The Senate voted 99-0 to adopt a resolution that urged President Barack Obama to fully enforce existing economic sanctions against Iran and to “provide diplomatic, military and economic support” to Israel “in its defense of its territory, people and existence”.

Washington, it said, should support Israel “in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force” if Israel “is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

The measure also re-affirmed the official policy of the administration of President Barack Obama that it would take whatever action necessary to “prevent” Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Republican-led House of Representatives unanimously approved new sanctions legislation that, if passed into law, would blacklist foreign countries or companies that fail to reduce their oil imports from Iran to virtually nil within 180 days.

The same bill would expand the current blacklisting of companies that do business with Iran’s financial sector to include those engaged in the country’s automotive and mining sectors, as well.

In perhaps its most controversial section, the bill also eliminates President Obama’s ability to waive most sanctions for national-interest or national-security reasons.

Such waiver authority, which has been routinely included in existing sanctions legislation, has been used by Obama to ensure that countries that have historically enjoyed important trade and financial relations with Tehran continue cooperating with Western-led international efforts to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear programme.

The president’s waiver authority is also considered critical to prospects for a negotiated agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany) by which such curbs would be accepted by Tehran in return for easing sanctions.

Both moves come as the Senate Republicans unveiled yet another bill even more far-reaching than that approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee by blacklisting companies that do any trade with Iran and deprive the president of all waiver authority. Under the draft legislation, which so far lacks any Democratic co-sponsors, sanctions could be eased or lifted only by an act of Congress.

Approval of both the Senate resolution and the House bill were hailed by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier group of the Israel lobby here.

“The passage of this resolution is an extremely significant and timely state of solidarity with Israel and a restatement of America’s determination to thwart Iran’s nuclear quest – which endangers America, Israeli, and international security,” it said about the Senate action.

The House bill, it noted with approval, would impose a de facto commercial embargo against Iran and would “maximise the effectiveness of American economic and diplomatic efforts as Iran nears a nuclear weapons capability.”

But other observers said the latest Congressional moves marked a dangerous escalation in tensions at a critical moment.

“Congress should abstain from any more reckless threats or sanctions that push us closer to the brink of war with Iran,” Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said of the Senate action.

“Attacking the president’s waiver authority is a cynical attempt to weaken his hand at the negotiating table and sabotage diplomatic efforts,” he added about the House bill. “If the president can’t lift sanctions in exchange for concessions, the Iranians will have little incentive to cooperate.”

The latest Congressional moves came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear programme detailing the installation of more advanced centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, a buildup of stockpiles of 3.5-percent and 20-percent enriched uranium, and advances in the construction of its heavy-water reactor at Arak.

While a number of senators made much of the latest report, suggesting that Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, experts here said that the report offered no major surprises and that Iran’s 20-percent enriched stockpile – which could most easily be further enriched to bomb grade – remained substantially below what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last September defined as Israel’s “red line”.

“The report findings underscore the urgent need to intensify negotiations with Tehran to resolve the political questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and to resolve the outstanding questions regarding the potential military dimensions of the program,” according to an analysis by the Arms Control Association (ACA) here.

“But, at the same time, the findings reinforce earlier assessments that Iran remains years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop a weapon, and, since 2007, the U.S. intelligence community has insisted that the country’s leadership has not yet decided to build one. But the progress Iran has made in building and mastering the technology would shorten the time it would need to construct a bomb if such a decision were made, according to nuclear experts.

On the diplomatic front, meanwhile, progress has been more or less frozen since the latest P5+1 meeting with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan in early April when Tehran rejected a Western offer to ease sanctions on gold and precious-metal trade and some Iranian exports in exchange for suspending 20-percent enrichment and transferring its existing 20-percent stockpile out of the country.

Most observers believe the new talks are unlikely until after Iran’s elections next month and the inauguration of a new president, despite the fact that decisions on nuclear issues are ultimately made by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Among the favoured candidates approved this week by the Guardian Council is Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is considered by veteran Iran watchers a hard-liner who has often frustrated his P5+1 interlocutors.

Some had hoped that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who entered the race at the last minute and has occasionally urged better relations with the West, would offer a major challenge, but his candidacy was rejected by the Council.

Another approved candidate in the race, Hasan Rowhani, served as former president Mohammed Khatami’s chief nuclear negotiator. In that post, he struck a deal to suspend enrichment with the so-called EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany). But his lack of prominence makes him an underdog in a race dominated by conservatives closely associated with Khamenei.

Whether the flurry of new threats and sanctions by Congress will affect the election – or the calculations of Khamenei himself – remains to be seen.

Even the strongest supporters of sanctions have conceded that the economic pressure they’ve exerted on the regime to date has not produced the desired result and may even have strengthened regime hardliners who are convinced that Washington’s ultimate aim is “regime change” – a conviction that is likely to be strengthened by a review of Wednesday’s Senate debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Endorsed by nearly three dozen former top U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence officials, the report calls for Washington to “rebalance” its dual-track policy toward Tehran by strengthening the diplomatic track to take advantage of the pressure it has exerted on Tehran through ever-stricter sanctions and threats of military action.

“Much has been accomplished through pressure, but the results have fallen short of expectations in several ways, and unintended consequences pose risks,” according to the report, the latest in a series by The Iran Project and the first to make specific policy reccomendations designed to both defuse persistent tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme and lay the groundwork for a broader dialogue between the two countries.

Previous reports have focused instead on the costs and benefits of sanctions and military action against Iran.

The pressure track, the new, 84-page report argues, may have weakened Iran’s economy and slowed the expansion of its nuclear programme, but it has not produced any breakthrough nor markedly reduced Tehran’s regional influence.

Moreover, the pressure track may also have hardened Tehran’s resistance to pressure, contributed to a rise in repression in Iran, and compounded sectarian tensions across the volatile Middle East, according to the report.

It was signed by, among other prominent foreign-policy figures, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar; and one of the most highly decorated diplomats of his generation, former Amb. Thomas Pickering, a core member of The Iran Project.

