Just Kidding Around?
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has warned his negotiators for the Geneva talks to be careful, very careful in what they agree to. According to the interim accord a final deal negotiated between Iran and the G5+1 would leave Iran with an "enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures", a measure in and of itself to give comfort to all those who believe Iran has its eye on achieving a nuclear arsenal to complement its ballistic rockets. |
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DIETER NAGL / AFP - Getty Images
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The number of operational centrifuges, their sophistication, speed and efficiency enabling enrichment to high-tech applications ranging from reactor fuel to nuclear fissionability. If Iran had its druthers it would keep the entire 20,000 centrifuges set up and spinning. The point is to remove most of them, disable them, destroy them, lest Iran retain the capacity to produce sufficient weapons-grade enriched uranium in a space of a few months, undetected and triumphant.
Russia, China, Britain, the United States, France and Germany would feel more comfortable with a scant few thousand of the less technically advanced spinners on the go. Their calculation is that this would produce a one-year window should Iran turn all its centrifuges to work to begin its weapons-grade uranium process from start to the production of at least one weapon. Another thing; the advanced centrifuges should be dispensed with as in: forget it.
The underground enriching facility at Fordo remains a problem, heavily fortified as it is against the possibility of aerial attacks. So while the six powers would prefer the installation shut down, Tehran bristles at the prospect of any of its atomic infrastructure touched, impinging on national pride. Alternatively it could be "repurposed" and still kept as a nuclear facility; as a storage place for equipment or material; down-purposed.
As for the under-construction Arak heavy-water facility. Its problem is that it is meant to produce substantial amounts of plutonium also useful as the fissile core of a missile. Conversion to a light-water installation would be achieved most purposefully by tearing down the existing structure and re-building it from scratch, a prospect Tehran would be sure to foam at the mouth over.
The head of the Revolutionary Guards, the body effectively in control of Iran's nuclear program is displeased no end against the possibility of any concessions tarnishing the nation's pride erupting from the negotiations. General Mohammad Ali Jafari warned Iranian negotiators to preserve the "red lines of the establishment ... so that the national pride is not damaged".
As for Ayatollah Khamenei, he has given orders to his government to brace for a worst-case scenario. One can only imagine he hasn't yet seen the photographs of a fawning EU's Catherine Ashton laughing it up with Iranian Foreign Minster Mohammad Javad Zarif. All is sweetness and light-heartedness. Yet the Ayatollah advises for the creation of an "economy of resistance", in counter to the anticipated ongoing sanctions.
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insists his country has no intention of buckling to pressure from the world powers; it will scrap none of its nuclear facilities. The agreement sought by the G5+1 is meant to leave Iran with little capacity to ramp into enriched uranium production mode, let alone plutonium production.
There is an aura of suspended credulity in all of this, as though this is the public theatre being glimpsed, while backstage other, subtle and possibly less palatable solutions to the impasse will be agreed upon to placate the Iranian regime which will, one way or another, in the short- or the long-term find a way to reach its desired end.
Labels: G5+1, Iran, Negotiations, Nuclear Technology
posted by Pieface @ Friday, February 21, 2014
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