Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday—in an interview given to AFP while he was attending the climate change summit in Copenhagen—that “Iran is ready to strike a uranium enrichment deal if the United States and the West respect the Islamic Republic and stop making threats”. Referring to proposals to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) that would entail Iran shipping part of its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) out of the country, Ahmadinejad stated that “everything is possible, 400 kilos, 800 kilos, it’s nothing. But not in a climate where they threaten us. They have to change their vocabulary, in respect and legality. In this case we will say, very good you want to keep your word, in this case we are ready to sit down at the table to reach an agreement.” Ahmadinejad’s references to “400 kilos” or “800 kilos” of LEU reflect Iranian counterproposals to the demand of the United States and its partners that Iran must ship 1,200 kilos of LEU abroad in a single batch before receiving any fuel for the TRR.
Ahmadinejad even said that 1,200 kilos “is not such a large amount. We have the technology and we are currently producing this uranium (enriched) at 3.5 percent…From the outset, delivering 1,200 kilos of uranium was not a problem for us…but they believe they can wave a stick to threaten us, those days are over”. Based on Iran’s previous representations, we believe that Ahmadinejad is suggesting that the Islamic Republic might be willing to transfer up to 1,200 kilos of LEU, but only in return for the delivery of finished fuel for the TRR up front (and, perhaps, the LEU would be transferred from Iranian control in installments).
The Iranian President reiterated the Islamic Republic’s longstanding position that it does not want nuclear weapons and is not seeking to build them: “If we want to make a bomb, we would not be afraid of the United States…but we do not want to make a bomb. Our policy is transparent. If we wanted to make a bomb we would be brave enough to say so. When we say that we are not making one, we are not. We do not believe in it.” But, referring to “America and the others”, Ahmadinejad warned in this context that “if they say again that they want to take out (low enriched uranium) to prevent Iran from making a bomb, it will be an insult”.
Ahmadinejad’s comments provide striking confirmation not only for our view of the Iranian leadership’s perspective on the nuclear negotiations that began in Geneva on October 1, but also for our assessment that the Obama Administration has badly mishandled the issue of refueling the TRR. Rather than using the issue to show that the Obama Administration is truly serious about U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, U.S. policymakers were too clever for their own good—or, at least, for U.S. national interests—and tried to use Iran’s need to refuel the TRR as a source of “leverage” that would force the Islamic Republic to take the first step down the road to surrendering national control over its fuel cycle activities. Especially in an environment in which the Obama Administration remains focused on “zero enrichment” as a negotiating outcome and has yet to clarify its own long-term strategic intentions vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic, such an approach was bound to undermine prospects for diplomatic progress. And that is precisely what has happened.
Looking ahead to 2010, the Obama Administration seems determined to compound its errors in dealing with the TRR issue by doing still more damage to the prospects for constructive U.S.-Iranian engagement. As we noted in a recent article in ForeignPolicy.com, “After months of halfhearted, fruitless attempts at engagement, the United States and its European partners are effectively re-enacting George W. Bush’s Iran policy”.
Starting early in the New Year, the United States and its European partners will push in the United Nations Security Council and perhaps among a “coalition of the like-minded” for international measures that will not come anywhere close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s goal of “crippling” sanctions against the Islamic Republic. President Obama will also turn to Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey—a neoconservative Dick Cheney protégé and holdover from the George W. Bush Administration—to advance new rounds of unilateral U.S. financial sanctions against Iran, thereby confirming the growing perception in Iranian policymaking circles that the Obama Administration is not substantively all that different from its predecessor.
In the face of these initiatives, Iran will almost certainly continue to expand its nuclear infrastructure. And, as it becomes increasingly clear that sanctions are (once again) failing to change Tehran’s nuclear decision-making in fundamental ways, the risks of an eventual military confrontation between the United States (or Israel, with U.S. backing) and Iran will start, inexorably, to rise.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
I love it, I can read this stuff forever, keep em coming! Happy New Years!
Hello i read your website often and thought i would wish you all the best for the New Year!
Clearly wigwag is sincerely devoted to democracy and human rights. I have no doubt that if protests erupted against US backed puppets in Egypt or Jordan he would be equally supportive.
Wow, what a piece of nonsense!
Can we expect Flynt Leverett or Hillary Mann Leverett to comment on the death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri?
Of course not. They view him and the tens of thousands of Iranians who showed up at his funeral today as irrelevant to Iran’s future. The Leveretts think that the United States is better off casting its lot with Ayatollah Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij Militia.
Surely the Leveretts don’t think that the current reactionary clique running Iran is better or more ethical than the regime’s opponents; but they’re realists which means they just don’t care how the regime behaves (as long as American interests can be enhanced). One has to wonder just how repugnant a government would have to be before the Leveretts would advise against working with it. What’s next; asking Kim Jung Il to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener in April?
The “grand bargain” advocated by the Leveretts would dramatically reduce the probability that regime change will ever happen in Iran. In effect, what the Leveretts are advocating is for the United States to become virtual allies with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. Over 50 years ago the United States actively worked to thwart democracy in Iran when it supported the coup against Mossedegh and now the Leveretts want the United States to stab Iranian advocates for democracy in the back all over again.
Following the June elections (according to today’s New York Times) this is what the late Ayatollah Montazeri said,
“A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,”
Ironic isn’t it, that Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett want the United States to pursue a strategy that supports a more hard-line position than the man once destined to be the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini?
It’s not that the Leveretts like the reactionary elements in Iran; it’s that they just don’t care.
Is it any wonder that “realism” is in such disrepute in both political parties?