Iran in recent week appeared to turn down proposals by Washington to allow temporary storage of much of the nation's low-enriched uranium in Turkey or another neighboring state under a U.N. proposal to further refine the material for civilian use, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 6).
The offers were aimed at addressing Tehran's concerns that Western powers might not return the uranium under the U.N. plan, which is aimed at eliminating immediate concerns that Iran could produce enough material for a nuclear weapon using its existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
Tehran instead suggested storing the uranium on the Iranian island of Kish, a proposal rejected due to concerns that Iran could expel U.N. supervisors of the nuclear material at any point while the deal was being carried out, according to one high-level Obama administration official.
It appears that Iran is simply not going to uphold its tentative Oct. 1 pledge to ship out the uranium, which Washington and other nations hoped would allow for more time to continue wider nuclear negotiations, according to some Obama administration officials.
"If you listen to what the Iranians have said publicly and privately over the past week, it’s evident that they simply cannot bring themselves to do the deal,” an administration official said yesterday (David Sanger, New York Times I, Nov. 8).
The proposal to store the material in Turkey was relayed by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, but the plan "was rejected by Iranian authorities at the time," Iranian state media quoted a source as saying.
"It seems the IAEA chief is trying to take advantage of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's (forthcoming) visit to Turkey to gain media coverage on a closed issue," the source said, according to the Xinhua News Agency (Xinhua News Agency I/China View, Nov. 8).
“I am in contact with [the Iranians] every single day,” ElBaradei said Friday on PBS' "Charlie Rose Show."
“They said they would like to keep it on our territory, but I said that defeats the whole purpose of defusing the crisis. We need to get the material out to eliminate the perception that you could develop nuclear weapons tomorrow,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying (Bill Varner, Bloomberg, Nov. 6).
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested the Kremlin could support new international economic penalties against Iran if sufficient progress is not made on the uranium proposal, the Times reported Saturday.
“If agreements are reached on the programs linked to uranium enrichment and its use for peaceful purposes in Iran, we will with pleasure take part in these programs. If the Iranian leadership takes a less constructive position, then anything is possible, in theory," Medvedev told Der Spiegel.
“We would not want this to end in imposing sanctions under international law, because sanctions, as a rule, are a complex and dangerous path,” he said. “But if there is no forward movement, no one can rule out this scenario” (Ellen Barry, New York Times II, Nov. 7).
“Russian efforts may well prompt Iran to accept,” an Obama administration official said yesterday. “There is still time for Iran to make the right choice” before the U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35 governing nations convene this month (Sanger, New York Times).
Iran might offer to send 1,800 pounds of its low-enriched uranium to other countries for refinement, 800 pounds less than ElBaradei had originally proposed in the U.N. plan, Iranian media yesterday quoted diplomats as saying.
Tehran wanted a "two-staged, simultaneous exchange" of the low-enriched uranium for 265 pounds of more highly enriched material prepared for use in a Tehran medical research reactor, the Los Angeles Times reported. The offer has not been independently confirmed (Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 9).
Senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili yesterday said he wants to conclude a deal to obtain the uranium fuel "as quickly as possible," Agence France-Presse reported.
"Tehran still welcomes the discussions [with the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany] on the basis of [their] package of proposals," Iranian media quoted Jalili as saying (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Nov. 8).
"The nuclear deal has some economic angles and therefore technical and economic experts' opinions should be thoroughly considered (before finalizing the deal)," Jalili added in a meeting with a Russian official, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Earth Times, Nov. 9).
Iranian lawmakers ruled out any possible transfer of Iranian uranium to an outside power, the Associated Press reported.
"Nothing will be given of the 1,200 kilograms (of low-enriched uranium) ... to the other side in exchange for 20 percent enriched fuel, not in one batch nor in several. It is out of question," state media quoted Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy and national security committee, as saying Saturday (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Google News, Nov. 7).
Boroujerdi pressed Moscow to follow through on its planned delivery of an advanced air-defense system, Reuters reported yesterday.
"If Russia does not keep its promises to deliver the missiles, then it would be a negative point in our relations," he said. "Avoiding delivery of [the] S-300 defense system to Iran, if that is Russia's official stance, would be a new chapter in breaking promises by the Russians."
Officials and independent analysts have expressed concern that Iran could use the defenses to protect its nuclear facilities from potential airstrikes (Reza Derakhshi, Reuters, Nov. 8).