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Iran Ready to Talk?

Iran Ready to Talk?

U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross argues compellingly in today’s New York Times that Iran sanctions are biting hard and that Tehran may be getting in the mood for serious negotiations. In particular, Ross reports that Iran has declared its willingness to discuss the so-called Russian step-by-step plan, in which parties to the nuclear dispute take reciprocal actions in four stages.

As summarized by Peter Crail in an Arms Control Association issue brief on January 25, in the Russian plan:

• Iran would initially freeze expansion of its uranium enrichment program and freeze enrichment at 5 percent
• the IAEA would gradually get greater access to sensitive facilities and key individuals
• eventually Iran would suspend enrichment for three months
• the P5 + 1, collectively, would gradually lift UN sanctions
• the P5 + 1 individually would lift sanctions
• the P5 + 1 would provide incentives offered in 2006 and 2008 proposals

I remain skeptical about whether the nuclear dispute can be settled on terms that are limited essentially to elements of the dispute. But if in fact Iran is no readier for a “grand bargain” than its main counter-party, the United Stats, then perhaps the Russian plan will prove a viable way to go.

Photo Credit: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

 

Author

William Sweet

Bill Sweet has been writing about nuclear arms control and peace politics since interning at the IAEA in Vienna during summer 1974, right after India's test of a "peaceful nuclear device." As an editor and writer for Congressional Quarterly, Physics Today and IEEE Spectrum magazine he wrote about the freeze and European peace movements, space weaponry and Star Wars, Iraq, North Korea and Iran. His work has appeared in magazines like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and The New Republic, as well as in The New York Times, the LA Times, Newsday and the Baltimore Sun. The author of two books--The Nuclear Age: Energy, Proliferation and the Arms Race, and Kicking the Carbon Habit: The Case for Renewable and Nuclear Energy--he recently published "Situating Putin," a group of essays about contemporary Russia, as an e-book. He teaches European history as an adjunct at CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College.