Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly described a potential compromise with Tehran to stop it from developing a nuclear bomb, saying the Trump administration is willing to let Iran have a civil nuclear program that uses only imported nuclear fuel.
Rubio’s remarks, made earlier this week in a podcast with The Free Press, offer insight into the specifics of the Trump administration’s position since the beginning of secret nuclear negotiations with Tehran earlier this month.
The majority of analysts predict that the U.S. approach will be difficult to sell. Accepting the idea would render Iran reliant on foreign fuel supplies, even if it would give Tehran what it claims it wants—a civilian nuclear program.
The West’s worries that Tehran is attempting to maintain the possibility of developing nuclear weapons would grow if the plan were rejected.
As the negotiations began in Rome last week, Ali Shamkhani, a top advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected what he referred to as the “U.A.E.” model.
That was a reference to the United Arab Emirates’ strategy of not enriching uranium itself but instead importing nuclear fuel to run several reactors. The Persian Gulf state, which is rich in oil, has also pledged not to reprocess the spent fuel in order to extract plutonium, which can be applied to the production of nuclear weapons.
Fueling Iran has been a concept from the beginning of Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian official who is now a nuclear policy expert at Princeton University, Tehran offered to accept non-Iranian nuclear enrichment in the 1980s and early 1990s if the United States would permit European nations to supply the fuel, but Washington rejected the offer.
The concept reappeared during the negotiations that resulted in a 2015 nuclear agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program, according to Richard Nephew, a negotiator with Iran under the Obama and Biden administrations.
He claimed Iran refused to rely on foreign fuel but suggested that its uranium enrichment plants may supply fissile material for nearby countries.
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