WarSclerotic

Israeli Leader, Obama Clash – WSJ.com.

Netanyahu Delivers Rare Public Rebuke to U.S. President Over Proposal to Restart Peace Talks

By JAY SOLOMON And CAROL E. LEE

WASHINGTON—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a rare public rebuke of President Barack Obama at the White House, declaring that Israel would never accept the terms of his proposal to resume peace talks with the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu appeared to lecture Mr. Obama following their nearly two-hour meeting Friday—exposing tensions between leaders over Mideast policy that are usually kept out of the public eye.

That followed some unsuccessful behind-the-scenes wrangling by Israeli officials to convince Mr. Obama to abandon plans to urge, in a major speech Thursday, that peace negotiations resume based on Israel’s borders before it gained new territory in the 1967 Six Day War.

Before cameras and reporters in the Oval Office Friday afternoon, Mr. Netanyahu turned to face the president while telling him Israel “cannot go back to the 1967 lines” that are “indefensible.”

The discord was likely to play out further at the annual gathering of Washington’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where Mr. Obama was scheduled to speak on Sunday and Mr. Netanyahu the following day.

The encounter could place Jewish-Americans in the awkward position of having to choose sides between the visions laid out by the two leaders. Pro-Israel lawmakers and lobbyists already began lashing out at Mr. Obama’s stance soon after he proposed it.

Mr. Netanyahu will also speak before a joint session of Congress Tuesday, providing him a second opportunity to rally support against Mr. Obama’s approach.

Neither leader, meanwhile, articulated a clear path for resuming peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Indeed, both men agreed that the recent inclusion of the militant organization Hamas in a Palestinian government greatly undermined efforts to revive the peace process. The U.S. designates Hamas as a terrorist organization.

“Obviously there are some differences between us in the precise formulations and language, and that’s going to happen between friends,” Mr. Obama told reporters as he sat next to Mr. Netanyahu, before the Israeli premier spoke.

But, he said, “I think that it is possible for us to shape a deal that allows Israel to secure itself, not to be vulnerable, but also allows it to resolve what has obviously been a wrenching issue for both peoples for decades now.”

Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu met Friday morning at the White House following 24 hours of hectic diplomacy between the U.S. and Israel.

Earlier in the week, senior Israeli officials said they had been led to believe that Mr. Obama’s address—his first wide-ranging speech on recent political turmoil in the Mideast—wouldn’t focus in a significant way on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Then, before the speech Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu got word that Mr. Obama was about to make the clearest statement ever by a U.S. president that talks to create an independent Palestinian state should begin with Israel’s pre-’67 borders as the baseline—though the president would recognize the need for land swaps.

Israel has resisted such a declaration, arguing that it essentially forces the Jewish state to give up bargaining chips at the beginning of any negotiation. Mr. Netanyahu has said Mr. Obama’s comments marked a reversal from an assurance by President George W. Bush in 2004 that Washington accepted that Israel wouldn’t have to give up large Jewish settlements in the disputed West Bank as part of any final agreement.

Mr. Netanyahu tried to prevent the statement, in a tense phone call with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to officials briefed on the exchange. Mr. Obama started his Thursday speech more than half an hour late due to last-minute changes, according to U.S. officials.

Messrs. Netanyahu and Obama had wide-ranging discussions in the Oval Office Friday, which drifted well beyond the scheduled time and cut into the two leaders’ lunch.

Aides who were supposed to be included in portions of the meeting were left outside Mr. Obama’s office.

U.S. and Israeli officials said the two men discussed the reasons behind Mr. Obama’s decision to make a definitive public statement on the borders issue.

They also discussed the recent political turmoil in the Arab world, particularly the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the continuing threat posed to Israel by Iran.

Israeli officials said Mr. Netanyahu left the meeting feeling better about the state of Israeli relations with its closest ally. “He came in worried and left encouraged,” said a senior Israeli official briefed on the meeting.

Still, Mr. Netanyahu directly challenged Mr. Obama’s vision for a two-state solution in the press availability after the meeting, a rare break from the usual diplomatic niceties at such staged events.

After Mr. Obama’s introductory comments, the Israeli leader leaned toward the president and directly said his call for negotiations based on pre-1967 lines was a non-starter.

“Remember that, before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. It was half the width of the Washington Beltway, and these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive,” Mr. Netanyahu said, staring at Mr. Obama.

“So we can’t go back to those indefensible lines, and we’re going to have to have a long-term military presence along the Jordan [Valley],” he added.

The latter point directly contradicted Mr. Obama’s statements in his Thursday speech, which stated Israel would have to conduct a phased withdrawal of its troops from the West Bank.

