Eyes on Iran
Posted Tuesday, 23 November, 18:27
By Ben Rhode, Research Associate for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament
The IISS Manama Dialogue will take place on the same weekend that negotiations between world powers and Iran over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme are expected to resume after more than a year. The talks, which fell apart in late 2009 with Iran's rejection of a proposed nuclear-fuel swap, are due to kick off again in Geneva on 5 December, just after the Dialogue comes to a close in Bahrain. Last year, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made news at Manama by announcing details of an alternative fuel-swap plan.
Anxieties about Iran's intentions remain high in the Gulf, and regional support for a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, once limited to private conversations with Westerners, is occasionally emerging into the open.
The West saw its fuel-swap proposal as a way to reduce Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium, some of which Iran was planning to turn into highly enriched uranium for its research reactor. The deal would not have solved the underlying problem of Iran's development of dual-use enrichment and reprocessing technologies, but it would have bought time for further negotiations and a possible longer-term solution.
In February, Iran announced that it had enriched uranium to 20%, which was supposedly to fuel the research reactor. But as it is unable itself to fabricate the uranium into the reactor's fuel elements, this move only heightened international concern.
On the other hand – to some international relief – the actual pace of Iran's declared enrichment programme appears to have slowed, with fewer centrifuges operating at its Natanz facility than last year. This may be due to the intrinsic design faults of the machines, poor-quality components or foreign sabotage, including the possibility that Iranian centrifuges were the target of cyber-warfare.
The UN Security Council imposed its most biting sanctions resolution yet in June. These sanctions have been accompanied by even more stringent economic measures taken against Iran by the EU, the US, and other countries (including South Korea).
It is unclear whether the new sanctions and Iran's technical problems have led to a change in its negotiating calculus. The US seems willing to revive the proposed fuel-swap deal from last year, although now under stricter conditions. But Iran's president has already announced that the talks will not deal with the nuclear issue and insisted that Western leaders first declare whether they are 'friends or foes' of Iran.
Still, it is to be hoped that Iran's return to the table reflects a genuine willingness to engage in meaningful negotiations, and is not merely another attempt to defuse concerted international action against its nuclear activities.