“A strengthened diplomatic track that includes the promise of sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable (Iranian) cooperation could help to end the standoff and produce a nuclear deal,” the report asserts.

The report comes amidst uncertainty about the future of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme between Tehran and the “P5+1”, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. In the latest round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, earlier this month, it appears that neither side moved off its previous position, and no date for new high-level talks has been set.

Nonetheless, all parties said the discussions were more detailed and substantive than in past meetings and stressed that there had been no breakdown in the process. Most analysts believe that little or no progress can be expected until after the presidential elections in Iran Jun. 14.

The lack of apparent progress – coupled with the installation of more and more sophisticated centrifuges by Iran at uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo – has encouraged the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), to press Congress for new sanctions against Iran and foreign companies that do business with it that, if approved and fully enforced, would amount to a de facto trade embargo against the Islamic Republic.

A key Senate committee Tuesday approved a resolution calling on Obama to more strictly enforce existing sanctions and to provide military and other support to Israel if the Jewish state “is compelled to take military action in self-defense”.

The new report, “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure With Diplomacy,” also comes amidst a spate of other studies by influential mainstream think tanks that have argued for greater flexibility by the administration in its dealings with Iran.

Just last week, an Atlantic Council task force, which Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel co-chaired until he was nominated to his new post, released a report that called for Washington to “make a more concerted effort to keep Iran from getting to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while lessening the chances for war through reinvigorated diplomacy that offers Iran a realistic and face-saving way out of the nuclear standoff.”

While it concluded that Washington should retain the option to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it from acquiring a weapon, it also warned that ramifications of a “premature military strike …could also be dire.”

Similarly, a new book co-authored by a former top Gulf expert in the Reagan administration, Geoffrey Kemp of the Center for the National Interest, and based on months of consultations with elite national-security experts recommended a “more aggressive U.S. strategy. …(A)llowing very limited and closely monitored (uranium) enrichment within Iran is far preferable to war, and is less risky,” according to the book.

Meanwhile, another recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that, “Economic pressure or military force cannot ‘end’ Iran’s nuclear program. …The only sustainable solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution.”

This emerging elite – if not Congressional – consensus will be bolstered by The Iran Project’s report which insists that “no change in U.S. policy will be possible unless President Obama makes the negotiation of a nuclear deal with Iran one of his top priorities.”

The report stresses that any direct talks – which the administration in recent months appears to have endorsed – should complement the efforts of the P5+1 and that emphasising the diplomatic track would not mean abandoning the pressure track, “including maintaining the option of using military force should the Iranians move quickly to build a bomb.”

“Yet the more the President threatens the use of force, the more difficult it will be for Iran’s defiant leadership to consider any offer, and the more the President will be under pressure to use military force,” it warned.

The report defines a minimum nuclear deal as including Iran’s agreement to produce only low-enriched uranium (3.5-5 percent); cease its production of 20-percent enriched uranium; reduce its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium; and forswear production of plutonium – all under a strict monitoring regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In return, Washington and its P5+1 partners would offer some sanctions relief (although the report notes that Obama’s flexibility to roll back U.S. sanctions is limited by Congress); a commitment not to impose new sanctions for a period of time; and formal recognition of Iran’s limited enrichment programme.

If such a minimum agreement can be reached, according to the report, Washington should broaden talks with Tehran to explore opportunities for cooperation, notably on Afghanistan and Iraq, drug trafficking, and even Syria, although that would be substantially more ambitious.

While the administration has called for direct talks with Tehran’s to clarify its position on the nuclear programme, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed strong scepticism about their usefulness so long as Washington is “holding a gun against Iran”.

At the same time, he has not ruled out such talks – previously a taboo subject in Tehran that has now become a major subject of public debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The Tehran Research Reactor where uranium enriched to 20 percent is used to produce medical isotopes. Credit: Jim Lobe/IPS

The U.S. should not only focus on the short-term goal of “suspending or delaying” Iran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapons capability, but also on “curtailing Iran’s other worrisome activities in the region while encouraging – or at least, not derailing – a better relationship with the citizens of the pivotal state,” according to a report released Thursday by the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

“It may not be possible to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to increase people-to-people ties,” Barbara Slavin, an Iran specialist and Council senior fellow, told IPS.

“The fact that academic exchanges are actually rising – and that nearly 7,000 Iranian students came to the U.S. last year – suggests that Iranians and their government value these connections and do not want to lose them despite the regime’s fears of a ‘velvet revolution’,” she said.

The U.S. should engage Iranians through a variety of means including media outreach, cultural exchanges, internet freedom promotion and reducing the “negative effects” sanctions have on Iran’s citizenry, it says.

This can be done by “designating a small number of U.S. and private Iranian financial institutions as channels for payment for humanitarian, educational, and public diplomacy-related transactions carefully licensed by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control”, according to the report.

While “sanctions have had a severe impact on the Iranian economy,” they “have not yet had the intended political effect of bolstering moderates or shifting the positions of the regime’s leaders,” notes the report, echoing an observation that’s been heard throughout Washington lately.

Any lessening of the sanctions regime, however, ties in to a “dilemma” noted by the report: while eased economic sanctions “would help Iran’s government resume economic growth”, a rapprochement would “allow in more Westerners and could contribute to a potential ‘velvet revolution’ against the theocratic system led by the middle class.”

At the same time, the U.S. does not want to relieve economic pressure on the government while it continues its controversial nuclear activities, the report adds.

“Thus, while the long-term strategic objectives of the United States require it to try harder to build bridges to the Iranian people to prepare the ground for the eventual resumption of normal diplomatic ties, a normalization of relations is unlikely until the nuclear issue is resolved”, the report said.

Talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) during the last two months did not result in a breakthrough, but the Iranians agreed to consider suspending their 20-percent enrichment of uranium for a six-month period and to convert their existing 20-percent stockpile to uranium oxide for medical use in exchange for some relaxation of Western economic sanctions as a confidence-building agreement, according to Al-Monitor.

The next round of negotiations will take place Apr. 5-6 in Kazakhstan.

