Khamenei accuses US of making false overtures

Paul Woodward, Online Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 04. 2009 10:23AM UAE / November 4. 2009 6:23AM GMT

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered his strongest rebuke to date against the Obama administration on Tuesday saying that the US has not lived up to its promise of 'change'.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran decided from the very beginning not to prejudge and to instead consider the slogan of 'change'. But what we have witnessed in practice during this period of time has been in contradiction with the remarks that have been made," Ayatollah Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian students, Press TV reported.

"Iran's supreme leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from President Obama, warned Tuesday that negotiating with United States was 'naive and perverted' and said Iranian politicians should not be 'deceived' into starting such talks," The Washington Post said.

"Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Obama has approached him several times through oral and written messages. It was the second time that Khamenei, 70, who wields ultimate political and religious authority in Iran, has referred to Obama's outreach, in which the US president reportedly has requested talks between the two estranged nations.

"Khamenei previously has mentioned receiving two letters from Obama. The White House has not confirmed sending letters to the supreme leader but has acknowledged a willingness to talk to Iran and said it has sought to communicate with Iranian leaders in a variety of ways.

"In his harshest comments against the Obama administration to date, Khamenei said Tuesday that the United States has ill intentions toward Iran and is not to be trusted. The remarks came amid wrangling between Iranian officials and representatives of the United States, Russia and France over a UN-backed proposal aimed at resolving a protracted dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. Under the deal, Iran would ship much of its low-enriched uranium abroad for processing into fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes. The United States and its allies see the arrangement as a way to reduce a uranium stockpile that could otherwise be used to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, while meeting Iran's professed need for medium-enriched nuclear fuel for the research reactor."

Reporting for The National from Tehran, Marayam Sinaiee said: "The government is under increasing domestic pressure from across the political spectrum to reject the IAEA-brokered and US-backed nuclear deal to ship a large quantity of the country’s low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment.

"The pressure grew on Iran as the outgoing IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, at the UN on Monday urged Iran to respond 'soon' to the proposal and send its uranium to Russia and France for conversion into fuel rods.

"Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist opposition leader and a former presidential aspirant, said on Saturday: 'It seems that most of the fruit of the country's nuclear activities, which has caused … several UN sanctions resolutions, should be delivered to other countries [according to the deal] in the hope that they might be kind enough to provide us with some nuclear fuel at some time in the future. Can this be called a victory?'"

A commentary for Tehran Bureau said: "Iran's judiciary chief Sadeq Larijani has become the latest high-ranking Iranian official to express skepticism about an international proposal to send the country's nuclear fuel abroad for further enrichment...

" 'If we approach talks with the United States without care and precision, and we make superficial statements we cannot be successful,' Larijani said in a barb directed squarely at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"In recent days, the president has been trumpeting loudly what he considers to be Iran's triumph in being recognised by the West. On Thursday, he told a rally in the holy city of Mashhad that 'conditions for international nuclear cooperation' had been met.

"Quite rightly, the western media have paid less attention to this than to the subsequent, more sceptical noises coming from deeper within the establishment.

"While Ahmadinejad was still in Mashhad, as usual with his entire cabinet in tow, the Head of Iran's Parliamentary National Security Council, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, told reporters that Iranian negotiators had told of Iran's 'broad distrust' of western states during talks with the 'five-plus-one' powers in Vienna last month.

" 'There is no confidence that they will give us 20 per cent enriched fuel in exchange for 3.5 per cent enriched fuel,' Boroujerdi said.

"Though the Majles itself has no direct say in Iran's nuclear policy, it's Security and Foreign Policy Council has the ear of the Supreme Leader, and thus Boroujerdi's comments are a more credible barometer of Iran's stance than Ahmadinejad's crowd-pleasing schtick."

China's Xinhua news agency said: "Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday that Iran will consider the enrichment of high-grade uranium inside the country if the talks with powers fail, the official IRNA news agency reported.

" 'Our first request is to purchase nuclear fuel for Tehran reactor but if we do not reach a conclusion on the issue, fuel production with the 20 per cent enriched uranium inside Iran will be considered,' Mottaki was quoted as saying.

"Mottaki made the remarks in Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur where he is attending the 12th ministerial meeting of the D8 group, comprising eight developing Islamic countries of Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria, according to IRNA.

"Reiterating that Iran will not cease the enrichment of uranium (inside the country), he said that 'the purchase of 20 per cent enriched uranium for the Tehran reactor has nothing to do with the issue of enrichment,' and that the process of uranium enrichment is being continued."

In The National, Tony Karon noted: "The Vienna deal could collapse under the weight of the larger question that it tried to sidestep: whether Iran will maintain its uranium enrichment capability as part of its nuclear energy programme. Negotiators purposely avoided discussing Iran's non-compliance with UN Security Council resolutions on suspending enrichment, or western demands that it give up on the very idea of enriching uranium as part of its nuclear programme, but it is the two sides' differences on that issue that lie at the heart of the stand-off over the Vienna deal.

"The lesson appears to be that it will be difficult to achieve agreement on an issue so sensitive to both sides without addressing their mutual mistrust. As long as the western powers pursue an end to uranium enrichment in Iran, and Iran resists that goal, no diplomatic solution is likely. The truth is that enrichment is already a reality in Iran. Neither Russia nor China - nor for that matter such key Iranian neighbours as Iraq and Turkey - view uranium enrichment by Iran as necessarily posing a military threat, and are therefore unlikely to back serious sanctions. So Tehran is less likely to blink.

"While the Europeans and the US may well read Iran's response as a 'no' and begin pressing for sanctions, Iran may be betting that China and Russia are unlikely to go along; because they don't share the western objective of zero-enrichment in Iran, or they don't believe that Iran's paltry stockpile of low-enriched uranium represents any kind of imminent bomb threat."

pwoodward@thenational.ae