The White House, following the press event, tried to play down any divisions and said Mr. Obama’s speech didn’t mark a significant shift in U.S. policy. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush mapped out peace plans that implicitly involved using the 1967 borders as a starting point for talks; Mr. Obama made that assumption explicit.

“This is a position that’s been recognized by all parties to these negotiations for a long time: that any territorial resolution would be based on the ’67 lines,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said after the meeting.

U.S. and Israeli officials said the coming weeks could prove crucial for the stability of Israel and the broader Middle East.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, viewing the peace process as stalled, has launched a campaign to win recognition for Palestine as a sovereign state from the United Nations. A vote on the issue could pass during the U.N. General Assembly in September.

U.S. officials said one reason Mr. Obama made his declaration Thursday was to try to win international support for a new round of peace talks and to block the U.N. vote. U.S. officials said the White House needed to show the Palestinians and Europeans that Washington was serious about pressing Mr. Netanyahu for concessions.

Mr. Netanyahu’s on-camera critique of the American president also drew out some divisions among Jewish-Americans, who were already split over Mr. Obama’s suggestion that peace negotiations should begin with the pre-1967 lines.

Mr. Obama won the majority of Jewish voters in 2008, but some have expressed dissatisfaction over his approach to Israel.

“The President’s remarks have revived and exacerbated fears in Israel,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn.). “The fact is, while the exciting and hopeful new reality in the Arab world is the Arab Spring, the newest reality in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not hopeful,” he said.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human-rights group, said he was “delighted” by Mr. Netanyahu’s statements.

“The prime minister decided while the press was there that he was going to make it very clear in front of President Obama this was not going to happen, not on his watch,” he said.

Others played down the tension between the two leaders Friday. Abraham Foxman, national director of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, criticized Mr. Obama’s 1967 statement but said the two countries mostly agree on how to begin the peace process.

—Danny Yadron contributed to this article.

Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com

ASSAD KILLS 34 PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTERS, INCLUDING CHILDREN.

Al Arabiya

Friday, 20 May 2011

Syrian citizens who fled from violence from the western Syrian villages along the Lebasese-Syrian border, protest as they shout slogans against Bashar Al Assad and his regime. (AP photo)

Alan Dershowitz: President Obama’s Mistake.

President Obama should be commended for his emphasis on Israel’s security and his concern about Hamas joining the Palestinian Authority without renouncing its violent charter. But he made one serious mistake that tilts the balance against Israel in any future negotiations. Without insisting that the Palestinians give up their absurd claim to have millions of supposed refugees “return” to Israel as a matter of right, he insisted that Israel must surrender all of the areas captured in its defensive war of 1967, subject only to land swaps. This formulation undercuts Security Council Resolution 242 (which I played a very small role in helping to draft). Resolution 242, passed unanimously by the Security Council in the wake of Israel’s 1967 victory, contemplated some territorial adjustments necessary to assure Israel’s security against future attacks. It also contemplated that Israel would hold on to the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and the access roads to Hebrew University, without the need for any land swaps. Land swaps would only be required to make up for any areas beyond those contemplated by Resolution 242. The Obama formulation would seem to require land swaps even for the Western Wall.

Any proposed peace agreement will require the Palestinians to give up the so-called right of return, which is designed not for family reunification, but rather to turn Israel into another Palestinian state with an Arab majority. As all reasonable people know, the right of return is a non-starter. It is used as a “card” by the Palestinian leadership who fully understand that they will have to give it up if they want real peace. The Israelis also know that they will have to end their occupation of most of the West Bank (as they ended their occupation of Gaza) if they want real peace. Obama’s mistake was to insist that Israel give up its card without demanding that the Palestinians give up theirs.

Obama’s mistake is a continuation of a serious mistake he made early in his administration. That first mistake was to demand that Israel freeze all settlements. The Palestinian Authority had not demanded that as a condition to negotiations. But once the president of the United States issued such a demand, the Palestinian leadership could not be seen by its followers as being less Palestinian than the president. In other words, President Obama made it more difficult for the Palestinian leadership to be reasonable. Most objective observers now recognize Obama’s serious mistake in this regard. What is shocking is that he has done it again. By demanding that Israel surrender all the territories it captured in the 1967 war (subject only to land swaps) without insisting that the Palestinians surrender their right of return, the president has gone further than Palestinian negotiators had during various prior negotiations. This makes it more difficult for the Palestinian leadership to be reasonable in their negotiations with the Israelis.

It is not too late for the president to “clarify” his remarks so that all sides understand that there must be quid for quo — that the Palestinians must surrender any right to return if the Israelis are expected to seriously consider going back to the 1967 lines (which Abba Eban called “the Auschwitz lines” because they denied Israel real security).

