Khamenei douses hopes for nuclear talks
Posted: 08/02/2013 Filed under: Gulf and Middle East Security, Mark Fitzpatrick, Non-Proliferation | Tags: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, E3+3, enriched uranium, Fordow, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Natanz, nuclear programme Leave a comment »
By Mark Fitzpatrick, Director, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme
He is a mad mullah after all – mad meaning angry, that is. Following the positive notes sounded by US Vice President Joe Biden and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in Munich last week, it did not take long for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to quash any optimism over the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and the international community. These are scheduled to take place in Almaty on 26 February.
In a speech on 7 February, Khamenei ruled out holding bilateral talks with America on his country’s controversial nuclear programme so long as Washington continued pressure tactics. He claimed the US was proposing talks while ‘pointing a gun at Iran’, adding that: ‘Some naive people like the idea of negotiating with America [but] negotiations will not solve the problems.’
Iran’s refusal on concessions renews the threats of war
Posted: 10/10/2012 Filed under: Gulf and Middle East Security, Mark Fitzpatrick, Non-Proliferation | Tags: E3+3, Fordow, Iran, Israel, non-proliferation, nuclear sites, Qom 1 Comment »
Fordow Uranium Enrichment Facility, North of Qom. Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Podnox
Mark Fitzpatrick, Director of Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme, wrote an op-ed in The National published on 10 October examining how a prolonged stalemate in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme could lead to a strike.
Iran is ‘so far from making concessions’, writes Fitzpatrick, that there has not yet been any need for the E3+3 (France, Germany and the UK plus Russia, China and the US) to grapple with the issue of sanctions relief.
As a confidence-building measure, the E3+3 asked Iran to stop production of 20% enriched uranium, ship out the accumulated 20 per cent product and shut down its enrichment facility at Fordow. Iran is only willing to consider stopping 20% enrichment, in exchange for the lifting of all sanctions. The trade from Iran’s point of view has been characterised by former Iranian negotiator Hossein Mousavian as amounting to ‘diamonds for peanuts‘. But for the E3+3, what Iran is offering is similarly unpalatable: ‘With the lower level of enrichment, Iran could get to the bomb in only a slightly longer time than if it started with a 20 per cent product,’ writes Fitzpatrick.
A change in Iran’s position could be ‘too little, too late’. Sanctions are having a devastating effect on Iran’s economy, but there is not likely to be another meaningful meeting between the negotiating powers until after the US election – and it is possible concessions won’t be made until after Iran’s own presidential elections in June 2013, and even then, these may merely be tactical. If a new Iranian president isn’t ready to make a deal next year, Israel may attack.
Read the full article.
Time for US to ‘go big’ and close Iran deal
Posted: 15/06/2012 Filed under: Andrew Parasiliti, Gulf and Middle East Security, Non-Proliferation, US | Tags: Barack Obama, E3+3, Hillary Clinton, Iran, P5+1, US Leave a comment »![U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton participates in a joint discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres hosted by The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on June 12, 2012. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]](http://iissvoicesblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/7367264304_17b4541d4d_o.jpg "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton participates in a joint discussion with Israeli President Shimon Peres hosted by The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on June 12, 2012. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]")
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged speculation this week that the US may be preparing to ‘go big’ on Iran, by presenting Tehran with a much broader proposal over its nuclear programme. During a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, she said that Iran would be offered ‘a diplomatic way out, a very clear path that would be verifiable and would be linked to action for action’ when nuclear talks resumed in Moscow on 18 June.
IISS-US Director Andrew Parasiliti argues in his latest piece for Al-Monitor that the US should indeed recognise Iran’s right to enrichment and accept Iranian offers of cooperation. There’s no downside to President Barack Obama’s going all out on Iran, Parasiliti says.
