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Iran’s New Nuke Proposal: Progress, or Delaying Tactic?

18 May 2010 00:30 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. For more than a decade, Iran and the West have tried, with no luck, to bridge their differences over the Islamic Republic’s determination to have its own nuclear energy program and the West’s suspicion that Iran wants to build nuclear weapons, APA reports quoting â€œTimeâ€ magazine.
Now, Brazil and Turkey, two countries ambitious to play a bigger role on the world stage, claim to have found a formula to break the impasse. On Monday, Turkey, Brazil and Iran announced a deal whereby Iran would ship a significant amount of its uranium fuel stockpiles to Turkey for reprocessing. But there are still many questions about the details of the deal, which will be scrutinized closely once Iran submits it to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. In fact, some observers say it could increase tensions in the standoff between Iran and those who wish to curtail its nuclear program.
The Turkish and Brazilian deal was designed to satisfy the U.N. Security Council concerns about the transparency of Iran’s nuclear agenda. The Council is currently considering another round of sanctions to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes (mainly for use in a reactor in Tehran used for medical research). By shipping its uranium abroad for conversion into fuel for its medical reactor, Iran will have a smaller uranium stockpile at home - an amount sufficiently reduced to convince critics that Iran does not have enough to enrich to the very high levels necessary for weapon building. Once processed uranium is turned into the type of nuclear fuel necessary for the medical reactor, it cannot then be weaponized.
The problem is that by and large the U.S., the E.U. have been running out of patience with Iran while Russia and China (who can cast vetoes in the Security Council) have been making diplomatic nods to encourage movement in the negotiations. The U.S. and the U.N. have been asking Iran for the past six months to accept a similar deal to the Turkish-Brazilian one, whereby Iran would ship uranium for reprocessing in France. Though President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initially backed the deal, it fell apart in October amid a chorus of criticism from across Iran’s political spectrum, as both hardliners and moderates accused the government of trading away the country’s nuclear patrimony.
Brazil and Turkey may have succeeded in breaking through to Iran where the U.S. failed merely by being developing, rather than established, powers - and thereby more trusted by Iran. But since the U.S. offer to Iran fell through, the Obama Administration has largely given up hope that Iran would cooperate voluntarily. It has begun to push for a new round of U.N. sanctions, and Europe and, at least for now, Russia and China have not raised objections. The Obama Administration is likely to see the new deal as a delaying tactic thrown up by Iran once it became clear that sanctions were imminent.
Indeed, there are many as yet unanswered questions in the agreement. For one thing, it doesn’t specify which nation is going to do the enriching, since Turkey doesn’t have a the ability to do so on its own. More importantly, Iran has continued building its stockpiles of enriched uranium since the rejected deal with the U.S. So even though Iran is offering to send the same amount of uranium to Turkey as the U.S. wanted Iran to send to France, it has most likely increased its stockpile in the months since. Therefore, Iran may still have enough enriched uranium could to remain above the threshold necessary for building a weapon. And the U.S. has expressed suspicion that Iran has more enrichment facilities than are currently known to the IAEA.
Even if the proposed deal does meet IAEA approval and is implemented, it isn’t likely to appease Israel, which believes that Iran’s nuclear program poses an existential threat to the Jewish state. The Israeli government disapproved even of the original IAEA brokered deal, and is unlikely to see the Turkish mediated deal as a solution. Until now, the U.S. has persuaded Israel to back down from its threats to end Iran’s nuclear program the old-fashioned way - with a military bombardment - but said that it reserves the right to act unilaterally if the U.S. is unable to persuade Iran to end its enrichment program entirely. Indeed, even the original IAEA brokered proposal for Iran to ship uranium to France was merely meant as a stop-gap measure to buy time and build confidence between the opposing sides for a more comprehensive deal in the future. And Israel is well aware that while the world’s diplomats keep talking, Iran’s centrifuges keep spinning. If the Turkish-Brazilian deal ends up just being more hot air, their foray into high-stakes global diplomacy may end up coming back to haunt the Middle East.