November 01-2013
A Majlis deputy announced last week that Iran had halted its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, but another deputy later denied there was any truth to that report. And Israel’s prime minister says he longer cares.
The Iranian government has said nothing to clear up the enrichment issue, staying mum on the matter for a full week.
But most analysts generally did not believe the first report saying enrichment to 20 percent had been suspended. Many people following the negotiations expect Iran will be willing to halt 20 percent enrichment—but will only agree to do so in exchange for some concession from the Big Six.
Meanwhile, in Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he no longer cares about 20 percent enrichment—he was the one who made it into an international issue—but wants to stop all enrichment in Iran.
Over the last several months, going back into the Ahmadi-nejad Administration, a number of Iranian officials have expressed a willingness to end 20 percent enrichment, saying that Iran has more than enough fuel from 20 percent enriched uranium to power its small reactor in Tehran, the only use for 20 percent enriched uranium in Iran.
The claim of a cessation of enrichment was made last Tuesday by Deputy Hossain Naqavi Hossaini, the vice chair of the National Security Committee. He said Iran now has all it needs for the Tehran reactor “at the moment and there is no need for more production.”
That statement stood unchallenged for four days. Then, on Saturday, Alaeddin Borujerdi, the chairman of the National Security Committee, said, “Enrichment at 20 percent is continuing.” He didn’t say why he waited four days to contradict his vice chair.
Netanyahu said the discussion of 20 percent enrichment was just a distraction, and the real focus should be on dismantling Iran’s entire nuclear program.
This was a new position for Netanyahu, who made 20 percent enrichment the central point of his address to the United Nations in September of last year—drawing a red line on a cartoon bomb to show his ceiling on 20 percent enrichment by Iran.
But on Sunday, Netanyahu said, “We are not impressed by the discourse around the issue of 20 percent enrichment. The Iranians are deliberately focusing the debate on this issue. It is irrelevant.”
Netanyahu told the cabinet Sunday that technological advances in the past year—specifically Iran’s new and faster IR-2m centrifuges—enable it to “leap across the barrier of 20 percent enrichment and go directly from 3.5 percent enrichment to [weapons-grade] 90 percent within weeks…. Iran must be stripped of its enrichment capability and its heavy-water plant [at Arak].”