New Twist in Iran on Plan for Nuclear Fuel 
By Richard Bernstein and David E. Sanger
December 29, 2005
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/international/middleeast/29iran.html
BERLIN, Dec. 28 - In what may herald a sharp reversal of previous statements, a senior Iranian official said Wednesday that Iran would seriously and enthusiastically study a Russian proposal aimed at breaking the deadlock on efforts to block Iran from enriching nuclear fuel. 
The official, Javad Vaeedi, deputy head of the Supreme National Security Council, was referring to a proposal made by Russia several weeks ago under which Iranian-produced uranium gas would be processed into fuel in Russia and returned to Iran. 
The circuitous route would ensure that Iran would be able to produce fuel only for nuclear power, and could not enrich the uranium into a form that could be used in weapons. It would also slow Iran's ability to obtain enrichment technology. 
Last week in Vienna, Mohammad Mehdi Akhondzadeh, the leader of the delegation that has been conducting talks with British, German and French negotiators, rejected the same proposal, saying that Iran had told the Europeans to act on the proposition that enrichment will be conducted inside Iran, and that any other option was unacceptable and an insult.
It is difficult to ascertain Iraq's true position on the issue. There have been some hints of a struggle within the new government over nuclear policy, American and European officials say, but a senior American official said last week, We're not clear who is calling the shots.
Iran has insisted on many occasions that it has the right to develop the technology to produce nuclear fuel on its own territory. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has responded that the issue is not one of rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed, but rather a question of whether Iran can be trusted, after repeatedly deceiving the International Atomic Energy Agency about its facilities and abilities.
Iran claims that its nuclear program, parts of which it carried out clandestinely for 18 years before it was discovered by United Nations inspectors, is only to generate power, but the United States and Europe believe the true goal is to develop nuclear weapons.
Mr. Vaeedi's statement indicating a more welcoming attitude toward the Russian proposal was reported Wednesday by the Iranian Student News Service, which has been used in the past to make policy declarations to the world.
One interpretation is that Iran, faced with the possibility that the Europeans will halt the talks once and for all and refer Iran's violations of the nonproliferation accord to the United Nations Security Council for a vote on sanctions, has decided that the Russian proposal is an acceptable compromise.
But it seemed equally likely that Iran was not so much making a policy change as it was continuing the jockeying for international support that has been taking place over the past several months. The United States and the three European nations have been simultaneously trying to convince Russia and China that Iran is seeking a weapon, and pressing them to tell Tehran that neither would block action at the Security Council.
The trouble is that when they say they'll give it serious study, it doesn't mean they'll accept it, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan research group that follows developments in Iran, said of Mr. Vaeedi's statement. Iran's problem is that just to turn down the Russian proposal adds a lot of support to those who want to bring the matter to the Security Council. 
The Europeans suspended the talks with Iran in August when Iran, breaking an agreement to cease all uranium processing activities while the talks were under way, began converting uranium into gas at a plant in Isfahan, an activity that it has vowed to continue.
The conversion into a gas is a major step in producing nuclear fuel, and the Europeans and Americans seem willing to allow that to go forward in Iran, though for much of the year they have said even that technology could not remain in Iranian hands.
The next step would be the enrichment of the gas into material that can be used either to generate electricity or to build a bomb, which is the stage of the process that Russia has offered to conduct. Russia would stand to earn tens of millions of dollars in fees for the service.
Following the suspension of negotiations, the next natural move for the Europeans and the United States would have been to carry out a longstanding threat to refer Iran to the Security Council for sanctions. But the Western countries have hesitated to do that because of a likely veto of sanctions by Russia and China, both of which have major commercial ties to Iran.
The European strategy since then has clearly been to hold open the possibility of resuming talks, either to make real progress on the substance of Iran's nuclear program, or to persuade Russia and China that everything has been done to give Iran an opportunity to come to an agreement and that the only option is sanctions.
Russia has been reported in recent weeks to be growing impatient with what it has come to see as Iranian intransigence. Russia also joined the European countries and the United States in harshly criticizing remarks by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he has denied that the Holocaust occurred and said Israel should be wiped off the map.
Last week in Vienna, the three European countries and Iran held talks about whether to resume negotiations. The result was inconclusive, and another meeting has been scheduled for January. It was at last week's meeting that Mr. Akhondzadeh seemed to reject the Russian proposal.
The very different tone taken Wednesday by Mr. Vaeedi in Teheran could be aimed at persuading the Europeans to reopen talks, and to forestall support for sanctions by Russia and China.
They'd seemed to be hardening over the last several months, Mr. Albright said of the Iranians, so I'd be surprised if this statement was a real change of position.
Richard Bernstein reported from Berlin for this article, and David E. Sanger from Waco, Tex.