NYTIMES:Iran Nuclear Talks to Continue as Tone Heats Up

...gaffe by Iran’s state-run television, its Web site reported results of an opinion poll on Tuesday that said 63 percent of respondents favored halting Iran’s uranium enrichment in return for gradual removal of the sanctions — precisely the opposite message from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s.

On Wednesday, the poll had been removed, replaced by a poll about soccer, and Iran’s state television accused the BBC’s Persian service of hacking the Web site to doctor the results of the uranium poll. In fact, the Iranian television said only 24 percent of respondents favored halting enrichment, and the majority favored retaliation.

Iran Nuclear Talks to Continue as Tone Heats Up

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-talks-to-continue-as-tone-heats-up.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Low-level talks between Iran and the group of big powers over the disputed Iranian nuclear program ended early Wednesday with both sides saying the deputies of their top negotiators would meet at a later date. Their announcement gave no hint of progress but nonetheless suggested that neither side was ready to declare the effort a failure.

The talks, in Istanbul, were held against a backdrop of increasingly bellicose oratory by Iran and the United States because of the nuclear impasse, which after a lull of more than three months has started to raise tensions again in the Middle East.

Iran has renewed a threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf oil conduit, in response to the recently intensified American and European sanctions meant to paralyze the Iranian oil industry as a pressure tactic in the nuclear talks. Iran has also said the new sanctions would have no effect on its resolve to prevail in the nuclear dispute.

On Monday, Obama administration officials disclosed they had reinforced American military strength in bases near the Strait of Hormuz as a signal to Iran to not attempt to disrupt oil tanker traffic. At the same time, Iran began a three-day military exercise, test firing missiles it said were capable of hitting American bases and targets in Israel.

The Iranians raised the shrill tone a notch on Wednesday, when the commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force, which has been conducting the missile tests, said he had contingency plans to hit 35 American bases in the early minutes of any conflict.

"All these bases are within the reach of our missiles," the commander, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, was quoted as saying by Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency. He was also quoted as saying Israel has provided "good targets for us as well."

The increasingly hostile tone has mirrored pessimism over the lack of visible progress in the nuclear negotiations.

The Istanbul talks, which began on Tuesday and lasted into early Wednesday morning, were described by both sides as technical discussions involving lower-ranking experts representing Iran and the so-called P5-Plus-One Group of countries — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign policy official and the lead negotiator for the group, said in a statement that "the experts explored positions on a number of technical subjects." The statement said her deputy, Helga Schmid, would meet with the deputy of the lead Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, at an unspecified future date.

Iran’s official news media provided a similarly sterile appraisal of the Istanbul meeting, but added that the deputy-level meeting would be followed by a meeting between Mrs. Ashton and Mr. Jalili.

Iran and the P5-Plus-One Group have held three rounds of formal talks since April over the Iranian uranium enrichment program, which Western powers and Israel suspect is a cover for achieving bombmaking capability despite Iranian denials.

The Security Council has demanded that Iran halt its uranium enrichment, which Iran has refused to do on grounds that it has the inherent legal right to enrich for peaceful purposes as a signatory of the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The cumulative effects of American and European sanctions have already cut deeply into Iran’s ability to export oil, industry figures show, and have contributed to severe economic disruptions and inflation in Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said Tuesday that the country would resist the sanctions regardless of their severity and instead use them as an opportunity to wean itself from dependence on oil sales, which finance 80 percent of the national budget.

In what appeared to be a possible gaffe by Iran’s state-run television, its Web site reported results of an opinion poll on Tuesday that said 63 percent of respondents favored halting Iran’s uranium enrichment in return for gradual removal of the sanctions — precisely the opposite message from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s.

On Wednesday, the poll had been removed, replaced by a poll about soccer, and Iran’s state television accused the BBC’s Persian service of hacking the Web site to doctor the results of the uranium poll. In fact, the Iranian television said only 24 percent of respondents favored halting enrichment, and the majority favored retaliation.