Baeidi-Nejad Questions Jalili's Claims Regarding Nuclear Negotiations

Hamid Baeidi-Nejad, head of Iran's expert group in nuclear negotiations, rejected Saeed Jalili's statements about the achievements of previous officials in Iran's nuclear file, emphasizing that Mr. Jalili, in his capacity as the person responsible for this file, was unable to reach the negotiation stage with world powers. Saeed Jalili, former Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and head of nuclear negotiations until 2013, has recently made severe criticisms of the Vienna nuclear agreement and the Iranian negotiating team, claiming that during his tenure, world powers were ready to completely lift sanctions and accept Iran's uranium enrichment program. However, Hamid Baeidi-Nejad on Thursday, September 9, stated on his Instagram page that comparing previous negotiations with the recent nuclear talks that led to the Vienna agreement 'does not seem logical.' According to him, Jalili's discussions with the 1+5 group were halted at an initial stage, a phase where 'the parties assess the conditions to see if they can find common ground to begin negotiations or not,' and thus 'neither side had even entered the pre-negotiation phase, let alone the negotiation phase.' In part of his note, he stated: 'As an expert, it is hard for me to imagine that in the previous round of talks, which did not even reach the negotiation stage, and considering that the time allocated for negotiations at that time was much shorter compared to this period, it was possible for Iran and the 1+5 countries to reach such an understanding regarding the comprehensive lifting of sanctions and acceptance of enrichment.' Mr. Baeidi-Nejad then calculated the number of times Mr. Jalili engaged in discussions with the 1+5 members from 2007 to 2013, and considering that the talks were conducted through a translator, which meant that half of the discussion time was spent on translation, he concluded that 'the total time of these discussions compared to the new type of discussions would be a maximum of 4 days. And this was under conditions where we know there were major disagreements between the two sides regarding enrichment and the lifting of sanctions, and that all economic and banking sanctions should be lifted at once.' Saeed Jalili on Tuesday, September 6, in a meeting with members of the Iranian Parliament's special committee to review the nuclear agreement document, stated that this agreement is unacceptable and that 'one hundred of Iran's legitimate rights' have been disregarded. Less than a week prior, he had mentioned in the Assembly of Experts that when Hassan Rouhani's government took over the nuclear project, 'the opposing side acknowledged Iran's nuclear rights within the framework of the NPT and admitted that Iran was not an exception in nuclear rights and obligations and announced its practical readiness to form a nuclear deal and enter the issue of lifting sanctions, including unilateral sanctions.'