With growing speculation that the Obama administration might allow Iran to continue enriching uranium, is a deal back on the cards?
The current round of talks between Iran and the major world powers, represented by the so-called P5+1, resumes January 24 in Istanbul following an initial two-day session held last month in Geneva. And, while it’s exceedingly unlikely that the talks will achieve a breakthrough, for the first time in quite a while there’s actually some reason for optimism.
First of all, the scuttlebutt in Washington is that the Obama administration is now prepared to put a much-improved offer on the table. According to several sources in think tanks, on Capitol Hill and among Iran experts, the United States will offer to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium, on its own soil and with its existing array of centrifuges. That offer, however, will be contingent on Iran exporting the bulk of its enriched uranium for processing outside the country, most likely in Russia, where part of it will be transformed into fuel rods for use in the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), which is used for medical purposes, and part of it will be reprocessed into fuel for the Russian-built nuclear plant at Bushehr, which recently started up. That latter use could be crucial, since it allows Iran to claim that it’s refining and enriching fuel for civilian use in a power plant, not for military purposes.
In exchange, Iran would be required to accept stringent new oversight by the international community, through the International Atomic Energy Agency. In addition, it wouldn’t be allowed to expand either the number or the capacity of its existing centrifuges. In any case, according to Iran watchers, the sanctions regime has already severely undercut Iran’s ability to manufacture and operate additional centrifuges. And Iran’s nuclear programme has also been undermined by what appears to be a devastating covert operations effort—led, it’s hard not to presume, by the United States and Israel—that has included the Stuxnet computer virus, a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers and a campaign of sabotage aimed at equipment and technology used in Iran’s nuclear industry.
Were a deal struck roughly along these lines, it would achieve the much-desired win-win outcome for both sides. The United States could claim that it has achieved its primary goal of tougher inspections and verification measures aimed at ensuring that Iran doesn’t opt for a military nuclear programme, while creating an ongoing conveyor belt that would take Iran’s low-enriched uranium outside the country, where it could be transformed into civilian-use fuel rods. Iran, on the other hand, could claim that it has stood firm, winning the world’s recognition of its right to a uranium enrichment programme on its own soil, under Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty terms. Once in place, the deal would allow Iran to insist that economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council be lifted.
Photo Credit: Office of the President of Iran
View as Single Page
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
Rehmat
Obama administration knows for fact that Iran under Islamic regime poses no threat to US security even if Tehran acquire a couple of hundreds of crude nuclear bombs nor the rest of G5+1 stupid enough to fear Iran. It’s the Zionist-regime which is exploiting this issue to keep Washington developing a friendly relations with Tehran.
Gary Samor, Obama’s White House adviser on Iran’s nuclear program and Brookings’ Bruce Reidel had prepared an 18-month study for the joint Zionist think tanks Brookings-CFR during 2007-08. It described in details how the next president (Barack Obama) should stop or set-back Iran’s nuclear program in order to maintain Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Muslim heartland. It was Samor who sold to IAEA and Russia the idea of Iran’s low-enriched uranium being shipped to Russia for conversion into more highly-enriched fuel rods – during his Obama’s visit to Moscow. Thus setting back Iranian breakout capability for a few years.
Both the Conservatives and the Reformist leaders are unanimous in rejecting the idea of LEU stocks being sent to a foreign country. The defeated presidential candidate, Mir Mousavi, has called the IAEA proposal: “If the demands carried out, all the efforts of thousands of scientists will go to the wind”. Conservative parliamentarian Hesmatollah Falahatpisheh said any deal with the West involving the export of Iran’s LEU stocks should be conditioned on ending the economic sanctions on Iran, particularly a lifting of sanctions on raw uranium imports.” And Mohsen Rezai, the conservative secretary of the Expediency Council, said that Iran should retain 1,100 kilograms of the roughly 1,500 kilograms of LEU in its stockpile, rather than sending 1,200 kilograms abroad as called for in the ElBaradei plan.
Gareth Porter, US investigating journalist and author, in his recent article, titled US-Iran Talk: The Road to diplomatic Failure has blamed Obama administration for not being sincere in its dialogue with Iran.
“The talks between the G5 plus 1 and Iran are careening toward a premature breakdown. If they do fall apart, it will be due in large part to a serious diplomatic miscalculation by the Obama administration.”
“Along with its European allies, the Obama administration seized on a plan that cleverly asked Iran to divest itself of the bulk of its stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU). It seemed to represent a golden opportunity to set back Iran’s nuclear program, and despite the warning signs that such an objective is not achievable by the West, it lured the West away from a serious effort to find a diplomatic compromise with Iran aimed at defusing the decades-long hostility between Washington and Tehran.”
“The origins of the immediate diplomatic drama surrounding the proposal lay in Iran’s need to supply fuel for its US-built Tehran research reactor producing medical radioisotopes. Iran had obtained 23 kilograms of fuel enriched to 20 percent from Argentina under a cooperation agreement signed in 1988 that ended in 1993. But that supply is expected to run out in late 2010, and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki sent a letter to the IAEA in June requesting its help in purchasing enough 20 percent enriched uranium under the agency’s supervision so that the medical reactor would again have a long-term supply. But that would require a relaxation of the international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. And when the Obama administration got wind of the Iranian request, it created a new diplomatic strategy aimed at forcing Iran to accept terms that would force it to give up most of its LEU for about a year.”
“Lately, Ahmadinejad advanced yet another proposal to put roughly a quarter of its LEU under seal by the IAEA on Iranian soil until the uranium for its medical reactor is delivered, rather than sending it abroad. But Obama warned November 15, “We are now running out of time” for negotiations on the ElBaradei proposal…….”
Yesterday, Iranian FM Manouchehr Mottaki, said that his government is willing to exchange most of its uranium for processed nuclear fuel from abroad – as the United Nations has proposed – but only according to a timetable that ZOGs have already rejected. Under the new offer, Iran would handover 882 pounds (34% of its total stocks) of uranium initially – in exchange for an equal amount of enriched material to fuel a medical research reactor.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/israel-behind-us-iran-nuclear-conflict/
Fred54
The realty is that both the US and Iran are signatories of the NNPT.
The treaty expicitly requires nulear countries to HELP non-nulear
countries develop peaceful nuclear power. US is violating the treaty
and by extension the Constitution. End of discussion.
John V. Walsh
I agree with Paul, above, who says: “The Kabuki will continue and Obamian apologists like Dreyfuss and Lobe and Cole will continue to pretend to that Obama REALLY REALLY REALLY doesn’t want war…”
As Andrew Bacevich points out in his recent book, Washington Rules, and as Noam Chomsky has been saying for decades, there is CONTINUITY in US foreign policy which persist, though Presidents come and go.
Obama is no exception.
Iran has little choice it seems to me but to acquire a nuclear deterrent. The US and Israel could prevent this by taking a peaceful stance toward Iran. The US in particular could get out of the Middle East and Central Asia and cease supporting an ever belligerent Israel. As long as the US threatens Iran with a nuclear force OR a massive conventional force, then there will be pressure for Iran to acquire a nuclear deterrent. There must be disarmament for all if there is to be a nuke-free Iran.