Israel Matzav

Iran clenches its fist

Iran responded to the P - 5+1 countries on Thursday by clenching its fist. According to Iranian media, it demanded to send its low enriched uranium abroad gradually rather than all at once, and it demanded the right to import higher enriched uranium simultaneously with the lower enriched uranium's departure. Those conditions have been labeled 'non-starters' for the West by the media.

Western powers were likely to rebuff Tehran's proposed amendments because their priority is to reduce the stockpile of Iranian LEU to ward off the danger that Iran might turn it into the highly-enriched uranium needed for an atom bomb.

Sending most of the LEU abroad would buy about a year for talks on halting enrichment in Iran in return for incentives to forge a long-term solution to the nuclear dispute.

The powers will see Iran's counter-offer involving nuclear fuel imports as problematic because U.N. sanctions ban trade in nuclear materials, including enriched uranium, with Tehran.

Iran views such sanctions as illegal and unjust.

Israel labeled Iran's offer 'insufficient.'

Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the downside of the agreement was that it granted international recognition to uranium enrichment by Iran.

He urged the international community to go further and demand a complete stop to enrichment on Iranian soil.

'If this agreement is implemented, it will take them back a year, but there is a fly in the ointment. It means that they (the US, Russia and France) recognize that Iran is enriching uranium and that helps them (Iran) with their argument that they are enriching uranium for peaceful purposes,' Barak said.

'It is important to insist on an end to enrichment in Iran,' he told Israel Radio.

President Obama's chance to play hardball looks like it's coming real soon. Let's see if he even steps up to the plate.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:59 PM