WASHINGTON — The question of whether the United States should seek to engage Iran in one-on-one talks on its nuclear program joined the likely topics for Monday’s final presidential debate as supporters of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney jousted Sunday over the issue.
The prospect of such talks was raised in an article published over the weekend in The New York Times that said Iran and the U.S. had agreed in principle to direct talks after the presidential election.
On Saturday, the White House denied that a final agreement on direct talks had been reached, while saying that it remained open to such contacts. On Sunday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry dismissed the report.
But if the report proved to be true, said a supporter of Romney, the Republican nominee, Iran’s motives should be seriously questioned.
“I hope we don’t take the bait,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think this is a ploy by the Iranians” to buy time for their nuclear program and divide the international coalition, he said.
A supporter of Obama, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on the same program that the tough international sanctions that the president helped marshal against Iran might be bearing fruit exactly as hoped, forcing Iran to blink.
“This month of October, the currency in Iran has declined 40 percent in value,” said Durbin, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “There is unrest in the streets of Tehran, and the leaders in Iran are feeling it. That’s exactly what we wanted the sanctions program to do.”
The Times, citing unnamed senior Obama administration officials, reported over the weekend that after secret exchanges, U.S. and Iranian officials had agreed in principle to hold one-on-one negotiations between the nations, which have not had official diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, denied Sunday that any direct talks had been scheduled.
“We do not have anything such as talks with the United States,” he told the semiofficial Fars news agency.
Salehi predicted that there would be a new round of talks in November with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — including the U.S. — and Germany, but said that “there is no fixed date yet.” Several rounds of such talks have failed to produce a breakthrough. The U.S. and its partners say Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at producing a weapon, but Iran insists the program is for peaceful purposes.
In the past, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and members of his inner circle have floated the idea of re-establishing some diplomatic contacts with the U.S.
But while Ahmadinejad is the public face of the Iranian government, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the only Iranian leader with the authority to approve direct negotiations with the United States.
Iranian analysts suggested that if there had there been any behind-the-scenes negotiations, Khamenei would have publicly hinted at a change in his stance.
“Instead, he has done nothing but strongly denounce all ideas of any compromise in the nuclear case,” said Abbas Abdi, a former politician critical of Ahmadinejad.
That stance leaves little space for diplomatic maneuvering, Abdi said, adding that negotiations with the U.S. could only weaken the ayatollah’s position.
“Direct talks with our archenemy would be a disgrace for those who support him and create more leverage for his opponents to criticize him,” Abdi said.
