Iran Rejects Proposed Gulf Nuclear Compromise

Iran said Saturday it would not accept a compromise plan aimed at defusing the nuclear standoff with the West if it meant giving up its uranium enrichment activities, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 2).

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council last week proposed establishing a uranium enrichment plant in a neutral nation outside the region to produce nuclear fuel for energy-production plants in the Middle East.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is aimed only at power production, but Western nations suspect it is seeking to produce nuclear weapon material.

“While we are cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the nature of our nuclear work, we will continue the uranium enrichment activities on our soil,” Iranian state media quoted Iranian deputy supreme national security council head Javad Vaidi as saying.

“Creation of a consortium to provide enriched uranium is fine as far as it does not require Iran to halt enrichment on its soil,” he added.

“If it requires a halt to enrichment in Iran, then it is not acceptable.  A plan like this was offered to Iran by Russia previously but it was rejected,” he said (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Nov. 3).

Germany and the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations agreed Friday to move toward a new round of sanctions against Iran unless IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana report progress in talks with Tehran, Reuters reported.

A spokesman for the British Foreign Office said that political directors from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States plan to meet Nov. 19 to review the progress reports by the nuclear negotiators.

“Political directors agreed to finalize a text for a third U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution with the intention of bringing it to a vote in the U.N. Security Council unless the November reports of Dr. Solana and Dr. ElBaradei show a positive outcome of the efforts,” the Foreign Office spokesman said.

The United States last month announced a new set of unilateral sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program (see GSN, Oct. 25).  U.S. officials have not ruled out military intervention as an option for resolving the nuclear standoff. 

The United Kingdom has said it would work with the United States to pass a new Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Diplomats for the other nations have expressed a desire to review Iran’s disclosure of information on its nuclear activities to the U.N. nuclear watchdog before they choose a course of action (Sophie Walker, Reuters, Nov. 2).

“The U.S. believes very strongly there is a need to accelerate the diplomacy, to strengthen the sanctions,” U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said after meeting with his counterparts in London, the Associated Press reported.

“We want a diplomatic solution, we do not want to give up on diplomacy, but we need the help of the P-5 (permanent Security Council members) countries to do that, particularly the support of Russia and China,” he said.

The Security Council has yet to find consensus on punitive measures that would be included in a new sanctions resolution, according to one Security Council diplomat at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

A high-level State Department official said the Russian and Chinese representatives were “unprepared” at last week’s meeting to finalize a new draft sanctions resolution, suggesting that their governments had not yet approved what basic moves to take against Iran.

“We are disappointed by the lack of cooperation by China on a third Security Council resolution,” Burns said.  “We don't think that China is moving with us.”

“[Russia and China] do not seem to have quite the sense of urgency that we and the other members do about moving forward,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey (David Stringer, Associated Press/San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 2).

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates today in Beijing called on China to push for new economic sanctions against Iran, AFP reported.

Gates raised the issue during discussions with Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan.

“We agreed that it is important to pursue efforts to persuade the Iranian government to change their behavior and their policy peacefully through diplomatic means,” Gates said following the meeting.

"I would say I added the importance of continuing an increased economic pressure as a way of persuading the Iranian government to make different choices," he said.

Cao did not comment on the discussion (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Nov. 5).

Meanwhile, independent and government analysts continue to question assertions by the Bush administration that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the McClatchy-Tribune news service reported.

“I don't think that anyone right today thinks they're working on a bomb,” one U.S. official said.

Experts outside the government said that while Iran might have pursued nuclear weapons development in the past and could direct its uranium enrichment capacity at developing such weapons in the future, there is little concrete proof of its suspected nuclear weapons ambition.

“There is no smoking-gun proof of work on a nuclear weapon, but there is enough evidence that points in that direction,” said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Factors that suggest Iran could be pursuing nuclear weapons include its large oil reserves that could serve as a dependable energy source, its history of hiding nuclear enrichment activities from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and its acquisition of material from the nuclear smuggling ring once led by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, McClatchy-Tribune said (Jonathan Landay, McClatchy-Tribune/Houston Chronicle, Nov. 3).

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