Even with limits, Iran would still be able to
make bombs, says strategic affairs minister • Defense Minister Moshe
Ya'alon meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and says: We
cannot fall into the trap of lifting sanctions as trust-building steps.
Will Iran shut down its
Fordo enrichment facility?
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Photo credit: AP  |
Officials in Jerusalem on Wednesday rejected
Iran's proposal to halt uranium enrichment to 20 percent, with one
official from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office saying, "No
deal is better than a bad deal."
According to the official, the Iranians are
offering to give up something which does not hurt their enrichment
activities and could still bring them to being a nuclear threshold
state, and no one should be tempted to accept the offer.
Strategic Affairs, Intelligence and International Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz called the Iranian gesture "a joke."
"Closing the Fordo compound means that Iran,
in its first year of going nuclear, would be able to make five instead
of six atomic bombs," he said. "Capping enrichment at 20 percent is less
significant now that Iran has 20,000 centrifuges. Israel is ready for a
real, serious diplomatic solution, meaning an Iranian nuclear program
that operates similarly to Canada and Mexico's nuclear infrastructure:
Iran could generate electricity at its reactor, but would need to
purchase the nuclear fuel to operate it from other countries."
The Wall Street Journal broke the details of
the Iranian proposal on Tuesday. According to the report, the proposal
would include limiting the number of centrifuges operating on Iran's
soil as well as a vow not to enrich uranium beyond 20 percent fissile
purity -- a level that international powers consider dangerously close
to weapons-grade.
Iran is also reportedly planning to propose
opening its nuclear facilities to inspectors for international
supervision rather than limiting international access, as it has done
until now. Tehran is still deliberating whether or not to agree to the
Western, and namely Israeli, demand to decommission its enrichment
facility at Fordo.
A Western diplomat told The Wall Street
Journal that "the Iranians are preparing to go to Geneva with a serious
package ... These include limits on the numbers of centrifuges
operating, enrichment amounts and the need for verification." The Geneva
talks are scheduled to be held Oct. 15-16, and will be the first talks
with Iran since the election of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani.
French and British diplomats arrived in Israel
on Wednesday to discuss relaxing sanctions on Iran. Israeli
representatives emphasized that scaling back sanctions would harm
negotiations with Iran and would not achieve their goal. A senior
official in the Prime Minister's Office said that Britain had updated
Israel on "its intentions to thaw relations with Iran, to show it that
dialogue is the right way." Israel maintained that there were still no
European plans to lift the sanctions and that many efforts were made to
prevent that.
Meanwhile, at a meeting at the Pentagon on
Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon told U.S. Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel not to give up on the Iranian sanctions.
"Any relaxing of sanctions will bring about
the collapse [of the sanctions policy]. We cannot fall into this trap of
lifting sanctions as trust-building steps before achieving any of the
goals set before the Iranians," Ya'alon said.
Hagel reassured Ya'alon that the U.S. was "not
planning to change its unequivocal policy of preventing Iran from
attaining nuclear weapons." During their talks, Hagel expressed his
approval of the U.N.'s undertaking to dismantle Syria's chemical
weapons. Ya'alon and Hagel also spoke about the U.S.'s efforts to
improve the IDF's qualitative advantage.
Wednesday's meeting was the third of its kind in the
past six months. Ya'alon thanked Hagel for his cooperation, and
surprised him with a birthday gift for his 67th birthday last week.
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