So Iran continues to stall over this Uranium enrichment deal they had agreed to in principle some time ago. They failed to meet an initial deadline two weeks ago for accepting it. The deal would have them send out about 75% of their Low Enriched Uranium in return for specially fabricated fuel - a higher enriched uranium - to run a Tehran research reactor that produces radioactive isotopes for cancer treatment. After further enrichment in Russia, France would convert the uranium into fuel rods that would be returned to Iran for use in this research reactor. It was a deal aimed at buying time, reducing Iran's stockpile of uranium below the amount needed to build a bomb while continuing negotiations over the next year with some breathing space.
World powers saw a "win-win" deal when they thought of providing the fuel needed in return for Iran cutting its LEU stockpile below the threshold at which it could be further refined into fissile material for a nuclear warhead.
In talks with six powers in Geneva on October 1, Iran agreed in principle to send the bulk of its LEU to Russia and France for further processing and conversion into fuel plates for the Tehran reactor, Western officials said.
But they said Iran balked at fleshing out details in Vienna and seemed to retreat from the point of the deal hatched in Geneva -- to ease suspicions of a bomb agenda in Iran raised by its record of nuclear secrecy and curbs on IAEA inspections.
ElBaradei's plan would have Iran send out 75 percent of its LEU stocks by the end of this year and get it back as fuel for the Tehran research reactor.
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"When the reactor's fuel runs out next year, we would help to keep it going. There are hospitals, doctors, cancer patients who rely on the material produced there. We know the leadership in Tehran needs to keep the reactor going. We would like to help with that effort," Davies said. (U.S. ambassador to the IAEA.)
http://www.reuters.com/...
Obama has apparently been sending back channel messages to Tehran suggesting alternatives.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, attempting to salvage a faltering nuclear deal with Iran, has told Iran’s leaders in back-channel messages that it is willing to allow the country to send its stockpile of enriched uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey, for temporary safekeeping, according to administration officials and diplomats involved in the exchanges.
But the overtures, made through the International Atomic Energy Agency over the past two weeks, have all been ignored, the officials said. Instead, they said, the Iranians have revived an old counterproposal: that international arms inspectors take custody of much of Iran’s fuel, but keep it on Kish, a Persian Gulf resort island that is part of Iran.
A senior Obama administration official said that proposal had been rejected because leaving the nuclear material on Iranian territory would allow for the possibility that the Iranians could evict the international inspectors at any moment. That happened in North Korea in 2003, and within months the country had converted its fuel into the material for several nuclear weapons.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Administration officials are pessimistic that the deal will reach fruition. IAEA chief, El baradei says the chances of a deal are receding. No further meetings between Iran and The West are scheduled, but Obama's willing to give Iran more time.
Mr. Obama’s aides say he is still willing to wait until year’s end before concluding that Iran is rejecting his offers of diplomatic engagement. What happens after that is unclear: Mr. Obama has suggested he would then turn to much more severe sanctions than the United Nations has already imposed against Iran, though it is unclear whether Russia and China would go along.
Russia has urged Iran to accept the deal.
TEHRAN — Russia's envoy to Tehran on Sunday urged Iran to sign on to a UN-drafted nuclear fuel deal in a bid to resolve the controversy over its atomic drive, which he said lacks "complete transparency."
"This is not to trick Iran in order to take its low-enriched uranium out of its hands," Sadovnikov, Moscow's ambassador to Tehran, said in an interview with the official IRNA news agency.
"We believe that reaching this agreement and signing the technical contract to produce fuel for the Tehran reactor is beneficial to Iran and will help in resolving the nuclear issue," he said.
http://www.google.com/...
Khamenei lashed out at the Obama administration last week further dampening hopes that a deal can be struck.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lashed out at the United States in a speech on Tuesday, criticizing what he called an arrogant American attitude toward nuclear talks and saying the Obama administration had not followed through on its promises of change.
"The Islamic republic of Iran decided from the beginning not to prejudge and instead to consider the slogan of ‘change,’ " said Ayatollah Khamenei in remarks to a group of students and teachers that were broadcast by the state-run Press TV. "But what we have witnessed in practice during this period of time has been in contradiction with the remarks that have been made."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In related news, it's been reported that The IAEA has evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists may have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design.
The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.
The dossier, titled "Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program", is drawn in part from reports submitted to it by western intelligence agencies.
The agency has in the past treated such reports with scepticism, particularly after the Iraq war. But its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said the evidence of Iranian weaponisation "appears to have been derived from multiple sources over different periods of time, appears to be generally consistent, and is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed that it needs to be addressed by Iran".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
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