Iran and world powers will meet in Moscow next month for more talks to try solve a longstanding dispute about Iran's nuclear energy programme, Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign-policy chief, has said.
Speaking in Baghdad on Thursday, the last of two days of discussions between envoys from Iran and six leading powers to try to defuse Western fears of a covert Iranian effort to develop nuclear bombs, Ashton said it was clear both sides wanted progress and had some common ground, but they also had significant differences.
"We will maintain intensive contacts with our Iranian counterparts to prepare a further meeting in Moscow," she announced in the Iraqi capital.
The Moscow meeting is set to take place on June 18 and 19.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In-depth coverage of a growing regional debate
Ashton, who leads the negotiations for the P5+1 (the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany), said the bloc wanted practical steps from Iran to address concerns over its nuclear work.
Chief among such concerns is Iran's ability to enrich uranium to a fissile purity of 20 per cent. That is the nuclear advance most worrying to the West since it hurdles technical obstacles to reaching 90 per cent, or bomb-grade, enrichment.
Iran says it will not exceed 20 per cent and the material will be made into fuel for a research reactor.
"Iran declared its readiness to address the issue of 20 per cent enrichment and came with its own five point plan, including their assertion that we recognise their right to enrichment," Ashton said.
No deal
The Baghdad talks failed to reach any deal, despite reports indicating that the P1+5 had made several offers if Iran would halt enrichment, including fuel plates for a reactor producing medical isotopes, relaxing restrictions on aircraft parts and nuclear safety assistance.
But this falls short of the lifting of the whole raft of UN Security Council and unilateral Western sanctions that have been directed at Iran for years.
Iran is threatened with an EU oil embargo, due to take full effect from July 1, which will ensure EU firms from heading crude tankers to countries such as India, South Korea and Japan, all major buyers of Iran's oil.
Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief negotiator, emphasised that Iran had the right to continue to enrich uranium.
"Of the main topics in using peaceful nuclear energy is the topic of having the nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment. We emphasise this right," he said in Baghdad on Thursday.
"This is an undeniable right of the Iranian nation ... especially the right to enrich uranium."
Earlier, an Iranian delegation official had complained that world powers were hindering the talks in Baghdad, creating a "difficult atmosphere".
"We believe the reason P5+1 is not able to reach a result is America," the official told Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity.
"[P5+1] came to Baghdad without a clear mandate so we think the atmosphere is difficult."
Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful, but Western powers suspect it is masking attempts to join the elite club of nations with nuclear weapons.
The powers' overall goal is an Iranian agreement to curb uranium enrichment in a transparent, verifiable way to ensure it is for peaceful purposes only.
Iran's priority is to secure an end to sanctions isolating the country and damaging its economy.
The Baghdad talks were the second round in the latest series between the P5+1 and Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, with earlier negotiations held in Istanbul, Turkey, last month.
Despite hyperbolic talk over Iran's nuclear programme, it's unlikely the country would deploy potential nuclear weapons.
D. Parvaz Last Modified: 23 Apr 2012 17:31
It has been reported that Israel plans to attack Iran after US presidential elections in November [GALLO/GETTY]
While Iran's nuclear programme has been at the centre of foreign and economic policy debates for months, what seems unclear is the precise nature of the threat it might pose.
Is Iran striving for nuclear latency (the ability to produce nuclear weapons) or is it actually striving to build weapons? Would they deploy them, or use them as a means of further establishing its power in the region?
There have been a series of inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities over the years, with mixed results and levels of cooperation from Iran.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Every country that has reached the level of nuclear potential has realised that you maximise this potential by refraining from the use of your weapons. It's equivalent to a situation where you're torturing somebody - you never want to kill them, because then, it's over. " .. - Stephen Kinzer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, maintains that Iran never has and never will seek nuclear weapons.
“There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons," he said .. http://presstv.com/detail/228156.html .. in a speech in February. He went on to say that Iran, "logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous".
A spokesperson for the IAEA declined Al Jazeera's request for an interview, saying that the agency preferred that its "reports do the talking". The agency's newest board report .. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeairan/iaea_reports.shtml .. expresses frustration with Iran's lack of cooperation and refers to outstanding issues connected to the "possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme".
The US has been concerned with Iran's influence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and becoming a nuclear power in the region is only bound to increase that clout.
"The main reason Iran is trying to reach that point is that Iran is suffering from lack of legitimacy and recognition on the International level - they think that the West will not recognise the Islamic Republic without a nuclear Iran," said Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at the Washington Institute.
"Iran wants to be treated like Pakistan - which has a nuclear programme. It fears giving up its nuclear programme and becoming another Libya," said Khalaji.
"I do not believe that Iranian leaders are suicidal - using a nuclear bomb against any country will be the end of the Islamic Republic and the current leadership," said Khalaji, himself a native of Qom and the son of reformist cleric Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Khalaji.
"I think they don't want a nuclear bomb to use it. I think they want nuclear capability to just have full hegemony in the region."
He added that another effect of a nuclear Iran may be a potential cascade effect, as other countries in the region rush to become nuclear states.
"Every country that has reached the level of nuclear potential has realised that you maximise this potential by refraining from the use of your weapons," said author and Iran expert Stephen Kinzer.
"It's equivalent to a situation where you're torturing somebody - you never want to kill them, because then, it's over."
Marvin Weinbaum, former intelligence analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the US State Department and a current scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute, recently argued .. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/israels-gift-iran-6653 .. in an article that a war against Iran would be a mistake, but not because of the questionable ethics of a pre-emptive war or the mass casualties it would cause.
