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U.S. Hints at Quick Easing of Sanctions if Iran Yields in Nuclear Talks In Iran Talks, Nuclear Gains Offer Challenge
(about 4 hours later)
GENEVA — As negotiations get under way in Geneva Tuesday on Iran’s disputed nuclear program, expectations are running higher than they have in a decade. But the barriers that remain are daunting, and are likely to center on what the experts call Iran’s “breakout capacity,” the ability to build a nuclear weapon in a matter of months, and its willingness to accept intrusive inspections. GENEVA — Iran is expected to make an offer on Tuesday to scale back its effort to enrich uranium, a move that a year ago would have been a significant concession to the West. But Iran’s nuclear abilities have advanced so far since then that experts say it will take far more than that to assure the West that Tehran does not have the capacity to quickly produce a nuclear weapon.
Iran is expected to propose a moratorium on enrichment to 20 percent, a level that experts say is worrying, while restricting enrichment to the range of 3 percent to 5 percent that is used in commercial reactors. In return, it wants quick reciprocal gestures from the United States, a step that a senior American official said the Obama administration was prepared to take. With thousands of advanced centrifuges spinning and Iranian engineers working on a plant that will produce plutonium — which also can be used in a weapon — Iran’s program presents a daunting challenge for negotiators determined to roll back its nuclear activities.
“We are quite ready to move,” said the official, who added that the American delegation to the talks, scheduled to start on Tuesday, includes top experts on the economic sanctions that have heavily damaged on Iran’s economy. Both sides enter the nuclear talks that begin here Tuesday with inherent strengths and weaknesses. Iran walks in with a nuclear program that cannot easily be turned back, while the West has imposed sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.
But the senior official also said that the United States and its partners in the talks would first wait to see if Iran was prepared to take concrete steps to constrain the pace and scope of its nuclear program, address its growing stockpile of enriched uranium and provide a new degree of transparency about its nuclear activities. And if Iran is going to maintain the right to enrich uranium to even low levels, as it continues to insists it must, the West would surely demand highly intrusive inspections — far more than Iran has tolerated in the past. How these matters are resolved will go far in deciding the success or failure of the talks.
“We are going to make judgments based on the actions of the Iranians,” said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. In 2003, Iran had a relative handful of relatively unsophisticated centrifuges. Today, it has at least 19,000, and 1,000 of those are highly advanced. Those have been installed but are not yet being used to enrich uranium
The talks in Geneva are the first between Iran and the big powers since the election of a new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, who took office in August and has made a priority of easing the crippling sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities. The rounds of talks under Mr. Rouhani’s predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made no progress. That is more than enough, experts say, to transform low-enriched uranium from the 3 percent to 5 percent range to weapons grade in a few months — the so-called breakout that is unacceptable to the West and Israel.
The new Iranian president’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has announced that he intends to present a new proposal when the talks open here on Tuesday to persuade world powers that the country’s nuclear program has only peaceful aims, a top official said on Sunday. “Ending production of 20 percent enriched uranium is not sufficient to prevent breakout, because Iran can produce nuclear weapons using low-enriched uranium and a large number of centrifuge machines,” said Gary Samore, a senior aide on nonproliferation on the National Security Council in President Obama’s first term.
The P5-plus-1 talks with Iran, as they are known in diplomatic shorthand, involve the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany. In addition, Tehran is nearing completion of a heavy-water reactor that would be capable of producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, another factor that Western experts say argues for far broader constraints.
The United States had asked Iran to present the proposal before the Tuesday meeting so the Obama administration and its foreign partners would be in a better position to respond. The talks in Geneva are the first between Iran and the United States and five other world powers since the election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, who took office in August and has made a priority of easing the crippling sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear activities.
Iran’s reluctance to do so, as well as uncertainty on whether it was prepared to make far-reaching concessions, has led to some caution on the Western side. Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts from Western nations are not planning to attend. A series of conciliatory messages and speeches from Mr. Rouhani and other Iranian officials — capped by a phone call to the Iranian president from Mr. Obama last month — has helped foster the most promising atmosphere for negotiations since 2003, when Mr. Rouhani was Tehran’s lead nuclear negotiator.
In comments on Sunday, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said that the proposal would involve a three-step plan that would establish the independence of Iran’s civilian nuclear program while providing assurances that the country is not trying to produce nuclear weapons. A senior American official said on Monday that the United States was heartened by the change of tone in Tehran and believed that Mr. Rouhani’s election signals a sincere intention by Iran to chart “a more moderate course.”
“We need to move towards a trust-building road map with the Westerners,” Mr. Araghchi told the Iranian Students’ News Agency in an interview. “To them, trust-building means taking some steps in the nuclear case, and for us this happens when sanctions are lifted.” But the official also said that the United States and its partners were still waiting to see if Iran would take concrete steps to constrain the pace and scope of its nuclear program, limit its growing stockpile of enriched uranium and be more open about its nuclear activities.
Iranian officials have not publicly described the details in public. But there has been speculation that a major element will be a commitment to stop the production of uranium that is enriched to 20 percent purity, which is a short technical step away from highly enriched uranium required for bomb-grade fuel. Fuel needed for civilian reactors, by contrast, is low-enriched uranium of 5 percent or less. “We are going to make judgments based on the actions of the Iranian government, not simply its words, although we appreciate the change in its tone,” the official said.
American experts said that if a moratorium on 20 percent enriched uranium turns out to be the centerpiece of the new Iranian proposal it will fall short of what is needed to stop Iran from developing a “breakout” capability — the capacity to rapidly develop a nuclear weapon. As hopeful as the Obama administration may be, a number of issues may prove contentious in the P5-plus-1 talks, involving the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and Germany.
“Ending production of 20 percent enriched uranium is not sufficient to prevent breakout because Iran can produce nuclear weapons using low-enriched uranium and a large number of centrifuge machines,” said Gary Samore, a former proliferation expert on the Obama’s administration’s National Security Council, who is now the president of United Against Nuclear Iran, a group that strongly advocates tough sanctions. In hinting that they will accept some constraints on their nuclear program, for example, the Iranians have stressed that they want quick reciprocal steps to ease sanctions.
“The U.S. is looking for an agreement that limits Iran’s overall enrichment capacity, defined in terms of numbers and types of centrifuges and stockpile of low enriched uranium, in exchange for substantial sanctions relief,” Mr. Samore added. American officials have said that they are prepared to reciprocate, and the United States delegation here includes a senior expert on economic sanctions: Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Obama administration has never said publicly whether it might be prepared to accept an Iranian right to enrich uranium to low levels as part of any agreement. But the United States is reluctant to withdraw the most effective measures, especially sanctions that have cut off Iran from the international banking system, until the main issues are solved. There are also limits to how far the administration can go without Congressional authorization.

