Is Iran ready for a Nuclear Deal?

The following online news article “Some See Iran as Ready for Nuclear Deal” from the New York Times by Michael Slackman questions whether Iran is ready for a nuclear deal. It’s about time and let’s hope so.

“RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Iran says it has no plans to build nuclear weapons. Western nations say they do not believe Iran and periodically release intelligence reports that they say prove Iran has been working on building a bomb.

Hassan Rowhani, center, chief nuclear negotiator for Iran, in 2005, the year his speech on Iran’s program was published.  For years, that has been the point of contention in an intractable international dispute.

But as the United States and its Western allies prepare for a second round of direct negotiations with Tehran this month, that may no longer be the central question. The more pertinent point, Iran experts and regional analysts say, is that Iran finally may be ready to make a deal.

The analysts cite a confluence of factors, from Iran’s internal political crisis to the change in leadership in Washington, and one overriding point: Iran’s leadership may have achieved much of what it set out to accomplish when it stepped up its clandestine nuclear program in 1999.

In contentious, high-stakes negotiations, deals are possible when both sides have a chance to declare victory, and that point may have been reached.

“If the Iranian endgame is to keep enrichment, and if the United States’ endgame is to make sure there are no nuclear weapons in Iran, then it can be a win-win,” said Trita Parsi, author of a book on Iran and president of the National Iranian American Council, an independent advocacy group in Washington. “Those who have been criticizing the administration for compromising or giving Iran a concession, they are wrong. It is not a concession to adjust to an unchanging reality.”

For Iran, this is not exactly about compromising — which it has shown little appetite for — as much as cooperating. For the West, it is not about winning concessions but about developing verifiable assurances that Iran is not producing weapons.

“I think the Iranians are simply in no mood to accept any serious limits on the expansion of their program,” said Flynt Leverett, director of the Iran Project at the New America Foundation. “From their point of view, they already suspended enrichment for almost two years, from 2003 to 2005, and from their perspective, they got nothing for that and they’re not going to do that again.”

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Iran opposition urge clerics to act over detainees

The news from Iran is still not positive as you will find in this story posted on Reuters news site.  The opposition to the government of Iran continues to rally against the results of the election and the turmoil continues in Iran.

“Iran’s opposition urged senior clerics on Saturday to help secure the release of people arrested following June’s disputed presidential election, after a protester died in prison.
A reformist website said the son of an adviser to defeated conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaie had been killed in a Tehran prison after being detained in post-election unrest.
The authorities were not immediately available to confirm the death or the circumstances surrounding it.

Rights groups say hundreds of people, including senior pro-reform activists, journalists, academics and lawyers, have been arrested since Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential vote.

In a flurry of announcements on websites, critics of the election condemned the tactics employed since the vote by the authorities, who have banned street protests by those who say the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged.

Iran’s top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed the president’s election victory soon after the vote.
But the opposition continues to contest the result of the election, which has plunged the country into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed deepening divisions in Iran’s ruling elite.

“The only way out of this situation is … to immediately release detainees,” Ghalamnews quoted a joint statement issued by moderate defeated candidates and former President Mohammad Khatami as saying.

“We are very worried about their physical and mental health … this imposed state security should end … It is wrong to link pro-reform detainees to foreign countries,” it said.
Tehran has accused western powers of fuelling post-election unrest, charges they deny, adding to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program which the West suspects is a cover for building atomic weapons. Iran says its program is peaceful.

Israel, believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power, has repeatedly described Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its existence and the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Iran would strike Israel’s nuclear sites if targeted…”

“If the Zionist Regime (Israel) attacks Iran, we will surely strike its nuclear facilities with our missile capabilities,” Mohammad Ali Jafari, Guards commander-in-chief, told Iran’s Arabic language al-Alam television.

The security establishment has thrown its support behind Ahmadinejad over the election and has been criticized by the opposition for its role in quelling the mass protests.
Moderate defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi said in a letter to Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei that those detained since the election had been subjected to “mental torture” and…”

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