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Iran's Friendly Nuke TalkIs it a genuine breakthrough, or is Tehran just stringing us along?

By Fred KaplanPosted Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, at 5:50 PM ET

Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed JaliliThe Oct. 1 talks in Geneva about Iran's nuclear program were certainly groundbreaking. The mere fact that Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, made specific commitments—instead of railing on about peace and justice, Iran's usual MO in these sorts of forums—was remarkable in itself.

The fact that most of these commitments were made during a 45-minute break from the multilateral forum, when Jalili talked one-on-one with Undersecretary of State William Burns—the first high-level contact between the United States and Iran in 30 years—also signals the possibility of further breakthroughs.

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But is this good news or bad? Is it the prelude to serious measures that impede Iran from converting its nuclear program to a nuclear-weapons program? Or are the Iranians just stringing us along, making nice but negligible gestures to keep the U.N. Security Council from tightening sanctions while Iran continues to work secretly toward building atomic bombs?

One needn't be paranoid or a neocon to suspect the latter. The Iranians have lied repeatedly about the scope of their nuclear program. The uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran, which has been the main focus of Western concerns, was covert until 2002, when the anti-Iranian terrorist group MEK revealed its existence, which was in turn confirmed by U.S. intelligence, at which point the Iranians fessed up.

Last week, during the G20 meeting, President Barack Obama publicly announced the existence of yet another covert enrichment facility in Qom, Iran—raising the possibility of a broad network of secret sites. In fact, many analysts believe that the facility is so small, it could serve no function but as one link in a broader network. And the fact of its secrecy suggests that its purpose is not to generate electricity or to power medical research but, rather, to build atomic bombs.

The inference is by no means certain, but the burden of proof now lies with the Iranians, and they know this. The Qom disclosure is almost certainly what spurred them to make nice in Geneva to pre-empt international isolation. It is also what justifies skepticism about their motives.

A little context: To enrich uranium, a cascade of centrifuges—thousands of them—spins and separates the lighter-weight U-235 isotopes (which can make bombs) from the heavier U-238 isotopes (which cannot make bombs), thus isolating and collecting the "purer" uranium. The Iranians have reportedly enriched enough uranium at Natanz to provide the explosive ingredients for one atomic bomb.

At the Geneva talks, Iran made two important pledges. First, it promised to allow officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect and continuously monitor the facility in Qom. Second, it agreed to send some of the uranium from Natanz to other countries for further enrichment; those other countries would, in turn, send it back to Iran to use as fuel for electricity or some other purpose other than building bombs.

These pledges are welcome but not entirely assuring. The IAEA inspectors can find out only so much if Qom is but one of several facilities, most of which are hidden. And as for exporting the uranium for enrichment, it is not yet clear how much of it the Iranians intend to send.

Because of these uncertainties, some critics are dismissing the whole venture as fraudulent. They may turn out to be right. But what would they have Obama do? Attacking the sites doesn't make much sense, even on the narrowest of calculations. If there are other hidden sites (which is the hawkish critics' premise), an attack would leave much of Iran's program unscathed. Nor does tightening the sanctions now seem plausible; the Security Council's members seem more amenable to harsher sanctions after the Qom revelations, but they'd be unlikely to approve them without at least taking up the Iranians' offer and seeing if they follow through.