“There are a number of ways that Almaty II can play out, but we certainly hope that what the Iranians have characterised as positive will produce concrete results,” said a senior administration official in a Wednesday call with reporters.

“The bottom line is that we need to have them enter into a negotiation on the substance of the proposal that we have put in front of them…we’ll have to evaluate their response and then decide on what is the best way forward,” the official said.

“The Obama administration should lay out a step-by-step reciprocal and proportionate plan that ends with graduated relief of sanctions on oil, and eventually on the Iranian Central Bank, in return for verifiable curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment and stocks of enriched uranium, and assurances that Iran does not have undeclared nuclear materials and facilities,” recommends the Council’s report.

The report also recommends diminishing Iran’s ability to hurt U.S. interests in the region through means that include “efforts to shape and effectively support a coherent Syrian opposition that can provide a viable alternative to the Assad regime as well as reviving Arab-Israeli peace talks and shoring up the U.S. relationship with
Egypt, Turkey and the GCC states.”

Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general who was Iran’s chief European interlocutor from 2003 to 2009, stated this week that Syria was so important to Iran that he did not think it possible to reach a nuclear agreement without also addressing the conflict there.

“Remember that [on] Syria, China and Russia are not in the same place [as] the Americans and the Europeans, and that is an important issue…[For] Iran, Syria has an important relationship. If on that we are not together, it will be more difficult to solve [the problem],” he said.

“Iran understands well that the U.S. wants a political solution in Syria and not a continuation of bloodshed and chaos. Otherwise, the Obama administration would have intervened more forcefully before now,” Slavin told IPS.

“I personally think the U.S. should engage Iran on Syria because both the U.S. and Iran want to prevent Assad from being replaced by a fundamentalist Sunni regime. But I also think that, given what has happened in Syria over the past two years, the U.S. should be more proactive as that is the only thing that will convince Assad to step down,” she said.

While a majority of the Council’s Iran Task Force “supports retaining the option of military strikes as a last resort”, the report includes a list of the “ramifications of a premature military strike”.

The potentially “dire second- and third-order effects” include Iranian retaliation against Israel with “thousands of missiles and rockets”, “international condemnation” that could result in the dissolving of the U.S.-built multilateral coalition against Iran, and Iranian withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would seriously diminish the international community’s access to Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to a report released Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists, Iran’s nuclear programme has so far cost Tehran more than 100 billion dollars in lost oil revenue and foreign investments alone.

Authors Ali Vaez and Karim Sadjadpour conclude that given the extent of Iran’s investment in and expertise on its nuclear programme, the only way to ensure it remains peaceful is through a “mutually agreeable diplomatic solution”.

Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general who was Iran’s chief European interlocutor from 2003 to 2009, does not think it is possible to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme without also addressing Syria. Credit: cc by 2.5

On the eve of its second round of talks with Iran on curbing its nuclear programme in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) is showing signs of growing disunity, according to the European Union’s former top foreign policy official.

Speaking at a forum at the Brookings Institution here, Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general who was Iran’s chief European interlocutor from 2003 to 2009, suggested that Russia and China, in particular, are likely to oppose any additional sanctions or other pressure against Tehran if the Almaty talks, currently scheduled for Apr. 5-6, fail to yield much progress.

“I think that the level of consistency and coherence of the P5 (+1) is diminishing,” he told a standing-room-only audience. “It is diminishing first because of Syria. Remember that (on) Syria, China and Russia are not in the same place (as) the Americans and the Europeans, and that is an important issue. It is not a minor issue, because… (for) Iran, Syria has an important relationship. If on that we are not together, it will be more difficult to solve” the problem.

Syria was so important to Iran, he went on, that he did not think it possible to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme without also addressing Syria.

But Syria is not the only issue, he added, noting that at the so-called BRICS summit last week in South Africa, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and the host country, who have historically confined their statements to economic issues, jointly expressed growing concern about “threats of military action as well as unilateral sanctions” against Iran and urged all “disagreements with Tehran to be resolved by political and diplomatic means” alone.

Emerging powers, said Solana, are increasingly unhappy with Western pressure to curb imports of Iranian oil and gas, especially in light of the latest estimates of a possible spike in energy prices next year if Iranian supplies are kept off the market.

“That is something the Chinese (and) nobody wants,” he said, adding that China may be forced to increase Iranian imports to maintain its high economic growth rate.

Solana’s remarks come amid bubbling speculation about possible progress at Almaty which will take place two weeks after technical talks between the P5+1 and Iran in Istanbul.

According to Laura Rozen, an especially well-informed observer of the talks for the Al-Monitor website, the Iranian delegation agreed to consider suspending their 20-percent enrichment of uranium for a six-month period and to convert their existing 20-percent stockpile to uranium oxide for medical use in exchange for some relaxation of Western economic sanctions as a confidence-building agreement.

Their presentation was regarded as moving Tehran marginally closer to a P5+1 offer tabled during the first Almaty round in February.

At that time, the six powers agreed to provide modest sanctions relief, primarily by permitting Turkey and other countries that have traditionally imported Iranian oil and gas to pay in gold in exchange for Tehran’s suspension of 20-percent enrichment operations at its underground Fordo facility, shipping its 20-percent stockpile out of the country; and ramping up inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

According to Rozen’s sources, however, Iran raised numerous objections to the proposal at the Istanbul meeting.

Gary Samore, who served as President Barack Obama’s top nuclear adviser during his first term, told the Brookings audience Monday that he thought the P5+1 offer was a “good deal” for Iran “if it is looking at ways to create a respite” from further economic sanctions which, he added, Washington and the three European countries are certain to push through in the absence of some interim agreement.

But he was doubtful that one would be achieved later this week in Almaty. “I have such low expectations for what’s going to come out of this next round of talks that I think it’s a mistake to try to set the bar,” he said. “If they agree to another round of meetings, that will be the process continuing, but I think that it really is unrealistic to expect that there’d be some kind of breakthrough in these talks.”

