Zabiha News

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Submitted by Zabiha News:“Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, took a trip from Tehran today to the holy city of Qom, home to some of the most powerful clerics in the Shiite Muslim faith, which is prevalent in Iran and Iraq. In Qom, he visited three key Iranian clerics for closed-door meetings.

Analysts offered a number of possibilities for Jalili’s secretive visit:

1. To the chagrin of Ahmadinejad, powerful moderates in the government want to bend on the issue of enrichment, either by accepting the so-called “freeze-for-freeze” proposal to stop adding new uranium-enriching centrifuges, or by suspending enrichment altogether. Jalili and his camp, led by Ahmadinejad, want political backing for going up against them.
2. Ahmadinejad wants to do a U-turn and accept some kind of compromise with the West, but needs some political cover.
3. Jalili is a relative political newcomer. Unlike his well-connected predecessor, Larijani, he doesn’t have the political standing to make any bold moves, and wants to improve his ties to the clergy in order to do so.”