P 5+1 to offer Iran a package and time but no sanctions relief

Laura Rozen reports that the P 5+1 (the five veto-wielding Security Council members plus German) plan to offer Iran a package deal during their meeting in Baghdad on Wednesday. The package will not include sanctions relief. For now.

While the details of the proposed package have not been made public, Western officials told Al Monitor that the package does not include sanctions relief at this stage.

Instead, the United States and its P5+1 partners will offer fuel for Tehran’s Research Reactor (TRR) plus safety upgrades to the plant, which is of 1960s vintage. Also potentially on the table: new research reactors that use lower level 3.5 percent enriched uranium, safety upgrades for Iran’s one functioning nuclear power plant at Bushehr and spare parts for its accident-plagued fleet of civilian airliners.

In return, Iran must stop producing uranium enriched to 20 percent and halt activities at Fordow, an enrichment facility built into a mountain near Qom. It is not clear whether Iran would also have to send out its stockpile of more than 100 kg of the fuel.

They're also planning to offer Iran what it needs most: Time.

“Expectations are guarded,” a second western official told Al Monitor Tuesday. “If we talk substantively on elements of a deal and agree to meet again in three weeks, Baghdad will have been a success.”

What could go wrong?