Iran Spurns Engagement on Nuclear Drive, Thwarting Obama Effort

Iran Spurns Engagement on Nuclear Drive, Thwarting Obama Effort


By Henry Meyer


July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian leaders are turning inward and rejecting engagement with the West as they blame outsiders for street protests, even as President Barack Obama’s administration pushes for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.

The leadership has denounced foreign governments as “enemies” for encouraging demonstrations over last month’s presidential election and plans to put a British Embassy employee on trial for inciting the protests, which were violently suppressed. A French student also has been detained on spy charges.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded yesterday that direct talks remain “the best vehicle” for presenting Iranian leaders with a choice of limiting their nuclear ambitions or continuing “down a path to further isolation.”

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Clinton said neither she nor Obama “have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success of any kind.” She added that “the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election,” an assessment endorsed by specialists on the region.

“It’s much harder for any engagement strategy to be successful” in the post-election atmosphere, said former U.S. diplomat Mark Fitzpatrick, who now heads the non-proliferation program at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The regime is increasingly isolated since the election and more determined than ever to reject international demands that it give up uranium enrichment, a prelude to developing a nuclear weapon, said Fitzpatrick, who was deputy assistant secretary of State for non-proliferation until 2005.

Consequences of Failure

Obama’s engagement initiative seeks to persuade the regime to accept limits on nuclear development in return for economic and political benefits. Its failure could trigger a regional arms race, increase chances of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and lead Iran to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s crude oil is transported.

“The U.S. administration is discovering now that that the attitude of Iranian leaders is harder to sway than they thought on the campaign trail,” said Ilan Berman, an Iran expert at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. “That’s where the frustration is coming from.”

Reflecting that frustration, Clinton said July 8 that the U.S. will seek wider sanctions against Iran if it rejects dialogue. Vice President Joseph Biden said July 6 that Israel has a “sovereign right” to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Dispute Over Purposes

Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, says its nuclear efforts are intended solely to generate electrical power. The U.S. and allies say it is developing a weapon.

Obama’s overture to Iranian leaders was aimed at breaking a stalemate, by withdrawing President George W. Bush’s demand that Iran must first halt enrichment before any talks could begin.

“If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said in a January interview with the Arabic-language, Dubai-based al- Arabiya television network.

Before that, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, had offered to aid Iran’s civilian nuclear program and provide economic benefits in return for a suspension of enrichment.

The results have been meager. Even before the June 12 election, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said Iran had stepped up enrichment and was still blocking international monitors.

Ahmadinejad and Mousavi

Then came the election, the government’s declaration that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected and the claim by challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi that the vote was rigged. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets. The regime responded with a crackdown in which 20 people died and hundreds were arrested, according to state-run news media.

Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the U.S. and U.K. of stoking the protests, and police on June 27 arrested nine British Embassy employees on suspicion of inciting demonstrations.

While eight were later released, Hossein Rassam, a political adviser, faces trial on charges of harming Iran’s national security. On July 1, police also arrested a 23-year-old French student, Clotilde Reiss, for alleged espionage.

‘Iron Fist’

Khamenei on July 6 warned that the Islamic republic would show an “iron fist” toward countries it regarded as “enemies.” Ahmadinejad said on June 14 that Iran would not tolerate outside pressure. “Our nation is not afraid of threats,” he told a news conference in Tehran. “It will stand up to those who want to prevent its progress.”

Obama, 47, now has little diplomatic maneuvering room, said Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group in New York. The only recent response to his initiative came on July 11, when Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran would present new proposals as a basis for talks, with no details.

The last time Iran made such a proposal, the U.S. didn’t take it seriously because “it didn’t address the specifics of the nuclear issue,” Kupchan said.

The best hope for reviving diplomacy is if Iranian leaders conclude that doing so lets them restore the legitimacy they lost because of the election, said Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University near Palo Alto, California. A deal might allow Iran to maintain enrichment in return for international oversight, he said.

Whatever the difficulties, Obama has little choice but to keep pursuing engagement, because other options -- such as a military strike -- are worse, Kupchan said.

“A low chance is a lot better than no chance,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Meyer in Dubai at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9YdnyuTBf_I

Iran: the next Japan?

Iran: the next Japan?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Clinton Bastin argues that Iran is a nation with sophisticated nuclear fuel cycle programme and should be treated as such.

Israel has 50 to 200 nuclear weapons, “implosion” type, tested and reliable, courtesy of France. They contain plutonium, produced in the heavy water reactor and recovered in the reprocessing plant, both at Dimona, supplied by France. Israel has not signed the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iran has signed the NPT, has a nuclear power programme that is fully safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency and is most important to Iran’s interests because of diminishing supplies of oil. Iran produces low enriched uranium needed for nuclear power because of its past experience with denial by the United States of important fuel cycle technology that had been promised.

Iran’s low-enriched uranium as uranium (2 to 5%U-235) hexaflouride (UF6) will be converted to uranium oxide for use as fuel for nuclear power. Uranium of this enrichment can be fairly easily handled without great danger of a criticality accident.