“Both sides are using diplomacy for their own purposes: the Iranians use diplomacy in an effort to show there’s progress and therefore no further sanctions are justified, and to the extent it looks like there’s progress, it helps maintain the value of the rial,” said Samore, who is now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“The U.S. and the P5+1 use diplomacy in order to demonstrate that Iran is being intransigent and unreasonable, and therefore more sanctions are required.”

“And that process is going to continue. …(I)f this next round of talks doesn’t produce results, the U.S. and the EU will be looking for additional sanctions in order to increase pressure,” he said. “…I think it’s possible Iran could decide after the presidential elections (in June) to accept the small deal on the table now.”

He stressed that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, both wants to avoid a U.S. military attack and to obtain a “nuclear weapons capacity” because he views the nuclear issue as part of a much broader struggle with the United States (which) “he believes is trying to destroy the Islamic Republic.”

On Syria, Samore argued that regime change will make a deal with Iran “more likely because the Supreme Leader will feel more isolated, under greater pressure, more likely to make tactical concessions in order to relieve further isolation and pressure.

“Of course that’s not going to change his fundamental interest to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity. I think it will confirm for him is the best way to defend himself against countries like the United States is to have that capacity.”

For his part, however, Solana said the West should be “much more engaged with Russia” on both Syria and Iran. Having met with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow two weeks ago, Solana reported a high level of distrust vis-à-vis the U.S. and regarding Washington’s intentions in Syria, and “my fear is that they may get cooler with relation (to) Iran, and we may break an agreement that the P5 may be maintained.”

He said the cohesion the P5+1 has maintained to date had been a “miracle” but suggested it was increasingly under threat.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

This year, like the first year of Obama’s presidency, the two leaders’ public messages had added significance because of the positive signals broadcast by both sides after Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany met in Almaty, Kazakhstan in March. The second meeting is slotted to occur Apr. 6.

Considering that the exchanged messages came in the midst of ongoing talks, a degree of softened language and the abandonment of threats was expected. In his first Norouz speech in 2009, when both sides were getting ready to embark on serious talks, Obama had said that his administration was committed to diplomacy and a process that “will not be advanced by threats” and is “honest and grounded in mutual respect”.

This time, however, his message was laced with threats and promises of rewards if Iranian leaders behaved well, eliciting Khamenei’s disdainful response, and revealing yet again how intractable – and dangerous – the conflict between Iran and the United States has become.

The dueling exchanges also revealed the rhetorical game both sides are playing for the hearts and minds of the Iranian people, who are caught in the crossfire of policies in which they have very little input despite the very serious impact these policies have had on their economic well-being.

Reciting Persian poetry and touting the greatness of Iran’s civilisation and culture, President Obama once again suggested that the United States is ready to reach a solution that gives “Iran access to peaceful nuclear energy while resolving once and for all the serious questions that the world has about the true nature of the Iranian nuclear programme.”

But this general offer – which remained unclear on the key question of whether the United States is willing to formally recognise Iran’s right to enrich uranium on its soil – was also framed within an explicit threat that if the “Iranian government continues down its current path, it will further isolate Iran.”

In other words, the Iranian leaders can choose “a better path” which Obama insisted was for the sake of the Iranian people for whom there is no good reason “to be denied the opportunities enjoyed by people in other countries, just as Iranians deserve the same freedoms and rights as people everywhere.”

Although Iran’s isolation was acknowledged, President Obama’s words were carefully chosen not to mention the fact that it is the United States that has endeavored to impose a ferocious sanctions regime on Iran which, in his words, “deny opportunity enjoyed by people of other countries.”

In the Norouz greeting that came after a tough year of hardship, highlighted by a 40-percent drop in Iran’s oil exports, Obama’s implicit message was that the Iranian people should not blame the United States as the source of their economic difficulties but rather their own government’s choice in refusing the demands of the “international community”.

Viewed through the eyes of the Iranian leadership, the aggressiveness of such a posture was obvious, particularly since two days later, standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the U.S. president set aside his soft language and once again reiterated that as far as Iran is concerned “all options are on the table.”

In other words, if the Iranian leaders do not abandon their current path, the people of Iran will not only continue to be collectively punished through broad-based sanctions and denial of opportunities, they may also be subject to military attacks.

Not surprisingly, the response from Ayatollah Khamenei was calibrated to counter President Obama’s threats hidden in the language of respect for Iranian culture and people. Khamenei also showed his conciliatory side by stating that he does not oppose even bilateral talks with the United States, but added the caveat that he is not optimistic about their results. Why?

“Because our past experiences show that in the logic of the American gentlemen, negotiation does not mean sitting down together to try to reach a rational solution,” Khamenei said. “This is not what they mean by negotiation. What they mean is that we should sit down together and talk so that Iran accepts their views. The goal has been announced in advance: Iran must accept their view.”

Highlighting a clear disconnect between what Obama says to different audiences, Ayatollah Khamenei went to the heart of the problem President Obama has in convincing the Iranian people that he has their interest in mind when talking to them. Khamenei reminded his Iranian audience that “in his official addresses, the American president speaks about Iran’s economic problems as if he is speaking about his victories.”

He pointed to the announced intent of sanctions to “cripple” Iran by “the incompetent lady who was responsible for America’s foreign policy”, an apparent reference to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Khamenei’s response also singled out the United States as Iran’s number one enemy and “main centre of conspiracies against the Iranian nation”. He did acknowledge the help the U.S. gets from other Western countries and Israel but dismissed the latter as “too small to be considered among the frontline enemies of the Iranian nation”.

Along the same lines, Khamenei was also dismissive of Obama’s claim to speak for the international community. “The international community is no way interested in enmity with Iranian or Islamic Iran,” Khamenei said.

Despite differences, however, Khamenei speech had one key point in common with Obama’s message. Both leaders were ready to heap praise on the Iranian people; one did so for their “great and celebrated culture” and the other for their resistance and “high capacity and power to turn threats into opportunities”.

