Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...drama of last week's revelation that Iran has been secretly building an underground uranium-enrichment facility may have raised expectations that this week's Geneva talks would be a kind of high-noon showdown. Instead, the meeting on Oct. 1 between Iran's nuclear negotiator and representatives of the Western powers and Russia and China is more likely to be the opening exchange of a tortuous conversation that will continue for months...
...renewal of talks with Tehran follows President Barack Obama's warning to Iran that it must discuss Western concerns about its nuclear program or else face a new round of sanctions. But Iran has hardly been in an accommodating mood. A week ago it wrote to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to reveal that it was building a uranium-enrichment facility in the mountains near Qom. (Obama announced the existence of the hitherto secret facility four days later, and U.S. officials claimed that Tehran had preempted him only because it was aware that it had been caught red-handed...
...secrecy and partially underground location on a military base, and second, the fact that its limited capacity (3,000 centrifuges) makes it unsuitable for supplying reactor fuel but potentially capable of slowly amassing weapons-grade material. Iran continues to insist that it is simply exercising its right to develop nuclear-energy infrastructure as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But on Sept. 28, Tehran also test-fired a medium-range missile capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military bases in the gulf, underscoring its threat to retaliate for any attack on its nuclear facilities. And Iranian officials have...
Tehran's approach has been to try to deal with the nuclear issue through the IAEA exclusively and to reject U.N. Security Council demands that it freeze uranium enrichment. Its insistence on its nuclear "rights" is a statement of its rejection of the demand from Western countries that it give up the right to enrich uranium, even for peaceful purposes, because of concerns about its intentions. Washington and its allies are debating whether the West can sustain that demand or could accept continued enrichment in Iran but under stricter safeguards against weaponization. Iran is making clear where it plans...
...wrote in the Washington Post on Sept. 27, "At this week's talks, Iran's representatives are likely to subtly hint of cooperation to come - but only if talks continue. However, such gestures do not mean Iran is prepared to offer meaningful concessions and impose any restraints on its nuclear ambitions." And the most distasteful aspect of the process may be that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad uses the talks to burnish the legitimacy of a regime at odds with millions of its own people...