Iran's Nuke Letter "Nothing New" Say Leakers

By Cernig

Anonymous Western officials have leaked what they say are aspects of Iran's letter to EU chief negotiator Javier Solana, charging that the letter is "nothing new", although the Western governments involved have declined to discuss the letter's contents "on record". The anonymous officials told the NY Times that:

said Iran would be willing to open a comprehensive negotiation with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, and the six world powers involved in confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It did not specifically address any of the proposals they presented to it last month.

“The time for negotiating from the condescending position of inequality has come to an end,” the Iranian response said, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

It also criticized the United Nations Security Council sanctions against it as “illegal” and spoke of a “lack of trust” because of the “duplicitous behavior of certain big powers,” the officials said.

It apparently made no mention, in particular, of any "freeze on freeze" deal, and an Iranian spokesman close to President Ahmadinejad said yesterday that “Iran’s stand regarding its peaceful nuclear program has not changed." However, the letter did say that Iran was ready for a new phase of negotiations with Solana and it's worth noting that Ahmadinejad's faction has recently been publicly rebuked by figures closer to Grand Ayatollah Kameini for their excessively recalcitrant and infammatory rhetoric.

No good news, then. As I see it, we're still in a position where the West, with the Bush administration as back-seat driver, is trying to play poker with a haggler (and, of course, vice versa). There's something majorly wrong with the West's position that Iran must give up enrichment activities which are its right under the terms of the Non-proliferation Treaty as a precondition to...negotiations on whether it should give up enrichment activities. There's also something wrong with an Iranian government that won't, through simple stupid pride, say that if the precondition was dropped every option, even a cessation of enrichment, would be on the table.

The obvious answer is that Iranian enrichment shouldn't stop - it should be internationalised. If the Iranian venture was converted into an international one -as both the Iranians themselves and US progressive non-proliferation experts have at different times said - then those activities could be made subject to a full IAEA inspection regime and involvement by Western nations, ensuring (beyond even the IAEA's current guarantee that none of Iran's low-level enriched uranium can be redirected for further enrichment to bomb grade without their knowledge) that Iran's enrichment activities cannot be used for bomb-making. On Iran's part, it would have the technology its national pride says it should master, the fuel for reactors so that it can stop burning oil for power and sell that oil instead for hard currency - and even a new source of hard currency as a member of the select club of nuclear fuel producers.

But unless someone makes an effort to break the poker-bluff impasse, I feel, then Iran and the West are on a collision course that will end in an attack which will fail to halt the Iranian program and to its inevitable blowback. Unfortunately, there are those on both sides who actually wish for that, seeing it as a method of bolstering their own political fortunes.

Comments

[taraka das]

The most ridiculous aspect of the Bush Administration's policy on Iran is that Iran already agreed to suspend enrichment, and actually did so for nine months.

The Bush Administration, instead of using that opening, did nothing, and allowed the Iranian president at the time Khatami, to be defeated by a hard-liner, Achmadinejad.

This policy of the Bush Administration is not about nuclear weapons, and it isn't even about the NPT. It's about finding some excuse to destroy Iran's nuclear fuel industry, and to forceably change regimes in Iran to gain control of their oil by military force.

[Andy]

The Bush administration's precondition for negotiations is not Iran giving up it's rights, but a halt to enrichment while negotiations progress. The administration believes that without a halt during negotiations that Iran would simply drag negotiations out until it had a fait accompli.

[Ralph the ex Nuc]

I don't want to sound sappy, but Iran has every right to the technology and the process to enrich Uranium for peaceful purposes.

All these sanctions are just so much tripe.

[Steve Hynd]

Andy,

The Bush administration's precondition for negotiations is not Iran giving up it's rights, but a halt to enrichment while negotiations progress.

Do you really believe that the Bush administration's stance isn't all about Iran giving up its NPT rights?

Regards, C

[Andy]

Cernig,

The Administration's ultimate goals are beside the point, but they have made them rather clear, at least publicly. Whether or not those goals are absolute or simply the starting point for some kind of compromise isn't know. Regardless, the precondition is there and it is one the EU agrees with and it's not completely unreasonable in my view.

Regardless, Iran's, nor any other nations, NPT rights are absolute. Iran's rights extend only to the wholly peaceful use of nuclear technology and that is the very thing that is in dispute.