Sanctions expert to accompany US delegation in Iran-G5+1 talks

Director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Adam Szubin, who is among the US government's foremost experts on sanctions, is slated to accompany the American delegation during the upcoming talks between the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) with Iran, the US State Department said. The US delegation which is scheduled to attend Iran-G5+1 nuclear talks on October 15-16 in Geneva will include Szubin who has led OFAC since 2006 and is responsible for administering and enforcing the US government's economic sanctions programs to advance foreign policy and national security objectives. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, effectively the State Department's third-ranking diplomat, will lead the US delegation to negotiations between Iran and six major powers. The US team also includes James Timbie, the senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security; Puneet Talwar, the senior director for Iran, Iraq and the Persian Gulf States on the White House National Security Staff; and Richard Nephew, the principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department. The presence of Szubin in the US delegation during Tuesday-Wednesday talks with Iran, can be considered as a hint that Washington may be giving greater thought to how it might ease sanctions on Tehran. Iran and the world powers held a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York in September and are due to meet again in Geneva on October 15-16. On April 6, Iran and the six world powers wrapped up two days of intensive negotiations in Almaty, but without making any major breakthrough. Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.