U.S. will reportedly demand closure of Iranian nuclear facility, stop to uranium production in talks

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

Quite tragically, it appears that the United States will be taking the approach to Iran’s nuclear program advocated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming multi-party nuclear talks to be held in Turkey.

According to American and European diplomats cited by the New York Times, the Obama administration and its allies in Europe will open the negotiations by calling for the immediate closure and eventual dismantling of the recently completed underground nuclear facility.

They will also reportedly be pushing for a halt in Iran’s uranium production, which the New York Times erroneously claims “is considered just a few steps from bomb grade.”

In reality, it is quite a long way from weapons grade uranium, but given the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta all agree that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons it is a non-issue.

The diplomats reportedly said that they will also seek to have all existing stockpiles of uranium shipped out of Iran, which is also what Netanyahu was advocating.

President Obama has called this Iran’s “last chance” to resolve what the Times calls their “nuclear confrontation with the United Nations and the West” in a diplomatic manner.

Although, the nation which is actually confronting the world with a nuclear threat is not Iran, but one of the nations that is so loudly crying foul in the case of Iran: Israel.

Israel’s position in this whole fiasco is ludicrously hypocritical, and that is an understatement.

The West is now seeking to have the underground nuclear facility of Fordo near the Iranian holy city of Qom completely shut down, forcing the nations’ leadership to throw away their massive investment into the facility which is hardened against airstrikes.

As of now it is unclear if Western diplomats will be able to accept anything short of a complete closure and disassembly of Fordo, but it is likely the case that the Iranian leadership will resist these calls as much as possible.

“We have no idea how the Iranians will react,” one senior administration official said. “We probably won’t know after the first meeting.”

That being said, the latest sanctions on Iranian oil exports are set to come into effect in the early summer, which will bring even more pronounced economic suffering to the Iranian people.

Currently it seems that the West is hoping that the heavy use of sanctions and the threat of military force both from Israel and the United States – which has steadily been building up forces in the region and has planned for this to continue for some time – will somehow push the Iranians to give up their peaceful nuclear program.

The Times notes that some “experts fear the tough conditions being set could instead swing the debate in favor of Iran’s hard-liners,” which I think is an accurate projection.

Recently Iran has objected to having the talks held in the Turkish capital of Istanbul, calling for the talks to be held in what they consider a more neutral location like Iraq or China.

According to the Times has nonsensically “underscored doubts among Obama administration officials and their European partners about Iran’s readiness to negotiate seriously and to finally answer questions from international nuclear inspectors.”

Interestingly, the Times cites Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, a leading Iranian lawmaker, who said in a statement on the Parliament’s website on Friday that Iran “has the scientific and technological capability” to produce a nuclear weapon “but will never choose this path.”

Oddly, the statement was removed by late Saturday.

The Times points to Israeli and British figures who somehow manage to look at the exact same evidence examined by individuals in the United States and come to a completely different conclusion.

Indeed, as I mentioned previously, it has been stated many times that Iran does not possess and is not pursuing nuclear weapons, yet somehow people still continue to claim – without a shred of evidence – that Iran has made the decision to either move towards a nuclear weapon or what they like to call “a nuclear weapons capability.”

It is worth noting that it was recently reported that Israel already has special forces operating in Iran attempting to gather evidence to support a strike, although as I pointed out at the time it could very well be a psychological operation.

American and European officials reportedly say that they cannot see themselves agreeing to anything which would leave Iran with a stockpile of uranium, which they have currently enriched to 20 percent.

“This may be the most complex negotiation I’ve ever seen the president enter,” one unnamed senior administration official said recently. “It’s got the Democrats and Republicans looking to score points, the Russians and the Chinese trying to water down the sanctions, the French pushing for harsher actions and the Israelis threatening to take the program out.”

The British and French are reportedly concerned that Obama might draw out the talks – even if they aren’t making any progress – through the upcoming presidential election in order to avoid the negative implications of a potential military strike.

However, it is worth noting that all of the assets for a military strike are already in place, as I have heavily documented in my series, “Iran: a quickly evolving geopolitical imbroglio,” which means that a strike could potentially occur as soon as someone gives the go ahead.

Leaders in Europe and Israel reportedly believe that such a move on Obama’s part would play into Iran’s supposed strategy to use the talks in order to give themselves time to keep their centrifuges running, although this is essentially what Netanyahu has been claiming by calling the talks a “trap.”

Officials have reportedly said that their first priority is to force Iran to ship all of their uranium out of the nation and close the underground facility of Fordo, after which they will move to have Iran dismantle facilities.

The Times notes that Iran has not even produced enough uranium to produce a single nuclear weapon – 100 kilograms at 20 percent enrichment – even if the uranium had been enriched to weapons grade, which is far from the case.

“Our position is clear: Iran must live up to its international obligations, including full suspension of uranium enrichment as required by multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, said Friday.

For some reason, Israel is allowed to continue with their secretive program outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and without international scrutiny, yet when Iran wants to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, they are demonized.

It makes so little sense; it is almost hard to believe that international figures could hold such a blatantly nonsensical position.

“What we are looking for is a way to acknowledge Iran’s right to enrich, but only at levels that would give us plenty of warning if they moved toward a weapon,” one European diplomat familiar with the internal debates said.

However, 20 percent enrichment still gives plenty of time before Iran would be able to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon.

Furthermore, they are not even pursuing the technology involved in creating a nuclear weapon – which requires a lot more than just weapons grade uranium – so the entire basis of the argument is laughable.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear power purposes, but the West continues to erroneously claim that they have breached the treaty.

Once again, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has had to explicitly say that the Iranian program does not exceed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that they are open to any proposal for nuclear cooperation.

This makes me wonder how the Western establishment media and government figures will attempt to twist this in order to further make Ahmadinejad out to be some bloodthirsty madman in an effort to make the international community ignore the preponderance of evidence in favor of the West’s narrative.

The Western players in the negotiations have already said that Iran must move forward in nuclear talks without any preconditions, as the previous talks in January of last year involved Iran demanding that Britain, France, Russia, the United States and Germany all lift their sanctions on Iran and recognize the Iranian right to enrich uranium as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Of course, the West did not accept such a precondition, which is hardly surprising given the antagonistic and militaristic approach they have been taking.

It has been reported that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a mysterious message from Obama to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to anonymous American officials, he said that “there is great urgency” in bringing Iran into serious negotiations, although how specific Erdogan actually was when it comes to the potential consequences of continuing their nuclear program is unknown.

Something tells me that the Iranian leadership is indeed becoming increasingly aware of the troop buildup in their region and the fact that the Israeli regime is itching to strike their nation.

It will be fascinating to see how these talks turn out and if Iran will either bow to the Western pressures or continue to exercise their rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while feeling the pain of massive sanctions with the threat of military action looming.

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This article first appeared at End the Lie.