If President Obama is to play a positive role in bringing the Palestinians and the Israelis to the negotiating table, he should insist that there be no preconditions to negotiation. This would mean the Palestinians no longer insisting on a settlement freeze before they will even sit down to try to negotiate realistic borders. The president did not even ask the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. Nor did he ask them to drop the condition that he, in effect, made them adopt when he earlier insisted on the freeze.

The president missed an important opportunity in delivering his highly anticipated speech. We are no closer to negotiations now than we were before the speech. My fear is that we may be a bit further away as a result of the president’s one-sided insistence that Israel surrender territories without the Palestinians giving up the right of return. I hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington may increase the chances of meaningful negotiations. I wish I could be more optimistic but the president’s speech gave no cause for optimism. I wish it had been different because I strongly support a two-state solution based on a willingness by Israel to surrender territories captured in 1967 coupled with a willingness of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, to renounce the use of violence and terrorism and to give up any right of return.

At least 10 dead after forces fire at crow… JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – At least ten protesters were killed when Syrian security forces fired on Friday at a pro-democracy demonstration in the town of Sanamin south of the capital Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syrian security forces fired live rounds into crowds gathered for at least two protests in the central city of Homs, an activist in the city said, as pro-democracy demonstrations erupted across the country earlier Friday.

The Syrian rights group said the coastal city of Banias, which was stormed by the army this month, witnessed the largest demonstration since the uprising began in southern Syria nine weeks ago.

Thousands joined protests in Banias, , the capital Damascus and Homs, witnesses and activists said, defying heavy troop and security deployment to quell street protests against the autocractic rule of President Bashar Assad.

The renewed protests come a fay after Syria condemned sanctions imposed by Washington on Assad and other officials in response to the crackdown on protests.

An official source on Syrian state television said the sanctions were targeting the Syrian people and served Israeli interests. “The sanctions have not and will not affect Syria’s independent will,” the source was quoted as saying.

Analysis: What rankled Netanyahu … JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

  In 2004, US President George Bush, in exchange for then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, wrote a letter saying in any future agreement between Israel and the Palestinians it would be “unrealistic” to expect a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice lines (the 1967 lines), and that a just and fair solution to the Palestinian refugee issue would be their absorption in a future Palestinian state, rather than Israel.

What prompted Prime Minister Netanyahu to issue a surprisingly harsh response to President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night was the sense that Obama had essentially thrown that letter out the window.

There were three elements in the Obama speech — a speech which was not without some “sweeteners” for Israel — that particularly irritated and surprised Netanyahu.

The first had to do with the President using, for the first time, the 1967 lines as a baseline for an agreement, saying in his speech that “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Using the 1967 lines as a baseline, and saying that land will have to be swapped from inside Israel, has never before been US policy.

In 2009, in a carefully worded statement, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said the following: “We believe that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

What Obama did in his speech was make the Palestinian goals of a “viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps,” the American goal as well.

Although the 1967 lines may have been the implied baseline in the Bush letter, there was no hint there of a need for Israel to compensate the Palestinians fully for all territory taken in the Six Day War. In fact, Bush wrote that Israel must have “secure and recognized borders” emerging from negotiations based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. UNSC Resolution 242 famously calls for an Israeli withdrawal from territories taken during the war, but not all the territories.

In Netanyahu’s mind Obama is charting new and dangerous territory, something that cannot be ignored or whitewashed. Or, as he said as his plane was just about to land in Washington Friday morning a few hours before his planned meeting with the President, “some things cannot be swept under the rug.”

The second issue that perturbed Netanyahu was the refugee issue.

While Bush in his letter said clearly that the Palestinian refugees should return to a Palestinian state, Obama made no mention of that position and instead actually said that the refugee issue would have to be negotiated down the line. In the Israeli view, Obama simply ignored the American policy articulated by Bush on the refugees.

With Palestinian “refugees” storming the border fence in the north demanding the “right of return,” the concern inside the PMO is that Obama’s failure to take a firm stand on the issue only reinforces the Palestinian belief that there is actually something to talk about on this issue. “This is a basic misunderstanding of the reality,” one PMO source said.

And the third issue that rankled Netanyahu had to do with Hamas. While Obama said the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation raised “profound and legitimate questions for Israel,” for Netanyahu this was simply not a strong enough statement. The PMO saw Obama as “wishy-washy” on Hamas, and at the very least wanted to hear Obama reiterate the Quartet’s three conditions for engagement with Hamas as part of a PA unity government: forswearing terrorism, recognizing Israel and accepting previous agreements.

