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Ear to the Ground

A Tentative Deal on Iran’s Uranium

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Posted on Oct 21, 2009
Iran nuclear program
payvand.com

Shipping out its enriched uranium would significantly ease international fears about Iran’s nuclear program.

Prodded by the U.S., Russia and France at talks in Vienna, Iranian negotiators have agreed to carry back to Tehran a proposed deal that would see Iran ship out most of its enriched uranium—the stuff of nuclear weapons—to Russia.

The Associated Press:

Iranian negotiators on Wednesday expressed support for a deal that—if accepted by their leaders—would delay Tehran’s ability to make nuclear weapons by sending most of its existing enriched uranium to Russia for processing, diplomats said.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that representatives of Iran and its three interlocutors—the U.S., Russia and France—had accepted the draft for forwarding to their capitals. ElBaradei said he hoped for approval from all four countries by Friday.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate, praised the draft, saying it was “on the right track,” while emphasizing that senior Iranian officials in Tehran still had to sign off on it.

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Blackspeare's avatar

By Blackspeare, October 23, 2009 at 10:07 pm Link to this comment

If this strategy sounds familiar, that’s because it bears an eerie resemblance to the Agreed Framework signed with North Korea in the ‘90s—and it will likely have the same disastrous result.

North Korea serves as a cautionary tale. In 1994, America and its allies decided to allow the communist nation to develop a limited civilian nuclear capability for power generation—even agreeing to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors. In exchange, North Korea was to freeze and dismantle some of its existing nuclear reactors and related facilities, provide access to international inspectors, remain a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and ship its spent fuel rods out of the country.

But North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il was bent on having a nuclear-weapon program, so he developed one in secret after 1994. North Korea used spent fuel rods from its civilian reactors to create weapons-grade plutonium, hid its facilities from international inspectors—sometimes refusing the inspectors entry—and eventually pulled out of the NPT. It used its relationships with China and Russia to shield it from meaningful UN Security Council intervention and to get technical know-how and missile technologies crucial to launching nuclear weapons. It will be the same for Iran.  Russia hasn’t forgotten the USA’s involvement in the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan and wants revenge——Iran is their key!

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PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, October 22, 2009 at 3:46 am Link to this comment

As long as Iran abides by the NPT and other treaties the United States has no say in this.

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By Commune115, October 21, 2009 at 6:37 pm Link to this comment

Melpol, “14th century cultures should not
be allowed to import weapons created by Western science”? The new film about Darwin’s life, “Creation,” couldn’t even be distributed in the US because of religious sensitivities. We are just as dangerous with nuclear weapons as the Pakistanis, NO ONE should have them.

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Robert's avatar

By Robert, October 21, 2009 at 1:47 pm Link to this comment

Which country in the Middle-East has large stock piles of undeclared nuclear weapons?

Which country in the Middle-East has large stockpiles of undeclared chemical and biological weapons?

Which country in the Middle-East has NO outside inspections of its WMD’s stockpiles & warehouses?

It is NOT Iraq. It is NOT Iran.

Click on link below to watch this BBC documentary video which was ONLY aired on LINK TV. No other American News Zionist controlled media will make it available for the American people to watch/view.

Why haven’t we heard about Israel’s military cargo plane that crashed in the Netherlands several years ago and what was it transporting?

What about Israel’s Nuclear & chemical weapons?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-234685330662058240&q=israel+secret+weapon&total=107&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1#
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By melpol, October 21, 2009 at 11:34 am Link to this comment

Delaying Iran from importing nuclear technology is good news. Better news would
be if Pakistan had its nuclear bombs removed. 14th century cultures should not
be allowed to import weapons created by Western science. Let them stick to the
sword, it is safer.

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