Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iran’s last chance

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Iran’s last chance
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: October 30 2009 19:22 | Last updated: October 30 2009 19:22
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/44238500-c586-11de-9b3b-00144feab49a.html


Rarely, in the 30 years of name-calling and visceral animosity between the US and Iran triggered by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has the prospect of detente between them been so tantalisingly within reach. But Tehran is recklessly close to frittering away this opening. That would be a disaster.

The tentative deal struck at landmark talks in Geneva at the beginning of this month bought vital time to stave off what was looking like an inexorable confrontation between Iran and the west over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Under the outline accord, Iran would ship abroad the bulk of its known stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for reprocessing into higher grade medical isotopes for cancer treatment. Russia agreed to enrich the uranium to greater purity, then send it to France to be packaged up for use by an Iranian research reactor in Tehran. Iran is meanwhile allowing international inspection of a previously undeclared nuclear site near Qom. There is an elegance to this deal.

First, by exporting the raw material for a bomb it denies pursuing, Iran would start reassuring its neighbours – including an alarmed and increasingly bellicose Israel. Second, Russia is co-operating with the US and Europe. The theocrats in Tehran are at last hearing one voice. Third, this deal starts down the only path that can lead eventually to a resolution of this confrontation: implicitly conceding Iran’s right to enrich uranium but under strict international oversight.

But what is now happening? The Iranian regime, as ever, is playing hard to get. While Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the mercurial president ruthlessly re-imposed by fraud in this summer’s bitterly contested elections, has welcomed a US shift to “co-operation”, Tehran wants a sort of instalment plan to phase its exports of LEU.

There is some wiggle room – not least because Iran has not set out a formal, written position. When it does, it should be clear what is at stake. Take the path to detente; the other road leads to perdition.