Vienna — The secret US-Iran diplomatic channel that helped advance the interim nuclear deal last year got underway after a message from US President Barack Obama was conveyed to Iran: The United States would be prepared to accept a limited Iranian domestic enrichment program as part of a nuclear agreement in which Iran would take concrete and verifiable steps to assure the world its nuclear program would remain exclusively peaceful.
“Basically it was to inform Iran that we are prepared to accept a limited enrichment program in the context of an otherwise acceptable deal,” former US-Iran negotiator Robert Einhorn told Al-Monitor in an interview July 13. “It was not a specific quid pro quo.”