A former official who was briefed on the Geneva talks by some of the participants said: “Witkoff and Kushner did not bring a US technical team with them. They used Grossi as their technical expert, but that is not his job. So Jonathan Powell took his own team.
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“It was not a complete deal, but it was progress and was unlikely to be the Iranians’ final offer. The British team expected the next round of negotiations to go ahead on the basis of the progress in Geneva.”
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The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of an Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon.
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UK officials have subsequently explained they were impressed that Iran was prepared for the deal to be permanent and, unlike the 2015 nuclear agreement, would not have cut-off dates, or sunset clauses ending the restrictions on its programme.
Iran had also agreed to down-blend the 440kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium under the supervision of the IAEA inside Iran. It agreed no stockpiles of highly enriched uranium would be built up in the future.
In the final session of the talks, Iran agreed to a three- to-five-year pause on domestic enrichment, but the US in the afternoon session, after consultations with Trump, demanded a 10-year pause.
In practice, Iran had no means to enrich domestically because of the bombing of its enrichment plants in 2015.
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Accounts differ on whether Kushner left the talks giving the impression Trump would welcome what had been agreed, or that the US negotiators knew it would take something massive to persuade Trump that war was not the best option.
One Gulf diplomat with knowledge of the talks said: “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”
The Guardian
Also...who's in charge here? What's really going on?
