Iran Daily, March 8: Foreign Minister Zarif — “Failure in Nuclear Talks is Not End of World”

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• Revolutionary Guards Outlet: American, Israeli, and Arab “Military Advisors of Islamic State” Arrested in Iraq

While maintaining hope for a nuclear agreement with the US and other powers, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that failure “will not be the end of the world”.

Zarif said in an interview on Saturday:

There is still a chance of more than 50% for the attainment of an agreement, and I feel that both sides believe that success and attainment of an agreement will be much better and useful than failure in the negotiations.

Yet failure in reaching an understanding will not be the end of the world; however, both sides have spent their time and political prestige in the success of these talks.

Iran and the US held four days of discussions last week to try and close “significant gaps” to reach a comprehensive agreement by July 1. Tehran has reportedly made concessions over its uranium enrichment and holding of nuclear fuel; however, it is insisting that US-led sanctions be lifted within months of an agreement.

Zarif restated the position on Saturday:

As it was said in the [interim] Geneva agreement [of November 2013], as long as an agreement is not made on all issues, nothing has been agreed on….

Removal of the UN Security Council sanctions is not complicated and merely depends on the political will (of the other side.

Iran and the US, joined by European Union foreign policy chiefs, are scheduled to renew talks on Saturday.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, implied on Saturday that the enrichment issues have been resolved, leaving sanctions as the main barrier to a deal.

Salehi said, after meetings with US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in last week’s talks:

We were facing a type of deadlock in the technical negotiations….We held talks on enrichment, the Arak [heavy-water] research reactor, research and development, Fordoo [uranium enrichment facility], and some other smaller issues…..

We can say that the technical deadlocks were removed in the two technical meetings.

Revolutionary Guards Outlet: American, Israeli, and Arab “Military Advisors of Islamic State” Arrested in Iraq

Fars News, the outlet of the Revolutionary Guards, claims that, Iraqi Special Forces have arrested four “foreign military advisors” of the Islamic State.

Among the advisors were American, Israeli and Arab nationals, according to Fars. The men were supposedly detained in Tal Abta desert near Mosul city in northern Iraq.