Last week, Israel-Firster Hillary Clinton announced that the upcoming meeting of the so-called “P5+1″ on Iran’s nuclear program will be held in Istanbul on April 13. EU’s Cathrine Ashton, however said that the venue for the talk is still under consideration. Several Iranian lawmakers have objected Turkey being the venue due to Ankara’s open support for the USreali plan to bring regime change in Damascus.Tehran has indicated that it is considering another country, instead of Turkey, as the venue for the multifaceted talks with the P5+1. China, Iraq and Kazakhstan have offered to host the talks. However, it seems Tehran favors Baghdad as venue for the talk. Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari has confirmed that he had received a request from his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi.
It seem, Ankara has backed-down from playing US poodle over this issue. On Friday, Turkish foreign minister Dr. Ahmet Davutoglu in a phone conversation with Iran’s secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili lauded Tehran’s choice of Baghdad as venue for P5+1 talks as “wise”.
Last month, Erdogan-Davutoglu received dress-down from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei in Mashhad on Ankara’s covert war on Syria. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand kept Erdogan waiting for a whole day in Tehran before he met Turkish leader. Ankara has, since, reduced its oil import from Iran by 20%.
Barack Obama administration prefers to see P5+1 meeting in Turkey in order to boost Turkey as the pro-Israel regional power over the Islamic Republic. However, it may not have other choice but to accept America’s modern miracle of ‘stablity’, Iraq. Tehran understands, Ankara’s desperate regional realignment with Saudi Abrabi, Qatar and Egypt to project Turkey as number one regional power. However, Ankara’s double standards in Syria and Bahrain, have resulted in loosing its special relations with Tehran.
“While Turkey is receiving billions of petro-dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar – the US is installing a missile defense system in Turkey’s Malatya region whose sole agenda is to neutralize Iran’s missile capabilities in a conflict with Israel – that’s to say, weaken Iran’s capabilities to retaliate in the event of an Israeli military strike. The ABM project is predicated on GCC-Iran animosities and it doesn’t speak well of the US diplomacy to be seen so openly feeding on them,” says India’s former ambassador MK Bhadrakumar.
“Quite obviously, the Syrian crisis and attendant regional alignments have become the core issue in Turkey-Iran relations. Tehran can learn to live with the US’ ABM radar on the Anatolian plains; it can survive reduction in Turkey’s oil purchases; it can do without Erdogan’s certificate for its nuclear program; it is indifferent where the oil sheikhs park the ‘green money’ in Turkey. But Syria is the ‘red line’. And what Turkey has been doing in Syria is completely unacceptable,” says MK Bhadrakumar
Uprooted Palestinian 
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