January 25, 2005

Report: EU, Iran nuclear talks deadlocked

Talks between European powers and Iran are deadlocked on the key issue of uranium enrichment, with Iran refusing to consider scrapping such programs even while acknowledging they make no economic sense, according to a confidential document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
[...]
The United States and several other countries fear Iran is seeking to enrich uranium not to the low level needed to generate power, but to weapons-grade uranium that forms the core of nuclear warheads.

Iran publicly insists it only seeks to make low-grade enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, but the summary of the last meeting on Jan. 17 in Geneva appears to blur that assertion. It says that Iran privately acknowledged what Washington and its allies have argued all along _ that as an oil rich country it does not need nuclear energy.
"Iran recognizes explicitly that its fuel cycle program cannot be justified on economic grounds," the document says.

This mounting crisis will continue unless and until the United States gets involved and forces the mullahs to stand down.
The Ayatollahs know that these EU powers are "paper tigers" and these talks remind me of numerous instances of cat and mouse with the EUroweenies being the ones who say "Eek!"
Not to make too light of this--Iranian nukes are a huge problem--and given their learning curve on nuke bombs and missiles, it may very possible that the Iranians will have the ability to hit these same EUropean countries with nuclear-tipped missiles in the next few months and years, if they don't already.
Let's hope that President Bush and his fine team have yet another creative and bold solution to this looming threat.
As the notice says, "Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear."
I expect the President's SOTU address to be even more interesting than his Inaugural one.