Listening to the spin out of Washington last week, you'd think that fear of imminent sanctions prompted Iran's arrival at nuclear talks in Geneva on Thursday and forced it to promise to change its wicked ways. Tehran's negotiators agreed to inspections at its hitherto secret uranium enrichment plan at Qom and accepted a plan to ship three quarters of its existing enriched uranium stock to Russia for eventual reprocessing into fuel rods for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Still, the official line warns, Iran's promises of good behaviour can't be banked: it will have to prove its good intentions through action.
Many in Washington also began talking as if it were conventional wisdom that Iran continues to hide more sinister activity from view. Indeed, The New York Times has begun inserting the word “declared” when referring to Iran's enriched-uranium stockpile, suggesting that a secret stash is being overlooked. Neither the IAEA nor western intelligence agencies have cited any evidence that such a stockpile exists, but no matter. It is what the former US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld called a “known unknown” in reference to Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction.
If Iran were really taking the risk of stockpiling uranium on the sly, that would be because it wanted to create bomb material without alerting inspectors and such material would be enriched to weapons grade. Otherwise why bother to keep it secret? But if Iran already has a stockpile of weapons-grade uranium, the key component of a bomb, that would make a farce not only of the current negotiations, but also of sanctions and the “military option” – you can't bomb facilities whose locations are unknown.
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In the knowable world significant progress was made last week to limit the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons. And not because Tehran has been spooked by the threat of sanctions. Nobody paying close attention took seriously the Obama administration's fanciful claim that they'd secured Russian support for new sanctions. The Iranians arrived in Geneva aware of the limits to any sanctions that the US could muster.
As for the claim by western officials that their “exposure” of the Qom facility had forced Iran to accept inspections, the reality is that Iran caught Washington off guard by informing the IAEA of the site's existence four days before Mr Obama's dramatic “revelation” of the same. In doing so, they had clearly signalled that they would accept inspections – otherwise they wouldn't have informed the watchdog body. Still, the Qom issue teed up a positive symbolic start to the talks: the US and its allies could demand that Iran show good faith by having the site inspected; Iran could immediately agree. Chalk one up for win-win diplomacy.
The more significant agreement, was the one on shipping enriched uranium stocks abroad for conversion into fuel rods. Alarmists in Washington and Israel had warned that Iran's stockpile was already large enough that, if enriched to weapons grade, it could provide materiel for one bomb. If implemented, the new agreement would remove that danger for now since fuel rods can't be enriched to bomb grade.
But it's a big win for Iran too. The western position until now had been that Iran must forego the right to enrich uranium even for peaceful purposes. Yet, the uranium that will be shipped to Russia was enriched by Iran in defiance of Security Council resolutions demanding its suspension until all outstanding issues with the IAEA had been resolved. From Tehran's perspective, the new deal reflects a tacit admission by western powers that uranium enrichment in Iran has become an intractable reality. So instead, they are focusing on strengthening safeguards against weaponisation.
When Iran insists that its nuclear rights are not up for negotiation, it means that it has no intention of giving
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document.write(''); Diplomacy and Iran may yet have potential to break out
Tony Karon
Last Updated: October 04. 2009 12:37AM UAE / October 3. 2009 8:37PM GMT
Listening to the spin out of Washington last week, you'd think that fear of imminent sanctions prompted Iran's arrival at nuclear talks in Geneva on Thursday and forced it to promise to change its wicked ways. Tehran's negotiators agreed to inspections at its hitherto secret uranium enrichment plan at Qom and accepted a plan to ship three quarters of its existing enriched uranium stock to Russia for eventual reprocessing into fuel rods for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Still, the official line warns, Iran's promises of good behaviour can't be banked: it will have to prove its good intentions through action.
Many in Washington also began talking as if it were conventional wisdom that Iran continues to hide more sinister activity from view. Indeed, The New York Times has begun inserting the word “declared” when referring to Iran's enriched-uranium stockpile, suggesting that a secret stash is being overlooked. Neither the IAEA nor western intelligence agencies have cited any evidence that such a stockpile exists, but no matter. It is what the former US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld called a “known unknown” in reference to Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction.
