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Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi signaled flexibility on aspects of Iran’s atomic activities that worry world powers, Sunday, but rejected Western demands to send sensitive nuclear material out of the country, ahead of renewed negotiations this week.
"Of course we will negotiate regarding the form, amount, and various levels of (uranium) enrichment, but the shipping of materials out of the country is our red line," he was quoted as saying on Iranian state television's website.
Araqchi’s comments may disappoint the United States and other Western countries, who want Iran to ship out uranium enriched to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, a short technical step away from weapons-grade material.
The rejection follows a statement by Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, in which he told The Associated Press last Wednesday that Tehran might be willing to part with its enriched-uranium stockpile and stop enriching uranium to 20 percent purity, the level used in its research reactor in Tehran that creates medical isotopes, but which also considerably shortens the time frame required to create fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Larijani said Iran's potential to disperse with its uranium was pending "discussion."
Talks about Iran's nuclear program, due to start in Geneva on Tuesday, will be the first since the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has tried to improve relations with the West to pave a way for lifting economic sanctions.
Rouhani has raised hopes of a negotiated solution to a decade-old dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes, but the West fears may be aimed at developing nuclear weapons capability.
In meetings over the last two years, Western negotiators have demanded that Iran suspend 20-percent enrichment, send some of its existing uranium stockpiles abroad and shutter its Fordow production site buried deep inside a mountain south of Tehran, where most higher-grade enrichment work is done.
In return, they’ve offered to lift sanctions on trade in gold, precious metals and petrochemicals. Iran, which wants an easing of stringent oil and banking sanctions, dismissed that offer in meetings earlier this year. It says it needs 20-percent uranium for a medical-research reactor.
However, Araqchi's comments may be "the usual pre-negotiation posturing", said Middle East specialist Shashank Joshi at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
"It is easy to imagine a compromise whereby Iran would ship out only some of its uranium, allowing the negotiating team to claim a victory. There are many potential compromises that will be explored," Joshi told Reuters.
Cliff Kupchan, a director and Middle East analyst at risk consultancy Eurasia Group, took a similar line, saying Iran was seeking to gain leverage ahead of negotiations.
"Still, it is sobering that a lead Iranian negotiator is setting red lines so early. These are going to be tough talks."
The upcoming talks in Geneva follow a charm offensive at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where Rouhani "sought to reconstruct Iran's regional and global standing" – and, by most accounts, made great strides in doing so.
While Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed, at an Oct. 5 speech to the Islamic Republic's military, that some aspects of Rouhani's diplomacy with the U.S. were "not appropriate," and that "the American government is untrustworthy, supercilious and unreasonable," some analysts believe Khamenei is trying to calm anti-U.S. extremists while Tehran patches up its relations with the West.
Al Jazeera and wire services
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