Iran's "Nuclear Problem" and a "Doable Deal"

Rather unfortunate news out of London this weekend: Iran's new hard-line nuclear negotiator has effectively torn up four years of negotiations with the West. Saeed Jalili, a confidante of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sees no reason for further talks on Iran's uranium enrichment program with the so-called EU3+1 (Britain, France, Germany and the U.S.).

This was the reported upshot of Jalili's crucial meeting with EU3+1 representative Javier Solana. The Times' Elaine Sciolino describes Jalili's first encounter as chief negotiator as nothing short of a disaster. Confirming fears that he would follow the naive, ideological and reckless course that his pragmatic predecessor Ali Larijani studiously avoided, Jalili reportedly spent the first 90 minutes lecturing Solana on everything from Iranian popular opinion to God. The reaction of Western governments, which are debating a third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran, was predictable. "The real Iran," one official was quoted complaining. "We can't do business with these guys," said another.

Iran's dramatic shift to a harder, uncompromising line has at least as much to do with Ahmadinehjad's domestic maneuvering ahead of parliamentary elections next year and a presidential re-election in 2009. But clearly the U.S. and its allies are running up against a wall. The new hard-line amounts to Iran's rejection of Condi Rice's landmark 2006 offer for the U.S. to enter into full negotiations with the Islamic republic including on the issue of economic cooperation in exchange for Iran retreating on its uranium enrichment program. Despite Iran's denials, the U.S. believes that Iran will divert the program into construction of a nuclear weapon.

Perhaps just as startling as Jalili's defiance are the conclusions drawn by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans after talks with senior Iranian officials in Tehran last week. Visiting in his capacity as president of the International Crisis Group, he says he came away feeling that even significantly burdensome further sanctions will not undermine Iran's determination to resist "any limitation on the rights it claims are available to it under the NPT to acquire full fuel cycle peaceful nuclear capability." He heard what Solana later heard in London: that there is no more "Iran nuclear problem"--based on a new IAEA report that gives Iran good marks in clearing up questions about its once-secret program.

Evans says that Iranian officials including Jalili, however, were also well aware of the potential costs of Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology and especially any pursuit of nuclear weapons--including being targeted for pre-emptive attack by the U.S. or Israel. "This is a country seething with both national pride and resentment against past humiliations, and it does want to cut a regional and global figure by proving its sophisticated technological capability," Evans says. "That die is now cast."

The way out of the impasse now, Evans says, is to make "a doable deal" whose starting point would b e a time-limited freeze on Iran's enrichment activities as well as U.N. sanctions while negotiations commence. The deal would essentially give in to Iran's perhaps inevitable determination to sustain a uranium enrichment capability. But the quid pro quo would be Iran surrendering to highly intrusive IAEA oversight of a program that would include international partners.

The three points:

First, Iran would accept highly intrusive monitoring and inspection regimes, involving not only the application of the NPT Additional Protocol, but some other specially agreed access arrangements.

Second, Iran would spread out over an extended period, in defined stages, its R&D activity and development of enrichment activity, with the end result being an industrial scale facility, but one run as consortium with Iran having international commercial partners.

Third, these arrangements would be accompanied by international incentives, including the staged lifting of sanctions, the normalisation of diplomatic relations and technical support. In addition, there would be equally clear disincentives, including renewed sanctions and potentially even stronger measures, that would apply if any evidence emerged that Iran was pursuing in any way at all a nuclear weapons program.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo