Khamenei speaks during a meeting with air force commanders in Tehran yesterday.

Reuters/Dubai/Munich

Iran’s supreme leader said yesterday he could accept a compromise in nuclear talks and gave his strongest defence yet of President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to negotiate with the West, a policy opposed by powerful hardliners at home.
As his foreign minister met counterparties in the talks at a conference in Munich, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he “firmly” backed a fair nuclear deal.
“I would go along with any agreement that could be made. Of course, if it is not a bad deal. No agreement is better than an agreement which runs contrary to our nation’s interests,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian air force personnel, according to official news agencies.
In a speech that still underlined his suspicions about Western nations that he characterised as “bullies”, Khamenei backed Rouhani’s negotiations with them and said any workable deal would mean both sides easing their demands.
“As the president said, negotiations mean reaching a common point. Therefore, the other party ... should not expect its illogical expectations to be materialised. This means that one side would not end up getting all it wants.”
“I am for reaching a good settlement and the Iranian nation too will certainly not oppose any deal to uphold its dignity and integrity,” Khamenei said, an apparent warning to hardliners that they might have to accept a deal with powers including the United States, commonly known in Iran as “the Great Satan”.
Negotiators have set a June 30 final deadline for a nuclear deal, and Western officials have said they aim to agree on the substance of such an accord by March.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will address the US Congress on Iran on March 3 – to the annoyance of the Obama administration - said he would strive to thwart would be a “bad and dangerous agreement”.
“World powers and Iran are charging ahead to an agreement that would allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weaponry, something that would imperil the existence of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu told his weekly cabinet meeting.
The nuclear talks with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are aimed at clinching a deal that would ease Western concerns that Tehran could pursue a convert nuclear weapons programme, in return for the lifting of sanctions that have ravaged the Iranian economy.
Major sticking points are the pace at which sanctions would be removed, the size of Iran’s nuclear fuel-producing capacity—a key consideration in preventing any output of bomb material—and the length of any agreement.
“Our (nuclear) negotiators are trying to take the weapon of sanctions away from the enemy. If they can, so much the better. If they fail, everyone should know there are many ways at our disposal to dull this weapon,” Khamenei said.
Any deal “must be concluded in one stage and consist of clear and detailed specifications, and not subject to (various) interpretations”, he said.
“Given our past experience in dealing with the (West), a final draft must not leave any room for the other side to repeatedly extract concessions.”
Separately, Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif denied yesterday a Reuters report quoting unidentified senior Iranian officials saying he had told the United States during the talks that Rouhani’s political clout would be heavily damaged if negotiations failed.
“I believe the entire Iranian population understands that this government, that Dr Rouhani, his administration and the government in its entirety supported our efforts in the negotiations,” Zarif told a security conference in Munich where he met counterparties in the negotiations, in what he called a “very serious discussion”.
“Everybody has taken every necessary measure to make sure we succeed. All Iranians know this. If we fail, and I hope we won’t, they (Iranians) will not consider us responsible for that failure. They will consider attempts (to ask) too much from Iran as a reason for failure.”

No talks extension without ‘outlines’ of an agreement: Kerry
US Secretary of State John Kerry ruled out extending a March 31 deadline for Iran nuclear talks unless the basic framework of an agreement is hammered out, speaking in an interview aired yesterday.
“The only chance I can see of an extension at this point in time would be that you really have the outlines of the agreement,” Kerry said in the interview on NBC’s Meet the Press taped on Saturday in Munich.
Global powers have been struggling for more than a year to pin down a comprehensive deal to rein in Iran’s suspect nuclear programme, after an interim accord was struck in November 2013.
Kerry met with his Iranian counterpart Mohamed Javad Zarif on Friday and again yesterday in Munich, where the top US diplomat stressed Washington’s commitment to seeing the deadline met.
After their meeting yesterday, Zarif appeared to rule out any new extension to tough negotiations with world powers.   
Kerry said outlining the basics of the agreement was crucial before a possible extension could be considered, but reiterated his preference for sticking to the target date.
“But if we’re not able to make the fundamental decisions that have to be made over the course of the next weeks, literally, I think it would be impossible to extend,” he told NBC.
“I don’t think we would want to extend at that point. Either you make the decisions to prove your programme is a peaceful one, or if you’re unable to do that, it may tell a story that none of us want to hear.”