Iran Says It Offers New Plan for Nuclear Program – NYTimes.com.
Ilyas Omarov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, right, during talks with officials from the European Union, the United States, Britain, France, China, Germany and Russia on Iran’s nuclear program.
¶ ALMATY, Kazakhstan — North Korea is more than 2,500 miles from the resumed nuclear negotiations that got under way here Friday between Iran and the six big powers, but North Korea’s nuclear-arms bombast and the cautious foreign response are hanging over the negotiations in unsettling ways.
¶ For the first time since Iran and the six powers restarted their dialogue a year ago after a long lapse, North Korea, which had held similar talks in the 1990s that collapsed in betrayal and mistrust, is simultaneously demonstrating an outcome that Iran may find enviable, nonproliferation experts said. North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, however small, has nonetheless emboldened it to challenge the United States and other nuclear-armed powers, which have responded with caution and — from North Korea’s vantage point — some degree of respect.
¶ “I do feel as if Iran has inevitably been drawing lessons from how the world is dealing with North Korea,” said Valerie Lincy, executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “I would imagine the lessons they’re drawing are not the ones the Western powers would like: That you can weather sanctions, and renege on previous agreements, and ultimately if you stand fast, you’ll get what you’re looking for.”
¶ Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist at the International Crisis Group, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that works to resolve conflicts, said that while Iran does not want to be viewed as an “irrational cult state” like North Korea, it also sees the conspicuous absence of talk about regime change by North Korea’s adversaries in the current episode of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
¶ “These guys are smart, and they’re shrewd,” Mr. Kupchan said of Iran’s leaders. “They’re well aware of what North Korea has gotten away with. They see that North Korea elicits fear and significant geopolitical ballast because it has nuclear weapons.”
¶ Expectations for this latest round of negotiations have been modest at best, with little sign that the Iranian government was ready to accept an offer made by the six powers at the last round of talks in February: restrictions on its supply of dangerous enriched uranium in exchange for an initial modest easing of international sanctions, to be followed by further trust-building measures.
¶ The Iranian delegation said as talks resumed that it had put forward a “comprehensive proposal” that it hoped would “establish a new bedrock for cooperation.” But negotiators representing the group of six powers said they had not seen anything new, suggesting they may have already hit a roadblock.
¶ The talks were to continue on Saturday between Saeed Jalili, the lead Iranian negotiator, and Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief. She represents the so-called P5-plus-1, which are the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany.
¶ Michael Mann, a spokeswoman for Ms. Ashton, told reporters as the talks opened that “the confidence-building measure has to come from Iran.”
¶ But in what could be a sign that Iran’s position has basically remained unchanged, Mr. Jalili began his visit to Almaty on Thursday with a speech to university students in which he insisted on his country’s unfettered right to develop a civilian nuclear program, and accused the larger powers of hypocrisy because they have nuclear arms.
¶ In the speech, Mr. Jalili suggested that his counterparts must simply “accept the inalienable rights” of Iran, specifically the right to enrich uranium, as part of any solution.
¶ Throughout the dispute, the Iranians have asserted that their uranium enrichment activities are for civilian purposes and that AyatollahAli Khamenei, the supreme leader, issued a religious decree banning nuclear weapons in the country. Iran has also repeatedly argued that because it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, its activities are by definition peaceful and legal.
¶ At the same time the Iranians have refused to comply with Security Council demands that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment until unresolved questions about its nuclear intentions are answered, including indications that it has done work on triggers for atomic bombs.
¶ Ms. Lincy, of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said she believed Iran may be primarily interested in the negotiations in order to achieve some relief from the sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union, which have been causing increased economic pain — but to do so without sacrificing its ability to make nuclear fuel.
¶ Again, she drew a parallel to North Korea’s negotiations more than two decades ago, when it negotiated a step-by-step deal for food and fuel assistance from the United States in exchange for promises to not to make nuclear weapons. That deal collapsed in 2002, when the Americans accused North Korea of secretly building a facility to enrich uranium.
¶ In some ways, she said, the P5-plus-1 group’s offer to Iran is similar in structure to that failed North Korea agreement — initial moves by Iran, followed by eased sanctions, followed by further steps.
¶ Gary Milhollin, executive editor of Iranwatch.org, a Web site published by the Wisconsin Project, said in an article before the latest talks had even begun that such an approach could be a mistake. “The lesson from North Korea is that an interim agreement of this kind won’t work,” he wrote. “Before making any halfway deal, U.S. and European diplomats should insist that Iran remove itself from the path that North Korea so easily followed.”
¶ Others said the Iranians — like the North Koreans — had shown a great tenacity for enduring economic sanctions regardless of their severity, calling into question their value in any negotiation strategy.
¶ In a study released before the latest round of talks, the National Iranian American Council, a Washington advocacy group that opposes the sanctions, said they had actually strengthened the Iranian government’s resolve. “Capitulation is seen as a greater threat to the regime’s survival than even a military confrontation with the United States,” the study said.
¶ Some experts said they believed Iranian leaders were viewing North Korea’s nuclear belligerence with some measure of alarm, however. In their view, the United States and others could use it as justification for even more ostracism of Iran, which has a brotherly military relationship with North Korea and has adopted some of its missile and weapons technology. The two countries, along with Syria, were the only ones that opposed passage of the Arms Trade Treaty on conventional weapons at the United Nations this week, for example.
¶ “If the North Koreans really started a war, Iran will be subject to intense international pressures,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a professor of political science at Syracuse University. He said many people would fear “the Iranians are as crazy as those guys and therefore we should contain them.”
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