Iran offered to reduce support for for insurgent strikes on British military personnel in Iraq if the United Kingdom would agree to the legitimacy of Tehran's disputed nuclear activities, the British ambassador to the United Nations said in a documentary aired Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 20).
(Feb. 23) -
French Defense Minister Herve Morin urged Iran Friday to comply with international nuclear demands (Dominique Faget/Getty Images).
London and Washington suspect that Shia extremists have used explosives and other weapons provided by Iran in attacks on coalition personnel in Iraq.
"The Iranians wanted to be able to strike a deal whereby they stopped killing our forces in Iraq in return for them being allowed to carry on with their nuclear program: 'We stop killing you in Iraq, stop undermining the political process there, you allow us to carry on with our nuclear program without let or hindrance,'" London rejected the deal, Ambassador John Sawers said in the BBC documentary, "Iran and the West: Nuclear Confrontation."
Sawers said the British government rejected the deal, the London Guardian reported.
The United Kingdom and other Western powers have expressed concern that Iran's uranium enrichment program could produce a key nuclear weapon ingredient, but Tehran has insisted the effort would only produce nuclear power plant fuel. With the four other permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany, the United Kingdom has offered Iran political and financial benefits intended to persuade Iran to halt enrichment activities (Julian Borger, London Guardian, Feb. 20).
Responding to a new International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear progress, Obama administration officials urged world powers to take quick action to resolve the atomic dispute, Agence France-Presse reported.
"This White House understands that -- working with our allies -- that this is an urgent problem that has to be addressed and we can't delay addressing," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday.
The report "confirms what we all have feared and anticipated, which is that Iran ... remains in pursuit of its nuclear program," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice added in a radio interview. "There's no ambiguity about that, and our aim is to combine enhanced pressures, and indeed the potential for direct engagement to try to prevent Iran from taking its program to fruition" (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Feb. 21).
France yesterday called on Iran to increase its nuclear transparency, according to AFP.
"France insists that Iran be transparent, that it halt its sensitive activities, and that Iran opens up to the International Atomic Energy Agency," French Defense Minister Herve Morin said. "France considers Iran's nuclear program is a serious threat to security, not just in the region but also to the world."
The official encouraged Tehran to pursue "constructive dialogue" with other nations to "bring [a] major source of concern to an end" (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Feb. 22).
The United States should continue requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program as a precondition for direct negotiations, Institute for Science and International Security head David Albright said in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations published Friday.
"The accommodation approach, unfortunately, is by no means guaranteed to be successful, and it's better to focus on what we really want and work on that. But it's a long-term issue. You have to maintain your resolve, and tensions are going to increase," Albright said, noting that international isolation helped persuade South Africa to abandon nuclear weapons in the late 1980s.
He added, though: "It is essential that the United States talk to Iran directly. And talk to them on many fronts. The United States should allow diplomats to engage with Iranians around the world."
The United States should not "accommodate Iran with short-term solutions" as it pursues dialogue, he said.
"Compromises that the United States may offer, such as settling for merely slowing down the enrichment program, are guaranteed not to work. The important thing is to maintain the U.S. goal of an Iranian suspension of uranium enrichment.
"It is also important to increase the sanctions on Iran in order to try to get Iran to rethink its calculation on whether an enrichment program is in their interest. It's critical to also negotiate directly with Iran, so Iran understands what the United States wants, and the United States understands what Iran wants," Albright said.
Various nations are likely to respond differently to Iran's nuclear breakout capability, he added.
"Some, like Russia, will probably say, 'So what? They're still not building nuclear weapons.' The United States will have to worry that they don't know Iran's intentions. The U.S. government has believed Iran would eventually seek nuclear weapons and it would have to face the prospect that it could happen with little notice, complicating any negotiation process," Albright said. "A country like Israel will see it as a major threat because they'll worry that if things do go bad and Iran decides to get nuclear weapons, they can do so quickly, and Israel wouldn't know what or where to strike. For Israel, an Iranian nuclear breakout capability brings up existential questions" (New York Times, Feb. 20).
Meanwhile, Iran plans to launch preliminary tests of its Bushehr nuclear power reactor on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported.
Personnel will review all functions at the facility during the "virtual fuel-injection test," which would follow inspections by Iran and Russia, Iranian media reported. The Russian state firm Atomstroiexport has carried out the plant's construction.
Last week's IAEA report indicated that earlier Iranian assessments underestimated how much low-enriched material the country had produced.
"Iran is cooperating well with U.N. nuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched," the agency said in a statement yesterday.
"Our production of a nuclear energy program is completely within the framework or structure of international laws," said Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's media adviser (Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, Feb. 23).