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EU Reportedly Considering Iran Nuclear Compromise
France, Germany and the United Kingdom are considering a compromise proposal by Iran that would allow Tehran to keep some nuclear technology, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, March 30). European negotiators have previously maintained that Iran must dismantle its nuclear program, but are now considering allowing Iran to keep a small uranium enrichment program, diplomats said. “The Iranians have been offering this for a long time. What’s new is that the EU is thinking about it,” a diplomat with access to the negotiations said yesterday. “The ideas they (Iran) came up with were not really acceptable, but we have said we will get back to them,” said a diplomat from one of the three European powers. Under the terms of the deal, Iranian enriched uranium would only be allowed to contain 3.5 percent of the uranium 235 isotope. Nuclear weapons use enrichment levels of 90 percent or higher, according to Reuters. The United States dismissed talks of compromise. “We and the EU three remain united in the view that only a full cessation and dismantling of Iran’s sensitive nuclear fuel cycle pursuits can provide the kind of confidence we’re looking for that Iran has abandoned its nuclear weapons program,” said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, March 30). Ereli also dismissed as insignificant the tour taken by reporters yesterday of the Natanz nuclear facility, Agence France-Presse reported. “If Iran were really serious about allaying the concerns of the international community, they would stop denying [the International Atomic Energy Agency] full and unrestricted access to suspicious sites,” he said. The United States remains committed to allowing the European Union to complete its negotiations with Iran, a senior State Department official said. “I would say these talks have not yet produced the end of their program, but the Europeans are continuing to engage and we’ll let them decide when they think they’re no longer useful,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 30). The next round of talks is set to begin on April 10, Mohammad Saaidi, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said yesterday (Xinhua, March 31). Iran will not give up its right to full-scale uranium enrichment, President Mohammad Khatami reiterated yesterday. “Despite the pressures from every side to deprive it of peaceful nuclear technology, the Islamic republic... is on the verge of producing (nuclear) fuel,” Khatami said. “In the not very distant future, with the help of God and with understanding and interaction with the international community, we will start our legitimate and legal activities in every field and we will complete whatever we have done so far,” he said (Agence France-Presse, March 30). Meanwhile, Iran is boosting its military forces, including its missile program, in anticipation of an attack against its nuclear facilities, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Iran has been upgrading its Shahab 3 missile and reportedly established air defenses around its nuclear facilities. Iran has also confirmed creating underground facilities to protect its nuclear program. In addition, Ukraine has revealed in recent weeks an investigation into sales of X-55 missiles to Iran in 2001, according to the Monitor (see related GSN story, today). U.S. intelligence services have acquired Farsi-language designs and test data, dated from 2001 to 2003, to modify the Shahab 3 missile to carry a “black box” that U.S. experts “believe is almost certainly a nuclear warhead,” the Wall Street Journal Asia reported last week. While U.S. officials at first thought “the find might be disinformation, perhaps by Israel,” they “are now persuaded ... the documents are real,” according to the report. “They see a fight coming, regardless of what they do, so they are getting ready for it,” said a European diplomat in Tehran. “If I was a student of (Prussian military strategist Karl von) Clausewitz, I would do as the U.S. does: I would talk incentives, and (at the same time) design a theater of war against the enemy,” said Abbas Maleki, a former deputy foreign minister who heads the Institute for Caspian Studies in Tehran. “Iran must be very, very cautious to avoid any attack,” Maleki said. “We have conventional weapons designed for neighboring threats like Saddam Hussein and the Taliban — not to fight a superpower. But we must defend ourselves.” Any U.S. military action against Iran could bolster Tehran’s conservative clerics, according to some analysts. “Iranians are very patriotic, and though there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the regime, they oppose an attack,” said Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a political scientist at Tehran University with close ties to the Khatami government. “It would be like Sept. 11 in the U.S., which brought the neocons into power. A U.S. attack could bring our neocons into power.” “Rather than setting back the nuclear program, (a strike) could accelerate it,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst now at the Brookings Institution. “That’s actually sinking in with the [Bush] administration” (Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, March 31).
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