Obama ‘embarrassed’ for Iran letter signatories

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said he was “embarrassed” for Republicans who signed a controversial letter warning Iran’s leaders about reaching a nuclear deal with the White House.
“I am embarrassed for them,” Obama said in an interview with Vice media, which is expected to be released on Monday.
“For them to address a letter to the Ayatollah who, they claim, is our mortal enemy and their basic argument to them is: don’t deal with our president because you can’t trust him to follow through on an agreement. It’s close to unprecedented.”
Forty-seven Senate Republicans — including several potential 2016 presidential candidates — signed the open letter to Iran’s supreme leader published earlier this month.
Republicans warned any deal agreed before Obama leaves office in 2017 is “nothing more than an executive agreement between President Barack Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei.”
“The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time,” they added.
With a March deadline looming, negotiators are furiously working to agree on a deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear programme in return for reducing Western sanctions.
A new round of talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is due to take place in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has meanwhile criticised the two-step process, saying matters should be handled in one fell swoop. He is due to give a closely watched Iranian New Year’s address on March 21.
On Thursday Khamenei said the other side in the talks was “deceitful and stabs in the back,” according to news agency ISNA.
Kerry, currently attending an investment conference in Egypt, will travel to the Swiss city of Lausanne Sunday to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The US negotiating team, including chief negotiator Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, are scheduled to join him in Lausanne, the State Department said on Friday.
With uncertainty still surrounding the deal, remained unclear how long Kerry will stay in Lausanne nor when he is expected to return to Washington.
Zarif is meanwhile due to take a break from the talks with Kerry on Monday to meet EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and her French, German and British counterparts, before returning to Switzerland, according to his ministry.
On March 9, 47 Republican US senators wrote an open letter to Iran’s leaders warning that any nuclear deal could be modified by Congress or revoked “with the stroke of a pen” by Obama’s successors.
This followed an address to US lawmakers — on a Republican invitation — by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he warned that the mooted deal would leave Iran’s nuclear programme “largely intact”.
Obama said it was “somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with hardliners in Iran”. Kerry called the missive “irresponsible”.
Zarif, who together with reformist President Hassan Rouhani is also under pressure from Iranian hardliners, was scathing about the letter from US “extremists”, saying it had “no legal value”.
“In truth, it told us that we cannot trust the United States,” Zarif told top clerics.
Diplomats say there has been progress in some areas, including changing the design of the Arak reactor that could give Iran weapons-grade plutonium once operational.