Word: uranium
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...Obama campaigned for the presidency promising a game-changing diplomatic outreach, noting that President Bush's efforts had failed to prevent Iran from achieving a capacity to enrich uranium. But, under pressure at home and abroad from skeptics of engagement who insist that Iran is drawing perilously close to nuclear weapons capability, Obama gave his engagement effort only until the new year to change the game. With that deadline fast approaching, Iran's pushback against a deal that would require it to ship out most of its current enriched-uranium stockpile for conversion abroad into harmless reactor fuel has prompted...
...inheriting Bush's Iran stalemate? Two key factors have combined to scupper his diplomatic efforts: Iran's domestic political year of living dangerously, and the fact that the new Administration bound its diplomacy to tight deadlines and to the same goal as its predecessor - persuading Iran to abandon uranium enrichment, even for peaceful purposes. That combination of factors was clear in the fate of the Tehran Research Reactor fuel deal, which Obama's own deadline had turned into a kind of last-chance ultimatum...
...Tehran insists that it has not, in fact, rejected the deal that would see the country exchange three quarters of its current enriched uranium stockpile for reactor fuel. Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki says Tehran simply wants to ship out its uranium in smaller parcels and over a longer time period, rather than in the single immediate shipment demanded by the West. But the Western powers are unwilling to change the terms of the deal, because their prime objective is to deplete Iran's stockpile in order to temporarily remove its capacity to build a bomb. (See pictures of people around...
...with weapons inspectors, Iran vowed to significantly expand its controversial nuclear program by constructing 10 large facilities capable of generating 20,000 MW of electricity and 250 to 300 tons of nuclear fuel annually. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also stirred up concerns by declaring that Iran would move to enrich uranium to a far higher level of purity than it does now. Experts mostly dismissed the expansion plan as bluster, arguing that Iran lacks the industrial infrastructure to meet its ambitious targets. The country's lone existing facility, at Natanz, holds about 8,000 operating nuclear centrifuges; the proposal envisions some...
...critical juncture in efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability. Iran has rejected a proposal to ship its low-enriched uranium out of the country for further processing and is refusing to meet the main requirement of the international community—the long-overdue suspension of its enrichment of uranium. Since Iran imports up to 40 percent of its refined petroleum, curtailing its access to fuel might have a severe impact on the Iranian economy, forcing the regime to suspend its nuclear program and open the door to relief from sanctions. As President Obama has said...