Heaping praise, however, cannot hide the fact that the most likely victims of the conflict between the governments of the two countries are the ones that have no input in the decisions made in either country. Both speeches made clear that, caught in the rhetorical crossfire, the people of Iran are subjects to be wooed and courted but whose economic welfare is not of much concern.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Credit: sajed.ir/GNU license

While the U.S.-led sanctions regime on Iran has produced substantial economic hardship, analysts here are increasingly pointing out that Tehran’s controversial nuclear activities have continued unabated.

According to a study released Tuesday by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), “there is a clear disconnect between the stated goals of the sanctions policy (a change in the Iranian calculus in regard to its nuclear program) and what sanctions have actually achieved.”

Based on interviews with senior Iranian political officials, analysts and members of the business community, the report argues that key Iranian regime stakeholders have not begun “building narratives that enable such a course correction” nor started “lobbying the government for a shift in policy”.

“[Iran’s nuclear programme] appears at best entirely unaffected by the sanctions or at worst partly driven by them in the sense that escalating sanctions as a bargaining chip also gives Iran the incentive to advance its program for the same reason,” argue report authors Bijan Khajehpour, Reza Marashi and Trita Parsi.

“…It is highly unlikely that the regime will succumb to sanctions pressure at a time when its narrative remains unchallenged, key stakeholders are not visibly lobbying for policy shifts, no proportionate sanctions relief is put on the table by the P5+1, and capitulation is seen as a greater threat to the regime’s survival than even a military confrontation with the United States,” according to the report.

Indeed, despite four rounds of U.N.-ratified sanctions on Iran imposed between 2006 and 2010, and unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU that led to Iran’s currency losing 40 percent of its value in 2012, Tehran has not made nuclear concessions favourable to the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) during negotiations.

“Sanctions have not induced significant Iranian concessions because the Iranians have been given little or no reason to believe that such concessions will bring significant relief from sanctions,” Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst, told IPS.

Calling Western sanctions against Iran “underwhelming”, Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based group which strongly advocates for sanctions on Iran, wrote in June 2012 that only “economic warfare” would compel Iran to halt its nuclear programme.

“And, if that’s insufficient to get Khamenei to strike a deal – and there is unfortunately no evidence so far that it will – the president needs to unite the country in moving beyond sanctions and preparing for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” concluded Dubowitz in his foreignpolicy.com article.

But Pillar was critical of the notion of sanctions as an alternative to military action.

“A fallacy in the common view of sanctions and military attack as being two alternative ways of dealing with the same problem is the tendency to think of sanctions in isolation, without regard to the diplomacy that must accompany sanctions for them to be of any help,” said the former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

“Merely piling on more sanctions without providing necessary incentives would probably only increase the risk of impasse leading to military conflict – both because it would confirm the Iranian belief that the West is interested more in regime change than in making a deal, and because it would encourage those in the United States and Israel who would welcome a war to argue that sanctions had been ‘tried’ and military force was the only option left,” he said.

While Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be deeply distrustful of U.S. intentions with or without sanctions, Ahmad Sadri, an Iran expert at Lake Forest College, told IPS that a change in Iran’s nuclear policy is possible.

“The imperious attitude and the coercive politics of sanctions have left no doubt in [Khamenei’s] mind that America is not after a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear programme. In his mind, the aim of America is nothing less than regime change,” he said.

But while “the case is already prejudiced…we are talking about motivated negotiators,” Sadri told IPS.

“Although the Iranian economy is far from a collapse, the vulnerable classes are feeling the pinch of the skyrocketing prices…the effect sanctions could have are not direct. They are not smart. They do hurt the common people. But also, the government is interested in bringing them to an end,” he said.

According to Sadri, if the P5+1 wants Iran to agree to their demands, they must change their view and approach to Iran and the diplomatic process.

“They must want to end the impasse without humiliating a country with two and a half millennia of history and two centuries of resisting colonial encroachments. They must negotiate in good faith and offer Iran an honourable deal with a face-saving way out of the impasse,” he said.

Iranian officials expressed disappointment after more details of a revised package by the P5+1 that included only slight sanctions relief was revealed in Istanbul during “technical” talks on Mar. 19.

In a Mar. 20 speech marking the Iranian New Year, Ayatollah Khamenei again insisted that any deal on its nuclear programme must include acknowledgement of “Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes”.

“Past experiences and the existing conditions show that the Americans are not after resolving this issue and they want the nuclear issue to remain unresolved so that they have a pretext to pressure and ‘cripple’ the Iranian nation. Of course, much to the dismay of the enemies, the Iranian nation will not be crippled,” he said.

Iran and the P5+1 group are due to meet again in Almaty, Kazakhstan on Apr. 5 and 6.

“The U.S. and the other P5+1 countries need to couple their demands on Iran with offers of sanctions relief more significant than they have offered so far, and they need to make clear that they accept Iran’s right to have a peaceful nuclear programme, to include enrichment of uranium,” said Pillar.

“More generally they need to make clear that they are willing to do business with the current Iranian regime and that they are not more interested in overthrowing it,” he said.

The Tehran Research Reactor where uranium enriched to 20 percent is used to produce medical isotopes. Credit: Jim Lobe/IPS

The meeting between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) that took place in late February in Almaty, Kazakhstan was described as positive and even a “turning point” by Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili.

This positive reception has set the stage for the meeting of lower-level representatives from the two sides in Istanbul this coming week to iron out technical details for a second high-level meeting Apr. 5 and 6 back in Almaty.

Irrespective of what the results of the next meetings will turn out to be, two aspects of the February Almaty agreements are worth noting.

First was the decision by Iran to agree to quick follow-up meetings, a development that appears to have genuinely surprised Iran’s great-power interlocutors. Having been led to believe that the upcoming June presidential elections will lead to particularly contentious times in Tehran, the common wisdom had it that Iran would shy away from direct and substantive negotiations until after the vote.

The decision in favour of quick meetings constituted a clear signal that the nuclear talks are considered a vital interest of the state and are thus not to be affected by Iran’s intense intra-elite political competition.

A second related message has been conveyed by the complete lack of commentary on the part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding what happened in Almaty. If anyone had any doubts that the office of the current president no longer has any input into the discussion of how Tehran will handle its side of the nuclear negotiations, Almaty should have put them to rest.

Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did mention in his Thursday speech to the Assembly of Experts that he had given his assent to Ahmadinejad’s effort to pursue an agreement with the United States through the mediation of Turkey and Brazil in 2010, but also insisted that he told “officials that the Americans would not accept, and they didn’t.” In Khamenei’s telling, Ahmadinejad’s failure seems to have sealed his irrelevance to the nuclear talks.

Still, the clarity regarding the systemic nature of decision-making on the nuclear file does not diminish the difficult and complex challenges facing Tehran as its negotiators prepare for the technical talks in Istanbul and the subsequent Almaty II meeting in early April.

The acknowledged slight shift on the part of the U.S. has given the Iranian negotiators the opening they need to make the case for their domestic audience that the talks with the P5+1 have finally changed from a forum for issuing demands to Iran into a process of give and take.

But the question of how to respond to the shift that has taken place has also clearly placed the onus on Tehran.

The P5+1′s decision to drop its demand that Iran immediately shut down its underground enrichment plant at Fordow and allow Tehran to keep some of its 20-percent enriched uranium for use in the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) for the production of medical isotopes can be seen as a de facto recognition of Iran’s basic enrichment rights.

Although effective – as opposed to official – recognition is still far from satisfying Iranian demands, it offers an opening for a process of give and take that at least strongly suggests that official recognition will be part of the end game.

Furthermore, although the offered suspension of certain sanctions, such as the recently imposed ban on gold trade does not go far enough for Tehran, the poential for putting in place a reliable step-by-step process of exchanging layers of sanctions for increased limitations on Iran’s nuclear programme and enhanced verification of its peaceful nature is something that Tehran finds acceptable, with the understanding that there will be some sort of equivalency between the steps taken by both sides.

At the same time, the challenge of devising a sustained step-by-step process based on equivalency remains. For Tehran, the challenge is underlined by its ambivalence regarding Washington’s actual aims in the negotiations. It is sceptical that the Barack Obama administration is willing or able to put a stop to the dual-track process of simultaneously talking and pressuring Iran, even if Tehran takes the step of, for example, suspending operations at Fordow.

This ambivalence was openly expressed by Ayatollah Khamenei who, in a meeting with the members of the Assembly of Experts Thursday, said that the Westerners in the Almaty meeting “did not do anything important that can be construed as a concession; rather they only made a minor acknowledgement of just a fraction of Iran’s rights.” He went on to say, “in order to assess Western sincerity in the recent meeting, we should wait for the next meeting.”

The statement implies the belief that the U.S. has finally come to accept the reality that no matter how much economic and political pressure is exerted on Iran, Tehran will not waver on its right to pursue a nuclear energy programme.

In the words of one Iranian political analyst, Mehdi Mohammadi, “The United States believed that all-out pressures will change Iran’s strategic calculations and will force Tehran to make a concession….They expected Iran to change (its strategic calculations), but in practice, it was the United States which changed.”

The U.S. may have changed its calculations, but Khamenei’s focus on “American sincerity” still reflects his persistent scepticism about U.S. intensions. By his own admission, as well as reporting of various Iranian diplomats who have been involved in nuclear talks over the past decade, Ayatollah Khamenei has at various times supported negotiations.

But his support has also been accompanied by scepticism regarding Washington’s desire or ability to address some of Iran’s bottom lines regarding its pursuit of what it insists is a peaceful programme. The “go-ahead”, in other words, as it was with Ahmadinejad’s gambit with the Turkish and Brazilian intervention, has always been accompanied by the “it-will-not-work” caveat.

As the person now identified both domestically and internationally as being fully in charge of the nuclear file, the Leader has only himself on whom to use the “it-will-not-work” refrain and pay the domestic political costs if the negotiations fail as they have in the past.

As this new round of negotiations begins, he has to decide whether he is once again willing to accept, as he did between 2003 and 2005, the suspension of at least part of Iran’s enrichment programme in exchange for suspension of some sanctions on the part of the U.S. and Europe.

As a first step, the acceptance that neither of these suspensions needs to be considerable or major in terms of broader demands that both sides have on each other is a necessity. But the acceptance of a mini-step as a first move is by itself a sign that a process based on a more realistic understanding and expectation of what can be given and taken on the part of both sides has begun.

The resolution, introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham and Robert Menendez and publicised in a press conference Thursday on Capitol Hill, will reportedly be a focus of the widely attended American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference in Washington next week.

According to a copy obtained by IPS, the “sense of the Congress” resolution “Urges that, if Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to our ally in defense of its territory, people, and existence.”

“The resolution reiterates strong support for Israel and concern with Iran’s nuclear research – two sentiments no one would argue,” Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network, told IPS.

“Those who vote on it will understand that it is hortatory and doesn’t have any effect on U.S. national security decision-making, but that may not be so clear to observers overseas,” continued Hurlburt, a former staffer in Madeleine Albright’s State Department under President Bill Clinton.

“It’s critical that the U.S. be seen to retain decision-making flexibility as negotiations seem to be moving toward a more sensitive phase,” she said.

This week in Almaty the P5+1 softened their “stop, shut and ship” offer presented last spring by asking Iran to “suspend” enrichment of uranium to 20 percent while using its existing stockpile for nuclear fuel and modifying equipment at its Fordow facility rather than permanently closing it.

This, in addition to increased IAEA monitoring, would result in slight sanctions relief that will not impact existing oil or financial sanctions, a U.S. diplomat told Al-Monitor.

Iran’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili called the talks “a positive step” in a statement published on Mehr News.

“Some of the points raised in their respond [sic] were more realistic comparing to what they said in the past…which we believe is positive, despite the fact that we have a long way to reach to the optimum point,” said Jalili.

“There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about outcome of the Almaty talks,” Kelsey Davenport, a nonproliferation analyst at the Arms Control Association, told IPS.

“If press accounts are accurate, I think that the revised proposal reflects a move toward a more balanced interim step that addresses the most urgent concerns on both sides; namely sanctions relief for Iran and for the P5+1, it would limit the size of Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent,” she said.