That Obama made no mention of these conditions, and that he did not clearly and unequivocally reject Hamas’ participation in a PA government, sent — at least in Netanyahu’s mind — exactly the wrong message.

An Analysis Of Obama’s Middle East Speech | The New Republic.

What Obama got right, and wrong, in his Middle East speech.

Yossi Kline HaLevy

At odds with Washington – JPost – Opinion – Editorials.

  In sharp contrast to his 2009 Cairo speech, President Barack Obama made it abundantly clear during his speech in Washington on Thursday precisely who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in the Muslim world.

The good guys are Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor who sparked a revolution that brought down president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali by setting himself on fire; Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google executive involved in the Tahrir Square protests that doomed president Hosni Mubarak; and the millions of others in Syria, Bahrain, Iran and elsewhere demanding basic human rights, economic opportunity and freedom of expression.

Obama also identified the bad guys. Basher Assad is a bad guy who has chosen to answer his own people’s cries for reform with brutal murders and imprisonment. Obama’s message to Assad was to either help with the reforms or move out of the way. Yet after witnessing Assad’s military forces mow down peaceful protesters with tanks and artillery in Homs, Deraa, Baniyas and other Syrian cities for several weeks now, Obama said nothing that modified the stance presented at the end of April by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that there was no room for direct US intervention in Syria. Nor was it clear why the rationale behind interfering in Libya – the prevention of the massacre of thousands – did not apply to the Syrian scenario.

Obama also spoke out strongly against Bahrain’s brutal crackdown against the Shi’ite opposition, and against Iran’s repression of its citizens and its “illicit nuclear program.” But in neither case did he elucidate any concrete steps he felt the US should take against these regimes. Nor did he say how he would help strengthen opposition movements there.

His disinclination in 2009 to extend aid to brave Iranian activists who were behind that year’s Green Revolution is a painful reminder of the administration’s failure to take action at critical moments. Judging from the US’s ongoing reaction to Syria, it is not entirely clear whether that lesson has been learned.

THE US president was a great deal more specific on his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He made it clear that his country would not cooperate with the Palestinian push for a UN General Assembly declaration recognizing a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines – a predictable US position but still a partial relief. Negotiation with Israel, not UN recognition, is the only route to Palestinian statehood, Obama said, reflecting consistent US policy.

However, while there were no signs that he was threatening or pressuring Israel, Obama did say that a two-state solution should be based on the 1967 lines, a clear endorsement of Palestinian demands, and terminology that for many Israelis will bring fears of escalating pressure to return to positions similar to those from which a vulnerable Israel was repeatedly attacked between 1948 and 1967. He mentioned “land swaps” but, as in the past, was silent on the issue of an Israeli right to maintain the settlement blocs, in stark contrast to his predecessor George W. Bush, who endorsed such territorial adjustments in a letter to Ariel Sharon.

Obama also dissented outright with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s reading of the geopolitical map, claiming that the Arab Spring offered a unique opportunity to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In contrast, Netanyahu has presented what is in our opinion a more sober, realistic assessment of the situation. The instability running rampant in the region illustrates how easily regimes, including a newly founded Palestinian state, can suddenly be toppled and potentially taken over by Islamic extremists like Hamas.

Problematic, too, was Obama’s declaration that the sides should relaunch talks focusing initially on borders and security, leaving the “emotional” issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees for later. Israel’s position has long been that such an order of business could enable the Palestinians to “pocket” the Israeli territorial concessions involved in border agreements without withdrawing their demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinians – which is the destruction of the Jewish state by demographic means. Disturbingly, he did not specify that the Palestinian refugee problem must be solved within a new “Palestine,” not in Israel.

A positive point in Obama’s speech was his recognition of the “bad guy” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He wondered how Israel was to conduct negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that included Hamas in its national unity government, as long as the terrorist organization was bent on Israel’s destruction. Strikingly, however, he did not reiterate the imperative for Hamas to recognize Israel and abandon terrorism as a precondition for such talks. Here, of all untenable places, he was vague, declaring only that “In the weeks and months to come, Palestinian leaders will have to provide a credible answer to that question.”

It’s that question that goes to the root of whether the Palestinian leadership is truly prepared to reconcile itself to the fact of Jewish sovereign rights in the Middle East. And it is the differing assessments of Obama and Netanyahu on that most central of issues that explains why the president’s speech was received so coldly by the prime minister as he set out for what now seems certain to be a highly troubling visit to Washington.

EU will sharply expand Iran sanc… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  BRUSSELS – The European Union is expected to expand its sanctions significantly against Iran on Monday, reflecting growing frustration among Western powers with a lack of progress in nuclear talks with Tehran, EU diplomats said.

