Cautious optimism follows Iran meeting

Michael Theodoulou, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: October 22. 2009 2:33AM UAE / October 21. 2009 10:33PM GMT

Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, briefs the media in Vienna yesterday. Hans Punz / AP Photo

Hopes rose last night of a breakthrough on Iran’s nuclear crisis after Iranian negotiators agreed to consider a draft deal to send most of their country’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium abroad. That would delay the Islamic republic’s potential to make an atomic weapon by up to a year. Any optimism was tempered by uncertainty and suspense, however.

The provisional deal was presented yesterday by Mohammad ElBaradei, the outgoing director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who asked for confirmation from the Iranian leadership tomorrow.

His proposals came at the end of three days of tense talks in Vienna between Iran and the United States, Russia and France. The high-stakes negotiations were dogged by mutual mistrust, delays and tough posturing in Tehran, which branded France “an untrustworthy party”.

Mr ElBaradei declined to provide details of the draft deal, but said his proposals reflected “a balanced approach on how to move forward”.

The agreement is designed to reduce tension and build confidence between Iran and the West.

This would allow time to thrash out a much more difficult, comprehensive settlement of the seven-year-old nuclear stand-off.

“It looks promising. It’s unlikely that ElBaradei would have put his name down on this deal without being fairly sure that it’s going to be approved – for his sake and the sake of his legacy,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst based in Israel and co-author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran. “Embarrassing him [ElBaradei] would be very costly for Tehran because the person who is going to follow him is going to be much more conservative,” he said in an interview.

Mr ElBaradei has been a stalwart proponent of a negotiated solution, incurring the animosity of hawks in Washington and Israel who regard him as being soft on Tehran.

If Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorses the agreement, he would stave off further sanctions and enable his regime to claim some credibility abroad while it confronts a severe domestic political challenge ignited by the presidential election in June.

An unprecedented Iranian agreement to relinquish its uranium enrichment to a foreign country would also be a boost for Barack Obama, the US president: he could argue that his policy of engagement has won more from Iran in 10 months than eight years of hostility under his predecessor, George W Bush.

“If they [Iran] go along with this, it’s going to be a very constructive step forward,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, which promotes dialogue between Tehran and Washington. “It’s going to be a couple of nervous days. I worry that internal infighting in Iran could put a stop to this,” he said.

The United States, France and Russia have been pushing Iran to confirm an agreement reached “in principle” in Geneva on October 1 whereby Iran would ship 1,200kg of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France as a confidence-building measure.

Moscow and Paris would convert the uranium – about 75 per cent of Iran’s stockpile – into material for use in a medical research reactor in Tehran. Iran’s delegation chief in Vienna did not say whether Tehran would endorse the draft deal, although he suggested that the talks had been successful. “We welcome this event, we are fully co-operating,” said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, who hoped for an “amicable solution”.

To export most of its low-enriched uranium abroad would be a hard pill for Iran to swallow: its stockpile has been developed at the cost of three sets of UN Security Council sanctions. Rejecting the deal, however, would antagonise Russia, upon which Tehran has relied, along with China, to dilute earlier Security Council sanctions.

Iran has amassed about 1,500kg of uranium enriched to below five per cent at its plant at Natanz. That quantity gives Iran “nuclear latency”, the ability to produce one atom bomb at short notice if the uranium is enriched to a 90-per-cent level.

Sending most of its uranium abroad removes Iran’s “breakout capacity” for between eight months and a year, nuclear experts say. Tehran vehemently denies it has any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, insisting its enrichment programme is solely aimed at the generation of electricity.

Iran is adamant that it will continue enriching low-enriched uranium for industrial purposes, but also says it will produce medium-enriched fuel for its civilian Tehran reactor if the West fails to deliver.

Tehran claims West has implicitly acknowledged this right in the tentative Geneva and Vienna agreement, and insists that any decision to export its stockpile is unrelated to its enrichment programme.

Neither side regards the provisional Geneva and Vienna agreements as a template for a final settlement. The West’s goal is for Iran to give up uranium enrichment altogether. Tehran says that will never happen.

Most analysts say a final solution will require the West to accept some enrichment on Iranian soil, and for Tehran to agree to singularly intrusive inspections to ensure none is diverted to a weapons programme.

mtheodoulou@thenational.ae