Israel Matzav

'The hell we'll negotiate our ballistic missiles'

President Hussein Obama may not have red lines, but Iran sure does. The Iranians have made it quite clear - again - that they will not negotiate over their ballistic missile program. I received this via email from The Israel Project.

A top Iranian official reiterated on Wednesday that Tehran will refuse to discuss its ballistic missile program in the context of comprehensive negotiations over its nuclear program with the international community, the latest in a long line of statements underlining that the Islamic republic views the issue as a red line. The dispute has the potential to impact the domestic policy debate in the United States both substantively and politically. Substantively, the issue is tangled up in a broader debate over the degree to which Iran will be forced to account for or roll back suspected military dimensions of its atomic program. Iranian negotiators had this week sought already to delay discussions wholesale of all such dimensions, which range from warhead development to the involvement of the Iranian military in uranium production. Politically an outright Iranian refusal is likely to erode confidence in the Obama administration's diplomatic nimbleness. Iranian negotiators had managed to exclude mention of Iran's missile program from the interim Joint Action Plan (JPA), an omission that White House figures justified to lawmakers and journalists as justified for the sake of building momentum. Lead U.S. diplomacy, including lead negotiator Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, instead insisted that Iran's ballistic missile program would be addressed in comprehensive negotiations.

And now that the sanctions are effectively gone, Iran just has so many incentives to make that concession....

What could go wrong? 

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, intercontinental ballistic missiles, intermediate range ballistic missiles, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, Wendy Sherman

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:24 PM