Kerry seeks to navigate stormy Iran talks

Secretary of State John Kerry will be reprising a familiar role as the calming presence while in Geneva this weekend to try to salvage nuclear talks with Iran.

The negotiations have fired up a broad swath of players, including Iran and Israel, Congress and the French. Through it all, America’s top diplomat has sought to ease tensions in pursuit of an improbable deal between actors that have distrusted each other for decades.

{mosads}Kerry’s soothing approach was on full display Thursday after Republicans on Capitol Hill prodded him to denounce Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for calling Israel the “rabid dog” of the region the previous day.

Kerry offered a vintage low-key rebuke – he called Khamenei’s comments “inflammatory” and “unnecessary” – but studiously avoided going any further.

“I think at this moment when we are trying to negotiate and to figure out what can and can’t be achieved, the last thing we need are names back and forth,” Kerry added. “I don’t want to exacerbate it now, sitting here.”

Over in New York, the president’s ambassador to the United Nations didn’t hold back.

“Let me, obviously, condemn the comments of the Ayatollah, which are abhorrent,” Samantha Power told CNN.

The contrast in styles highlights Kerry’s carefully crafted image as the trustworthy intermediary who can swoop in to get squabbling parties to agree. His goal in traveling to Geneva late Friday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, is “continuing to help narrow the differences and move closer to an agreement.”

Kerry has his work cut out for him.

In his speech to militiamen on the day the Geneva talks resumed, Khamenei declared that Iran’s “nuclear rights” – including uranium enrichment – was a “red line.” And Iran’s second-ranking negotiator in Geneva, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, told reporters on Thursday that “no progress” had been made because Iran had “lost trust” in America and its partners.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile has called the proposal on the table in Geneva two weeks ago a “very, very bad deal” in which “Iran gives practically nothing and it gets a hell of a lot.”

The deal currently under discussion is modeled after that proposal, which would see Iran freeze the most advanced aspects of its nuclear program in exchange for a loosening of sanctions worth about $6 billion to $10 billion.

“Nothing that we are doing here, in my judgment, will put Israel at any additional risk,” Kerry said this week in comments aimed at Netanyahu and his allies. “In fact, let me make this clear, we believe it reduces risk.”

Kerry is headed to Jerusalem after Thanksgiving to make that case directly to the Israeli leader.

Kerry has also sought to paper over any differences with the French, whose demands that the negotiation terms be toughened helped scuttle a deal two weeks ago.

“The French signed off on it, we signed off on it,” Kerry said after the talks broke up, adding that Iran simply wasn’t ready to accept the deal at that moment.

Kerry has also made the case for diplomacy repeatedly on Capitol Hill, where senators of both parties are chomping at the bit to slap new sanctions on Iran. Even Kerry’s congressional critics give him credit for his relentless optimism – but they say that’s exactly the problem.

“It’s classic John Kerry,” a senior Senate Republican aide told The Hill. “He’s never ungentlemanly. I’ve never seen him lose his cool.”

If Kerry’s rhetoric was “we don’t trust these people, these people are terrorists, they have deceived us on the nuclear program over and over again, we know their negotiation strategy is to deceive us and buy more time, here are our red lines we will not cross,” the aide said, maybe he could come to Congress and say “trust us to hold the line in negotiations with the Iranians.”

“But they have no red lines,” the aide said. “There’s no faith in our negotiating team because there’s no backstop to any position of the United States.”