The EU’s 27 governments are expected to approve the addition of around 100 companies to the bloc’s embargo list — including German-based bank EIH, which specialises in business in Iran — at a meeting in Brussels.

“There is a list of about a 100 companies, to be added to the EU sanctions on Monday,” one EU diplomat told Reuters on Thursday.

Another added: “Among those companies is the European Iranian … Bank,” he said, referring to EIH (Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank or European-Iranian Trade Bank).

“There would now be enough evidence that the bank financed companies involved in Iran’s nuclear program.”

Western powers say they suspect Iran is trying to develop atomic weapons under the cover of its declared civilian nuclear energy programme. Tehran says it needs nuclear power to meet a growing domestic demand for electricity.

The West has tried to convince Iran to suspend the program in return for trade and technology, but talks have ground to a halt.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, expressed her frustration on Tuesday at the lack of progress in negotiations with Tehran.

Ashton said after meetings with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton where they discussed the matter that the EU had wished for a “stronger and better” reply from Iran to her call to revive the talks, and said there appeared little room for new negotiations for now.

“I do urge Iran to think again and to consider coming back to the table. In terms of Iran, I would like to say there will be a new round of talks. But from the letters that I’ve received, I don’t see that at the present time,” Ashton said at the time.

Report: U.S. to sanction Syria’s Assad for human rights abuses – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Comment by U.S. sources comes after Syrian President admitted security forces had made mistakes in the handling of persistent popular unrest sweeping parts of the country.

By Reuters

The United States plans to impose personal sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad, sources close to the matter said on Wednesday, amid continued violent crackdowns on Syrian pro-democracy protests.

Assad had been partly rehabilitated in the West over the last three years but the United States and European Union condemned his use of force to quell unrest and warned they plan further steps after imposing sanctions on top Syrian officials.

	Syrian anti-regime protesters tearing down a poster of President Bashar al-Assad in Hama, north of Damascus, May 13, 2011.
	Photo by: AFP/YouTube

The Syrian leader told a delegation from the Damascus district of Midan that security forces had made mistakes handling the protests, Wednesday’s al Watan newspaper said.

One delegate said Assad told them 4,000 police would receive training “to prevent these excesses” being repeated, it said.

Human rights groups say Assad’s crackdown has killed at least 700 civilians. Authorities blame most of the violence on armed groups backed by Islamists and outside powers, saying they have also killed more than 120 soldiers and police.

Iran: Bushehr nuclear power plant ‘successfully launched’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iranian FM Ali Akbar Salehi says plant would become fully operational within weeks; plant’s launch was postponed by a few months in wake of an apparent Stuxnet virus attack.

By Haaretz Service

Iran’s nuclear power plant in Bushehr has been put online, Iranian Foreign Minister said on Wednesday, adding that the plant would become fully operational within several weeks.

The plant’s operation was delayed by several months after last year Iranian officials estimated that the Stuxnet virus had hit Bushehr staff computers, adding, however, that the cyber attack did not affect major systems.

	A reactor at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran on August 21, 2010.
	Photo by: AP

When Iran began loading fuel into Bushehr in August, officials said it would take two to three months for the plant to start producing electricity and that it would generate 1,000 megawatts, about 2.5 percent of the country’s power usage.

On Wednesday, however, the official Iranian news agency quoted the country’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi as saying that, as the Iranian regime “previously announced, Bushehr power plant has reached the criticality stage, [meaning] it has been successfully launched.”

The fission process, according to the country’s state-run Press TV, or criticality, allows the atoms to split by themselves in a chain reaction without interference from operators.

“This stage lasts for two months. We hope the plant will gain some 40 percent of its power within the next one to two months,” Salehi added.

He added that work has progressed at the site despite a two-month gap over a “technical glitch” in one of the pumps at the plant.

“We assure the [Iranian] nation that safety has the final say in Bushehr power plant,” Salehi pointed out.

Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov indicated that the Bushehr plant would be fully operational within weeks, telling the state-run news agency RIA that the plant was “a longstanding project and so I would refrain from naming concrete dates — but we are already on the threshold of the final launch of the reactor.”

The construction of the plant began in the 1970s by a German consortium, but was abandoned after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and has faced repeated delays since the mid-1990s, when Russia began work to complete it under a billion-dollar deal with Tehran.

The United States and other Western nations have urged Russia to abandon the project for years, fearing it would help Iran develop nuclear weapons. But an agreement obliging Tehran to repatriate spent nuclear fuel to Russia has eased those concerns.