Turkey Dropped As Venue For Iran Nuclear Talks

Turkey will not be the host of nuclear talks between Iran and the G5+1, according to the Esmail Kosari, the deputy head of Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.

Kosari told Khabar on line: “The new venue for the talks will be determined after Mr. Saeed Jalili [Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator] consults with the president.”

Turkey previously had been announced as Iran’s prime choice of venue for the nuclear negotiations, and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had directly expressed Iran’s desire to hold the talks in Istanbul.

However, in the past few days Iranian-Turkish relations have been gripped by serious tensions over the two countries’ opposing policies on the Syrian crisis, and Iran has turned to Iraq as its preferred venue for nuclear talks with world powers.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has harshly criticized Iran for its change of heart and accused Tehran of a “lack of honesty in its nuclear dossier.”

Meanwhile, another member of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Heydarpour Shahrezai, has said the nuclear talks will take place in Iraq or Syria, directly citing differences over Syria as the cause of this sudden change of direction.

The next round of nuclear talks will take place on April 14. The last time the two parties met was in January 2011 in Istanbul, but the negotiations reached an impasse, and since then the U.S. and the EU have been increasing sanctions on Iran as a way of forcing the country to alleviate their concerns about its nuclear program.