The Turkish foreign minister spent about two and a half hours briefing editors and columnists last Tuesday on the joint declaration signed in Tehran between Iran, Brazil, and Turkey. The deal, reached after eighteen hours of negotiations, resembled a similar agreement from last October that the Iranians first accepted and then rejected.
The foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, presented his case in detail and reiterated that his government kept in touch with the US, as did the Brazilians, whom the Iranians said they would consider to be a mediator. Referring to a letter that President Obama sent to the Brazilian president and the Turkish prime minister, Davutoğlu argued that the deal satisfied all of the United States’ conditions: that 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium be transferred out of Iran (in this case, to Turkey), that this transfer be done all at once, and that the fuel rods would be given to Iran within a year.
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