A new crisis between America and Iran looms

Talks to restore a nuclear deal are going badly. The alternatives are grim

The Economist -10 October 2021 -THE FORMER French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, probably summed it up best: tough nuclear diplomacy with Iran, he said in 2007, was the best way to avoid the catastrophic choice between “an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran”. To escape this dilemma, President Joe Biden has been trying to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran that Barack Obama negotiated in 2015 and Donald Trump tore up three years later.

But Iran is not making it easy. It has refused to speak directly to American officials in the six rounds of talks in Vienna that ended in June (it negotiated instead with European, Russian and Chinese intermediaries). It has dragged its feet since—citing the presidential election in June that brought to power Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner (pictured, during a visit to the Bushehr nuclear power plant); and the need to appoint new ministers and a negotiating team. Talks could resume in November, Iran says.

As though taunting America, Iran has stepped up its nuclear program. On October 9th Iran said it had produced more than 120kg of 20% enriched uranium, sharply up from the 84kg reported by UN inspectors last month, and approaching the 170kg required to make a bomb after further enrichment. It is already spinning up a growing stock of 60% enriched fissile material, a hair’s breadth away from bomb-grade stuff. The acceleration has been helped by Iran’s deployment of more, and more sophisticated, centrifuges to purify the fissile material. Other alarming developments include the conversion of enriched uranium hexafluoride gas into uranium metal—for which the most likely use is in bombs—and the hampering of inspections by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

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https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/10/10/a-new-crisis-between-america-and-iran-looms