Iran Move May Kill Nuclear Deal -- or Not

Sonni Efron and Douglas Frantz, The Los Angeles Times:

Tehran says it will resume uranium conversion. European negotiators seek clarification, but some observers see a bluff. Tehran's announcement Monday that it will resume uranium conversion could end up killing a European effort to strike a diplomatic deal to freeze Iran's nuclear programs, diplomats and experts said.

Or, they said, it could be a bluff.

After months of preparation, Britain, France and Germany said last week that they would present Iran with a package of incentives by next Sunday to persuade it to halt its nuclear programs. Though Iran insists that its nuclear activities are purely peaceful — for generating electricity — the U.S. and some other Western governments suspect Tehran may be using the program as a cover for building nuclear arms.

On Monday, Britain, France and Germany — known as the E-3 — struggled to decide whether Iran's move to resume uranium conversion meant that its hard-line leadership had concluded that the incentives would be insufficient, or whether Tehran was posturing in hopes of extracting a better offer. Uranium conversion is the first step in the process of making enriched uranium, which can be used either in nuclear weapons or in power plants.

"We're seeking clarification of Iran's intentions and we would urge them not to take any unilateral steps which might … make it very difficult to continue with the E-3/Iran negotiations," a British official in Washington said. He warned that if Iran "persisted, we could have to consult urgently with our partners on the board of the IAEA."

Britain, France and Germany have said they would ask the International Atomic Energy Agency board of directors to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council if Tehran violated the 2004 Paris Agreement. Under that accord, Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear programs, including uranium conversion, while negotiations with the Europeans were underway.

Three senior diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they suspected the Iranians were posturing.

"Every month or two they go through this … but they'd be really dumb to do it," a senior Bush administration official said. "There's a whole lot of posturing involved with the Iranians at any given moment, so I wouldn't read too much into it."

"We think it's negotiating pressure to focus the E-3 minds," said a Western diplomat based in Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered. "The E-3 still is divided on what to offer."

A European diplomat agreed: "They are definitely testing us, but we don't know whether they are testing us to get a better deal."

Uranium is transformed into fuel for civilian plants or nuclear weapons through a complicated process that starts with the conversion of natural ore to a gas known as uranium hexafluoride, or UF6. The gas is then fed into cascades of thousands of spinning centrifuges, which produce enriched uranium.

The plant Tehran wants to restart, at the country's nuclear technology center in Esfahan, would convert the ore to feedstock for a huge centrifuge plant that is nearing completion near Natanz, in central Iran.

Several diplomats and others expressed concern that the Iranians were attempting to stretch the Paris Agreement by gaining European consent to carry out conversion at Esfahan, provided they did not take the next step toward a nuclear weapon by enriching the uranium.

A diplomat close to the IAEA in Vienna said in a telephone interview that Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director-general, might be willing to back a plan that would allow Iran to carry out conversion at Esfahan and then ship the UF6 to Russia or another country for enrichment. The diplomat said that compromise could allow Iran to save face and still block it from attaining the ability to enrich its own uranium. READ MORE

French President Jacques Chirac recently said France did not want Iran to have any nuclear capability, a definition that would seem to cover uranium conversion. Moreover, any sign of backtracking or weakness by the Europeans on the conversion issue would risk a rift with the Bush administration, which has been supporting the negotiations from the sidelines.

However, Tehran may be prepared to see the talks with the Europeans fail, risking a showdown with the IAEA and eventually the United States.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Monday that "we've made clear that if Iran is going to violate its agreement and restart uranium reprocessing enrichment activities, then we would have to look to the next step" of taking Iran to the U.N. Security Council.

Another European official cautioned against dismissing the Iranian announcement, delivered in a letter to the IAEA on Monday morning, as simply posturing. The official said the letter was "of great concern to us."

"We take their intentions very seriously," the official said. "We will judge them by their actions, and we will look to the IAEA to inform us of activity on the ground."

But several officials said they were not sure what was actually going on at Esfahan.

ElBaradei sent the Iranian government a letter Monday saying that in order to implement "effective safeguards," the watchdog agency would need to install additional surveillance equipment.

An Iranian government spokesman said Tehran would allow two days, but IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said getting monitoring equipment into Iran and setting it up at Esfahan would take at least a week. Inspectors are in Iran, but not at Esfahan.

George Perkovich, who follows Iranian nuclear issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said it appeared that Tehran had decided to operate the Esfahan plant. But it could always reverse that decision, he said, if the reaction from the international community was too punitive or if the offer presented by the Europeans turned out to be better than expected.

"But I think they're assuming that neither of those things are going to happen," he said.

As usual, Perkovich said, the Iranian leadership is playing the negotiation game with skill, leaving itself as much maneuvering room as possible by timing its announcement before Sunday's inauguration of President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner who has defended Iran's right to nuclear technology.

If the E-3, the United States or the IAEA responds so harshly to Iran's restarting the Esfahan plant that Tehran sees its vital interests threatened, Perkovich said, then Ahmadinejad could announce when he comes to power that he is shutting down the plant.

"On the other hand," Perkovich said, "if the response is not so formidable and the Iranians go ahead, he can go down to the plant and have his picture taken."