Thomas Erdbrink contributed reporting from Tehran.

Any easing of sanctions would be “proportional to what Iran puts on the table,” said the senior American official, who added that it was likely that the Iranians would “disagree about what is proportionate.”
Another potential obstacle is Iran’s insistence that its right to enrich uranium be acknowledged now as part of the negotiations under which it would accept constraints on its nuclear activity.
The senior American official said that Iran had a right to a civilian nuclear energy program and that the United States was now prepared to talk about a “comprehensive” solution. But the official would not say whether Iran should be allowed to produce enriched uranium at home or limited to acquiring nuclear fuel from other nations.
“We are prepared to talk about what President Obama said in his address at the U.N.,” the senior official said. “That he respects the rights of the Iranian people to access a peaceful nuclear program. What that is is a matter of discussion.”
Even if the West yields on the scope of Iran’s nuclear program, the two sides would have to overcome Tehran’s resistance to extensive verification measures. The problems they face in that respect are apparent at the sprawling Parchin military base just outside of Tehran.
Iran says that only regular military activities take place behind Parchin’s barbed wires and high fences. But the International Atomic Energy Agency says the site may possibly hold clues to past work on a nuclear weapon.
Tehran allowed inspectors onto the base twice in 2005 but has rebuffed further requests. Iranian officials have said that the inspectors are allowed to visit each of the country’s 17 declared nuclear facilities, warehouses and related workshops, but not military bases and other locations that have nothing to do with its nuclear program.
Iranian officials say they will not accept what happened in Iraq in the 1990s, when international inspectors played cat-and-mouse games with the Iraqis and the C.I.A. planted agents on inspection teams in Iraq.
“There is more at stake here than only our national sovereignty,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, a Tehran-based analyst. “We don’t want inspectors running around the country freely. Iran is not a nuclear program with a country; we have far bigger security concerns than just the nuclear program.”
But Wendy Sherman, the senior State Department official who is leading the American delegation here, recently told Congress that “verifiable” steps to stop Iran’s program were needed because “deception is part of the DNA.”
Even as Iran has pressed its case, the Obama administration has faced countervailing pressures from Israel and members of Congress who are deeply suspicions of Iran and wary of removing sanctions.
Ray Takeyh, a former State Department expert on Iran, underscored the obstacles to a quick breakthrough.
“Both sides are victims of their success today,” Mr. Takeyh said. “Iranians have a mature nuclear program that they are reluctant to trade. The Americans have a substantial sanctions regime that they are averse to dismantling for anything but measurable Iranian concessions.”

Michael R. Gordon reported from Geneva, and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.