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| Greek MP's during the tense debate. |
THE GUARDIAN
In Greece, lawmakers approved a package of harsh austerity measures and economic policy changes that were required by its creditors as the terms of a $94 billion bailout package.Tsipras faced a revolt over the reforms from his radical-left ruling Syriza party, which came to power in January on anti-austerity promises. But the Athens parliament eventually carried the bill on Wednesday night by 229 lawmakers in favour, 64 against and six abstentions.
In a vote that saw tensions soar in and outside parliament, Syriza suffered huge losses as 40 MPs revolted against the measures, but pro-European opposition parties delivered their support. The outcome will significantly weaken Tsipras as the scale of the rebellion sinks in. Stripped of its working majority, the Syriza-dominated two-party coalition will struggle to enforce the pension cuts and VAT increases outlined in the deal or implement any other legislation outside it.
Still, there was relief that the Greek parliament had overwhelmingly supported reforms to ensure that talks on a third bailout for the debt-stricken country can begin.
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U.S. Offers to Help Israel Bolster Defenses,
NY TIMES
When President Obama called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to discuss the nuclear deal with Iran, the American president offered the Israeli leader, who had just deemed the agreement a “historic mistake,” a consolation prize: a fattening of the already generous military aid package the United States gives Israel.
The nuclear agreement, which would lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions designed to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon, would ultimately provide a financial windfall to Israel’s sworn enemy in the region, and Mr. Obama said he was prepared to hold “intensive discussions” with Mr. Netanyahu on what more could be done to bolster Israel’s defenses, administration officials said.
But, as in previous talks with Mr. Obama, Mr. Netanyahu refused to engage in such talk “at this juncture,” the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail the private discussions. And on Tuesday, as administration officials fanned out to make the case for the Iran agreement, one aide suggested in a phone call to Jewish and pro-Israel groups that Mr. Netanyahu had rebuffed their overtures because he believes accepting them now would be tantamount to blessing the nuclear deal, say people involved in the call who did not want to be quoted by name in describing it.
The president himself has hinted that he believes the Israeli prime minister is loath to talk about any additional security assistance he may want from the United States until after Congress has had its say on the Iran deal. Lawmakers have 60 days to review the deal, which Mr. Netanyahu has urged them to reject.
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No Time Like The Right Time...
NY TIMES
One by one, the roadblocks to a nuclear accord between Iran and the United States had been painstakingly cleared.
For the Iranians, this was a negotiation first and foremost to get rid of what Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister and his country’s chief negotiator, often called the “unjust sanctions” while trying to keep their nuclear options open. And while they treasured their nuclear program, they treasured the symbolism of not backing down to American demands even more. But Mr. Zarif was walking his own high-wire act at home. While he had an important ally in Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, hard-liners did not want to reach any deal at all; many were making a fortune from the sanctions because they controlled Iran’s black markets.
And conservatives around the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were looking for any signs that their Americanized chief negotiator, who studied at the University of Denver, was ready to give away too much nuclear infrastructure without getting Iran the sanctions lifted in return, as the ayatollah had decreed.
There was no single event, no heart-to-heart conversation between adversaries or game-changing insight that made the Iran deal happen. Instead, over a period of years, each side came to gradually understand what mattered most to the other.
For the Americans, that meant designing offers that kept the shell of Iran’s nuclear program in place while seeking to gut its interior. For the Iranians, it meant ridding themselves of sanctions in ways they could describe to their own people as forcing the United States to deal with Iran as an equal, respected sovereign power. And it happened because a brief constellation of personalities and events came into alignment:
The top energy officials of the United States and Iran, respectively, were Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi. Mr. Moniz and Mr. Salehi, a former foreign minister and now head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, joined the talks to work out the nuclear details — in a less political, more scientific environment.
The officials working under Mr. Salehi “were mostly hard-liners, and they would give on nothing,” one American official said. But when Mr. Salehi, who got his nuclear training at M.I.T. before the Iranian revolution, showed up and developed a rapport with Mr. Moniz, the secretary of energy and a former chairman of the M.I.T. physics department, the Iranian bureaucrats were often sidelined, or overruled.
During a break on one particularly discouraging March day in Lausanne, Switzerland, where negotiations were held before adjourning to Vienna, Mr. Zarif struck a different tone as he invoked the names of the key figures on two sides, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the top energy officials of the United States and Iran, Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi.
“We are not going to have another time in history when there is an Obama and a Biden and a Kerry and a Moniz again,” Mr. Zarif said, according to notes of the conversation. “And there may be no Rouhani, Zarif and Salehi.”
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| Hassan Rouhani was allowed to run for president in 2013 largely on a platform of ridding Iran of punishing sanctions. Credit Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press |
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When the photo ops were over, the seven foreign ministers who had negotiated it met for the last time. Each spoke briefly about the importance of the moment. Mr. Kerry spoke last, but then added a personal coda. Choking up, he recalled going off to Vietnam as a young naval officer and said he never wanted to go through that again. He emerged committed, he said, to using diplomacy to avoid the horrors of war.