US, Iran Teams Head to Istanbul For Nuclear-Experts Talks
Arms-control officials from Iran and six world powers are heading to Istanbul to discuss a new nuclear proposal as Iranian leaders intensify debate about possible direct US talks, reports Laura Rozen.
Arms-control officials from Iran and six world powers head to Istanbul for experts-level talks next week, to discuss a revised international proposal that Iranian officials greeted favorably at a meeting in Kazakhstan last month.
The US team to the Istanbul meeting, to be held March 17-18, includes two veteran State Department arms-control negotiators, Robert Einhorn and Jim Timbie, as well as Jofi Joseph, an Iran director in the White House WMD shop, US officials told the Back Channel Thursday. Einhorn and Timbie previously attended technical talks with Iran held in Istanbul last July, along with then-White House WMD czar Gary Samore, who left the administration in January.
Iran’s delegation to the technical talks in Istanbul next week is expected, as was the one held last July, to be led by Hamid-Reza Asgari, a long-time member of Iran's nuclear-negotiating team, who multiple Iranian sources tell Al-Monitor is an Iranian intelligence officer who has been involved in Iran's international arms-control discussions for over a decade. Iran's team to Istanbul also included Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
American and Iranian officials had fairly extensive discussions at the last technical talks held in Istanbul last July, a senior US official told journalists at the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan last month.
