The Latest from Iran (9 November): Assessing the Government

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In The New York Times this morning, David Sanger publishes an article, “Iran Is Said to Ignore Effort to Salvage a Nuclear Deal”, which gives half the story on the current tangled state of the negotiations over uranium enrichment.

Half the story because Sanger’s story is effectively a US Government press release. Here is the narrative of unnamed officials:

The Obama Administration…has told Iran’s leaders in back-channel messages that it is willing to allow the country to send its stockpile of enriched uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey, for temporary safekeeping….But the overtures, made through the International Atomic Energy Agency over the past two weeks, have all been ignored….Instead….the Iranians have revived an old counterproposal: that international arms inspectors take custody of much of Iran’s fuel, but keep it on Kish, a Persian Gulf resort island that is part of Iran….

That proposal had been rejected because leaving the nuclear material on Iranian territory would allow for the possibility that the Iranians could evict the international inspectors at any moment. That happened in North Korea in 2003, and within months the country had converted its fuel into the material for several nuclear weapons.

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