Iran Offers New Nuclear Plan

A senior Iranian official has proposed to allow France to oversee Iran’s uranium enrichment program, creating a possible breakthrough in the Iranian nuclear crisis, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Oct. 2).

“To be able to arrive at a solution, we have just had an idea,” Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, told France-Info radio.  “We propose that France create a consortium for the production in Iran of enriched uranium.”

“That way France, through the companies Eurodif and Areva, could control in a tangible way our enrichment activities,” he said.

Areva is a state-controlled nuclear energy firm and Eurodif is a multinational branch of Areva.  A Eurodif facility in southeastern France produces about 25 percent of the world’s enriched uranium, AP reported.

Saeedi offered no other details in the report broadcast today, and his proposal appeared to catch European officials by surprise.

“We are not involved in any negotiations” about such a consortium, said Areva spokesman Charles Hufnagel (Angela Charlton, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3). 

“This is something we have to analyze in greater detail. … It is interesting, but difficult to put in place,” said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who met last week with lead Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani (see GSN, Sept. 28).  Solana has been expected to speak with Larijani again this week, but no time has been scheduled, he said (Deutsche Press Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Oct. 3).

While not specifically addressing Saeedi’s proposal, France urged Iran to communicate with Solana to introduce any diplomatic initiatives.

“It’s through this channel we await a response from the Iranians on the suspension” of its uranium enrichment activities, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters today.  This summer, the U.N. Security Council demanded Iran freeze its sensitive nuclear activities to create better conditions for diplomatic progress.

If Iran agreed to a suspension, then “there could be [a] place for negotiations where each side can make whatever proposals it wishes,” Mattei said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 3).

Ambiguity about Saeedi’s proposal was reflected in news reports which appeared to use slightly, but perhaps significantly different translations of his radio remarks.  A Deutsche Press Agentur account had Saeedi saying the consortium “would have a tangible way of checking our activities (GSN italics;  Deutsche Press Agentur).

Furthermore, a report from the Iran Press Service, produced from Paris, quoted Saeedi as saying the consortium “can monitor our activities in a tangible fashion” (GSN italics).  That report also described Saeedi as a “former nuclear negotiator” (Safa Haeri, Iran Press Service, Oct. 3).

Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. officials said yesterday that they were making good progress toward gaining U.N. Security Council support for imposing sanctions against Iran.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told a group of Washington Times journalists that the United States would wait for the results of the expected Solana-Larijani meeting this week and then move forward in the council.

“For four months now, we’ve been waiting for an answer,” to a six-nation package of incentives offered to Iran, Burns said.  The United States has said that Tehran must suspend its uranium enrichment activities before U.S. diplomats will participate in talks to further develop the incentives package.

“We’ve said if they don’t suspend enrichment, we’ll take them to the Security Council and sanction them,” he said.  “We do believe we have Russian and Chinese support for that.”

“If [Iran’s answer] is maybe, it’s a no,” Burns added.  “If it’s ‘We’d like to negotiate this further,’ it has been negotiated for four months.  At some point you have to draw the line.  So I think you’ll have the answer by the end of the week.”

Burns said the United States would not offer any security guarantees to Iran in part because of Iranian support for Hezbollah during its recent clash with Israel.

“We saw the war this summer not to be just a border war,” Burns said.  “We saw this as a new element in the Middle East — the Iranian and Syrian involvement.”

“We are also very concerned about this nexus of terrorism — Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, [Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine].  We think they are coordinating their actions, and we are trying to push back on that,” he added (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, Oct. 3).

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