Sanctions weighed again on Iran

'Disappointing' talks between Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and the EU's Javier Solana prompt concern.

from the December 3, 2007 edition

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Iran denies it wants a nuclear weapon. In a letter Friday to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran had "no difficulty with taking transparency measures," had gone "far beyond its treaty obligations," and that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors had carried out 2,500 days' worth of inspections to confirm that "allegations [of a military program] have been completely baseless."

Still, the diplomatic dance continues. News agencies quoted a French diplomat saying that Mr. Solana's meeting had been a "disaster," that Tehran wanted to start talks again from scratch, and that Solana "left asking himself what the future of the negotiations could be."

"I have to admit that after five hours of meetings I expected more, and therefore I am disappointed," Solana said after his meeting with Jalili, a hard-line ally of Ahmadinejad who took over after the surprise resignation of former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, a far more seasoned negotiator.

Saturday, Jalili said Iran was not to blame. "[W]e defended the Iranian nation's rights and stressed fulfilling our duties and that the Iranian nation will not accept anything that goes beyond the NPT," he said. "If some people have become disappointed because they cannot deprive Iran of its natural rights, then this is another matter."

Jalili, speaking at a nuclear conference in Tehran before meeting Solana, said that "Iran has fulfilled all its obligations under the safeguard agreement, so it insists on the rights of the NPT." He said Iran believed all weapons of mass destruction to be "illegal, illegitimate, and ... useless" – and that "the language of force does not work" against Iran.

Jalili said Iran's experience of being deprived of airplane spare parts from the US for years, and imposition of multiple layers of UN and US sanctions, meant Iranians had little trust in the West. "They need to build confidence with the Iranian people," he said.

But analysts say the onus is on Iran to build confidence that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful. "If the same [positive] IAEA report was published two years ago, we might be in a different situation, but now it has gone too far," says Alexander Pikayev, an expert at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"If the US convinces the IAEA Board to have a negative [interpretation of the IAEA report], it will be difficult for Russia and China to resist more sanctions," says Mr. Pikayev, speaking in Tehran. Moscow is in a dilemma, he says, partly because Iran has pursued several nuclear paths, including a heavy water reactor: "The Kremlin does not want a nuclear-armed Iran, and there are some grounds to doubt Iran's intentions."

Russia last week finalized preparation of nuclear fuel for the nuclear reactor it is building at Bushehr, which is to be shipped – with no fixed date yet – six months before the plant goes on line.

Iranian officials say that any resurrection of the Additional Protocol requires a vote by Iran's parliament to revoke a law, passed when Iran's nuclear case was first sent to the Security Council, to forbid the government from cooperating beyond the minimum requirements of the NPT.

That dynamic could change – and the snap inspections be reinstituted – if the nuclear file were returned exclusively to the purview of the IAEA, says Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in an interview.

"That would be a very positive move by the Security Council, and we would act accordingly," says Mr. Araghchi. "Whenever they pass a resolution against us and put more sanctions against us, we react. I'm sure for positive gestures, we would also react."

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