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Tehran’s options

While the world debates the significance of the Hamas/Israel prisoner exchange, let me turn back to something that really counts for the United States:  Iran’s nuclear program.  In the aftermath of the Iran(Car)Tel plot, friend Rashad Mahmood, formerly of Cairo, asks “What would be reasonable Iranian policy to having their nuclear scientists killed (by admittedly much finer spycraft since they haven’t aired any proof of who has done it)?”

This is a reasonable question with some scary answers.   Let’s look at some of the (not mutually exclusive) options:

1. They can respond by killing the nuclear scientists of those countries they think responsible for the attacks on their own (presumably Israel, but as Rashad says there is no proof in the public domain).  I assume they’ve tried this and haven’t succeeded, or at least we haven’t heard about it.

2. They can accelerate their nuclear program, hide it better, protect the people who work in it and try to get nuclear weapons as soon as possible.  They may be trying, but they appear to be failing.

3.  They can begin to wonder whether the nuclear program is worth the trouble it is causing and reach an arrangement that reassures friends and foe alike that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons even if it acquires the “fuel cycle” technology required to do so.  President Ahmedinejad has proposed something along these lines, but no one is taking him seriously yet, so far as I can tell.

4. They can kill diplomats or citizens of third countries, say Saudi Arabia, that may have little to do with the killing of the Iranians but are hated enemies anyway.

My impression is that they’ve tried at one time or another Nos. 1-3, so far without success.  No. 4 doesn’t make any sense to me, but maybe it does to someone in Tehran (and certainly it does to some in DC).  The jury is still out on the extent of official Iranian involvement in the IranTel plot.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration seems to me to be doing the right thing:  keeping the focus on the nuclear program and ratcheting up sanctions implementation.  This may not bring immediate results, but at least it provides some incentive for no. 3.  The trick is knowing when to take Ahmedinejad’s proposition seriously.  It is really difficult for outsiders to judge when the right moment comes–we are going to have to trust the White House to call that shot.

Here is the version of what Ahmedinejad has said about limiting uranium enrichment published by the Washington Post:

Q:  I understand that you were in favor of the deal you had reached with the United States in 2009, according to which the U.S. would sell you 20-percent-enriched uranium in exchange for Iran exporting low-enriched uranium. But you were attacked by your critics and came under assault and people here could not reach a consensus and the deal fell apart.

Ahmedinejad:  In Iran, people are free to express their views. Every day some people criticize the policies of the government. This doesn’t mean that the government is going to abandon their policies. We felt that they wouldn’t give us the fuel required here for our reactor. There were some political leaders who gave interviews in the United States and Europe and they said they want to keep Iran from having access to such fuel. So we realized that they wouldn’t give us that fuel so we had to do it ourselves. Even if they gave us now uranium grade 20 percent, we would not continue with the production of this fuel.

Q:  So if the United States sold you the enriched uranium, would you stop enriching yourselves?

Ahmedinejad:  Yes. We don’t want to produce uranium of 20 percent. Because they did not give us that uranium, we had to make our own investments. If they start to give us that uranium today, we will stop production.

Q:  You reached a deal in Geneva in 2009, and you came back here and the deal fell apart here, and now people in Washington don’t believe a deal is possible.

Ahmedinejad: If they give us uranium grade 20 percent, we would stop production. Those negotiations took place in Vienna. Apparently they know everything. I repeat: If you give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production. Because uranium grade 20 percent can only be used for such reactors, nothing else.

This is the proposition some commentators think worth considering.  Many think it a mirage, but time is on Tehran’s side:  even if their nuclear program has slowed, they will eventually get there if there is no verifiable agreement for them to stop.