Monday, October 05, 2009

Point-CounterPoint: Is optimism warranted on Iran deal?


U.S. Wonders If Iran Is Playing for Time -Helene Cooper

If Iran has really agreed to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium out of the country to be turned into fuel, that is a significant concession, experts said.

The problem is that no one is certain that the Iranian government will actually do what Western officials say that it has now agreed to do.

In fact, after the talks in Geneva, Iranian officials did not sound as if they thought they had promised anything. "No, no!" said Mehdi Saffare, Iran's ambassador to Britain and a member of the Iranian delegation to the negotiations. The idea of sending Iran's enriched uranium out of the county had "not been discussed yet."
(New York Times)


Iran's Big Victory in Geneva -John Bolton

The most widely touted outcome of last week's Geneva talks with Iran was the "agreement in principle" to send approximately one nuclear-weapon's worth of Iran's low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for enrichment.

Diplomacy's three slipperiest words are "agreement in principle."

An Iranian official said the Geneva deal "is just based on principles. We have not agreed on any amount or any numbers." Bargaining over the deal's specifics could stretch out indefinitely.

The "agreement" also undercuts Security Council resolutions forbidding Iranian uranium enrichment. Moreover, we have no idea whether its declared LEU constitutes anything near its entire stockpile.
(Wall Street Journal)


Will Iran Simply Further Enrich Nuclear Fuel? -Michael Rubin

While Iranian authorities pledged to ship uranium to Russia for further enrichment, the West has no guarantee that Iranian scientists will not simply enrich the fuel further when it is repatriated to Iran.
(National Review)


The Coming Failure on Iran -Jackson Diehl

The Obama administration's positive tone following its first diplomatic encounter with Iran covers a deep and growing gloom in Washington and European capitals.

None of the steps the West is considering to stop the Iranian nuclear program is likely to work. The headlines obscure the fact that Tehran's negotiator in Geneva declined to respond to the central Western demand: that Iran freeze its uranium enrichment work. Iran has rejected that idea repeatedly.
(Washington Post)
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