Talks between the West and Iran start today in Baghdad, and the stage is set for another deal to let Iran off the hook while pretending to stop or slow its nuclear-weapons program.
Yesterday, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, fresh from a rare Tehran visit, expressed hope that a deal to renew IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites will be signed “quite soon.”
There are no details yet on the hoped-for pact, and Amano said some kinks must still be straightened out, but our diplomats are surely encouraged.
“Atmospherics,” after all, have long been a big part of diplomacy between Iran and the West. So now that Amano delivered the necessary good vibes, how can we fail?
We can’t, because both sides — Western diplomats led by the European Union’s Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s national-security chief Saeed Jalili — share the same goal: to prevent a US or Israeli military attack on the sites where Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
Iran, of course, is happy to say anything that gets it more time to build the bomb.
Officially, the West wants Iran to honor its treaty obligations and stop its nuke program. In reality, our diplomats and their political masters are more concerned to avoid a “destabilizing” strike.
The Obama administration fears an Israel-Iran war on the eve of the US presidential election; it’s reportedly ready to offer a new deal to the Iranians, compromising a major principle that has long been set by the UN Security Council.
In several resolutions, starting in 2006, the council imposed a complete ban on Iranian enrichment of uranium. All the following UN-backed sanctions were based on that premise. But the new deal would reportedly allow Iran to enrich to a low purity level (under 5 percent). If Iran agrees, it’d have to send abroad the material it’s enriched to a higher level (20 percent, well on the way to way to bomb-level purity).
Past efforts at similar deals with Iran all fizzled out. But the Obama team thinks that the pressure from the latest sanctions, plus Europe’s new ban on Iranian oil imports (set to start July 1) will force agreement.
Of course, Iran could say “yes” without truly agreeing — getting an easing of sanctions while failing to hand over all its bomb material. How long would it take us to catch on?
The deal also depends on IAEA inspections to ensure that Iran’s remaining centrifuges enrich only to a low level. Yet the record of the Vienna-based agency isn’t good: Iran made substantial advances despite past IAEA monitoring, as did North Korea (which, of course, now has nukes and missiles to deliver them).
The Israelis, meanwhile, are pointing to Sunday’s words from Maj.-Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the Iranian chief of staff: He reiterated that Iran’s goal is to “annihilate” Israel.
That’s why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that the only acceptable deal must include an end to all enrichment, the removal of all material that has already been enriched and the closure of a nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom. (The site is buried so deeply beneath hard rock that Israeli bombs can’t destroy it.)
But Israel doesn’t have a seat at the talks. So there’s nothing to stop Iran from using these negotiations to (again) delay Western action, while it fortifies the Qom facility and conceals its continued bomb work from inspectors and diplomats too eager for “success” to blow the whistle.