[Bagor]

UK security adviser attended US-Iran talks and judged deal was within reach
Exclusive: Jonathan Powell thought Tehran’s ‘surprising’ offer on its nuclear programme could prevent rush to war, sources say.

Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final talks between the US and Iran and judged that the offer made by Tehran on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent a rush to war, the Guardian can reveal.

Powell thought progress had been made in Geneva in late February and that the deal proposed by Iran was “surprising”, according to sources.

Two days after the talks ended, and after a date had been agreed for a further round of technical talks in Vienna, the US and Israel launched the attack on Iran.

Powell’s presence at the talks, and his close knowledge of how they were progressing, was confirmed by three sources.

One source said he was in the building at Oman’s ambassadorial residence in Cologny, Geneva, acting as an adviser, reflecting widespread concern about the US expertise on the talks represented by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy on several issues.

Kushner and Witkoff had invited Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the Geneva talks, to provide technical expertise, though Kushner would later claim that he and Witkoff had “a pretty deep understanding of the issues that matter in this”.

Nuclear experts would later say that Witkoff’s pronouncements on the Iran nuclear programme were riddled with basic errors.

Powell has long experience as a mediator, and one source said Powell brought an expert from the UK Cabinet Office with him. One western diplomat said: “Jonathan thought there was a deal to be done, but Iran were not quite there yet, especially on the issue of UN inspections of its nuclear sites.”

A former official who was briefed on the Geneva talks by some of the participants said: “Witkoff and Kushner did not bring a US technical team with them. They used Grossi as their technical expert, but that is not his job. So Jonathan Powell took his own team.

“The UK team were surprised by what the Iranians put on the table,” the former official added.

“It was not a complete deal, but it was progress and was unlikely to be the Iranians’ final offer. The British team expected the next round of negotiations to go ahead on the basis of the progress in Geneva.”

That next round of talks was due to take place in Vienna on Monday 2 March, but never happened. The US and Israel had launched their all-out attack two days earlier
Powell’s attendance at the Geneva talks, as well as at a previous set of meetings earlier in the month in the Swiss city, helps in part to explain the UK government’s reluctance to back the US attack on Iran, a reluctance that has put the UK-US relationship under unprecedented strain.

The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of an Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon. This is the first time it has become clear that Britain was so closely involved in the talks, and so had good reason to decide whether diplomatic options had been exhausted and a US attack was necessary.

Instead the UK regarded the attack as unlawful and premature since Powell believed the path remained open to a negotiated solution to the long-running issue of how Iran could reassure the US that it was not seeking a nuclear weapon.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-within-reach

Kushner and Witkoff. So knowledgeable on nuclear matters they saw it fit to not take a technical team with them.

Would be interesting to hear what Mr Grossi's takeaway from the meeting was and what he told Kushner and Witkoff. You'd think that would carry significant weight. Particularly by what the Brits took away from the meeting.