THE US and Europe are to demand that Iran dismantle its fortified underground nuclear facility and halt higher grade uranium enrichment, at a new round of talks this week, as a condition for lifting sanctions and the threat of a military attack.
US president Barack Obama has reiterated that Washington is prepared to accept Tehran maintaining a peaceful nuclear power programme but the White House is becoming more explicit in warning that the negotiations beginning in Istanbul on Friday are “perhaps a last chance” for diplomacy to work.
Diplomats say Iran will be pressed by the permanent UN security council members plus Germany, known as the P5+1, to shut its underground nuclear facility at Fordo, stop enriching uranium to 20 per cent, and hand over the estimated 100kg of uranium already enriched to that level.
The demands match those made by Binyamin Netanyahu at a White House meeting last month at which Mr Obama pressed the Israeli prime minister to hold off from a military attack on Iran and give sanctions and diplomacy an opportunity to work. Britain and France are also pushing for Iran to dismantle those parts of its nuclear programme that could be used for weapons.
Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, has warned that for the major powers to accept anything less than the demand for an end to uranium enrichment would be a victory for Tehran.
“We told our American friends as well as the Europeans that we would have expected the pressure for successful negotiations to be clear – namely that the P5+1 will demand clearly, no more enrichment to 20 per cent [and] all the already enriched 20 per cent material out of the country,” Mr Barak told CNN yesterday.
The Israeli defence minister added that while oil and banking sanctions had clearly had an impact, causing inflation in Iran to nearly double to 21.5 per cent in urban areas, he doubted they would be enough to force Tehran’s hand. He repeated his view that while matters would not come to a head within weeks, it would not take years either.
Israel is itself an undeclared nuclear power with an undetermined number of atom bombs.
Mr Obama continues to throw his weight behind diplomacy and sanctions while warning he will use force as a last resort. Washington, however, does not believe there is the urgency that Israel claims. The US president has sent out several messages to Tehran in recent days warning that this is perhaps the last chance to negotiate an end to the crisis.
The signals from Tehran are not encouraging, although they may be a negotiating position. In recent days, several prominent political and military figures have made belligerent statements.
A leading Iranian legislator, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, said Tehran “has the scientific and technological capability to produce a nuclear weapon but will never choose this path”.
On Saturday, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said western powers would soon have to accept the reality of Iran’s nuclear advances and warned that “confronting the Islamic Republic will not be to their benefit”. – (Guardian service)