One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
After Iran agreed to nuclear concessions on Oct. 1, President Obama said it was a "constructive beginning." But now, U.S. officials and Western diplomats say, Tehran is backtracking. With a year-end deadline approaching to show progress on nuclear talks, the U.S. and its European allies are likelier to call for more sanctions. Tehran's reversal began, NEWSWEEK has learned, at an Oct. 28 discussion between Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, and Javier Solana, the top Western negotiator, says a European diplomat who was briefed on the internal talks but would speak only on condition of anonymity. Jalili insisted the U.S. and Western powers negotiate from a vague, four-and-a-half-page proposal Tehran submitted Sept. 9 that didn't raise the topic of Iran's nuclear program at all (it only generally addressed "security and economic" issues). At the time, the Obama administration called the proposal unacceptable. The diplomat describes it as "a lot of blah-blah," adding, "They went back on all the clarity that we got."
A day after this meeting—last Thursday—negotiations were further undercut when Iran's delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency delivered an oral proposal dialing back on Tehran's Oct. 1 commitment to ship Iranian uranium to Russia for processing, says the European diplomat, whose account was confirmed by a senior Obama administration official and another Western official who didn't want to be named for similar reasons. At the Geneva talks, Iran agreed to send most of it slow-enriched uranium abroad so the nuclear fuel could be processed for civilian use. But the IAEA delegate, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Iran now wants to hold on to its uranium until it gets equivalent amounts from "since the rationale behind the proposal was to deprive Iran of its uranium long enough to delay building of a bomb.
This game of one step forward, two steps back is likely a result of Tehran's continuing power struggle, the officials say. It's also a standard Tehran ploy. "You move them, and then when they go back home, something happens there and they go back to a standstill," says the European diplomat. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other U.S. officials say they want to give the Iranians time to resolve internal disputes. Still, says the senior administration official, "it would seem they're trying to turn back the clock."
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Michael Hirsh covers international affairs for NEWSWEEK reporting on a range of topics from Homeland Security to postwar Iraq. He co-authored the November 3, 2003 cover story, "Bush's $87 Billion Mess," about the Iraq reconstruction plan. The issue was one of three that won the 2004 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
Hirsh writes a column on Newsweek.com entitled "The World from Washington" focusing on foreign policy issues and serves as Washington Web Editor for Newsweek. He also edited NEWSWEEK's "Issues 2007" special issue, which explores all facets and issues of globalization.
Hirsh was the magazine's Foreign Editor from January 2001 to January 2002, and helped guide Newsweek's award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. Before that he was a Senior Editor/Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in the Washington bureau, writing about foreign affairs and international economics. Hirsh was also managing editor for the Newsweek International special issue "ISSUES 2001," the second in a series of three annual reviews of the global economy in the new century.
From September 1998 to December 1999, as Diplomatic Correspondent, Hirsh covered foreign policy, the State Department and the Treasury. He moved to the Washington D.C. bureau in May 1997, previously serving as a senior editor of Newsweek International, covering the same beat.
Prior to joining NEWSWEEK in October 1994 as a New York-based senior writer, Hirsh served as the Tokyo-based Asia Bureau Chief for Institutional Investor from 1992 to 1994. Previously, he was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Tokyo and a National Editor in New York.
Hirsh was co-winner of the 2002 Ed Cunningham Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for Newsweek's terror coverage and contributed to the team of Newsweek reporters who earned the magazine the prestigious 2002 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, also for the magazine's coverage of the war on terror. Hirsh also won a Deadline Club Award in 1997 for investigative reporting on his expose of the IRS's abusive practices, and was one of five finalists for a 1994 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism for his article, "China's Financial Revolutionaries." It profiled the new generation of mainland Chinese businessmen who are striving to build a capitalist financial system from scratch. Hirsh is the author of the nonfiction book "At War with Ourselves" (Oxford University Press, 2003) which explores America's foreign policy and its global role.
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