Eye on Iran: Iran's Leader Appears Unbending on Core Nuclear Issues, Say Experts

Join UANI           Top Stories LAT: "Iran's agreement last year to join international negotiations over its disputed nuclear program stirred a new debate about the country's enigmatic supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Was the cleric an implacable revolutionary, as he claimed, who would never yield to the West? Or did he have a less visible pragmatic side that could allow compromise over his country's controversial nuclear program? This month's international negotiations in Vienna over that program have filled in more details about the elusive leader. And in the view of some Western officials and private experts, the emerging portrait is not encouraging for those who hope for a landmark nuclear deal that would restrict Iran to nonmilitary nuclear activities and resolve a top world security issue. The talks, which were extended for four months after failing to reach a deal by a July 20 deadline, suggested that Khamenei may be willing to compromise on some important issues. But on the contentious core question - Iran's uranium enrichment capacity - Khamenei signaled he won't yield to the demands of six world powers for a scaled-back program, but rather insists on having a bigger effort, sooner, than the world powers will accept... 'He doesn't seem ready to make the fundamental compromise,' said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist at Brookings Institution." http://t.uani.com/1yVEf53 Reuters: "Major powers appear to have made only limited headway in making sure Iran will not be able to build an atomic bomb any time soon, underlining the uphill task they face after talks that began in February were extended by four months... On the most contentious issue in the decade-old standoff - Iran's capacity to make nuclear fuel that has military uses as well as the civilian ones Tehran argues for - positions remain far apart. The United States, France, Germany, Russia, China and Britain want Iran to scale back its nuclear program. Iran says it is entirely peaceful and wants sanctions lifted quickly. 'We still have a considerable way to go,' a U.S. administration official said. Iran's enrichment capacity goes to the heart of the dispute over its atomic ambitions as it determines the so-called breakout timeline - how long it would take to produce enough highly refined uranium for one nuclear weapon." http://t.uani.com/1qy7zhx Trend: "Five Iranian citizens were lashed in public in the country's western city of Kermanshah due to breaking of the Ramadan fast. Deputy Prosecutor of Kermanshah province, Ali Ashraf Karami said that the mentioned persons were sentenced to lashing due to eating in public during fasting hours in the month of Ramadan, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on July 22." http://t.uani.com/WAVkDA     Sanctions Relief Trend: "The Taiwanese shipping line Wan Hai berthed at Iran's Shahid Rajaee Port as EU sanctions against the country's shipping industry have been eased, the Fars news agency reported on July 22. Wan Hai container with 6,000 TEU capacity berthed at Shahid Rajaee Port in the southern province of Hormozgan neighboring the Persian Gulf on July 22. Before the easing of sanctions, ships had to unload cargoes at ports in Turkey, the UAE, Georgia, and Oman, and then the cargoes were transported to Iran. Direct shipment through Shahid Rajaee Port will decrease costs $40,000-100,000 per ton of cargo. Other ships from India, China, and South Korea are also scheduled to berth at Shahid Rajaee Port in the future, the IRNA news agency quoted Ali Jahandideh, the deputy director of the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran as saying on July 21." http://t.uani.com/1o4T8OG  Human Rights RFE/RL: "April 16 was supposed to be the last day of Balal's life. Seven years after stabbing another teen dead in a street fight, Balal was to be publicly executed in front of his victim's family, in a small town in Iran's northern province of Mazandaran. Instead, Balal was given a new lease on life when, in the very last minute, he was spared by his victim's mother. The dramatic scenes of Balal, his neck in a noose, being pardoned have received extensive coverage in the media and on social-networking sites. Since then the scene has been reenacted dozens of times in a wave of forgiveness that belies the authorities' efforts to push the death penalty. Last week alone, according to the reformist 'Shargh' daily, nine individuals sentenced to death were pardoned by victims' families. Observers say a concerted publicity campaign is at play, but money is also a factor." http://t.uani.com/1nh2Xs5 Domestic Politics Al-Monitor: "The spokesman for a parliamentary investigative committee has said that cases of personnel violations under the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration have been sent to the judiciary. Mostafa Afzali Fard, spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's Article 90 Commission, did not specify which cases or officials in the previous administration were under investigation. However, he told the Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency that the judiciary had a responsibility to attend to the cases 'with speed.' The most recent accusation of corruption under the Ahmadinejad presidency surfaced July 16. According to Iranian parliamentarian, Gholamali Jaffarizadeh Imanabadi, 450,000 of 650,000 personnel hired under the previous administration were 'illegally employed,' some of them reportedly through family and personal connections." http://t.uani.com/Upmmfd Opinion & Analysis UANI Advisory Board Member Michael Singh in WSJ: "In any negotiation, the zone of possible agreement, or range of outcomes acceptable to both sides, is determined by how each side answers two questions: How valuable is a deal (based on its particulars, the offering party's trustworthiness and the legal framework upholding it)? And is the most likely alternative to an agreement better or worse for each side's interests? The Obama administration has focused on the first question, making clear that it is more willing than its predecessors to accept a large Iranian nuclear program and engaging directly with Tehran to build trust. Meanwhile, it has failed to persuade Iran that rejecting a deal would have alarming consequences. President Barack Obama's hesitancy to