Iran and six world powers are meeting in Baghdad hoping to silence what President Barack Obama called the “drums of war”, as Britain said that it was examining its options should war break out between Tehran and Israel.
Senior figures in the Government’s National Security Council told the BBC that they are looking at what military role Britain would play. One option is apparently deployment of the Royal Navy in the Middle East.
World powers are laying out a new package of proposals in crunch talks over Iran’s contested nuclear programme which will be “of interest” to Tehran, a spokesman for the EU’s foreign policy chief said.
“I am not going to go into the details of what we are proposing but of course we are putting proposals on the table that are of interest to Iran,” Michael Mann, spokesman for Baroness Ashton, said at the talks in Baghdad.
The one overriding issue is Iran’s nuclear programme, which the Islamic republic insists is peaceful but which much of the international community suspects masks an attempt to join the elite club of nations with the bomb.
The fear is that a nuclear-armed Iran would destabilise the already volatile Middle East and sound the death knell for 60 years of international efforts to prevent the spread of atomic weapons, sparking a regional arms race.
Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the region, feels its very existence would be under threat and has refused to rule out a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Mr Obama took office in January 2009 offering a radical change in approach to his predecessor, George W. Bush, in dealings with Iran, famously offering an “extended hand” to Tehran if it “unclenched its fist.”
This failed, however, and Iran has since dramatically expanded its programme, enriching uranium to purities of 20 per cent, a level within spitting distance, technically speaking, of the 90 per cent needed for a nuclear weapon.
As a result, talk of war has increased and the UN Security Council has imposed more sanctions on Iran. Additional US and EU restrictions targeting Iran’s oil sector are due to come into force from July 1.
But now, both sides “have walked up to the abyss and they have both decided they don’t want to go down it,” said Trita Parsi, author of an acclaimed book about Obama’s dealings with Iran called “A Single Roll of the Dice.”
Obama, seeking re-election in November against a Republican challenger accusing him of dawdling over Iran and keen to oil prices come down, is impatient for results, while Iran is feeling the pinch from the sanctions.
The P5+1 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, USA, France, China, Russia) and Germany – and Iran met in Istanbul in mid-April and managed to find enough common ground to come to Baghdad, with both sides hailing what they said was a fresh approach from the other.
But the Baghdad meeting will put these renewed efforts to the test as they seek to set the parameters of what will be a lengthy and arduous process of compromise requiring hitherto unseen amounts of patience and trust.
One key way for Iran to win the confidence of the P5+1 will be a suspension of 20-percent enrichment, while another would be Iran shipping its stockpiles of enriched uranium abroad.
What might also help is Iran implementing the additional protocol (AP) of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which allows for more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA also wants Iran to address allegations made in its November report that until 2003, and possibly since, Tehran had a “structured programme” of “activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”
Telegraph has the full article
