Iran: is a deal on the way?
It's only a week ago that the US, France and Britain announced that they'd discovered a hitherto unadmitted Iranian nuclear facility near the religious centre of Qom.
Yesterday, in Geneva, during more than seven hours of talks, Iran seemed to be keen to defuse what looked like becoming a major new bone of contention.
According to a "senior US official", Iran has accepted a proposal - not about the Qom plant but about a much older one in Tehran - that, if implemented, "would be a positive interim step to help build confidence". (The full US background briefing is available .)
The key questions were: would Iran agree to allow UN inspectors free access to the Qum plant? And would it agree to a proposal that it should export its known stocks of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia, where it would be further enriched to allow it to be used for medical purposes but not for weapons?
The answers to both questions appear to be Yes. The reported: "Iran's agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing -- if it happens -- would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit."
By the way, a word about the people the Iranians were talking to yesterday. They are sometimes described as the E3 + 3 (in other words, three European nations - Britain, France and Germany - plus three others: the US, Russia, and China), or as the P5 + 1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - plus one other: Germany). It adds up, of course, to the same thing.
And just a thought about sanctions. Iran has been told that it has until the end of the year to satisfy the Security Council that it's not secretly developing nuclear weapons, or face the threat of tighter UN sanctions.
But if you look back at what sanctions did to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia as it was then) under Ian Smith, or Cuba under Fidel Castro (49 years and counting), it's evident that sanctions rarely do what they're designed to do.
And Iran has a neighbour, Iraq, with a very long border and a government that is more than friendly. No wonder many Western diplomats feel that the carrot may work better than the stick.
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