Testing Iran’s nuclear intentions: A grand bargain with the Great Satan?

Diplomacy needs help, not just from America, but from Russia, China and Japan too

ON THE principle that it is better to negotiate hopefully than to arrive prematurely at a dangerous impasse, Britain, France and Germany are relieved that President George Bush has now lent his support to their efforts to talk Iran out of its troubling nuclear technologies for enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium. These would give Iran the capacity - though it denies the intent - to build a bomb. America's shift boosts the Europeans' negotiating power, so helping to keep their struggling talks with Iran going, and closes a transatlantic rift that Iran had sought to exploit by playing injured party to a hostile America. It also returns the spotlight to where it ought to be, on Iran's egregious violations of nuclear safeguards. Yet for diplomacy to resolve the nuclear issue, America and Iran will both need to rethink their parts. And others, including Russia, China and Japan, have a role to play too.

If the Europeans cannot induce Iran voluntarily to give up its suspect technologies - it has already brushed aside their proffered support for a bid to join the World Trade Organisation, help with less dangerous nuclear technologies and other inducements, and was this week threatening to call off further talks - should America try? There has long been hopeful talk of a “grand bargain” that would end the frost-bitten hostility between Iran's “Great Satan” and what is in many ways the most problematic of America's “outposts of tryanny”.

Certainly America has a lot to offer Iran, not least because its trade sanctions have for years not just hampered bilateral trade, they have also dampened investment by western firms, particularly in Iran's oil and gas industries. But relations have not just fallen foul of Iran's suspect nuclear ambitions. Iran has long drawn America's ire by supporting armed groups hostile to Israel (whose right to exist it denies) and opposing the Middle East peace process. America bristles, too, at the clerical regime's anti-democratic ways.

But what if Iran were to signal its readiness to give up the nuclear technologies it spent 18 years deceiving international inspectors to acquire? Would Mr Bush still refuse any dealings with the place? He has an even lower regard for North Korea's regime, yet, nose firmly held, America is attempting to negotiate with it under a six-party diplomatic umbrella. Some on his team would rather wait until the two-thirds of Iranians under 30 turn the mullahs out of power - standing ready, meanwhile, to help them do so. But Iran's democratic development lags far behind its nuclear development. If America is to play a more central role in the nuclear diplomacy, it will have to steel itself to deal with the regime Iran has.

That is all the harder, given the tangle of issues in dispute. And on the nuclear issue, Mr Bush is still mulling his diplomatic options. One thing he could usefully do is make clear the ways in which relations might improve with Iran if the nuclear issue could be satisfactorily dealt with.

But there's the rub. For any bargain to be reached, however grand or modest, Iran would have to do what it has so far refused: provide the “objective guarantees” the Europeans and others have asked for it to show that its nuclear intentions are peaceful. After all the lies of the past, the Europeans are right to argue that the only guarantee anyone could have confidence in would be an end to all enrichment and reprocessing.

Yet a strident Iran insists it will “never” give up such technologies. Though it agreed with the Europeans to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing work while talks continue, it has repeatedly demanded that it be allowed to continue “research” using 20 uranium-producing centrifuges that inspectors did not seal, has carried on tinkering with bits of the machinery and, despite a request to desist from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear guardian, has continued construction of a nuclear reactor that is pretty useless for generating electricity, but would be ideally suited for making plutonium for bombs. It has even talked of pulling out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its safeguards.

Give diplomacy a chance

Perhaps, argue the hopefuls, Iran is awaiting a diplomatic offer that it would find harder to refuse. America's more active involvement in the diplomacy could thus help test Iran's real intentions. But what if, as others worry, Iran is determined to do exactly what it says: carry on enriching and reprocessing potentially bomb-usable nuclear materials, come what may?

The Europeans have told Iran that, if it does that, they will support America in taking its nuclear breaches to the UN Security Council. But Iran just shrugs, assuming it can keep playing its critics off against each other, while counting on Russia and China to veto any UN sanctions. Which is why the diplomacy needs all the backing it can get.

Russia is Iran's chief nuclear partner; China and Japan are contemplating big investments in its oil and gas industries. None wants to see a potentially nuclear-armed Iran or the instability that would bring. If all three were to deliver the same uncompromising message to Iran - give up enrichment and reprocessing or expect sanctions to follow - the costs of continuing might suddenly seem truly prohibitive.

Editorial argues that diplomatic negotiations with Iran over its nuclear intentions needs help, not just from America, but from Russia, China and Japan too.