Iranian rejection of nuclear deal is soft-pedaled by ElBaradei

[Israel Insider]

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, responded negatively Thursday to the IAEA proposal endorsed by world powers that demanded that Iran send three-quarters of its known low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into difficult-to-weaponize nuclear fuel. The contents of the response were not released by Tehran nor by its Egyptian apologist, IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei.

As the New York Times reported, "In public, neither the Iranians nor the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, revealed the details of Iran’s objections, which came only hours after Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insisted that “we are ready to cooperate” with the West."

But five hours after he received it, ElBaradei was already hard at work trying to Iran's negative and inadequate answer, providing excuses for the Iranian footdragging and refusal to go along with the US proposal: "Iran has provided an 'initial response' to a planned international nuclear fuel deal. More consultations were needed. The Director General is engaged in consultations with the government of Iran as well as all relevant parties, with the hope that agreement on his proposal can be reached soon.”

But the European and American officials, according to the Times, said that Iranian officials had refused to go along with the central feature of the draft agreement reached on Oct. 21 in Vienna: a provision that would have required the country to send about three-quarters of its current known stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia to be processed and returned for use in a reactor in Tehran used to make medical isotopes."

A senior European official quoted by the Times characterized the Iranian response as “basically a refusal.” The Iranians, he said, want to keep all of their lightly enriched uranium in the country until receiving fuel bought from the West for the reactor in Tehran. “The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium,” the official said. “That’s not a minor detail. That’s the whole point of the deal.”

The result is to enable Iran yet again to avoid deadlines and to spin out its answers indefinitely, while they race to build their bomb. But the Americans are also racing to buy time, US officials admit, so that Israel won't attack first. As the Times notes: "American officials said they thought that the accord would give them a year or so to seek a broader nuclear agreement with Iran while defusing the possibility that Israel might try to attack Iran’s nuclear installations before Iran gained more fuel and expertise. "

Iranian media reported that Iran would agree only to transfer its enriched uranium overseas in small batches over an extended period of time and only in exchange for replenishing purchases of highly-enriched uranium. This proviso, of course, defeats the purpose of the deal -- which is intended to reduce Iran's overall stockpile of enriched uranium and thus delay its progress toward a nuclear weapon.

According to DEBKAfile, Tehran reportedly unwilling to ship more than 10% of its enriched uranium in each installment and immediately have it replaced, enabling Iran to retain enough enriched uranium to keep building nuclear weapons unaffected.

American officials said it was unclear whether Iran’s declaration to Dr. ElBaradei was its final position, but they insisted that the US would not renegotiate the terms. Michael Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that “we await clarification of Iran’s response,” but that the United States was “unified with our Russian and French partners” in support of the agreement reached in Vienna. That agreement explicitly called for Iran to ship 2,600 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia by Jan. 15, according to officials who have seen the document, which has never been made public.

In Washington on Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee unanimously approved a measure that would let the White House impose stronger sanctions on Iran. The Senate bill, passed a day after the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a similar measure, would authorize sanctions against companies that provide Iran with refined petroleum products and would ban most trade between the countries, exempting food and medicine.

[Jim Talbot]

The sooner El Baradei retires, the better.
Blix was bad enough, this guy's even worse. December cannot roll around quick enough.

[Robert Bernier]

The danger of nuclear arms and the Western democracies.
Governments are well aware that the ongoing nuclear arms race by totalitarian regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang is like a ticking time bomb. No street actions can be seen in Paris, Brussels or New York to demand that North Korea or Iran should be stopped in their illegal nuclear ambitions. The word indifference is a rather accurate word to describe the apathy in Western democracies. However, when it comes to nuclear arms, nothing is normal and every move can necessitate an urgent counter-move. More about Nuclear Non-proliferation treaties and the Western democracies at : http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2009/08/nuclear-non-proliferation-treaties_09.html
http://xrl.us/be86yc