World powers, Iran clinch 'historic' nuclear deal

Geneva — Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief in a breakthrough deal with world powers reached on Sunday after a decade of failed diplomacy and rising tensions.

US President Barack Obama said the preliminary accord clinched in marathon Geneva talks was "an important first step" towards easing fears once and for all that Tehran will get the bomb.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose elections in June raised big hopes for a thaw with the West, said on Twitter that the breakthrough was made possible by the "Iranian people's vote for moderation" and that it would "open new horizons".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office however immediately called the agreement struck in Geneva a "bad deal", saying it still left the Islamic republic with the capacity to make a nuclear weapon.

"Today, the United States together with our close allies and partners took an important first step toward a comprehensive solution that addresses our concerns with the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear programme," Obama said at the White House.

"While today's announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal.

"For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear programme, and key parts of the programme will be rolled back."

The Arms Control Association called the deal an "historic breakthrough"in the decade-old impasse a "net plus for nuclear nonproliferation and international security."

Under the deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany announced at 3:00 am Geneva time (0200 GMT), Tehran will limit uranium enrichment -- the area that raises most suspicions over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons drive -- to low levels.

It will neutralise its entire stockpile of uranium enriched to medium 20-percent purities -- close to weapons-grade -- within six months, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in Geneva where he and other foreign ministers helped nail down the deal.

Iran will also not add to its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, nor install more centrifuges or commission the Arak reactor.

UN atomic inspectors will also have additional, "unprecedented" access, Kerry said.

In exchange the deal will afford the Islamic republic some $7 billion (5.2 billion euros) in sanctions relief and the powers promised to impose no new embargo measures for six months if it sticks by the accord.

This represents "limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible relief while maintaining the vast bulk of our sanctions, including the oil, finance, and banking sanctions architecture," the White House said.

During this six-month period, Iran and the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany will negotiate a "comprehensive solution ... to give the international community confidence that Iran?s nuclear activities will be exclusively peaceful."

The deal was done at the third meeting of the P5+1 and Iran since Rouhani, seen as a relative moderate, replaced the more hawkish Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August saying he was ready for "serious" negotiations "without wasting time".

It remains to be seen, however, how the deal will go down with hardliners in both the United States and Iran -- and whether both sides stick to their commitments over the next half year.

Iranians, many of whom see the nuclear programme as source of national pride, are impatient to see a lifting of sanctions that have more than halved Iran's vital oil exports since mid-2012 and hit the economy hard.

Supreme leader Ali Ayatollah Khamenei, describing Israel as a doomed "rabid dog", said in Iran on Wednesday that he insisted "on not retreating one step from the rights of the Iranian nation."

Many in Israel strongly believe that the only aim of Iran -- an ally of Hezbollah and embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- is to develop a nuclear arsenal with which to threaten their country.

Netanyahu wants all of Iran's nuclear facilities dismantled for good, not some of them temporarily, believing nothing short of this will prevent its arch foe going nuclear -- as it is widely assumed to be itself.

"This is a bad agreement that gives Iran what it wanted: the partial lifting of sanctions while maintaining an essential part of its nuclear programme," Netanyahu's office said.

"Iran is threatening Israel and Israel has the right to defend itself," Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, warning that Israel was not bound by the accord.

Kerry said however that the deal extends the "breakout" time needed by Iran to develop nuclear weapons and thus "will make our partners in the region safer. It will make our ally Israel safer."

Many hardliners in the United States agree that Obama, who in September held an historic phone call with Rouhani, is being too soft on Iran by negotiating with Tehran and striking this deal.

"Unfortunately, some members of Congress believe further US-mandated sanctions would improve the United States negotiating position in the next round of talks," said Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association.

"Such a strategy is illogical and would be counterproductive."

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Secret US-Iran talks set stage for nuke deal

WASHINGTON (AP) —The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a high-stakes diplomatic gamble by the Obama administration that paved the way for the historic deal sealed early Sunday in Geneva aimed at slowing Tehran's nuclear program, The Associated Press has learned.

