Donald Trump insists that this weekend’s talks between the U.S. and Iran will be direct.
The Iranian negotiating team, led by Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, is maintaining the opposite. The discussions will be indirect, he says, led by mediators who will shuttle between the two sides. You might be forgiven for wondering: are they even negotiations at all?
During his first term, the U.S. president’s Iran policy was a shambles. He ditched an effective Obama-era agreement that required Iran to ship out 97 per cent of its enriched uranium stockpile, prohibited Iranian enrichment above 3.67 per cent purity, and instituted an inspection and verification regime that ensured potential violations of the deal would be spotted early on.
But Mr Trump never thought the deal was a good one. Nor did many of the Iran hawks in Washington, who viewed Barack Obama as no better than a modern day Neville Chamberlain.
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