Report: Iran Makes U.S. an Offer

Iran missed President Obama’s end-of-year nuclear-negotiation deadline, but is the country still interested in the nuclear-fuel swap? To show they are serious about the deal, the foreign ministry has reportedly stopped uranium enrichment for two months, and Iran made a formal response to the offer to exchange low enriched uranium for nuclear fuel cells produced in the West in late December or early January. "The Iranians have been saying different things for weeks, but what matters is whether they will accept the [International Atomic Energy Agency]'s proposed [Tehran Research Reactor] deal, which they agreed to in principle on October 1 but then walked away from,” said an administration official. The proposal calls for Iran to immediately send 1,200 kg of its low enriched uranium to Russia, and then France will send nuclear fuel cells for medical use back to Iran. "They know what they need to do to satisfy the international community’s concerns," said the anonymous official, "and to date they have not done so.”