May 17, 2010
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Obama's nuclear headache
The Obama administration isn't publicly celebrating the Iran nuclear fuel swap deal announced Monday in Tehran -- from my story today:
“Of course they are not thrilled,” Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Pentagon official, said of the administration. “They thought [the Brazilian-Turkish diplomatic effort with Tehran] was going to fail and didn’t stop it, or couldn’t stop it. It looks like it undercut their diplomacy.
“Now, in their heart of hearts, did they want it to be undercut? Maybe some of them, who thought the sanctions aren’t going to work,” he said.
Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council suggested that the deal was unlikely to satisfy Congress. “They are likely to continue to push for sanctions, and pressure the administration to continue the push for U.N. sanctions. “
But the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's deputy director of research Patrick Clawson said the deal essentially sets Iran’s nuclear clock back six months and demonstrates that pressure works.
“The whole point of this deal is to buy six to eight months,” Clawson said. “That is what we got.”
Clawson said there were three major sticking points to a similar deal Iran rejected last fall – that it send out 1,200 kg of its low enriched uranium, that it go all in one shipment, and that it go outside of the country.“And Iran has now caved on all three,” Clawson said. ... “This is not an end to the problem,” he added, “but a modest step that helps defuse the immediate crisis.”
See also: "Can Washington take 'yes' for an answer?"
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