Is Iran's nuclear offer real or a diplomatic wedge?

Tehran: Just as a small head of steam was building behind a western initiative for a new round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, Iran has declared its openness to accepting an enriched-uranium deal it had already rejected.

US, French, and German officials responded with suspicion to Iran's new interest in a proposal to move its stockpile of enriched uranium outside the country for further processing. The plan, originally proposed in October by the United Nation's atomic energy watchdog agency, was formally rejected by Iran last month.

But a declaration by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday that Iran is ready to accept some export scheme for its uranium was received favourably by Russia, and it prompted Chinese officials to call for further negotiations with Tehran.

Iran's new interest in a uranium deal left some Iran experts speculating that Tehran, seeing movement by the international community toward a new set of sanctions focused on the growing economic assets of the country's Revolutionary Guards, is acting to head off any international consensus.

"This may be an effort to drive a wedge" in the UN Security Council, which would have to approve what would be a fourth set of international sanctions against Iran, says Daniel Brumberg, acting director of the Muslim World Initiative at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. "The Iranian regime is always playing for time, so doing that by disrupting any developing [international] consensus would be par for the course for them."

But Brumberg, who has specialised in Iranian politics, says the chief motivation for the latest Iranian offer may also be domestic.

Demonstrations

He notes that Iran has entered what are called the annual "days of dawn" between February 1 and 11, celebrating the Iranian revolution and the days between the Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Iran on February 1, 1979, and the Shah's exile 10 days later. Traditionally these are days for celebrating the Islamic regime, Brumberg says, "but this year there could be large demonstrations by the opposition, and that may be making the regime nervous." Under that scenario, the regime may be trying with its new declaration on uranium to bolster its authority at home by demonstrating its control of the nuclear controversy with the international community.

"They may be saying, ‘You have to talk to us,' to the Security Council members, but their target audience for this show of authority may be at home," Brumberg says.

President Ahmadinejad's proposal for a uranium swap came with few specifics, so it remains unclear how close the Iranian plan comes to that of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA called for removing 70 per cent of Iran's low-enriched uranium to France and Russia, where it would be processed and returned a year later as fuel rods for a research reactor.