Darkest hour before dawn, or just a flop?

Laura Rozen reports in detail on the failure to make progress on nuclear issues in the P5+1 talks with Iran in Istanbul. The press will no doubt say this is a flop.

I certainly wouldn’t argue it is success, but note the absence of more threatened sanctions, the “open door” to further, unscheduled discussions, and the updated fuel swap proposal left on the table for the Iranians to take back to Tehran.  This smells to me like the beginning of a negotiation, not the end of one, at least on the P5 end.

The sticking point seems to be recognition of Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium.  This is a complicated legal issue that I won’t pretend to elucidate.  Suffice it to say that I don’t know of any country that has given up enrichment technology once it has acquired it, even if it may have stopped enrichment or limited its extent.  We may not worry anymore about Brazil or Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, but it is not because they have given up their enrichment technology.

Iran won’t either–that is quite clear.  The P5+1 are trying to finesse this issue with the avowedly pragmatic swap agreement, which would remove stocks of enriched uranium from Iran and limit the extent of enrichment.  But the Iranians are wanting an acknowledgment of their “right” to enrich even as they give up the enriched material.  This doesn’t strike me as an insoluble problem–and it has appeared in the recent past that Hillary Clinton was flexible on the issue.

That said, the P5+1 will want to be certain that Iran has seriously abandoned its nuclear weapons program before agreeing, either explicitly or implicitly, to Iran’s continuing to enrich.  That would require more intrusive inspections and a more serious statement by Tehran of its commitment.  Other countries have moved in this direction–Argentina, Brazil, Libya and South Africa are not such bad analogues.

It is impossible to be hopeful that Tehran will go in their direction.  Two factors weigh heavily in the direction of keeping the Iranian nuclear weapons option open:  a fragmented but nationalist political leadership that makes it difficult for any one component to compromise without being sharply criticized by others; real regional incentives to gain the power and prestige that some think would accrue to Iran as a nuclear weapons state, or even as a potential nuclear weapon state.

Tehran also had reason to be belligerent and recalcitrant during this particular meeting.  The murders of its nuclear scientists, the apparently successful Stuxnet attack on its centrifuges, and Israel’s apparent assessment that Iran would not be able to get nuclear weapons until 2015 have combined to lessen the likelihood of a military attack.

That said I doubt this is the end of the negotiations.  Too much is at stake for Iran, Israel and the P5.  Before reaching any solid conclusion, let’s wait for Acting Foreign Minister Salehi’s reaction to what the Iranian delegation brings back from Istanbul.