Time Inc.
President Barack Obama took office promising to pursue a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program, but so far, he's gotten little out of Tehran. So little, in fact, that the President has given Iran a Sept. 15 deadline to respond positively to his offer of negotiations, or face a heightening of sanctions. As U.S. officials huddled with their European, Russian and Chinese counterparts in Germany on Sept. 2 to review the issue, Iran signaled that it will indeed respond — by offering its own package of proposals to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the standoff. Western leaders at the meeting in Germany urged Iran to agree to a meeting with Russia, China, the key European nations and the U.S. before Sept. 23. But nobody is expecting Iran's proposals to come close to meeting Western demands, and that could leave Obama facing the unenviable choice of being painted as feckless or having to move down a road of escalation that puts a diplomatic solution further beyond reach.
"We can expect that the new Iranian package, much like the most recent Western proposals presented to Iran, will mostly be a repackaging of old positions," says Trita Parsi, an Iran analyst and president of the National Iranian American Council. Until now, Western governments have demanded that Iran suspend its uranium-enrichment program and negotiate an agreement to relinquish it in exchange for a package of economic incentives. But Iran insists that its much-scrutinized enrichment is for peaceful purposes, which it claims as a right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its proposals to resolve the standoff have typically focused on strengthening international safeguards against the weaponization of its enrichment facilities. Parsi expects that, at best, the Iranian package will suggest ways of strengthening the international inspection regime. "That's very valuable in itself," he says, "but it's short of what the U.S. has been demanding so far." (Read more...)
0 comments:
Post a Comment