Behind the Scenes, U.S. Tempts Iran with Global Nuclear Fuel Bank Deal

By M.K. Bhadrakumar, Asia Times. Posted April 13, 2009.

It is again early spring in the Central Asian steppes. There is a deceptive calm, but all signs are that the Great Game is bestirring from its slumber. The United States is focusing on the key Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, to stage a strategic comeback in the region. Prospects are brighter than ever as Kazakhstan is edging closer to the chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Economic Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) next year. The OSCE leadership brings Kazakhstan into the forefront of the Western strategies in Eurasia -- and out of Russian orbit.

The war in nearby Afghanistan provides the backdrop for the US's proactive diplomacy. But that, too, is deceptive. It seems the US is also probing a solution to the Iran nuclear problem with Kazakhstan's helping hand. The urgency is great and President Barack Obama has already hinted that he intends to pay a visit to Kazakhstan, the first ever to the steppes by an American president.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is "carefully considering" the setting up of an international uranium fuel bank in Kazakhstan, which could form the exit strategy for the historic US-Iran standoff. That is why the visit by the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to Astana, Kazakhstan, on Monday assumes exceptional importance.

In bits and pieces, a stray thought has been surfacing in the recent months in the US discourses over the situation surrounding Iran. It sought a rethink of Washington's insistence on Iran jettisoning its pursuit of uranium enrichment as a pre-requisite of commencement of direct talks between the two countries. This was borne out of a growing realization that the US insistence was no longer tenable. A logjam has indeed developed as it became clearer by the day that within the fractious Iranian opinion there is virtual unanimity when it comes to the continuance of the country's nuclear program, and effecting a regime change in Tehran didn't necessarily alter Iran's policies.

The Obama administration faces the reality that unless the impasse is broken somehow, the standoff continues. The standoff worked to Iran's advantage only insofar as the country speeded up its nuclear program ever since the series of United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions since 2006 began forbidding Iran from enriching uranium. Iran today has installed over 5,500 centrifuges and built up a stockpile exceeding 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium.

It now appears that the US might cede to Iran's nuclear program. The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that as part of a policy review commissioned by Obama, "diplomats are discussing whether the US will eventually have to accept Iran's insistence on carrying out the [enrichment] process, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material". The newspaper assessed that the Obama administration's message to Tehran is increasingly shaping up as "Don't develop a nuclear weapon" - a nuanced stance that would not rule out a deal accepting Iranian enrichment as such. It pointed out that Obama's articulations on the subject have become much less specific than those of former president George W Bush, who never minced words in crying a halt to Iran's enrichment.

The new thinking is that the priority should be to win greater access for UN inspectors to the Iranian nuclear establishments, as compared with the current limited inspection regime, which has led to diminishing information regarding Iran's nuclear program. In other words, why not trust Iran to retain its enrichment activities so long as its program can be effectively verified.

In this scenario, it is significant that following talks with Ahmadinejad, Kazakhstan President Nurusultan Nazarbayev chose the venue of their joint press conference on Monday in Astana to make the public offer that his country is willing to host a global nuclear fuel bank as part of a US-backed plan to put all uranium enrichment under international control. "If such a nuclear fuel bank were to be created, Kazakhstan would be ready to consider hosting it on its territory as a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and as a country that voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons," Nazarbayev said.

The veteran Kazakh statesman (who might have been the Soviet Union's prime minister but for the superpower's implosion in 1991) didn't speak out of the blue. Such impetuousness is alien to his shrewd political temperament. He knew the time has come for his proposal to be publicly voiced. It is an idea that is evidently supported by Obama. It devolves upon the creation of a global repository that would allow countries to tap into Kazakhstan's vast reserves of uranium to fuel their nuclear plants without having to develop their own enrichment capability. At any rate, Ahmadinejad also chose to publicly welcome the Kazakh proposal. "We [Iran] think that Nurusultan Nazarbayev's idea to host a nuclear fuel bank is a very good proposal," he noted.

These are, of course, early days. However, Iran used to maintain at one point that it would be open to the idea of stopping sensitive uranium enrichment if a supply of nuclear fuel from abroad could be guaranteed. In the face of the Bush administration's mindless containment strategy, the Iranian stance hardened, especially as the nuclear file got transferred from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the UN Security Council, and the country began harping on its due rights to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, including enriched uranium, for peaceful purposes.

Later on Monday in Astana, Ahmadinejad utilized yet another press conference to argue that he welcomed Nazarbayev's proposal since "any country that has uranium mines and the capability to produce nuclear fuel can also establish a nuclear fuel bank". He then went on to elaborate the Iranian response:

See more stories tagged with: iran, nuclear, obama, kazakhstan, teheran, global fuel

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

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