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 Western states were expected to ease sanctions later on Monday
after the United Nations nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran is meeting
its end of the bargain under a November 24 interim accord to resolve
a decade-old dispute over its nuclear program.
European Union foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, were due to
take a decision on EU measures later in the day. The U.S. State
Department and European Union confirmed receiving a report from the
International Atomic Energy Agency but neither commented on its
content.
The mutual concessions are scheduled to last six months, during
which time six powers — the United States, Russia, China, France,
Britain and Germany — aim to negotiate a final accord defining the
permissible scope of Iran's nuclear activity.
Western governments want such an agreement to lay to rest their
concerns that Iran could produce an atomic weapon and ease the risk
of new war in the Middle East. Tehran is seeking an end to painful
U.S. and EU sanctions that have severely damaged the OPEC producer's
economy.
The interim accord, struck on November 24 after years of on-off
diplomacy, marks the first time in a decade that Tehran has limited
its nuclear work, which it says has no military goals, and the first
time the West has eased economic pressure on Iran.
"We are looking forward to confirmation from the IAEA that Iran is
implementing its side of the deal," British Foreign Secretary
William Hague told reporters before meeting his counterparts in
Brussels.
"We will be fulfilling our side of the deal."
The EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates
diplomatic contacts with Iran on behalf of the six powers, said she
expected talks on the final settlement to start within the next few
weeks.
Under the interim deal, Iran agreed to suspend enrichment of uranium
to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, a short technical step
away from the level needed for nuclear weapons.
It also has to dilute or convert its stockpile of this higher-grade
uranium, and cease work on the Arak heavy water reactor, which could
provide plutonium, an alternative to uranium for bombs.
IAEA REPORTING PROGRESS
The IAEA said Tehran had begun the dilution process and that
enrichment of uranium to 20 percent had been stopped at the two
facilities where such work is done.
"The Agency confirms that, as of 20 January 2014, Iran ... has
ceased enriching uranium above 5 percent U-235 at the two cascades
at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) and four cascades at the
Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) previously used for this
purpose," its report to member states said.
It was referring to Iran's two enrichment plants, at Natanz and
Fordow. Cascades are linked networks of centrifuge machines that
spin uranium gas to increase the concentration of U-235, the isotope
used in nuclear fission chain reactions, which is found in nature at
concentrations of less than 1 percent.
Iranian state TV earlier said Iran had suspended 20 percent
enrichment at Natanz and inspectors were heading to Fordow.
In return, Tehran is expecting to be able to retrieve $4.2 billion
in oil revenues frozen overseas, and resume trade in petrochemicals,
gold and other precious metals.
The U.S. government estimates the value of sanctions relief in total
at about $7 billion, although some diplomats say much will depend on
the extent to which Western companies will now seek to re-enter the
Iranian market.
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The deal was reached after months of secret negotiations between
Washington and Tehran, and marks a new thaw in relations between the
United States and Iran, enemies since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
"The iceberg of sanctions against Iran is melting," the head of
Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, told state TV.
The breakthrough is widely seen as a result in part of the election
of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, as Iran's president last
year. Rouhani is expected to court global business this week at the
World Economic Forum in Davos, although any future trade bonanza
depends on the long-term success of nuclear diplomacy.
Washington has made clear its view that it is premature for industry
to start doing business with Iran again as most of the sanctions
remain in place for now.
Reaching the final accord will mean overcoming decades of
deep-seated mistrust between Iran and the West, and politicians on
both sides have warned it will be hugely challenging.
The preliminary deal does dampen talk of war: the United States and
Israel had both refused to rule out military action against Iranian
nuclear sites if the matter could not be resolved by diplomacy.
DOUBTS
But Israel, which is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear
arsenal and views a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat, has
branded the deal a "historic mistake" as it does not dismantle
Tehran's uranium enrichment program.
Its allies in the U.S. Congress have threatened to impose new
sanctions on Iran, even though President Barack Obama has urged them
to give diplomacy a chance.
Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in
Washington and a proponent of tough sanctions on Iran, said that by
providing economic relief, the West will lose future bargaining
power.
"The interim deal does nothing over the next 12 months to prevent
Iran from proceeding with the nuclear-weapon and ballistic-missile
research that are the keys to a deliverable nuclear weapon," he
said. "Ahead of final negotiations, Tehran will be in a stronger
position to block peaceful Western efforts to dismantle its
military-nuclear program."
The U.N. nuclear watchdog will play a key role in checking that Iran
implements the deal, but its increased access falls short of what it
says it needs to investigate suspicions that Tehran may have worked
on designing an atomic bomb in the past.
"The accord gives the powers and Iran plenty of flexibility in going
about reducing Iran's nuclear threat to a level the world will
accept," said proliferation expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie
Endowment think-tank. "But it hasn't spelled out how they will work
with the IAEA to resolve allegations Iran has been working on
nuclear weapons."
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Lesley
Wroughton in Washingon, writing by Justyna Pawlak; editing by Peter
Graff)
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