The discussions were kept hidden even from America's closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, and that may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and the West.

But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of the tensions between the U.S. and France, which earlier this month balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement and has angrily denounced the diplomatic outreach to Tehran.

President Barack Obama personally authorized the talks as part of his effort — promised in his first inaugural address — to reach out to a country the State Department designates as the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism.

The talks were held in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman and elsewhere with only a tight circle of people in the know, the AP learned. Since March, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Jake Sullivan, Vice President Joe Biden's top foreign policy adviser, have met at least five times with Iranian officials.

The last four clandestine meetings, held since Iran's reform-minded President Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated in August, produced much of the agreement later formally hammered out in negotiations in Geneva among the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany and Iran, said three senior administration officials. All spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss by name the highly sensitive diplomatic effort.

The AP was tipped to the first U.S.-Iranian meeting in March shortly after it occurred, but the White House and State Department disputed elements of the account and the AP could not confirm the meeting. The AP learned of further indications of secret diplomacy in the fall and pressed the White House and other officials further. As the Geneva talks appeared to be reaching their conclusion, senior administration officials confirmed to the AP the details of the extensive outreach.

The Geneva deal provides Iran with about $7 billion in relief from international sanctions in exchange for Iranian curbs on uranium enrichment and other nuclear activity. All parties pledged to work toward a final accord next year that would remove remaining suspicions in the West that Tehran is trying to assemble an atomic weapons arsenal.

Iran insists its nuclear interest is only in peaceful energy production and medical research.

The diplomatic gamble with Iran, if the interim agreement holds up and leads to a final pact preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, could avert years of threats of U.S. or Israeli military intervention. It could also prove a turning point in decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran — and become a crowning foreign policy achievement of Obama's presidency.

But if the deal collapses, or if Iran covertly races ahead with development of a nuclear weapon, Obama will face the consequences of failure, both at home and abroad. His gamble opens him to criticism that he has left Israel vulnerable to a country bent on its destruction and that he has made a deal with a state sponsor of terrorism.

The U.S. and Iran cut off diplomatic ties in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution and the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for more than a year. But Obama has expressed a willingness since becoming president to meet with the Iranians without conditions.

At the president's direction, the United States began a tentative outreach shortly after his inauguration in January 2009. Obama and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, exchanged letters, but the engagement yielded no results.

That outreach was hampered by Iran's hardline former president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, whose re-election in a disputed vote in June of that year led to a violent krackdown on opposition protesters. The next month, relations seemed at another low when Iran detained three American hikers who had strayed across the Iranian border from Iraq.

Ironically, efforts to win the release of the hikers turned out to be instrumental in making the clandestine diplomacy possible.

Oman's Sultan Qaboos was a key player, facilitating the eventual release of the hikers — the last two of whom returned to the United States in 2011 — and then offering himself as a mediator for a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. The secret informal discussions between mid-level officials in Washington and Tehran began.

Officials described those early contacts as exploratory discussions focused on the logistics of setting up higher-level talks. The discussions happened through numerous channels, officials said, including face-to-face talks at undisclosed locations. They included exchanges between then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, now Obama's national security adviser, and Iran's envoy to the world body, the officials said. National Security Council aide Puneet Talwar was also involved, the officials said.

The talks took on added weight eight months ago, when Obama dispatched the deputy secretary of state Burns, the top aide Sullivan and five other officials to meet with their Iranian counterparts in the Omani capital of Muscat. Obama dispatched the group shortly after the six powers opened a new round of nuclear talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in late February.

At the time, those main nuclear negotiations were making little progress, and the Iranians had little interest in holding bilateral talks with the United States on the sidelines of the meeting out of fear that the discussions would become public, the U.S. officials said.

