[caption id="attachment_107851" align="alignright" width="177"] The new Republican-controlled Congress wants to poison the nuclear talks with Iran, Jim W. Dean says.[/caption]
The American people should let members of Congress know that they are sick and tired of them playing the spoiler role in nuclear talks with Iran, a political commentator says.
Jim W. Dean, the managing director of Veterans Today, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on Republican lawmakers’ threats to have more sanctions imposed against Iran if the ongoing nuclear talks with Tehran fail.

“The new Republican-controlled Congress seems intent on playing the role of the ugly American now by continuing its attempt to poison the nuclear talks with Iran,” Dean said. “Tehran has said over and over that it would not respond to threats in the negotiations.”

“So the goal of the new round of sanctions seems to aggravate the domestic, political situation there in these delicate times where all sides especially Iran has to be able to have the domestic support for whatever final resolution that they are able to work out,” he added.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Thursday that the Senate will start debate within weeks on whether to impose new sanctions against Iran, despite warnings from the Obama administration that they risked derailing nuclear talks.

Dean said that Israel is deeply involved in this because it is just desperate to have some kind of more sanctions “to have Iran back off from the negotiations due to the pressure.”

“But the good part of this is that it [the US] seems to have has given up on the initial craziness of wanting to have passed more sanctions with the idea that if we put more sanctions on Iran we have a better chance of getting an agreement which is just crazy,” the veteran journalist stated.

“But there are two problems here. By playing the ugly American role, Congress is clearly wanting to divert attention from two major things here:

“No. 1, all of the bogus claims of Iran’s nuclear weapons program were exposed as such as neither the US and Israeli or any of the other intelligence agencies were ever [able] to put any proof on the table after all of these endless claims of trying to stop their weapons program.

“Then [No.] 2, Congress also wants to divert attention from all the concessions that Iran not only has made during the talks but has lived up to by the letter, which the IAEA has reaffirmed over and over.”

The illegal sanctions on Iran have been imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Tehran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran's civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.

“So if Congress were to do this, I don’t think they would be getting the support of the P5+1. It is almost like they are in the isolation. I mean America has been talking about trying to isolate Russians, China – it is part of this new Cold War thing – [but] it’s continuing to isolate itself because it’s saying if everybody else wants an agreement the US doesn’t; they’ll just go their own way, they’ll do their own sanctions,”  Dean stated.

“So I think this is the problem of Congress running the control [of] the foreign policy… So the American people have to get on the phone if they want to support the talks… and let Congress know that they are sick and tired of them playing the spoiler role when the world needs get this issue behind, because we all will be safer with a good resolution,” he advised.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held three rounds of intense negotiations in Geneva to help speed up the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group - Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany - over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program.

US State Department officials said on Wednesday that Kerry and Zarif held “substantive” talks in the Swiss city.

The meetings come as Tehran and its negotiating partners are set to kick off a fresh round of nuclear talks in Geneva on January 18.

Iran and the six powers wrapped up their latest round of nuclear talks in Geneva on December 17, 2014, three weeks after they failed to reach a final agreement by a November 24 deadline despite making some progress.

The two sides agreed to extend their discussions for seven more months until July 1, 2015.

The scale of Iran’s uranium enrichment and the timetable for the lifting of anti-Iran sanctions are seen as major sticking points in the talks.

By Press TV

 

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