Don't Look Now, But Obama May Have An Iran Success

By Steve Hynd

It's the accepted Beltway wisdom that Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran over its nuclear program is already over, failed. He was always going to be given one chance which was expected to not succeed and now that it has failed it's time to move on to further punitive sanctions. Unfortunately, it's also clear that sanctions will almost certainly not be UNSC backed and won't work in any case. Beltway wisdom leaves only one recourse after sanctions fail too - bombs.

Iran's leadership is well aware of the Villager's collective logic for eventual war, and know that the end of this month is the "red line" point beyond which it will be well-nigh impossible to prevent the narrative for eventual war playing itself out. Thus their's an element of panic in their attempt to keep a little national pride while capitulating to the West on a central principle today.

Speaking to reporters at a regional security conference in Bahrain, [Iranian Foreign Minister] Manochehr Mottaki said Iran agreed with a U.N. deal proposed in October in which up to 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of its uranium would be exchanged for fuel rods to power its research reactor.

"We accepted the proposal in principle," he said through a translator. "We suggested in the first phase we give you 400 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched uranium and you give us the equivalent in 20 percent uranium."

Mottaki said that, contrary to Western media leaks by diplomats to the IAEA and a statement based upon those leaks by Britain's Gordon Brown, this was Iran's official response to the IAEA's proposed deal under which Tehran would ship most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile abroad to be processed into fuel rods, which can't be enriched further.

"We gave a clear answer and we responded and our answer was we accepted in principle but there were differences in the mechanism," he said, suggesting the exchange take place on Iran's Kish island, in the Persian Gulf.

It is not clear, however, if the low-enriched uranium would then remain on the island or could be shipped out of the country � a necessary condition to any deal from the standpoint of the international community.

The world powers are also unlikely to accept a long drawn out exchange in stages, as it would allow Iran to maintain enough enriched uranium inside the country to possibly build a weapon.

Iran, meanwhile, wants to receive the fuel rods immediately in exchange for its uranium for fear that France or Russia could renege deal.

I've no doubt that the conventional Beltway wisdom will be that this is just another stalling tactic from Iran and that they aren't intending to finalize any deal. That would ignore the fact that the narrative the Beltway foreign policy elite have imposed upon the whole process is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, one of the most thorny problems so far has been that Iran has been pretty sure that America and its allies didn't really want a deal either, and were just going through the motions before an attack could be justified to the world. That view has been based upon what that elite has been writing and saying for years now. If Iran has deep trust issues, it's for good reason.

But Iran has to know that the choice is really between a deal soon or eventual bombs - and that's no real choice at all. They'll do a deal, if only the Beltway crowd will let Obama accept one.