WASHINGTON — Iran has tentatively agreed to ship much of its huge stockpile of uranium to Russia if it reaches a broader nuclear deal with the West, according to officials and diplomats involved in the negotiations, potentially a major breakthrough in talks that have been deadlocked.
Under the proposed agreement, the Russians would convert the uranium into fuel rods for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran’s only commercial reactor. Once the uranium is converted into fuel rods, it is extremely difficult to use them to make a nuclear weapon. That could go a long way toward alleviating concerns about Iran’s stockpile, though the agreement would not cut off every pathway that Tehran could take to obtain a nuclear weapon.
With a Nov. 24 deadline looming on the nuclear talks, negotiators between Iran and the United States and five other nations are still far from agreement on a range of other issues that could derail a final agreement, including the number of centrifuges the country could keep spinning, the speed at which economic sanctions would be suspended, the fate of a heavy-water reactor that produces plutonium, and whether international inspectors would be free to visit any suspected covert facilities. But “if the Iran-Russia deal works, it could be the cornerstone of something much larger,” said one American involved in the discussions.
The chief American negotiator, Wendy R. Sherman, alluded to this possible solution to the uranium issue in a recent speech in which she said, “We have made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable.” But Sherman, who on Monday was named acting deputy secretary of state, has refused to discuss any details of the role Russia could play, saying that negotiations, like mushrooms, “do best in the dark.”
Although relations between the United States and Russia have become increasingly difficult in recent months over a range of issues, a senior National Security Council official, while also refusing to discuss details, said Monday that “it is accurate to say that the Russians have played a very helpful role during these negotiations.”
The official added that Russia had worked with other nations “to put forward creative and reasonable ideas that preserve our objective of cutting off any possible pathway Iran might have to a nuclear weapon.”
“Despite differences of opinion on other foreign policy matters,” the official added, “Russia has remained completely unified with other countries in the negotiations.”
For Russia, the incentives for a deal are both financial and political. It would be paid handsomely for enriching Iran’s uranium, continuing the monopoly it has in providing the Iranians with a commercial reactor, and putting it in a good position to build the new nuclear power reactors that Iran has said it intends to seek in the future.
If the United States is wary of Russia’s role, it has little alternative to involving the country. To expand the time that Tehran would need to build an atomic bomb, it is critical to remove from Iran a substantial amount of the 28,000 pounds of uranium the International Atomic Energy Agency recently estimated it had produced.
The larger obstacle to reaching an agreement on the uranium may be the Iranians, the senior official said, because “what is less certain is whether Iran will accept the reasonable proposals” on the table, or “will continue to make excessive demands that are not aligned with its practical nuclear needs.”