Al Arabiya , 22 May 2012 – The White House on Tuesday called the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s progress toward an agreement with Iran a step forward but said it would keep pressuring Tehran until it sees concrete actions on the Iranian nuclear program.
“Promises are one thing, actions and fulfillments of obligations are another,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said when asked about the International Atomic Energy Agency’s announcement it was close to a deal to unblock monitoring of Iran’s suspected work on atom bombs.
“We will continue to pressure Tehran, continue to move forward with the sanctions that will be corning online as the year progresses,” Carney told a news briefing.
“We will continue to pressure Tehran, continue to move forward with the sanctions that will be corning online as the year progresses,” Carney told a news briefing.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said upon returning from Tehran that he and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator made a “decision” to reach an agreement on the U.N. watchdog probing suspected weapons activities.
Amano, who flew impromptu to Tehran to capitalize on progress in talks with Iran in Vienna held by senior aides, described the outcome of his meeting in Iran as an “important development … We understood each other’s position better”.
But contrary to the hopes of some diplomats before he left on Sunday, Amano failed to actually sign a deal, saying at a Vienna airport that this would happen “quite soon” because of remaining, unspecified “differences.”
A key demand of world powers is that Iran address accusations in a major IAEA report in November that, until 2003, and possibly since, Tehran did work “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”
One Western diplomat told AFP there had been “no breakthrough” in Amano’s visit. Another said the trip appeared disappointing but that they were waiting for a “clearer picture” at meetings in Vienna later on Tuesday.
“This is only a promise, and Iran has made many, many promises in the past,” said a third diplomat, adding that Tehran was possibly trying to appear cooperative ahead of Wednesday’s meeting in Baghdad.
Washington will look for Iran to “provide the access to all of the locations, the documents, and the personnel that the IAEA requires in order to determine whether Iran’s program is exclusively for peaceful purposes,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters earlier.
The U.S. mission in Vienna said that while it appreciated Amano’s efforts, it was “concerned by the urgent obligation for Iran to take concrete steps to cooperate fully” with the agency.
Meanwhile Israel is “highly skeptical” about the deal, a senior official told AFP on Tuesday, with Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz saying Iran has played “hide-and-seek for years” with the international community and the IAEA.
Mark Hibbs, proliferation expert at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, told AFP “the negotiation isn’t over and done with until it’s signed on the dotted line.”
“Amano has to be extremely careful he doesn’t forfeit any rights to Iran for the sake of getting an agreement. That would serve as a bad precedent.”
On Wednesday, the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. plus Germany — hope Iran will agree to a series of steps that can allay once and for all suspicions that it wants the bomb, most notably uranium enrichment.
Tehran says its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes.
In particular, they would like a suspension of enrichment to 20 percent, a capability that in theory makes it relatively easy to enrich to weapons grade — 90 percent — if it decided to develop a nuclear arsenal.
Iran on Tuesday announced it was loading domestically produced, 20-percent enriched uranium fuel into its Tehran reactor, underlining its atomic progress.
Shipping its uranium stockpiles abroad, and implementing the additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for more intrusive IAEA inspections, are considered other ways in which Iran could build confidence.
But Iran will likely be disappointed if it expects to see sanctions relief in return for any of these moves, with the most it can hope for being a pledge — with strings attached — not to impose any more, diplomats said.
In any case, it is far from certain that any firm promises will be made from either side in Baghdad, with one envoy playing down expectations by saying that even if the talks go well, the results might not be “tangible.”
Instead, the outcome could be an agreement to hold more regular talks at a working level to thrash out the technical details of confidence-building measures, a process needing two vital and elusive elements: patience and trust.