Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

96<strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Reset</strong>: Arms Reduction and Nonproliferationnegotiations rather than to pressure and threats of the use of force.The new U.S. administration signaled its readiness to engage in directdialogue with Iran, and the new U.S. president addressed the leadersand people of Iran in a video message in March 2009. However,the crisis of trust that has existed between the two sides continuesto the present day to prevent advantage being taken of this “windowof opportunity” for resolving the situation with the Iranian nuclearprogram that had opened following Barack Obama’s election as president.A new obstacle in the search for a resolution has arisen withthe deterioration of the domestic political situation in Iran followingthe June 2009 presidential election, the results of which, accordingto opposition candidates, were falsified.The September 2009 discovery of yet one more uranium enrichmentfacility under construction in Iran, this one near the cityof Qom (based on IAEA data, the facility was designed for 3,000centrifuges and could have been completed by 2011) dealt anotherblow to the nuclear confidence-building process. 40Admittedly, a potential solution to the crisis did appear to be withinreach on October 1, 2009, when the secretary of Iran’s SupremeNational Security Council, Saeed Jalili, met in Geneva with the politicaldirectors of the P5+1 and Javier Solana, the EU high representativefor foreign affairs and security policy. The parties emerged withIran agreeing to send 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU)out of the country in exchange for the P5+1’s promise to produce fuelfrom that LEU for the Tehran Research Reactor.On October 21, IAEA experts proposed an arrangement forhow this would actually work. According to this plan, 75 percentof Iran’s LEU (some 1,200 kilograms) accumulated at the enrichmentfacility in Natanz was to be shipped to Russia by January 15,2010. The uranium hexafluoride would then undergo purificationand enrichment at one of the existing facilities in Russia (which hasan overall separation capacity comprising 40-45 percent of the totalglobal capacity), where there is enough spare capacity to accept andfulfill Iran’s order expeditiously.Subsequently, the 19.75-percent enriched uranium was to be shippedto France (the technology to produce nuclear fuel for the Tehranreactor is currently available only in Argentina and France), whereit would then be made into fuel for the Tehran reactor and shippedback to Iran through Russia by the end of 2010. 41 The entire projectwas to be carried out on a commercial basis.