[But the
development could give opponents another reason to object, adding it to a list
of what they call concessions made by an administration in search of an
agreement. If Iran ever bars the inspectors from the country, as North Korea
did a dozen years ago, the international community would have no assurance
about the fate of the fuel. Nor has Iran answered longstanding questions about
its suspected nuclear design and testing of
components that could be used to detonate a warhead.]
By David E.
Sanger and Michael R.
Gordon
 |
|
Foreign
ministers from other world powers joined Secretary of State John Kerry in an
effort to
reach the outlines of a nuclear accord with Iran by a midnight Tuesday
deadline. Pool
photo by Brendan Smialowski
|
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With a negotiating deadline just two days away, Iranian
officials on Sunday backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear
agreement, saying they are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of
the country.
For months, Iran tentatively agreed that it would send a
large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would
not be accessible for use in any future weapons program. But on Sunday Iran’s
deputy foreign minister made a surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling
out an agreement that involved giving up a stockpile that Iran has spent years
and billions of dollars to amass.
“The export of
stocks of enriched uranium is not in our program, and we do not intend sending
them abroad,” the official, Abbas Araqchi, told the Iranian media, according to
Agence France-Presse. “There is no question of sending the stocks abroad.”
Western officials confirmed
that Iran was balking at shipping the fuel out, but insisted that there were
other ways of dealing with the material. Chief among those options, they said,
was blending it into a more diluted form.
Depending on the
technical details, that could make the process of enriching it for military use
far more lengthy, or perhaps nearly impossible.
Nonetheless, the
revelation that Iran is now insisting on retaining the fuel could raise a
potential obstacle at a critical time in the talks. And for critics of the
emerging deal in Congress, in Israel and in Sunni Arab nations like Saudi
Arabia, the prospect of leaving large amounts of nuclear fuel in Iran, in any
form, is bound to intensify their already substantial political opposition.
If an accord
allowing Iran to retain the fuel is reached, the Obama administration is
expected to argue that it would not constitute a serious risk, particularly if
it is regularly inspected. So far under an interim agreement negotiated in
2013, Iran has complied fully with a rigorous inspection process for the
stockpiles of its fuel, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said.
But the development
could give opponents another reason to object, adding it to a list of what they
call concessions made by an administration in search of an agreement. If Iran
ever bars the inspectors from the country, as North Korea did a dozen years
ago, the international community would have no assurance about the fate of the
fuel. Nor has Iran answered longstanding questions about its suspected nuclear design and testing of
components that could be used to detonate a warhead.
Ray Takeyh, a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has been critical of the
emerging accord, said the development raised serious questions about a possible
deal.
“The viability of
this agreement as a reliable arms control accord is diminished by this,” Mr.
Takeyh said. “One of the core administration arguments has been that the
uranium would be shipped abroad as a confidence building measure.”
On the assumption
that Iran’s uranium stockpile would be small, the United States and its
negotiating partners had been moving toward an agreement that would allow Iran
to retain roughly 6,000 centrifuges in operation. It is not clear how much that
might change if the fuel, even in diluted form, remains in the country.
If the fuel had
been shipped to Russia, the plan called for Moscow to convert it into
specialized fuel rods for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran’s only
commercial reactor. Once it was converted into fuel rods, it would have been
extremely difficult for Iran to use the material to make a nuclear weapon.
It is not clear
what form the fuel would take if it remains on Iranian territory.
The disclosure also
adds a new element to the growing debate over whether the proposed agreement
would meet President Obama’s oft-stated assurance that the world would have at
least a year’s warning if Iran raced for a bomb — what experts call “breakout
time.”
The argument over
warning time, which was accelerated by a skeptical paper published over the
weekend by the former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, offered a taste of the kind of arguments already taking shape in
Congress.
On Sunday,
Republican leaders made it clear they would press for more sanctions against
Iran if no agreement is reached here by Tuesday. In an interview with CNN,
Speaker John A. Boehner expressed doubts about a potential agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
“We have got a
regime that’s never quite kept their word about anything,” he said. “I just
don’t understand why we would sign an agreement with a group of people who, in
my opinion, have no intention of keeping their word.”
With pressure
mounting to settle on the main parameters of an accord, negotiators were still
divided on how fast United Nations’ and others’ sanctions on Iran might be
lifted. Important differences remained on what kind of research and development
Iran could carry out on new types of centrifuges during the last five years of
what is intended to be a 15-year agreement.
There was a clear
sense that the talks were approaching a pivotal moment as the foreign ministers
from other world powers joined Secretary of State John Kerry in an effort to
reach the outlines of a deal by a midnight Tuesday deadline.
“We are not there
yet,” said one Western official who, like others in this article, declined to
be identified because he was discussing diplomatic deliberations. “There are
lots of pieces floating around.”
Yet even if a deal
was reached by late Tuesday, American negotiators made clear that this was just
an interim step, and that any final agreement would require months of
negotiations over what were once called “technical agreements” but are now
clearly the source of continuing disagreement.
That calculation
over “breakout time” is so complex that experts from Britain, France, Germany
and Israel all have somewhat slightly different calculations than those of
experts from the United States.
The debate over
breakout time intensified when Olli Heinonen, who ran inspections for the
I.A.E.A. before moving to Harvard several years ago, published a paper on Saturday concluding that,
based on leaked estimates that Iran would operate roughly 6,500 centrifuges, “a
breakout time of between seven and eight months would still be possible.”
A senior Obama
administration official here said that while he did not dispute Mr. Heinonen’s
figures, the former inspector had conducted a textbook calculation rather than
examining the real-life conditions at Iran’s facilities.
Like other
countries, Iran loses some of its nuclear material every time it is changed
from a gas to a solid, and its machinery, the evidence shows, does not run at
perfect efficiency. The official said that the United States had created a
measure based on what American officials have called the “fastest reasonable”
estimate of how long Iran would take to produce a weapon.
Some experts
outside government say the American assumptions are reasonable, and perhaps
even generous to the Iranians — who have taken 20 years to get to this point,
far longer than it took programs, including in North Korea and Pakistan, to
produce bomb-grade material.
But the emergence
of competing estimates could pose a political problem for President Obama, who
has made breakout time the paramount measure for a potential agreement.
Parts of the
agreement have begun to leak out, and reflect the balancing act underway: An
effort by the United States and the other five powers here to cripple Iran’s
ability to produce enough nuclear material for a weapon for at least 10 years,
while letting the Iranians preserve a narrative that they are not dismantling
major facilities, or giving in to American pressure.
For example, a deep
underground facility at Fordow — exposed in 2009 — would likely be converted to
make medical isotopes. That means it would not be used for enriching uranium.
But several hundred
centrifuges might still be spinning there — the facility now has about 3,000 —
and that fact alone, American officials acknowledge, could provide fodder to
opponents of the deal.
Reporting was contributed by
Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran, and Andrew Siddons from Washington.