If Iran were really taking the risk of stockpiling uranium on the sly, that would be because it wanted to create bomb material without alerting inspectors and such material would be enriched to weapons grade. Otherwise why bother to keep it secret? But if Iran already has a stockpile of weapons-grade uranium, the key component of a bomb, that would make a farce not only of the current negotiations, but also of sanctions and the “military option” – you can't bomb facilities whose locations are unknown.
document.write('');
In the knowable world significant progress was made last week to limit the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons. And not because Tehran has been spooked by the threat of sanctions. Nobody paying close attention took seriously the Obama administration's fanciful claim that they'd secured Russian support for new sanctions. The Iranians arrived in Geneva aware of the limits to any sanctions that the US could muster.
As for the claim by western officials that their “exposure” of the Qom facility had forced Iran to accept inspections, the reality is that Iran caught Washington off guard by informing the IAEA of the site's existence four days before Mr Obama's dramatic “revelation” of the same. In doing so, they had clearly signalled that they would accept inspections – otherwise they wouldn't have informed the watchdog body. Still, the Qom issue teed up a positive symbolic start to the talks: the US and its allies could demand that Iran show good faith by having the site inspected; Iran could immediately agree. Chalk one up for win-win diplomacy.
The more significant agreement, was the one on shipping enriched uranium stocks abroad for conversion into fuel rods. Alarmists in Washington and Israel had warned that Iran's stockpile was already large enough that, if enriched to weapons grade, it could provide materiel for one bomb. If implemented, the new agreement would remove that danger for now since fuel rods can't be enriched to bomb grade.
But it's a big win for Iran too. The western position until now had been that Iran must forego the right to enrich uranium even for peaceful purposes. Yet, the uranium that will be shipped to Russia was enriched by Iran in defiance of Security Council resolutions demanding its suspension until all outstanding issues with the IAEA had been resolved. From Tehran's perspective, the new deal reflects a tacit admission by western powers that uranium enrichment in Iran has become an intractable reality. So instead, they are focusing on strengthening safeguards against weaponisation.
When Iran insists that its nuclear rights are not up for negotiation, it means that it has no intention of giving up uranium enrichment, which NPT signatories are allowed to do under IAEA scrutiny. But it appears willing to engage on strengthening that scrutiny and the mechanisms to create confidence over its intentions. That's an important change from Iran's initial reluctance to engage the Obama administration and from 18 months ago when it last sent Saeed Jalili to meet the same western representatives. Then he stonewalled them with harangues on philosophy and religion; this time he was cordial and ready for business, even holding a substantial one-on-one meeting with his American counterpart, Bill Burns.
But it is not only Iran's new-found flexibility that has enabled the change; it is also the West's new-found pragmatism. The deal on shipping uranium to Russia is unlikely to have been agreed upon in a four-hour conversation in Geneva – it would probably have been the subject of quiet negotiation for some time. Clearly, western powers have moved beyond simply demanding that Iran stop enriching uranium and Iran is no longer just folding its arms.
If Iran had been going hell-for-leather to turn its stockpile of enriched uranium into bomb materiel – as Israel and many hawks in the US have claimed, warning that Tehran is as little as a year away from weapons capability – then Thursday's deal is a setback. But if Iran has simply been assembling legitimate civilian nuclear technology that could give it a “breakout capacity” to build a nuclear weapon quickly should it choose to opt out of the NPT, then the new agreement is a net gain, because it reflects a tacit acceptance of uranium enrichment, under international scrutiny, on Iranian soil.
For the West, engaging with the reality of Iranian uranium enrichment is the only game in town for now. It leaves Iran with “breakout capacity”, but the world would have advanced warning if Iran opted to break out of the NPT and would have an opportunity to respond. Iran is also offering to strengthen the safeguards that can help stop this from happening.If the relationship is properly managed, the two sides will be able to slowly strengthen engagement in ways that diminish the likelihood of Iran deeming it necessary or wise to break out of the NPT. In the end, the best safeguard against a nuclear-armed Iran is to integrate it into a regional and global security order in ways that minimise threats to its security and that of its neighbours. That's going to be an arduous journey, but it appears to have begun in Geneva last week.
Tony Karon is a New York based analyst and author who blogs at rootless cosmopolitan, www.tonykaron.com
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