But the non-binding resolution presented Thursday is unlikely to go unnoticed by the Iranians, who will reportedly present a response to the P5+1’s revised offer during another meeting set for Mar. 16 in Istanbul, Turkey.

“If the Senate moves forward with this, they risk sending the signal to the Iranians that, no matter what was said at Almaty, the U.S. does not have its own house in order to make a deal and is not serious about resolving the nuclear dispute peacefully,” Jamal Abdi, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, told IPS.

“The same senators and organisations sponsoring this resolution would make this exact argument to halt further negotiations were Tehran to take such a provocative step in the midst of talks,” he said.

The resolution follows a bipartisan bill presented on Wednesday that seeks to make it the policy of the U.S. to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability — contrasting with President Obama’s previous declarations that the U.S. will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon – and to broaden and tighten existing sanctions on Iran.

Introduced by Representatives Ed Royce and Eliot Engel, the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act aims to restrict Iran’s access to hard currency by targeting its foreign exchange reserves, impose tougher restrictions on commercial trade with Iran and designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation.

“It is usually overlooked, but each time the United States imposes a new coercive restriction on Iran, Iran responds by upping the ante on its nuclear programme,” Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor who served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, told IPS.

“A new round of sanctions at this moment, when serious talks seem to be getting underway for the first time in eight months, risks sabotaging the limited progress that has been made,” he said.

While there may have been cautious optimism over the results of Almaty, a variety of factors will influence the ongoing diplomatic process.

“Nothing can really happen before the Iranian elections, other than ‘marking time,’” Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Carter administration, told IPS.

“Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will almost surely press the President to take a strong stand on Iran and to reaffirm his commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons [during Obama’s visit to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan],” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO from 1993-98.

“The issue is not just nuclear weapons or the lack thereof. Deep and long-lasting regional competitions for influence are at the heart of the matter…And in the last three administrations, we have been unwilling to put on the table a negotiating position that has a chance to succeed, by recognising that the security interests of the U.S., Israel, and Iran must all be considered,” Hunter told IPS.

“No country can negotiate seriously when it is under military threat, facing sanctions that only help to strengthen the regime domestically, and with no serious proposals on the ‘plus’ side,” he said.

“Sanctions may be most useful after a strike against Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities,” Clifford May, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based group that strongly advocates sanctions on Iran, wrote Thursday in an op-ed.

“If such an agreement [where “Iran’s rulers verifiably end the nuclear-weapons program, halt terrorism sponsorship, and ease domestic oppression”] cannot be reached, continuing and even tightening sanctions will make it more difficult for Iran to replace facilities destroyed after a military option has been exercised,” said May.

To date, no U.S. official assessment has concluded that Iran currently has an active weapons of mass destruction programme.

In August 2012, the Obama administration reiterated the assessment made by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in January 2012 that “Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons … should it choose to do so.”

“We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” said Clapper.

Amb. Bruce Laingen (left) and Amb. John Limbert. Credit: Kate Gould/Friends Committee on National Legislation

On the eve of resumed talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) in Almaty, Kazakhstan over its nuclear programme, two former hostages of the U.S. embassy takeover in Tehran argued that the aura of mistrust that has dogged relations for decades must be addressed.

“The ghosts of 1979 will be there and they will do their best to prevent any progress – they will haunt the proceedings, so to speak,” said retired Ambassador John Limbert at a Capitol Hill press conference Monday.

“All concerned should take steps [to address the shared issue of mistrust], particularly the governments of Iran and the United States,” Ambassador Bruce Laingen (retired), the chief of mission held hostage during the 1979 hostage crisis, told IPS.

“The two of us intrude on each other’s interests all the time. We’ve got to find a way reasonably to talk about those interests as they conflict or at least be ready to talk,” he said.

A fluent Persian-speaker and author, Limbert also urged broadening diplomatic efforts with Iran despite the constantly referenced grievances on both sides.

“The U.S. ‘two-track’ policy of engagement and pressure has – in reality – only one track: multilateral and unilateral sanctions, that whatever their stated intention and real effects, are allowing the Iranian government to claim credit for defying an international bully,” he said at the packed event, which was co-hosted by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the Friends Committee on National Legislation and the National Iranian American Council.

“To move forward, we must stop holding all questions hostage to agreement on the nuclear issue…The United States and Iran must open up dialogue on areas where there is political space on both sides to break the cycle of mistrust,” he said.

“The Islamic Republic, like it or not, is what it is and we have things to talk about, even if we are not friends,” said Limbert, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The Barack Obama administration maintains that “all options are on the table” to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. “But neither side wants to resort to military action to reach a solution,” said Alireza Nader, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, during an Arms Control Association briefing Monday.

“A military conflict – you can a make a very good argument – would be against the national interests of all sides,” he said.

Still, what has been assessed by most Western nuclear experts and intelligence agencies as Iran’s slow but steady move towards a nuclear weapon capability has resulted in years of cold and at times tense relations between Iran and the U.S. and Israel, as well as an ongoing “crippling” sanctions regime that led to Iran’s currency losing 40 percent of its value in October 2012, among other economic pain.

Yet Iran continues to insist that its nuclear activities are completely peaceful and has shown no sign that it will submit to P5+1 demands – most recently described as the “stop, shut and ship” demand (Iran should stop enriching uranium to 19.75 percent, shut down its Fordow plant and ship out its stockpile of its 19.75-enriched grade of uranium) – without substantial sanctions relief and acknowledgement of what Iran interprets as its right to enrich uranium according to its interpretation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Hopes for bilateral talks between Iran and the U.S. were also dashed last week after a speech by Iran’s Leader Ali Khamenei was interpreted by the Western press as a rejection of direct talks.

“The U.S. is pointing a gun at Iran and wants us to talk to them. The Iranian nation will not be intimidated by these actions,” said the leader on Feb. 7.

But some analysts contend that bilateral talks, as with progress on the nuclear issue, remains possible.

“…the Leader did not explicitly rule out bilateral talks. He merely voiced deep scepticism as to whether they would lead to a resolution of the nuclear dispute,” wrote Peter Jenkins, the UK’s former ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on IPS’s foreign policy blog on Feb. 8.