Weinbaum wrote that if Iran was a rational actor and decided against striking back, it would manage to make the world see the US and Israel lumped in as "aggressors", thereby winning hearts and minds while justifying the need for nuclear weapons.
"What we've seen is that Iran can be provocative ... If the kind of attack that they're likely to suffer is going to be one of a limited, surgical kind, and where they can recover from that in the matter of a few years, then there is far more to be gained in taking advantage of the political opportunities that it may afford," Weinbaum told Al Jazeera.
But he also said that he did not believe Iran was aiming to build nuclear weapons to "destroy the Jewish state", as he said is Israel's stated case.
"Do I believe it? No. Because ... were it do to so there would be massive retaliation, not just from Israel - because I think Israel would be limited - but by the United States," said Weinbaum.
"The Iranian leadership, above all, wants to survive. That's their number one objective right now."
The real ramifications of Iran achieving nuclear latency or acquiring weapons, he said, would be in allowing Iran "to throw its weight around in the region" against not only Israel, but other countries in the Gulf region.
"The Arab countries would be living in a very different environment than they are today," said Weinbaum, who dismisses the importance of Israel's nuclear programme in the region, saying that it is "useless" and has failed to "force anyone to do anything".
However, Iran, he said, "has the capacity to overthrow those regimes in the region".
US 'war drums' grow louder
Still, despite the lack of clarity as to what Iran wishes to do with potential nuclear warheads (destroy Israel or flex its muscles) and the stated reluctance of .. http://www.niacinsight.com/2012/03/30/military-leaders-warn-against-war-with-iran/ .. many US military and security experts to support a war against Iran, within the US, there's an increasing sense that Iran poses a serious threat.
"The beating of war drums has intensified, without a doubt, in recent months. It's a matter of great concern because these two countries are now really in each other's faces," said Kinzer.
"We're right in front of Iran with our ships in the Persian Gulf and people are being blown up on the streets of Tehran," he said, referring to Iranian scientists .. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/201211292043795301.html .. who have been the target of assassinations in recent years.
"Meanwhile, Iran is pushing into what Americans consider to be their own sphere of influence ... The enmity between these two countries has become an institution of American foreign policy, but with the elections coming up in the United States, the situation is reaching troubling new heights," said Kinzer.
Issues with logistics and a shortage of international support have lead to talk that Israel might postpone a possible strike for another year, which gives the situation time either to diffuse or intensify.
Indeed, it's uncertain if an attack on its nuclear facilities would act as a final deterrent.
"It is highly unlikely that an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would succeed in preventing an Iranian bomb over the long-term," said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, who specialises in issues of national security with a focus on nuclear weapons and terrorism.
"In fact, it could well bring the day when Iran tested a weapon closer, rather than delay it. Despite recent press excitement, my estimate of the likelihood of an Israeli air strike against Iran this year is about 25 per cent," said Allison - who added that he agreed with the view of the US intelligence community - that Iran was seeking the capability to build nuclear weapons, but has not yet decided to build them.
The efficacy of sanctions and wars
While China, Russia, Syria, Turkey and Venezuela are among countries that maintain decent ties with Iran, with Russia and China at times being the strongest of these allies, the West has largely responded to Iran with 30 years of sanctions.
"There have been various approaches and so far, the American approach seems to be dominant - and this is the approach that we should just hector and criticise and sanction and isolate Iran an push Iran into a corner and make Iran suffer until Iran surrenders," said Kinzer.
That said, he adds that Iran 's "biggest misstep" has been its lack of transparency.
"We don't really know what Iran is doing, and meanwhile they're testing missile delivery systems," said Kinzer.
Iran, he said, has seen the US refrain from attacking North Korea, one of its "axis of evil" enemies, because that enemy has nuclear weapons, while attacking Iraq, which did not.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's convoy in the southern city of Bandar Abbas earlier this month, shouting that they were hungry and suffering.
Although sanctions worked against Libya's nuclear programme, Allison points out that the programme there was not advanced. Sanctions failed to work in Pakistan because the US, he said, relaxed them due to "common interests [for example] the fight against al-Qaeda".
Bringing up Israel's own nuclear weapons programme is non-starter, as the country is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, therefore is not compelled to submit to IAEA inspections and has not faced sanctions for its weapons programme.
But Iran, said Allison, "has hidden behind the rights to dual-use nuclear technology given to it by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while at the same time seeking a nuclear weapon capability" - hence the ever-hardening sanctions, regardless of minimal returns. .. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2010/10/20101030124031952948.html
Dealing with a nuclear Iran
What seems untenable at the moment - that the world could possibly accept Iran as a nuclear power - might indeed be the case.
But Kinzer believes that accepting Iran as a nuclear power is "inevitable".
"The fact is ... more countries are going to becoming nuclear armed. We're going to have to get real and find the kinds of security mechanisms to help deal with that reality. You can't just pick and choose the members of this club forever and that's just something the West is going to have to deal with," he said.
Weinbaum is unsure that any measure would prevent Iran from reaching nuclear capability.
"The jury's out on that," he said.
"We have to see who prevails in Iran ... we have to see what they decide. There is some honest probing here to see how far they are willing to go."
But it seems that, acceptable or not, a mixture of internal politics - which sees the current government struggling for legitimacy - and international struggles - will keep Iran on its current course.
"Khamenei, and others in charge of the nuclear programme, believe that the only way to save the economy, to lift the sanctions and become a normal country is to go nuclear," said Khalaji.
"The Islamic Republic wrongly thinks that if it's more dangerous, it will be more likely to impose its recognition on the world. That's wrong," said Khalaji.
"I don't know anyone who believes that a more dangerous Iran would be safer."
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