Word: westernness
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...gloomy skepticism descended on Washington in the days after the Geneva meeting, with many suggesting that Iran was simply playing for time and not with open cards. The deeper reality, though, is that even if Iran cooperates, it won't necessarily do so on Western terms. The progress made in Geneva, for example, skirted the primary demand that the U.S. and its European allies have pressed since 2006: that Iran freeze and eventually give up its uranium-enrichment program in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives. (See pictures of IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei...
...Security Council resolutions, backed by limited sanctions, require that Iran suspend enrichment until transparency concerns raised by the IAEA are settled. But the Western demand that Iran cede the right to enrich its own uranium is a more ambitious goal that doesn't have U.N. backing - because enrichment under safeguards to prevent weaponization is a right of all signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). When Iran insists it won't negotiate over its "nuclear rights," that's a signal that it has no intention of giving up enrichment. And the Iranians have thus far declined to discuss...
...diplomatic solution in the works or that Iran is simply playing for time. What it does mean is that Iran will try to focus the diplomacy on strengthening safeguards against weaponization of nuclear material, rather than on halting the production of such material in the first place, as the Western powers have demanded. The U.S. and its allies had sought to prevent Iran from achieving a "breakout" capacity - i.e., assembling sufficient civilian nuclear infrastructure to allow it to move relatively quickly to build a bomb should it choose to break out of the NPT, in the manner that a country...
...tailor its positions to what will be acceptable to Russia, China and some of the Europeans than it is to heed the demands put forward by the U.S. and its key allies. (Neither Moscow nor Beijing believes Iran is building nuclear weapons, even if they're sympathetic to Western concerns over the need for greater safeguards against it doing so.) The question would then become whether the West is prepared to take Iran's less than satisfactory "yes" for an answer...
...know-how is a milestone Iran passed long before Bush had even left the Oval Office, and enrichment has been a fact on the ground in Iran for the past four years. And whether that reality is, in fact, reversible, has increasingly come into question, even in Western capitals. The Iranians appear impervious to the sanctions already implemented, and as long as they cooperate with efforts to strengthen safeguards against weaponization, it's unlikely that there will be sufficient international support to significantly strengthen the sanctions regime...