Nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Make or break?

The message from Russia and China

WILL Iran take up the offer of negotiations over the future of its nuclear programme? In public at least, diplomats from America, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia are holding their breath. Iran continues to ponder the package of incentives the six countries put to it last week. The hope is that any hard bargaining will be under way before the G8 summit (involving the G7 rich countries plus Russia) in St Petersburg in mid-July.

This week, the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear guardian, had before it yet another report listing inspectors' concerns about Iran's nuclear activities. But the real action was elsewhere. Iran's outspoken president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was in China, quietly sitting in on a meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which includes four Central Asian states and Russia too. The behind-the-scenes messages he and other officials are getting from Russia and China over Iran's nuclear ambitions may determine whether the nuclear diplomacy can succeed.

Both countries have been reluctant to press the other element of the agreed package: economic, financial and political sanctions. But without real costs to weigh against its nuclear plans, Iran will have little reason to consider the suspension of uranium enrichment and plutonium dabbling (both are usable for nuclear fuel-making but abusable for bomb-making) that the Europeans and others have made a condition for negotiations.

Plenty of countries, including Russia and China, but also Japan, India and Malaysia, that trade heavily with Iran are still chary of sanctions, unless ordered by the UN Security Council (where Russia and China, Iran notes, have vetoes). America, meanwhile, has been leaning on foreign banks to curb their dealings with Iran. This week, it added five companies (four in China, and another in the United States but representing a Chinese outfit) to its list of those fingered for assisting Iran's weapons programmes and so banned from doing business with American companies.

When Iran does reply, it is unlikely to give a straight yes or no. It has hinted at counter-proposals to include continued enrichment work, while perhaps accepting temporary restrictions on the number of uranium-spinning centrifuge machines that it operates.

That, Western negotiators stress, is a deal-breaker. A suspension of enrichment work is key to the diplomatic package and a precondition for America to join in direct talks for the first time. In any case, letting Iran continue enriching while talking, says Gary Samore of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, would be an "exercise in futility". The proposals put to Iran allow for such work to resume only when IAEA inspectors are completely satisfied that its programme is entirely peaceful.

At the rate Iran is going, that could take years. After two decades of lies and cover-ups, inspectors still doubt its explanations about past uranium and plutonium work and worry that it may have imported more advanced centrifuges than it has owned up to. They also have suspicions about military links to its nuclear programme, and about work on high-explosive bomb triggers and a potentially nuclear-capable missile cone. This fuels suspicion that Iran really wants a bomb, or the capacity to build one at speed.

Iranian officials acknowledge that, once the techniques for making uranium and plutonium are fully mastered, the only difference between a civilian nuclear programme and a military one is intent. They also insist they have an "absolute right" to nuclear technology. But no one is asking Iran to abandon its nuclear-power programme--all it claims to want. Alongside other economic inducements and security talks that could at some stage involve America, last week's package includes offers of co-operation on other advanced nuclear technologies, including reactor construction and agricultural and medical research, and guaranteed fuel supplies.

Searching for a compromise, one idea in the air is for Iran to go on spinning its centrifuges but using inert gas rather than uranium. But that, says David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think-tank, would leave it free to practise the tricky art of keeping centrifuges spinning for long periods. Whether or not Iran has a hidden military plan, these are just the skills it would need to keep a weapons option open.