use force in Syria and Iraq has undermined his military threats against Iran, and the specter of additional sanctions was undercut by the acrimony between the White House and Congress over the Kirk-Menendez bill on Iran sanctions. From Iran's perspective-borne out by the recent extension of talks-the alternative to negotiations is just more negotiations. This diminishes its incentive to accept even a generous deal. Negotiating tactics determine which among the possible range of outcomes is realized. So far, Iran's tactical prowess has outmatched ours. The administration credits crippling economic pressure for bringing Iran to the negotiating table. But the interim agreement with Iran contained a vital concession Tehran had been seeking for years: U.S. acquiescence to uranium enrichment. So as considerable as the economic pressure was, it is impossible to know whether that alone would have been enough to induce an Iranian shift. What's more, the U.S. got little in return for this concession. Rather, it belittled its own previous position on zero enrichment as 'maximalist' and even 'ridiculous.'  This enormous concession fundamentally changed American goals in the negotiations, yet our dismissal of the change prevented us from portraying it as such and extracting steps from Iran of similar magnitude. This and other major concessions-for example, that the restrictions on Iran would be temporary, not permanent-were made in the interim agreement, before the current round of talks even began. As a result, the U.S. began the most recent talks having largely already reached our bottom line. Iran, on the other hand, started from a position that actually was 'maximalist': that it required not only the 19,000 centrifuges it then possessed but an additional 30,000 or more. Washington was thus on its back foot: Iran's 'compromise' of simply maintaining its current centrifuge stocks looked reasonable in comparison to its starting position, while Iranian negotiators could portray the U.S. as inflexible for making few additional concessions. Going forward, the U.S. will need to correct strategic and tactical shortcomings by bolstering the credibility of the alternatives to making a deal-both sanctions and a military strike-and playing hardball at the negotiating table." http://t.uani.com/WAX8wD Robert Zarate in USA Today: "As the July 20 deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran is delayed four months, the United States should expand non-military pressure on Iran to boost the chances of a breakthrough. Iran should face a clear choice - make significant concessions before the new Nov. 24 deadline or suffer crippling economic sanctions... It's alarming that Washington's generous offer of eventual comprehensive sanctions relief hasn't persuaded Tehran to make any significant nuclear concessions. In fact, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently declared that his regime, rather than reduce its fleet of 19,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium, should increase it up to 190,000 units. With Iran unwilling to make significant nuclear concessions, the Obama administration has decided to put more time on the clock for a deal. But if that's all it does, it's almost certain to fail. Non-military pressure on Iran, in the form of economic sanctions, reopened the door to diplomacy. As President Obama conceded to Congress in his 2014 State of the Union, 'The sanctions that we put in place helped make this opportunity possible.' In turn, expanded non-military pressure can keep open the diplomatic door and persuade Iran to accept a good nuclear deal that's comprehensive, airtight and long-lasting. The White House should start by working with Congress. Sanctions legislation introduced by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., last December, for example, offers a fruitful approach. It would create a new framework that better balances diplomacy with non-military pressure, promising to impose decisive and crippling economic sanctions if Iran won't make significant nuclear concessions." http://t.uani.com/UpoqDS Colin Kahl in FP: "As talks over Iran's disputed nuclear program enter the home stretch, Tehran has placed a major obstacle in the way of a diplomatic solution: insistence on an industrial-scale uranium enrichment program... But putting extra time on the clock won't make much difference unless Iran is willing to make real concessions on the enrichment issue. On July 7, in a major speech in Tehran, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate 'decider' on the nuclear issue, declared that Iran has an 'absolute need' of 190,000 'separative work units' (SWUs) for its nuclear program. This highly technical term represents a measure of the productive capacity of Iranian centrifuges, the cylindrical machines used to enrich uranium to fuel nuclear reactors -- or, potentially, nuclear bombs. Iran currently operates around 10,000 first-generation 'IR-1' centrifuges, has installed another 8,000 IR-1s, and has installed but is not yet operating 1,000 more advanced 'IR-2m' models. When the efficiency of these machines is calculated, Khamenei's stated goal for Iran's program would represent a ten- to twentyfold increase in Iran's current enrichment capacity. A program that large could theoretically provide an indigenous supply of fuel for nuclear power plants, Tehran's stated intention. But it could also allow Iran to rapidly 'break out,' racing to produce bomb-grade uranium so quickly that the international community couldn't stop it. For the United States and the five other world powers (Britain, China, France, and Russia, plus Germany) known collectively as the P5+1, Iran's apparent bottom line is a showstopper. Until Iran restores international confidence in its nuclear intentions, the P5+1 justifiably sees an industrial-sized enrichment capacity as incompatible with the goal of ongoing talks to ensure Iran's program remains solely for peaceful purposes. For that reason, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration and its negotiating partners are demanding at least a two-thirds reduction in Iran's current enrichment capacity. Even Russia and China, the P5+1 members traditionally most sympathetic to Iran, have told Iranian negotiators that their position on enrichment capacity is untenable." http://t.uani.com/1tuWoU2 Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.