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Iran's Nuclear Response Creates a Quandary

[TIME] If the Obama administration had hoped to get the bulk of Iran's current stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country under a new agreement for reprocessing abroad, those hopes are fading fast. The counter-proposal offered by Iran on Thursday contained such substantive revisions that Western officials are interpreting it as a rejection. The aspect of the deal most welcomed by Tehran was that it represented a kind of tacit acceptance of Iran's enrichment program. Iran had managed to shift the debate from whether or not Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium to measures to safeguard its enriched uranium stockpiles from being used in a weapons program. Yet the proposed deal caused an uproar in Iran, where not only conservatives, but also pragmatists and opposition leaders accused the West of trying to steal the country's nuclear patrimony. "These American cowboys, old British foxes, and Zionist child murderers want to use this ploy to take Iran's uranium and not give it back," wrote a columnist in Kayhan on Monday. Some of the strongest criticism of the deal came from Mir Hossein Moussavi, the leading opposition presidential candidate in the disputed June election, who said: "If the promises given [to the West] are realized, then the hard work of thousands of scientists would be ruined." The Obama administration had hoped the deal would buy more time for its engagement strategy.
2009-11-02 06:00:00
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