Stakes High for Iran Talks

Amid Iranian threats to break off negotiations and European warnings about “irreversible gestures” on Tehran’s part, the stakes are high as the two sides prepare to meet over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.

The outcome of the meeting, scheduled for midweek in Geneva, is crucial not just because of what it could portend for Iran’s attainment of nuclear capability. If Iran leaves the negotiating table, the move could raise tensions throughout the Middle East and set the stage for a face-off between Tehran and the United States.

“The immediate concern is that if Iran carries out its threat, the U.S. will bomb them, and people in the region have had enough of wars between the United States and Muslim countries,” said Gary Samore, a former advisor to the National Security Council and now director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

The last-ditch effort to persuade Iran to maintain its suspension of nuclear activities will be the first face-to-face contact between representatives since Iran threatened earlier this month to break off talks with Britain, France and Germany, breaching a deal reached in November.

Under the agreement, which is voluntary, Iran suspended all work on nuclear processing including uranium enrichment, which can lead to the production of nuclear arms, in exchange for economic, technological and political incentives from Europe.

French diplomats plan to send a message at the Geneva meeting that an Iranian move to restart activity related to uranium enrichment would scuttle the talks and could result in a response by the U.N. Security Council, a French diplomatic official said Friday.

“We will tell them that committing an irreversible gesture makes no sense. It is not in their interest politically, technically or economically. It will put them in the position of being an isolated country. That’s not good for their security,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

The political calculus and diplomatic maneuvering of both the Europeans and the Iranians is knotted, but the question that could be answered at the Geneva meeting is whether Iran will continue its moratorium on processing nuclear material and stay at the bargaining table -- at least for the time being. Many experts believe that Iran will eventually restart its nuclear program, but delaying that day and putting in place strong verification measures to ensure the country is not making a bomb would be a reasonable outcome.

In an interview this week in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said that the question was not whether the Iranians would resume nuclear work, but when. Iran insists its nuclear efforts are for civilian purposes only.

“My country has a long-term plan to generate 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity,” the negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, said. “We cannot wait longer to implement our plans.... We believe that what is needed is to see a decision made by the Europeans over how to carry out [their commitments].”

He added: “The decision has been made in my country to resume activities at the Isfahan facility. The time of resumption is in my hands.”

The meeting comes after a week of charges and warnings about Iran’s ambitions. On Friday, a prominent Iranian exile claimed that Iran was smuggling a highly sensitive material that could be used to encase a nuclear warhead atop a missile.

The exile, Alireza Jafarzadeh, said a source within the government provided evidence to him that Tehran’s Defense Ministry “has in the past and continues to smuggle” the material into the country.

A day earlier, a senior State Department official and international experts told a Senate panel they saw no signs that current disarmament efforts would deter the country’s rulers from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Two years ago, when the extent of Iran’s nuclear program was first revealed, the United States had threatened to try to take the Islamic Republic to the Security Council. At that time, however, there was little support from other countries to do so.

Subsequently, U.S. officials shifted their tactics and now are working behind the scenes with the Europeans -- with whom they are in daily contact, although the Americans are not part of the official negotiations.

The U.S. has continued to take a tough line and insisted that Iran give up all its nuclear activities -- even those that could be used for the generation of electricity and other peaceful purposes, because they create products that can be used to enrich uranium and to make weapons.

Iran must “negotiate in good faith the eventual cessation and dismantling of all sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities,” U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns told the Senate committee.

Diplomats involved in the negotiations say it is unclear whether the Iranians will follow through with their threat to leave the talks.

“We have already been in a difficult context, on the verge of a breakdown,” said a French official who declined to be identified. “And the sole fact that we kept talking enabled the reestablishment of negotiations. This is not the first time.”

Going into the Geneva meeting, the Europeans are relying primarily on the threat of referring Iran to the Security Council to bring the country back to the bargaining table. However, they are also looking for a way “to sugarcoat it,” said a Western official close to the negotiations who declined to be identified.

Up to now, Iran has worked hard to avoid a Security Council referral. Since its nuclear program was uncovered, it has complied reluctantly with requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear verification organization, for information about the program.

Iran, however, is interested in more than sugarcoating. It has expressed dissatisfaction with the offers made so far by the Europeans, which include used U.S. airplane parts and an opening for the country to apply for World Trade Organization membership. In comments last week, Iranian officials expressed an interest in having the Europeans deliver 10 nuclear reactors -- for energy-generation purposes. It seems highly unlikely that such a deal could be struck anytime soon.

European diplomats involved in the negotiations warned Iran about pushing them too far.

“If the Iranians write a letter saying they plan to restart conversion, they set off a political process over which they may not be able to exert control ... they may think they can, but that is not at all clear,” a diplomat said.

Although a referral to the Security Council is the trump card for the European countries, its real-world impact would probably be relatively mild -- perhaps limited economic sanctions after a protracted process. The threat’s potency is that it would relegate Iran to the position of an outsider country. So far, Iran has wanted to remain in the community of nations. Iranians are deeply proud of their long history as a highly educated and refined culture.

A recent article in the Middle East Journal by Fariborz Mokhtari, an Iranian-born professor at the National Defense University in Washington, warns the United States against demonizing the Iranians for their nuclear ambitions, which he argues are founded on a perceived need for nuclear deterrence in a region where the country feels under threat from all sides.

Iran is a Shiite Muslim country in a largely Sunni part of the world. Most of the countries around it occupy land that once belonged to the Iranians, and U.S. military forces are poised in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Turkey, Central Asia and Afghanistan.

“There is no doubt that Iran’s rulers are interested in nuclear technology in general and nuclear deterrence in particular,” Mokhtari wrote. “Whether that means Iran’s rulers have already decided to build nuclear weapons or not is an unanswered question.”

The United States must avoid turning Iran’s quest for nuclear technology into a matter of national pride, which all Iranians would feel bound to defend.

“Insensitivity to Iranian nationalism ... runs the risk of turning it into a fiercely nationalist crash program to acquire nuclear weapons at any cost,” Mokhtari wrote.

If Iran carries out its threat to abandon negotiations, it would first inform the IAEA of its intention to resume work on a facility in Isfahan, which converts raw uranium yellow cake into hexafluoride gas, a key ingredient in the nuclear fuel cycle. The gas can be enriched through centrifuge processing to make weapons-grade uranium. Iran could begin work almost immediately once it decided to do so.

Iran has sent mixed signals about whether it would resume plans to proceed with the final step, which is uranium enrichment.

In any case, experts say Iran’s capability to take such a step and carry out the highest level of enrichment is still at least a couple of years away.

Rubin reported from Vienna and Rotella from Paris.