Iran Hints Nuclear Talks Could Include New Official

Iran Hints Nuclear Talks Could Include New Official
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/world/middleeast/irans-new-foreign-minister-may-lead-nuclear-talks.html
By RICK GLADSTONE
Published: August 20, 2013

Iran sent strong signals on Tuesday that its new foreign minister, an American-educated diplomat with a deep understanding of the United States, would assume the additional role of leading the Iranian delegation in talks with the major powers over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

Such a change under the new president, Hassan Rouhani, would be a significant departure for Iran in the nuclear talks. Mr. Rouhani, a moderate cleric who won the presidency in June over his more conservative rivals, has pledged to reduce tensions with the West over the nuclear issue, which has left Iran increasingly isolated and economically troubled by punitive sanctions.

Mr. Rouhani’s choice for foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was confirmed by Parliament last week. The signals that Mr. Zarif would lead the nuclear negotiations were conveyed on Tuesday at a regular weekly news conference in Tehran by the Foreign Ministry spokesman, which was broadcast by Iran’s Press TV Web site.

“Over the past 10 to 12 years, the negotiator has been the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. This may change,” said the spokesman, Abbas Araqchi. “Rouhani may decide to appoint somebody else. Maybe the foreign minister, or anyone else that he deems fit.”

For the spokesman to even make such a speculative statement suggested that Mr. Rouhani had already decided that his foreign minister would be doing the negotiating henceforth and that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on the nuclear issue, had agreed, despite his own deep mistrust of the West.

The previous nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, was a personal emissary of the ayatollah’s and was among the conservative presidential candidates defeated by Mr. Rouhani in the June 14 election. Mr. Jalili made no progress in the talks with the so-called P-5-plus-1, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany.

Mr. Zarif, 53, is widely considered the most important new face in Mr. Rouhani’s cabinet because of his background in the United States. He is known for having sought to improve relations with the West and the United States in particular, preferring to refer to it as a rival nation and not the enemy, the name commonly used by Iranian hard-line conservatives.

He was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2002 to 2007. He was sidelined and eventually replaced after the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner who escalated Iran’s nuclear activities and often inveighed against the West.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman’s statement on Tuesday was the second time in five days that personnel changes under Mr. Rouhani have suggested that a shake-up in strategy on the nuclear issue may be under way.

On Friday, Iranian state news media announced that Fereydoon Abassi, a hard-line nuclear scientist who narrowly escaped assassination nearly three years ago in a bombing that Iran attributed to Israeli agents, had been removed as the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, which operates nuclear facilities.

Mr. Abassi’s replacement was the former foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, widely considered the most practical member of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet. Mr. Abassi, by contrast, was regarded as uncompromising.

“You have to read the fig leaves from all these pronouncements — they’re talking about diplomacy,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a political science professor who specializes in Iran at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. “I think in this case they’re hoping some wise politicians here in the United States will put two and two together — that these are all signs they want to reach an agreement.”

It remains unclear when the nuclear talks will resume. But many Iran political experts have been saying they expect a less bombastic tone in the talks under Mr. Rouhani, even if Iran insists on its right to enrich uranium, a major obstacle to an agreement.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, rejecting Western suspicions that it aspires to build nuclear weapons.

A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2013, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Iran Hints Nuclear Talks Could Include New Official.