Word: uranium
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Iran insists its nuclear intentions are confined to generating electricity, but the concern of the U.S. and its allies is that the infrastructure of a civilian nuclear program - particularly uranium enrichment - puts a nuclear weapon within short-term reach should Iran decide to assemble one. (Israel and U.S. believe that Iran has not yet taken such a decision, and to do so it would have to expel the international inspectors that currently monitor its enrichment facility at Natanz. That's because the uranium already enriched there would have to be reprocessed to a far higher degree of enrichment to create...
...Israelis want to limit the diplomatic time frame out of fear that Iran will use open-ended talks as a cover for expanding its nuclear infrastructure. After all, even the Bush Administration had, in its final years, backed away from demanding that Iran suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition for talks, and Obama is unlikely to resuscitate a position to which the Iranians have shown no intention to concede. Instead, he seeks to create the most favorable conditions for diplomacy to work, because the alternatives are so unpalatable. Military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities are deemed...
Until now, the European diplomacy backed by the Bush Administration has aimed at getting Iran first to suspend uranium enrichment and then to agree to forgo the right to enrichment on its own soil, instead importing the fuel for its nuclear-energy program, in exchange for a package of political, economic and diplomatic incentives. Even if the U.S. agrees to talk while Iran's centrifuges are spinning, what's less clear is whether Washington and its allies will eventually settle for less than Iran forgoing enrichment altogether, and accept some level of low-grade enrichment being conducted under an expanded...
...purpose of seeking to deny Iran enrichment capability had been, as President Bush stressed, to prevent Iran from "mastering the technology" to create bomb-grade matériel. But Iran has clearly now mastered enrichment technology, producing a steadily growing stockpile of low-enriched uranium. While the U.S. would obviously like Tehran to dismantle its enrichment facilities, there's widespread doubt in Washington and beyond that the Iranians would agree...
...highly unlikely that the United States will be able to persuade or pressure Iran to forgo uranium enrichment entirely," former Bush Administration State Department official and current Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass recently noted. "The best that can be hoped for is a ceiling on what Tehran does - in particular, not enrich uranium to a concentration required for a weapon - and intrusive inspections so that the world can be confident of this. The outcome is less than ideal, to say the least, but it is one we could live with...