BAGHDAD — Iran and six world powers exchanged dueling proposals Wednesday in a tug of war over Tehran’s nuclear program that pits international concerns about the Islamic republic’s potential to build atomic weapons against enforcing crippling sanctions on its people.
The day-long back-and-forth in Baghdad focused largely on whether the current enrichment level of Iran’s uranium production is a red line the U.S. and other powers will not permit for fear it could become warhead-grade material.
Western negotiators presented a package offering Iran medical isotopes, some nuclear safety cooperation and possibly spare parts for civilian airliners. In exchange, Tehran would stop its 20 percent enrichment levels as a first step, according to a Western diplomat involved in the talks. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity.
Iran brought a potent bargaining chip to the table, tentatively agreeing to allow U.N. inspectors into a military complex suspected of conducting nuclear arms-related tests.
The gesture was an attempt to head off painful July 1 sanctions on its oil exports to lucrative European markets. U.S. and European measures have targeted Iran’s oil exports — its chief revenue source — and effectively blocked the country from international banking networks. But diplomats from the six world powers refused to consider
the sanctions as a relevant part of the impasse.
The talks are seen only as a small step forward in a delicate negotiating process that likely will unfold over months.
That would likely bring objections from Israel, which claims that Iran is only trying to buy time to keep its nuclear fuel labs in full operation.
But a delay could allow U.S. and European allies to tone down threats of military action — despite calls Wednesday from a hawkish alliance of U.S. senators who urged negotiators to take a hard line against Iran “to leave no doubt that the window for diplomacy is closing.”
“The Iranian regime’s long record of deceit and defiance should make us extremely cautious about its willingness to engage in good-faith diplomacy,” Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and independent Joe Lieberman, wrote in Wednesday’s editions of The Wall Street Journal.
