Stakes high for nuclear talks by Iran, 6 nations
ALMATY, Kazakhstan - Iran and world powers trying to curb Iran's nuclear progress are coming to the negotiating table this week with the window shrinking on diplomacy. Tehran is moving closer to the ability to make atomic arms, and that risks the threat of Mideast conflict.
Israel says the Islamic Republic is only a few months away from the threshold of having material to turn into a bomb and has vowed to use all means to prevent it from reaching that point. The United States has not said what its "red line" is, but has said it would not tolerate an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.
Any strike on Iran would provoke fierce retaliation directly from Iran and through its Middle East proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, raising the specter of a larger Middle East conflict. The stakes are clearly high for negotiators from six nations meeting their Iranian counterparts Friday and Saturday in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty.
While not mentioning the use of force, the United States and Israel both warned Iran ahead of that meeting that they would not allow it to acquire nuclear arms.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was a model of a country that was "talking but at the same time developing nuclear weapons."
"I think that model certainly can't be allowed to happen in the case of Iran," said Netanyahu Wednesday.
In Washington, a senior U.S. administration official urged Tehran to meet demands from the six powers that it scale back on uranium enrichment - a potential path to nuclear weapons. The official demanded anonymity as a condition for speaking on the issue.
The six - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany - hope the talks will result in at least an incremental advance in a decade of efforts to reduce Iran's bomb-making capacities by curbing its uranium-enrichment program.
The two sides parted in February after meeting in Almaty agreeing to at least keep talking over a new proposal submitted by the six. But they remain vastly divided on what they want from each other.
Iran wants an end to punishing sanctions crippling its economy, imposed to force it to end uranium enrichment. Iran denies any interest in atomic arms.
The six have moved from demanding a total end to enrichment. As a first step, they now are asking Tehran only to stop production and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 20 percent, which is just a technical step away from weapons-grade uranium.
While the six are dangling some sanctions relief, they are not offering to lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports and other punitive measures. The offer is not enough for Iran, so at best, the negotiations will end Saturday with an agreement that enough progress was made to talk again.
