POLITICO: When President Barack Obama first began negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, he was encouraged by the existence of an obscure religious ruling from the country’s Supreme Leader: in a fatwa, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that developing or using nuclear weapons is against Islam…
But as a June 30 deadline for a nuclear deal closes in, Khamenei’s Islamic decree has emerged as a major obstacle to a nuclear deal, say analysts and sources close to the talks. It turns out that the fatwa has turned what was once a key western demand — that Tehran fully disclose its past research into nuclear bomb technology — into a potential deal-breaker…
But addressing the IAEA’s concerns does not necessarily mean a full public confession. Reaching a deal may require finding a compromise solution that allows Iran to continue denying that it ran a secret Manhattan Project while granting the IAEA enough information to satisfy the nuclear watchdog agency that it understands the nature of Iran’s past program… (more)
