US proposes interim step in Iran nuclear talks allowing some enrichment: NYT

The Trump administration is proposing an arrangement that would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels while the United States and other countries work out a more detailed plan intended to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon but give it access to fuel for new nuclear power plants.

The proposal amounts to a bridge between the current situation, in which Iran is rapidly producing near-bomb-grade uranium, and the U.S. goal of Iran enriching no uranium at all on its soil, according to the New York Times.

Under the proposal, the United States would facilitate the building of nuclear power reactors for Iran and negotiate the construction of enrichment facilities managed by a consortium of regional countries. Once Iran began receiving any benefits from those promises, it would have to stop all enrichment in the country.

The outline of the potential deal, which was described on the condition of anonymity by Iranian and European officials, was handed to Iran over the weekend. Officials in Tehran indicated on Monday that a response would come in several days.

It is the first concrete indication since President Trump took office that the United States and Iran might be able to find a path to compromise that would head off a potential regional war over Tehran’s ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

But the details remain vague, the two sides remain far apart on many elements of a deal, and the domestic politics for both are complex. In his first term, Mr. Trump canceled an agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama that had similarly sought to keep Iran from being able to produce a nuclear bomb. At least in the opening years of the proposed arrangement, when new enrichment facilities to produce fuel for power plants are being built in cooperation with Arab states, Iran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium at low levels, despite Mr. Trump’s post on social media on Monday saying the United States would “not allow any enrichment of uranium.” (It is possible that he was referring to what would be allowed at the concluding stage of the potential deal rather than during an interim arrangement.)

The idea of a regional consortium would essentially wrap Iran in a bearhug with countries that might include the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others, allowing the production of low-grade nuclear fuel for power plants while seeking to ensure that Iran is not enriching fuel on its own for a bomb.

But one key unresolved question is whether Iran’s leadership will agree to an ultimate arrangement in which no nuclear fuel is produced on Iranian soil. “We do not need anyone’s permission to enrich uranium,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Tuesday.