Pentagon chief says Iran’s response to nuclear proposal is disappointing

ANKARA, Turkey — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and a conservative official in Tehran
found something they could agree on Saturday, as each dismissed the
Iranian foreign minister’s suggestion that a deal was close on Iran’s nuclear program.

Gates said he was disappointed in Iran’s response to a months-old proposal backed by the Obama administration in which Iran would exchange a limited quantity of low-enriched uranium for fuel plates for a Tehran medical reactor.

“I do not have the sense we are close to an agreement,” he said at a round-table meeting with journalists in Istanbul, where he also suggested that Washington’s patience had limits.

“The reality is, the longer that this goes on and the longer they continue to enrich, the value of the Tehran research reactor proposal as a reassurance to the international community diminishes,” Gates said.

Speaking at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country could accept the Tehran reactor proposal, but suggested there was some give-and-take on how much uranium could be enriched.

“It is very common that in business the buyer talks
about quantity and the seller about the price,” Mottaki said. “We would
inform the parties about our requirements. It may be less, it may be
more” than the 2,650 pounds of uranium to be sent to Russia and France under the terms of the United Nations-backed proposal presented last year.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that the government was open to the fuel exchange
proposal, surprising some analysts. But hard-line news media associated
with Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard rejected any possibility of a nuclear swap, while
the powerful speaker of parliament took to the airwaves Saturday to
denounce any deal.

“The Western governments are apparently seeking to sell out Iran’s enriched uranium under the pretext of its exchange with higher-enriched materials,” said Ali Larijani, according to state radio.

“You are after a kind of political deception,” he said, addressing the West. “You intend to swindle Iran out of its enriched materials.”

Iran insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, while the West and Israel allege Iran is pursuing a weapons program.

Some consider the flurry of contradictory messages from Iran is a maneuver aimed at distracting attention from Iran’s
domestic political crisis, and giving the Chinese and Russians
diplomatic cover to avoid joining the West in imposing tougher
sanctions on Iran.

But others insist that Ahmadinejad and his allies
want to make a deal with the West but are being thwarted by more
powerful hard-liners in the political establishment.

“I’m sure Iranian leaders are divided about the
nuclear fuel exchange deal,” said one Iranian analyst, speaking on
condition of anonymity. “Ahmadinejad and Mottaki have given the green
light for the deal to go ahead, while today (the newspapers) Kayhan and
Jomhouri Eslami have sharply criticized Ahmadinejad and opposed the
deal.” He noted that the heads of both papers are directly named by
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

Western officials who had gathered in Munich
for the annual security conference said time was running out for the
proposal, which was intended to create diplomatic breathing room by
bringing Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile below the threshold for making a nuclear weapon.

“Our hand remains stretched out,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. “But it is so far hanging into the empty space.”

With U.S. and Western patience with Iran eroding, Gates pressed the case for stepped-up sanctions against Iran, arguing that the countries negotiating with Iran had always agreed to apply pressure if engagement failed.

“The purpose of the pressure would be to bring Iran back to the negotiating table to negotiate seriously about constraining the program,” Gates said in Istanbul.
“The reality is they have done nothing to reassure the international
community that they are prepared to comply with the (Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty) or stop their progress toward a nuclear
weapon.”

Efforts to impose broad, painful international sanctions have been thwarted by China and Russia, which both have veto power on the U.N. Security Council. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi brushed off talk of imposing fresh sanctions on Iran, which has been punished several times at the Security Council for its continued production of nuclear fuel.

“In order not to complicate the situation, it is better to concentrate on dialogue,” he said Friday in Munich.

But Gates said he was an optimist and would continue to push for Chinese cooperation on sanctions.

“There will still be an effort to engage with China,” he said. “And I personally don’t believe that door has closed.”

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(c) 2010, Tribune Co.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.