Iran yesterday signaled willingness to send much of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to France and Russia for further refinement, a move that could address concerns that the Middle Eastern state intends to use the material in a nuclear weapon, the Wall Street Journal reported (see GSN, Oct. 1).
(Oct. 2) -
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, left, and other Iranian officials speak to reporters yesterday at U.N. headquarters in New York City. Tehran yesterday indicated it was willing to send much of its uranium supply abroad for further enrichment (Mario Tama/Getty Images).
"This limits Iran's ability to have the breakout ability needed to produce nuclear weapons," said one high-level U.S. official involved in yesterday's meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, of diplomats from Iran, the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany. Iran is widely believed to possess enough low-enriched uranium to power a nuclear weapon if the country withdrew from international nonproliferation safeguards and continued to enrich the material.
Once enriched to a level still unsuitable for weapons, the uranium would be returned to Iran to fuel a small research reactor in Tehran. International Atomic Energy Agency specialists are expected to hammer out the arrangement's technical details with Iranian officials later this month.
The preliminary agreement was welcomed by officials in the United States and several European nations, which have pressed Iran to curb its uranium enrichment activities in exchange for various forms of international assistance (Champion/Solomon, Wall Street Journal I, Oct. 2).
In an interview with the New York Times, a high-level U.S. official said that reducing Iran's uranium holdings would be “a confidence-building measure to alleviate tensions and buy us some diplomatic space” (Erlanger/Landler, New York Times, Oct. 1).
Still, the proposal fell short of Western demands that Tehran suspend its uranium enrichment program in exchange for a freeze on new economic penalties, giving the sides time to negotiate a permanent halt to the nation's disputed nuclear work.
"Unless they have some sort of agreement with Iran not to allow them to have their own indigenous enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, it's still dangerous," said Jackie Wolcott, a former nonproliferation official who served under President George W. Bush (Champion/Solomon, Wall Street Journal I).
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton suggested that Iran hopes to use talks as a stalling tactic: "They've now got the United States ensnared in negotiations. This is like the movie 'Groundhog Day,'" he told the Washington Post (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Oct. 2).
"In any given meeting, [the Iranians] give enough that makes the other side think that next time it will be better. But if you take all the fragments, in the end they don't give anything," added Yaakov Amidror, an Israeli reservist general and former military intelligence official.
At another multilateral meeting planned for later this month, the United States is expected to continue pressing Iran to suspend expansion of its enrichment effort, according to U.S. officials.
During a visit to Tehran tomorrow, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is set to discuss granting U.N. inspectors access to Iran's recently disclosed and still-unfinished Qum enrichment facility. U.S. officials want U.N. nuclear watchdog officials to travel to the site within two weeks (Champion/Solomon, Wall Street Journal I).
IAEA safeguards operations director Herman Nackaerts has asked Tehran for the "name and location [of the Qum facility] ... status of its construction and plans for the introduction of nuclear material," Iranian state media reported, according to Agence France-Presse.
The "agency would also appreciate being given access to the facility as soon as possible," Nackaerts wrote in a letter to the Iranian government (Agence France-Presse I/Daily Star, Oct. 2).
"Talk is no substitute for action," U.S. President Barack Obama said yesterday, after the day's talks ended. "Our patience is not unlimited. ... Going forward, we expect to see swift action."
"We support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear power," he added, according to the Associated Press. "Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step toward building confidence that Iran's program is in fact peaceful."
"It was a productive day, but the proof of that has not yet come to fruition, so we'll wait and continue to press our point of view and see what Iran decides to do," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, noting that U.S. negotiator William Burns had briefed her by telephone on the meeting's outcome.
"I will count it as a positive sign when it moves from gestures and engagements to actions and results," she said (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Google News, Oct. 1).
"These were historic negotiations. I'm happy about that," David Albright, head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, told the Christian Science Monitor. "But in a funny way, I'd say Round 1 went more for (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad than for Obama," he said, noting that Iran's uranium enrichment activities remained largely unchallenged at the meeting (Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor I, Oct. 1).
Public revelation of the Qum facility suggests that Iran might also be working on an undeclared site for converting unrefined uranium ore into uranium hexafluoride, an intermediate step in the enrichment process, nuclear analyst James Acton told the Christian Science Monitor.
"The bottom line is, there is a natural and reasonable suspicion that there is a clandestine conversion plant as well," said Acton, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor II, Oct. 1).
Iran emphasized yesterday, though, that it has reported all of its nuclear facilities to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, which employs surveillance measures to ensure that material from the sites is not diverted for use in weapons, Reuters reported.
"Whatever Iran has as nuclear sites has been announced to the IAEA, and the only case that is under construction is Qum and we also announced that," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters (Patrick Worsnip, Reuters I, Oct. 1).
Mottaki discussed the facility during a secret meeting Wednesday with two U.S. lawmakers in Washington, AFP reported.
Mottaki said at the session that Iran would "not give up its rights" under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, but he stressed that Tehran "has no plans to quit the NPT."
The Iranian report identified the legislators at the meeting as members of the "Foreign Relations Committee," a possible reference to the Senate's foreign policy body.
The Obama administration indicated it would not send a representative to speak with Mottaki, but it did not address the possibility of lawmakers meeting with the official (Agence France-Presse II, Oct. 1).
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives backed a measure yesterday that would prohibit firms that provide gasoline to Iran from also supplying crude oil to the U.S. emergency petroleum reserve, Reuters reported.
"Time is running out for Iran to give up its illegal nuclear weapons program," said Republican Senators Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and Susan Collins (Maine), who sponsored the provision.
The measure was placed in budget legislation expected to win approval in the Senate and be signed into law (Tom Doggett, Reuters II/Washington Post, Oct. 1).
The U.S. Treasury Department has started to tighten its enforcement of current penalties on Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
"We've been more effective, more aggressive and more public in our enforcement," said Adam Szubin, head of the department's Foreign Assets Control Office.
Officials from Szubin's office have met with representatives from U.S. firms to help ensure that products are not being diverted to Iran.
"It is reasonable for us to ask, what have you done to make sure your export doesn't go to Iran. We won't countenance willful blindness," he said (Chip Cummins, Wall Street Journal II, Oct. 2).