Low-enriched uranium cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon. The UF6 would have to be withdrawn from fully safeguarded inventories and returned to gas centrifuges for further enrichment, to about 90% U-235. This material would then need to be processed into metal, for use in a”gun” type weapon. Facilities for processing uranium into metal probably do not exist in Iran, and there is much more danger from criticality during such processing.

The uranium metal would then need to be cast, fabricated, machined into precise parts for a gun-type weapon (like cylinder and piston rings) and then assembled, with high explosive, into a weapon. All processing would be very dangerous, and the assembled weapon would likely not be “One-point” safe. First such US weapons were not; a torpedo bomber with such a weapon crashing and catching fire on a carrier deck would have about 5 minutes to put fire out prior to full nuclear detonation.

A gun-type weapon requires about 100 pounds of U-235, which would require about 2-1/2 tons of uranium enriched to 2% U235 to produce. Losses during processing and fabrication would at least double the amount needed.

The diversion of this much uranium from safeguarded inventories would be easily detected; time needed to make a weapon by Iran would be two to four years. Israel does not have experience with uranium-based nuclear weapons, and quality of its technical assessment of intelligence of Iran’s nuclear programme is probably limited.

I hope that you will support leaving Iran like Japan – a nation with an increasingly sophisticated nuclear fuel cycle programme that is carefully safeguarded to manage proliferation risks.

I was US coordinator with Japan for nuclear fuel cycle development during final few years of my career at DoE and visited Japan's fuel cycle centre at Rokkasho-mura with US Senate energy committee chairman Frank Murkowski in December 1996. Unfortunately, the reprocessing technology that I inherited for the collaboration was flawed and the reprocessing plant there is much too expensive and will have problems.

The reprocessing technology promised to Iran by us in 1970 was also flawed (similar to that provided to India, used for US nuclear power fuel, etc). I can provide full details.

We also need to accept that Iran's relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah will continue, and be willing to work with Tehran to integrate these groups into lasting settlement of the Middle East's core political conflicts.

​
Author Info:

Clinton Bastin is a retired US Department of Energy Chemical Engineer/Nuclear Scientist  

Iran and nuclear diplomacy: A yes or a no?

Iran and nuclear diplomacy

A yes or a no?
Jun 28th 2007

Diplomacy for diplomacy's sake

IF IRAN were to decide to end its high-wire defiance of the UN Security Council and open negotiations for a diplomatic solution to the stand-off over its nuclear work—telling all about its nuclear past and suspending production of potentially bomb-useable uranium and plutonium—it would need to find a ladder to climb down on. Constructing one has been the aim of European diplomats in months of off again, on again talks. So far, to no avail.

Suspension, Iran insists, is out. Instead, as the council has stepped up sanctions, Iran has speeded up the installation of centrifuge machines at its enrichment plant at Natanz and cut back co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's watchdog. So what to make of a new offer from Iran's nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, to talk to the IAEA about answering its inspectors' persistent questions?

Last year, in an effort to avoid being referred to the Security Council for its egregious breaches of nuclear safeguards, Iran offered to clear up all outstanding issues in just three weeks. It never did. Inspectors want answers about undocumented imports of nuclear kit, unexplained traces of plutonium and enriched uranium, suspected military links to what is claimed to be a peaceful nuclear programme, and the possession of documents and the conduct of experiments that make little sense except as part of a weapons programme.

Sceptics note that Mr Larijani's latest offer (talks about ways to provide answers, rather than just giving them) comes as sanctions discussions—on the agenda of George Bush's meeting next week with Russia's Vladimir Putin—are set to resume at the UN. Yet for months Iran has insisted it would not co-operate in the inspectors' quest until its case was returned from the Security Council to the IAEA.

The agency's director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, professes himself encouraged by the apparent change of heart. In a report to the IAEA's 35-nation board in June, Mr ElBaradei had called Iran's obstruction of the inspectors' work “disconcerting and regrettable”.

In his talks with European diplomats, Mr Larijani has also toyed with the idea of a time-limited suspension of enrichment work—only to be overruled by his bosses in Tehran, says Gary Samore of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. It was never clear whether his aim was to get negotiations started without too much loss of face or just to head off sanctions. Offering to dribble more information to inspectors may likewise be a play for time.

This week Mr Larijani praised Mr ElBaradei for an earlier controversial suggestion that Iran might as well be allowed to continue limited enrichment, since it had already mastered many of the skills. Mr Larijani also knows that both Russia and China are unenthusiastic in principle about sanctions. By sounding emollient rather than defiant, he may be hoping they will all help keep the UN off his back.

And if they don't, or won't? Pointing out what Iran needs to do to restore its nuclear reputation and searching for ways to get negotiations going may not be time wasted. Eventually, the diplomats hope, Iran, in an increasingly tight spot, will reach for both as its ladder to climb down on. But no one is holding their breath.


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