“To goad Iran into entering direct talks with the U.S., the Americans must come up with ways to show that they are serious about finding a peaceful solution,” Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iranian political analyst based in London, told IPS.

“The Obama administration can do this by either taking on Congress to secure concessions, or pushing the European members of the P5+1 to lift EU sanctions,” he said.

While the P5+1 will reportedly present Iran with an updated proposal that will include “sanctions relief” in return for verifiable moves by the Iranians that their nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, few are expecting substantial progress during this round of talks, particularly because Iran is getting ready for its June presidential election.

The Iranians are unlikely to allow substantial nuclear progress to be made while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is president, according to Shabani, who edits the Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs website.

“The best that can be achieved in Kazakhstan is for all sides to agree on some kind of road map for how to end the nuclear crisis down the road, and agree on a series of technical-level meetings to pave the way for high-level political talks later this year,” Shabani told IPS.

“Tearing down the wall of mistrust will not be easy,” said Laingen, who first served in Iran in 1953, during the Capitol Hill briefing Monday.

“But brick by brick, every step toward that goal advances the national security interests of the U.S. and Israel and other allies in the region, which are threatened by the spectre of another war in the powder keg of the Middle East,” he said.

A letter written this month by seven former Iranian parliamentarians now living in exile urges Iran and the P5+1 – the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – to pursue a “win-win outcome” by incorporating four points into an agreement.

The letter states that Iran should be able to enrich uranium up to five percent for peaceful purposes; Iran should be given fuel for its medical and scientific research reactors if it halts its enrichment of 20 percent uranium and allows the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to control its existing stockpile; Iran should implement the Additional Protocol as a “confidence-building measure”; and Iran should be provided with a timetable for the lifting of sanctions if it halts its 20 percent uranium enrichment.

“The proposal reminds us that there is in fact a reasonable solution to this confrontation, one that satisfies each side’s core interests and removes any need for war,” Stephen Walt, a Harvard international relations professor, told IPS.

“The only question is whether leaders in Washington and Tehran will be smart and far-sighted enough to seize it.”

Speaking Thursday on behalf of all the letter’s cosigners at the Wilson Center, former Iranian parliamentarians and democracy activists Fatemeh Haghighatjoo and Seyed Aliakbar Mousavi advocated for direct talks between Iran and the U.S. while discussing their proposal.

They argued that a deal can be made this year because Iran’s Supreme Leader is desperate for a “small victory” to reestablish his declining authority and because President Barack Obama is no longer hindered by re-election considerations – as long as both sides act with the other’s predicaments in mind.

“Both sides should think that they will gain something out of a new round of negotiations,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, who remains an active participant in Iran’s democracy movement.

“The nuclear file has to be closed in order for (the) Iranian people to take power,” she said.

Although concerns over an Israeli strike on Iran have significantly decreased since Obama refused to align the U.S.’s “red line” on Iran (a nuclear weapon) with Israel’s red line (nuclear weapon capability), the threat of a military conflict is still in the horizon as efforts to reach a deal continue to fail.

U.S. experts included on the Wilson Center panel argued that the letter provides a “useful” framework for an agreement, but is lacking in the way of important details.

George Perkovich, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Iran’s belief that it has a right to enrich uranium peacefully in accordance with the NPT is a matter of interpretation rather than fact.

“From the standpoint of the P5+1 (acknowledging Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear enrichment) is a huge concession,” he said, adding that the P5+1 “also understand(s) that there won’t be a diplomatic outcome if that isn’t one of the concessions.”

Perkovich also stated that concerns over past nuclear weapons-related work conducted by Iran that was halted in 2003 must be thoroughly investigated and laid to rest before a deal is made.

Iran’s alleged past nuclear work remains an important issue for U.S.-based experts.

“The former parliamentarians formula…should acknowledge not just the NPT members right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy programmes, but also their responsibility to comply with safeguards and cooperate with the IAEA’s efforts to verify that there is no diversion for military purposes,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told IPS.

“It is in Iran’s interest to immediately address questions about its past activities in order to bolster its claim that its programme is only for peaceful purposes,” he said.

For Reza Marashi, the research director of the National Iranian American Council, the letter is a solid example of “the mainstream view of Iran’s opposition” which “calls for the regime to be more transparent and flexible with regard to its nuclear program, but also calls for the U.S. and E.U. to lift sanctions and acknowledge Iran’s right to enrich on Iranian soil.”

“Perhaps most promising, (the letter) shows that Iran’s opposition understands how conflict resolution works: both sides must trade compromises of equal value, rather than letting the “perfect” deal be the enemy of a good one,” Marashi told IPS.

“This type of sound thinking and leadership bodes well for Iran’s future,” he said.

While the U.S.-led “crippling” sanctions regime on Iran continues to take a toll on Iran’s economy and average Iranians, it has yet to produce tangible results for the U.S. at the negotiating table and U.S. experts are increasingly acknowledging this.

In a Jan. 17 “memorandum to President Obama”, Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, urges Obama to “intensify the diplomatic dialogue” and offer sanctions relief “in order to obtain any meaningful concessions on the part of Tehran, despite the strategic and moral disinclination for rewarding Iran’s nuclear transgressions.”

“Working with our partners in Europe, Russia and China, an interagency effort should develop a persuasive package of specific sanctions relief that is sequenced to clear actions and credible commitments on the Iranian side,” wrote Maloney.

Obama seemed to be nodding at Iran when he made several war-averse statements during his second inaugural address this week.

“We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear,” he said.

But with Iran being accused of stalling on a date for more talks and members of Congress having pushed for yet more punitive measures against Iran and those who aid its circumvention of sanctions just this December, prospects for a nuclear deal are currently dismal.

“I worry that this is déjà vu all over again,” said MIT international security expert Jim Walsh, at the Wilson Center.

“You can’t do the same thing you’ve always done before and expect a different result,” he said.

*Jasmin Ramsey edits IPS News’s foreign policy blog, www.lobelog.com