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In New Nuclear Talks, Technological Gains by Iran Pose Challenges to the West
Iran Presents New Nuclear Proposal to Big Powers
(about 2 hours later)
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.
GENEVA — Speaking in English and using PowerPoint, Iran’s foreign minister outlined a new proposal to six big powers on Tuesday to constrain his country’s nuclear program in return for a right to enrich uranium.
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 the country’s nuclear activities.
The proposal presented by the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at negotiations in Geneva, called for “an end to an unnecessary crisis and a start for new horizons,” according to Iranian officials.
Both sides enter the nuclear talks that began here on Tuesday morning 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.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, asserted that there had been a “positive atmosphere” during the initial round of talks here and that the reaction by diplomats to the proposal had been “good.”
And if Iran is going to maintain the right to enrich uranium to even low levels, as it continues to insist it must, the West will 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.
Michael Mann, a spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreign policy official and the lead negotiator for the big powers in the talks with Iran, said that the Iranian proposal had been “very useful.”
In 2003, when Iran struck its only nuclear deal with the West, it had a relative handful of somewhat unsophisticated centrifuges. Today, Iran has at least 19,000, and 1,000 of those are of a highly advanced design and have been installed but are not yet being used to enrich uranium.
There was no public reaction from American officials to the proposal, which was made behind closed doors during a morning session of Iran and the P5-plus-1 countries — so called because they involve the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany.
That is more than enough, experts say, to transform low-enriched uranium to weapons grade from the 3 percent to 5 percent range in a few months. That would provide Iran with a so-called breakout capability that is unacceptable to the West and Israel, even if, as expected, Iran proposes a moratorium on enrichment to 20 percent.
The talks are the first formal negotiations between the P5-plus-1 countries and Iran since the election of Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president, who took office in August and has pledged to reach an agreement on the disputed nuclear program that would end the country’s prolonged economic isolation.
“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 details of Iran’s proposal are to remain confidential for the time being, Mr. Araqchi said, adding that his counterparts in the talks had also agreed to keep the proposal under wraps for now.
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.
After breaking for lunch, diplomats reconvened to discuss the details of the Iranian plan. Another round of talks is scheduled for Wednesday.
The talks in Geneva are the first between Iran and the United States and five other world powers since the election of Iran’s 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.
On Monday, a senior American official said that the United States wanted Iran to take steps that were “transparent and verifiable” to constrain its program and assure the West that it was not intended to produce a nuclear bomb.
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.
Iran’s nuclear efforts had advanced so much, the American official added, that Iran needed to take stops now to halt or even reverse its nuclear program so there was time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement.
A senior American official said Monday that the United States was heartened by the change of tone in Tehran and believed that Mr. Rouhani’s election signaled a sincere intention by Iran to chart “a more moderate course.”
“We have always believed that we need to put some time on the clock,” said the American official who stressed the need to constrain Iran’s program and “perhaps even take it back a notch.” The American official asked not to be named in accordance with the State Department’s diplomatic protocol for briefing reporters.
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.
Whether the new Iranian proposal meets that requirement was unclear.
“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,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocol.
Mr. Araqchi said a separate bilateral meeting between Iranian and the American diplomatic team, which is led by Wendy Sherman, a senior State Department official, had not been organized during the current round of talks. He said that he hoped that soon the world powers would be ready to send their foreign ministers so the level of the negotiations could be upgraded.
As hopeful as the Obama administration may be, a number of issues may prove contentious in the P5-plus-1 talks, so called because of the involvement of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and Germany.
“I hope that we will meet again in a period hopefully less than a month from today, and continue the talks,” he said.
In hinting that they will accept some constraints on their nuclear program, for example, the Iranians have emphasized that they want quick reciprocal steps to ease sanctions.
The United States had asked Iran to present the proposal in advance of the Tuesday meeting so the Obama administration and its foreign partners would be in a better position to respond.
American officials have said that they are prepared to reciprocate, and the United States delegation here includes a senior expert on economic sanctions, Adam J. Szubin, the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department.
Iran’s reluctance to do so, as well as uncertainty on whether Tehran was prepared to make far-reaching concessions, appears to have led to some caution on the Western side. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was recently in Europe, returned to Washington and did not attend the meeting here.
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.
Providing some additional details about Tuesday’s meeting, the Iranian Students’ News Agency, ISNA, quoted Mr. Araqchi as saying the Iranian side had made several points to address international concerns over what Iran asserts is a peaceful nuclear program but which the Western powers and Israel contend is an effort to lay the groundwork for developing nuclear weapons.
Any easing of sanctions would be “proportional to what Iran puts on the table,” said the senior American official, who added that the Iranians would most likely “disagree about what is proportionate.”
Mr. Araqchi asserted that Iran had a right to enrich uranium and would do so despite the demands of the Security Council that it suspend enrichment until questions about the nature of its program are satisfactorily resolved. The enrichment, he said, would continue to be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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.
He also asked for international nuclear cooperation, including the provision of fuel from other nations that was enriched up to 20 percent for a Tehran-based research reactor. In exchange, thee sanctions that the United States and other nations had imposed because of concerns that Iran was moving to develop nuclear weapons would be lifted, Mr. Araqchi said.
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 be limited to acquiring nuclear fuel from other nations.
“Naturally there will be a time frame for all these steps,” he said, according to the ISNA report.
“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.”
Iran’s plan, he said, was based on the religious edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the use and production of nuclear weapons.
Even if the West yielded 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.
“At least it was welcomed,” Mr. Araqchi said of the Western response. “But its details need to be explored and tomorrow we can make a final conclusion to see if we had any progress.”
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.
Iran’s former foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, now the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was quoted by the semiofficial Fars news agency on Tuesday as saying that only Ayatollah Khamenei is in charge of the country’s nuclear program.
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.
“The nuclear issue is above every other issue and the Supreme Leader leads the nuclear issue personally,” Mr. Salehi was quoted as saying. “Others are only executors.”
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 people on inspection teams in Iraq.
“There is more at stake here than only our national sovereignty,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, a political analyst based in Tehran. “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 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 pressure from Israel and members of Congress who are deeply suspicions of Iran and wary of removing sanctions. On Monday, 10 senators sent a letter to Mr. Obama arguing that Iran should freeze the enrichment of uranium and take other steps just to avoid the imposition of further economic sanctions.
Ray Takeyh, a former State Department expert on Iran who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 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.
Michael R. Gordon reported from Geneva, and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.
