Iran draws hard line on nukes (year of sanctions relief leads to dead end)

Winnipeg Free Press ^ | 10/17/14 - 1:27 PM | Alireza Jafarzadeh

[Dave346]

The latest round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program took place this week, pitting the United States and its European partners against the Iranian regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. It seems safe to say that if Iran and the United States can’t come to a workable compromise this week, and it certainly appears that way based on what has already transpired, there will be no basis for a final deal on Nov. 24. But there are serious outstanding questions about what a viable compromise would look like.

This was made clear last week, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s website released an infographic reiterating 11 red lines that his negotiators will never be permitted to cross. Virtually all of these demands are unreasonably out of step with the goal of the nuclear talks, i.e., denying the Iranian regime the ability to build the bomb.

Ironically, Khamenei demands expansion to its current uranium enrichment capabilities. He is also seeking preservation of nuclear sites that are fortified against attack, as well as significant limits on the IAEA inspections regime.

To sum up Khamenei’s position: Iran’s nuclear research and development will not be restrained in any way, shape, or form. This obviously contravenes the entire purpose of the nuclear negotiations and the optimistic Western assumptions about why Iran, under its new presidency, came to the negotiating table in the first place.

Over the past nine months of negotiating, Iran has shown no willingness to make compromises in order to achieve a deal. To the contrary, Tehran is actually more intransigent and more demanding, apparently believing that the crisis in Iraq and the economic effects of limited sanctions relief have given it enough leverage to insist upon significant concessions from the U.S.

Shockingly, the Obama administration has responded by keeping the doors open to several of those concessions. Last month, a proposal was introduced to allow Iran to keep most of its enrichment infrastructure but merely remove the piping connecting the machines. Tehran’s initial lukewarm response later turned into Khamenei’s outright rejection.

Even more shockingly, a number of commentators in the U.S. seem to be responding to the lack of progress by pushing for an agreement at any cost, on the assumption that a bad deal is still better than no deal at all.

The main argument in favour of signing such a deal is that it will at least preserve some IAEA access. But a bad deal doesn’t impede nuclear weapons work; it enables it. It may limit that work to secretive sites, such as SPND, as well as the Parchin military base, into which the IAEA has been repeatedly denied access. By rolling back sanctions and promoting European-Iranian relations, a bad deal will make it easier for Iran to obtain the financial resources and equipment needed to vigorously pursue that secretive research.

Earlier this month, the main Iranian opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, revealed that a Tehran facility that it first exposed in July 2011, and the West suspects is being used for nuclear weapons research has been moved by the regime to a new location. The research center, SPND, was referenced in a 2011 IAEA report and was placed under sanctions in August. The secretive relocation means that the nerve center of Tehran’s weaponization research is still fully operational, and that Tehran is intent on hiding and continuing this work.

Tehran’s troubling track record proves that if the Iranian regime and the United States are to reach a compromise this week, it must be a genuine compromise, and not simply the acceptance of Iran’s terms for a deal.

So the question remains: what would a workable compromise look like? First and foremost, it must allow unhindered IAEA access to the country, not the "conventional" relationship with the UN agency, which Iran is counting on, and has always counted on as it pursued secret nuclear research and development.

It must also shatter the Iranian fantasy about unrestrained and rapidly expanding uranium enrichment. The U.S. has offered more than enough compromise on that point already. A deal cannot emerge from good faith on one side only. If the Iranian regime cannot compromise by agreeing to significant and regularly verifiable cuts to its nuclear program, then the deal has already been lost.

Self-delusion will not salvage that deal. If Tehran’s ruling mullahs aren’t willing to abandon their nuclear weapons program, then that is simply the reality on which the West must base its Iran policy, going forward.

[stephenjohnbanker]

You don’t make deals with terrorist countries, you just destroy their weapons .

[spawn44]

THE FOREIGNERS first negotiating move was to offer Iran as much heavy uranium as they wanted.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Figures

[Mouton]

You mean Lurch bombed out, again?

[stephenjohnbanker]

Always

[blueplum]

there are serious outstanding questions about what a viable compromise would look like.

Unleash the Israeli dogs of hell. Israel has been far too patient and has been kept kenneled far too long. NO compromise. No further sanctions. No discussion. Just complete and total destruction of every single facility. Now.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Obama will give them anything they want. All they have to do is ask.

[Diogenesis]

Obala the Undocumented First Moslem told them
that he would have more flexibility after the Election
... and he did.