The text of the Iranian proposals, presented to the Big Six in Moscow last month, were printed in last week’s issue of the Iran Times.
Talking to reporters Monday, Clinton said, “The proposals we have seen from Iran thus far within the P5+1 negotiations are non-starters.”
That was a stunningly blunt assessment. Clinton did not adopt the usual diplomatic lingo that an opponent’s offer can be the basis for a more substantive discussion. She simply trashed the Iranian proposal as worthless.
But Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi may have seen Clinton’s assessment coming. Five days before Clinton trashed the Iranian proposal, Salehi in effect made a new proposal, saying Iran was ready to negotiate over its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent.
Months ago, the head of Iran’s nuclear program said on state television that Iran would not need to produce more 20 percent uranium once it had enough to fuel to power the Tehran Research Reactor, the sole reactor in Iran requiring 20 percent fuel. That was seen as a clear opening for the talks. But the Iranian proposal submitted to the Big Six in Moscow last month made no such offer.
However, many within the Iranian establishment are trying to justify further production of 20 percent fuel. A few weeks ago, for example, there was a proposal that Iran build nuclear-powered submarines, which use fuel enriched to 20 percent or even higher.
And on Sunday, the Mehr news agency quoted Majlis Deputy Mohammad Bayatian as saying his committee has approved a bill requiring the government to build nuclear-powered commercial vessels, which would also justify higher enrichment.
There are no nuclear-powered commercial ships in the world because they are not economically viable. Bayatian tried to counter that by saying sanctions have prompted some countries to refuse to provide Iranian merchant vessels with fuel. He did not name any countries.
Salehi told Reuters in an interview last Wednesday, “Iran is ready to talk about the 20 percent issue but, of course, it should be reciprocated properly.”
Salehi tried to put the burden for lack of progress in the talks on the Big Six. He said Iran was fully committed to resolving the nuclear issue but that the major powers had deviated from understandings agreed to at the first of three rounds of negotiations between Tehran and the Big Six this year. He did not say what agreements the Big Six had deviated from.
“For some reason whenever there is light at the end of the tunnel, somebody tries to cover up even that dim light,” he said. “The continuation of this [deadlock] … is not in the interest of the international community, not in the interests of my country and not in the interest of the region.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Salehi denied accusations that Iran’s Parchin military site has been cleansed of atomic material that would show Iran was carrying out banned nuclear trigger tests.
Nuclear inspectors would be able to confirm this when the time came to visit that site again, he said, without indicating when Iran would allow that to happen.
Salehi, who earned his doctorate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a former Iranian envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said granting the UN nuclear watchdog access to the Parchin site depended on when Iran managed to conclude a broader agreement with the IAEA. IAEA officials say Iran has backed away from such an agreement,