U.S. to Give Iran Nuclear Technology

AP: U.S. to give Iran nuclear technology – Yahoo! News

In a major concession, the United States is prepared to provide Iran with some nuclear technology if it stops enriching uranium, diplomats said Tuesday. The offer was part of a package of incentives presented to Tehran Tuesday by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said the diplomats, who were familiar with the proposals. The diplomats demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing details of the offer, which was agreed on last week by six world powers in a bid to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran.

That’s the entirety of the AP report at the moment. Details could change my mind about this.

My initial reaction is quite profane. Essentially, WTF with some extra Fs thrown in for good measure.

This sounds eerily similar to the Agreed Framework the Clinton administration negotiated with North Korea in 1994 under similar circumstances. It would not be unfair to say that agreement was somewhat less than successful.

UPDATE: A substantially revised and extended version of this is now up at Human Events Online.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. davod says:

    So much for the arms length approach through the Europeans. I heard that Condi said they were sending envoys directly to Iran.

    When you think about this it makes sense. Condi was a product of the cold war and she learned her trade in an era where negotiation was everything (Only Reagan understood that negotiation was only part of the picture).

    Condi’s mentors were all Arabists and now she is taking what is really a cool it approach.

    Has no one at the State Department read the Iranian letter.

  2. DC Loser says:

    Reading your Wikipedia link to the Agreed Framework, it would appear the deal collapsed because the US Congress refused to go along with it and the promosed LWR was never delivered. The North Koreans kicked the IAEA out and took the rods out of storage for reprocessing after that. You can disagree with the idea of the deal in the first place, but it was never implemented as negotiated, therefore dooming it to failure before it even started. I’m agnostic about this until more details are provided, but what other courses of action can we choose from all the other bad choices. Greg Djerejian has a piece today on McCaffrey’s take on Iran

    http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/

  3. LJD says:

    Could just be international politics…
    We don’t intend to give them nuclear technology any more than they intend to cease uranium enrichment or the development of weapons.

  4. DC Loser says:

    LJD – you are probably correct. Everybody is posturing to look good at this point.

  5. Toaz says:

    They can get the nuclear technology from Russia or China tomorrow.

    The correct answer is to develop a bomb like India and Pakistan. They both got excellent rewards and India got very wealthy. The US made the mistake and its difficult to get out of the logic. Bill Clinton and the CIA looked the other way and, maybe when Bush is Gone, they will again.