Region | Iran
Iran's political turmoil makes nuclear progress unlikely
Iran's political crisis is likely to prevent it from making any swift move to ratchet up its nuclear programme, analysts and officials say, potentially giving President Barack Obama and Western allies more time to grapple with the issue.
- By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 22:43 August 28, 2009
- Image Credit: Reuters
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is at the centre of post-electionchaos in Iran. As long as the political crisis continues,analysts say the country will be unable to take majordecisions about its nuclear programme.
Beirut: Iran's political crisis is likely to prevent it from making any swift move to ratchet up its nuclear programme, analysts and officials say, potentially giving President Barack Obama and Western allies more time to grapple with the issue.
Yet the ongoing chaos over the disputed re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad further confuses the question of who calls the shots in Tehran, the Iranian capital, and what a deal with the Islamic Republic might mean.
The Obama administration, concerned that Iran is seeking to amass the materials needed to manufacture nuclear weapons, set an informal deadline of September for the Iranian leadership to respond positively to an offer to discuss the matter rather than risk new economic sanctions.
"The infighting in Tehran has sent up a smoke screen that further confuses the picture from the outside, and the picture was plenty opaque to begin with," said a US official in Washington who is involved in formulating nuclear policy and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Tehran has long insisted its nuclear research programme is meant solely to provide electricity for its growing population. But most Western arms-control experts believe Iran is at least trying to achieve the ability to quickly manufacture a nuclear bomb. And Iran continues to defy United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding it stop producing enriched uranium that could be turned into fissile material for a bomb.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is set to take up its latest quarterly status report on Iran's nuclear programme on Wednesday.
In recent weeks, Iran granted IAEA inspectors access to a heavy-water reactor and parts of its enrichment facility. The move suggests an effort by Tehran to ease pressure on its most likely supporters at the Security Council, Russia and China, ahead of any new talks on sanctions.
While Iranian scientists have continued to enrich low-grade uranium during the nation's political crisis, news agencies have reported that Tehran has not taken steps to increase its processing capacity during the last quarter - although experts say that may have more to do with technical quirks than political decisions.
For now, most Iran watchers say Tehran not only will be unable to respond to the Obama administration's offer of talks, but also is in too much political disarray to make the major decisions necessary to build a nuclear weapon.
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