TIME reports why Iran's counter-proposal--close to a full rejection--creates a "quandary" for Team Obama:
The agreement brokered by the International Atomic Energy Association Nuclear Agency in Vienna last week sought to bridge Western concerns that Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium could potentially be reprocessed into weapons material and Iran's need for fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran. It requires Iran to provide the uranium for the fuel plates it needs from its own stocks, envisaging the transfer of an amount equivalent to some 75% of its stockpile to Russia by the end of the year for further processing. But according to Western officials briefed on Iran's response, Tehran wants instead to ship its uranium in smaller batches, and over a longer period of time. (Just as the Western powers suspect Iran of enriching uranium for ultimate conversion into bomb material, so do the Iranians suspect that the Vienna deal may fit with the Western goal of ending Iran's enrichment capability.) But Western officials warn that anything that leaves intact Iran's current stockpile — hypothetically enough to be reprocessed into a single crude atomic bomb should Iran decide to do so — is a deal-breaker. Although Iran continues to enrich uranium, replenishing the stocks of low enriched uranium shipped out under the deal would take about another year, during which time Western powers hope to negotiate an end to uranium enrichment in Iran.
The aspect of the deal most welcomed by Tehran was the fact that it represented a kind of tacit acceptance of Iran's enrichment program — after all, the uranium that would be used to create the reactor fuel was enriched in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and the deal was not even contingent on Iran heeding those resolutions. Whereas the Bush Administration had refused to negotiate with Iran unless it halted enrichment, the Obama Administration has been talking without preconditions, about a deal that wouldn't even halt continued enrichment. Iran had managed to shift the debate from whether or not Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium to measures to safeguard its enriched uranium stockpiles from being used in a weapons program. Ahmadinejad proclaimed that diplomatic achievement when he appeared to endorse the nuclear deal on Thursday. "A few years ago, they said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities," he said in a speech broadcast live on state television. "Now they want nuclear cooperation with the Iranian nation."
The Associated Press reported that Team Obama is preparing a contingency strategy to deter nuclear use by a nuclear Iran, should negotiations & sanctions fail (they will). The essential idea is to apply what nuclear strategists call "extended deterrence" to allies in Europe & the Mideast. This means that the US extends its nuclear deterrence umbrella so that attacks on allies under it are treated by the US as attacks on the US itself. Oddly, Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi chimed in, saying that a nuclear Iran would not necessarily be intolerable. She apparently does not grasp that a nuclear Iran could use its arsenal as a shield while it steps up repression domestically to ensconce its rulers permanently.
Nuclear proliferation maven Henry Sokolski urges imposition of sanctions against Iran now, to punish proliferation violations. He suggests financial sanctions, human rights pressure and asking Moscow to disclose the list of Russian scientists helping Iran's nuclear program, that it may be compared with a list made by Israel. But Moscow now says no sanctions anytime soon will be levied; Moscow can use its UN Security Council veto to prevent their effective imposition.
Here is a mini-paper on Fueling Iran's Research Reactor (4 pages) and a second on Iran's Centrifuge Uranium Enrichment (11 pages) program. Both come from Sokolski's Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, an invaluable source of information on nuclear proliferation issues. The latter report notes that Iran is the subject of four UN Security Council Resolutions re its nuclear program: UN SecRes 1737 (15 p.), UN SecRes 1747 (9 p.), UNSec Res 1803 (7 p.) & UN SecRes 1835 (1 p.).
Bottom Line. Iran marches on, Moscow throws roadblocks in front of efforts to contain Iran's uranium enrichment program. Team Obama & the Europeans have already conceded Iran's right to enrich, which UN Security Council resolutions had hitherto denied. If Tehran stonewalls & talks break down, Israel will know what it has to do. Americans & Europeans may settle for deterrence, but it appears unlikely that Israel will accept the same choice.
Comments