A group of Iranian students chant slogans to show their support for Iran's nuclear program in a gathering in front of the headquarters of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran on Sunday.(Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi, AP)
As world powers talk of extending Monday's deadline for a nuclear agreement with Iran, one thing is clear: The nation's authoritarian regime must decide if it wants to remain in conflict or engage with the West.
Before meeting with his Iranian counterpart over the weekend, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said 10 years of international negotiations with Iran were reaching "the hours of truth."
"It remains a question if Iran is really ready to renounce every research development it's working on in the direction of getting a nuclear weapon," Steinmeier said. "That is the only criterion."
Negotiators in Vienna, Austria, remain deadlocked on the size of Iran's program for producing fuel that can be used in reactors or bombs, and on when to lift sanctions intended to force Iran to stop production and answer the United Nations' questions about suspected work on nuclear weapons.
Late Sunday, the American delegation, including Secretary of State John Kerry, proposed that the two sides begin discussing an extension of the deadline, the Associated Press reported.
President Obama told ABC's
This Week that the U.S. goal is "to shut off a whole bunch of different avenues whereby Iran might get a nuclear weapon, and at the same time make sure that the structure of sanctions are rolled back, step for step, as Iran is doing what it's supposed to do."
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Iran has yet to explain evidence it conducted studies and tests of nuclear detonators, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told his board of governors last week.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, president Hassan Rouhani and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani are the founding fathers of Iran's nuclear weapons program, which they view as a guarantee against external and internal threats, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative who's now an Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
"The U.S. is asking those three men to forsake their most valued child," Gerecht said. "If they were to agree to confess to past nuclear weapons research, provide access to scientists, (and) turn over all the paper work, that would certainly suggest Khamenei has given up on his former identity."
The Iranians "have to choose between isolation and engagement," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security, which focuses on nuclear proliferation issues.
While many in Iran want the economy to grow, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — which controls the nation's nuclear facilities and is close to Khamenei — gains power through smuggling and other methods of countering sanctions and therefore may not want them lifted.
The talks are "about closing a chapter in the book of enmity" between Iran and the United States, said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, which promotes better relations between Iran and the United States.
"It's not just Iran that would have to close that chapter, but it's also true on the U.S. side," said Parsi, who is in Vienna monitoring the talks. If negotiations drag on until the new Republican-led Senate has a chance to pass fresh, harsher sanctions, "that could be lethal for diplomacy."
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