So, with the assistance of Sultan Qaboos, officials in both countries began quietly making plans to meet in Oman. Burns, Sullivan and a small team of U.S. technical experts arrived on a military plane in mid-March for the meeting with the Iranians.

The senior administration officials who spoke to the AP would not say who Burns and Sullivan met with but characterized the Iranian attendees as career diplomats, national security aides and experts on the nuclear issue who were likely to remain key players even after the country's elections this summer.

The goal on the American side, the U.S. officials said, was simply at that point to see if the U.S. and Iran could successfully arrange bilateral talks — a low bar that underscored the sour state of relations between the two nations.

Beyond nuclear issues, the officials said the U.S. team at the March Oman meeting also raised concerns about Iranian involvement in Syria, Tehran's threats to close the strategically important Strait of Hormuz and the status of Robert Levinson, a missing former FBI agent who the U.S. believes was abducted in Iran, as well as two other Americans detained in the country.

Hoping to keep the channel open, Secretary of State John Kerry then visited Oman in May on a trip ostensibly to push a military deal with the sultanate but secretly focused on maintaining that country's key mediation role, particularly after the Iranian election scheduled for the next month, the officials said.

Rouhani's election in June on a platform of easing sanctions crippling Iran's economy and stated willingness to engage with the West gave a new spark to the U.S. effort, the officials said.

Two secret meetings were organized immediately after Rouhani took office in August, with the specific goal of advancing the stalled nuclear talks with world powers. Another pair of meetings took place in October.

Burns and Sullivan led the U.S. delegation at each of those sessions, and were joined at the final secret meeting by chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman.

The Iranian delegation was a mix of officials the Americans had met in March in Oman and others who were new to the talks, administration officials said. All of the Iranians were fluent English speakers.

U.S. officials said the meetings happened in multiple locations, but would not confirm the exact spots, saying they did not want to jeopardize their ability to use the same locations in the future. But at least some of the talks are believed to have taken place in Oman.

The private meetings coincided with a public easing of U.S.-Iranian discord. In early August, Obama sent Rouhani a letter congratulating him on his election. The Iranian leader's response was viewed positively by the White House, which quickly laid the groundwork for the additional secret talks. The U.S. officials said they were convinced that the outreach had the blessing of Ayatollah Khameni, but would not elaborate.

As negotiators continued to talk behind the scenes, public speculation swirled over a possible meeting between Obama and Rouhani on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, which both attended in September in New York. Burns and Sullivan sought to arrange face-to-face talks, but the meeting never happened largely due to Iranian concerns, the officials said. Two days later, though, Obama and Rouhani spoke by phone — the first direct contact between a U.S. and Iranian leader in more than 30 years.

It was only after that Obama-Rouhani phone call that the U.S. began informing allies of the secret talks with Iran, the U.S. officials said.

Obama handled the most sensitive conversation himself, briefing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Sept. 30 meeting at the White House. He informed Netanyahu only about the two summer meetings, not the March talks, in keeping with the White House's promise only to tell allies about any discussions with Iran that were substantive.

The U.S. officials would not describe Netanyahu's reaction. But the next day, he delivered his General Assembly speech, blasting Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and warning the U.S. against mistaking a change in Iran's tone with an actual change in nuclear ambitions. The Israeli leader has subsequently denounced the potential nuclear agreement as the "deal of the century" for Iran.

After telling Netanyahu about the secret talks, the United States then briefed the other members of the six-nation negotiating team, the U.S. officials said.

The last secret gatherings between the U.S. and Iran took place shortly after the General Assembly, according to the officials.

There, the deal finally reached by the parties on Sunday began to take its final shape.

At this month's larger formal nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran in Geneva, Burns and Sullivan showed up as well, but the State Department went to great lengths to conceal their involvement, leaving their names off of the official delegation list.

They were housed at a different hotel than the rest of the team, used back entrances to come and go from meeting venues and were whisked into negotiating sessions from service elevators or unused corridors only after photographers left.

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