Europeans to Offer Iran Another Deal

The major European countries agreed Friday to offer Iran “a bigger stick and a bigger carrot” in a last-ditch deal to induce Tehran’s leaders to abandon their uranium-enrichment program or face U.N. action, diplomats and officials said.

Expressing hope that Iran would accept the deal and avoid a confrontation over nuclear weapons, one European official said, “There are those in Tehran who do not want to be seen as international outlaws.” But he conceded that “they may not be in the ascendancy” inside the Iranian government, which is dominated by hard-liners.

The deal, to be offered to Iranian representatives next week by Britain, France and Germany, would recognize Iran’s right to develop technology that leads to the peaceful use of nuclear power and guarantee its access to reactor fuel, officials said. At the same time, it would require Iran to stop work on technology that could be used to make atomic weapons. Trade cooperation and other undisclosed benefits also would be on offer.

If Iran accepts, it will have to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to verify its cooperation before a crucial agency meeting Nov. 25, two European officials said. If it refuses, they said, the agency’s board will vote at that meeting on whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- a step long sought by the Bush administration.

Senior officials from the Group of 8 industrialized nations met at the State Department on Friday but did not agree on a joint statement of action by all eight countries. Diplomats said that was to be expected, given the sharp differences among the United States, Russia and the European powers on Iran policy.

The Bush administration has little hope that the European-led initiative will succeed, and it did not endorse the proposal, though it did not block it, a senior U.S. official said.

“We’re not throwing anything into this other than our consent to their going ahead,” the official said.

One European diplomat noted: “We were not expecting that [the administration] would back something that was not their policy until now, just before the presidential election. Still, we have to try.

“It’s a satisfactory outcome that we have the eight richest countries in the world sending a clear message to Iran that it must comply with its obligations,” the European official said. The G-8 comprises the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and Russia.

The administration believes Iran’s yearlong negotiations with Britain, France and Germany have been a stalling ploy while Tehran accelerated work on secret nuclear weapons programs. Iran insists it wants only peaceful nuclear technologies.

Lacking the U.N. votes for sanctions against Iran, the U.S. has had to allow the Europeans to exhaust all diplomatic options and push for the matter to be taken up at the Security Council as soon as possible.

The Europeans, meanwhile, have been embarrassed by their inability to win compliance from Iran, which in September reversed an earlier pledge and said it was proceeding with uranium-enrichment programs. Still, they argued that the world must offer real incentives for Iran to comply and show a serious diplomatic effort, or the IAEA board would not vote to refer the matter to the Security Council.

European diplomats acknowledge that the proposed deal closely resembles one that Iran accepted a year ago, then reneged on.

The challenge for the Europeans has been to craft incentives that will be sufficiently appealing to Iran, yet not so lucrative that the Bush administration would oppose them as appearing to reward a nuclear aspirant that had promised not to develop nuclear weapons.

A second problem is that Iran’s position on the nuclear issue has hardened over the last year as the possibility of a U.S. military strike receded.

“They were real scared that the U.S. was going to come whack them in 2003, but then we got bogged down in Iraq,” said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In October, Iran said it had finished processing several tons of yellowcake uranium for use in the enrichment.

“In every contact with the Iranians, they have an extremely belligerent -- frankly -- negotiating style,” the European official said. “They hector and they talk tough. But ultimately, we believe they do want to deal on this, and we’re setting out the terms of the deal as we see it.”

Iranian opposition leaders said diplomatic efforts would require more stick and less carrot to keep Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

“The United States should embrace the Iranian people’s call for regime change,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, an opposition figure in Washington. “Nothing short of this would amount to much leverage in trying to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

Times staff writer Douglas Frantz in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.