Afternoon tea with Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif at the Upper East Side in New York on Park Avenue is a first in over 20 years. There is also Wendy Sherman and Ernest Moniz that are working the streets at the behest of the White House to get a nuclear agreement signed with Iran. Then there is the matter of gratuity with regard to new embassy locations including that (never-neutral) Switzerland. Imagine the non-reported and secretive discussions.
Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif this afternoon at the official residence of the Iranian ambassador to the UN in New York City. This is a rare symbolic move to have a secretary of state entering Iran’s soil for the first time since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is accompanying Kerry in his visit to the Upper East Side residence.
When asked by reporters how Iran nuclear talks were progressing, Kerry replied, “We’re plugging away, we’re plugging away.” Earlier in the day, speaking at the UN on the opening day of a month-long conference on nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Kerry said Iran and world powers were closer than ever to a historic Iran nuclear deal.
Iran and U.S. cut deal on new diplomatic offices in Washington, Tehran
The United States, in what may be among the first negotiated deals with Iran since relations broke off in 1980, is allowing the Iranian Interests Section in Washington to move to new headquarters on 23rd Street Northwest in West End.
In exchange, Switzerland, which had been looking for new space for the U.S. Interests Section in Tehran — because the current offices, we were told, were “no longer viable and pretty decrepit” — will be getting new offices as well for the U.S. facility.
“Reciprocity is the hallmark of diplomacy,” one source told us. “This was a swap.”
This news comes after Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s visit in New York last week to the elegant second-floor parlor in the residence of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations — making Kerry the first senior American official to, at least technically, set foot on Iranian soil in decades.
We asked whether the deal indicated a thaw in relations and was related to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programs.
A State Department official, in an e-mail reply Thursday, said “there is no connection that we are aware of between this long-planned relocation and the ongoing . . . negotiations to address the international community’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.”
“The Iranian Interests Section requested last year to relocate to a new address,” the official said, “and permission was granted, per standard protocol.” (The Iranians say they’ve been trying to move to new space for about 30 years.)
The Iranian mission here, which is technically under the auspices of Pakistan, basically handles visas, passports and some cultural matters for the estimated 1.5 million Iranian Americans in this country. It’s currently housed on Wisconsin Avenue north of the Georgetown Social Safeway and above the Wide World of Wines.
Well, this is one deal the Senate won’t get to review.
In part from al Monitor: There will be a “very detailed understanding of the process to resolve the IAEA’s [International Atomic Energy Agency] Iran requirements for satisfying and clarifying the [past] possible military dimensions” of its program.
Moniz also reiterated that under the framework deal reached earlier this month with Iran, the only enrichment site Iran will operate will be at Natanz, and that the underground Fordow facility will have no enrichment, no fissile material and also no advanced centrifuge research and development.
Under the agreement, “Fordow is shut down as an enrichment facility,” Moniz said. “Nearly two-third of its apparatus will be shipped out. There will be continuous surveillance and monitoring.”
“There will be no enrichment at Fordow,” Moniz said. “There will be no enrichment research and development at Fordow. There will be no uranium at Fordow.”
He added, “All of the enrichment and enrichment research and development will be at Natanz.”
First of all I am ashamed that our government would allow such a coward like Kerry to even be Secretary of State. He is hated by 80% of the military and 100% of his former Swift Boat crew. My God what has happened to our country and our military? Our Republic is gone….
That Kerry’s father worked for the UN and that he also was a fraud and a liar, nothing more Kerry does should surprise us.
Like Gore his associations and past define him.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/al-jazeera-bureau-chief-in-pakistan-also-doubled-as-al-qaeda-member/
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/al-jazeera-bureau-chief-in-pakistan-also-doubled-as-al-qaeda-member/