Iran, powers hold 'substantive' nuclear talks

US to deal harshly with violators of Iran sanctions Iran ready for long term deal: FM

CURBING ENRICHMENT

The goal of the talks for the United States and its European allies is to extend the time that Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

For that goal to be achieved, experts and diplomats say, Iran would have to limit enrichment to a low concentration of fissile purity, deactivate most of its centrifuges now devoted to such work, curb nuclear research to ensure it has solely civilian applications and submit to more intrusive monitoring by UN anti-proliferation inspectors.

Khamenei and other Iranian officials have often made clear that they could not accept any such cuts in nuclear capacities. The trick will be devising compromises that powerful constituencies on both sides can live with.

Western governments appear to have given up on the demand, made in a series of Security Council resolutions since 2006, that Iran should totally halt the most disputed aspects of its programme - all activities related to uranium enrichment at the underground Natanz and Fordow plants and production of plutonium at the planned Arak heavy water reactor.

Diplomats privately acknowledge that the nuclear programme is now too far advanced, and too much a cornerstone of Iran's national pride, for Tehran to agree to scrap it entirely.

But while Iran may keep a limited enrichment capacity, the West will insist on guarantees that mean any attempt to build a nuclear bomb would take long enough for it to be detected and stopped, possibly with military action.

Israel, which called the November deal a "historic mistake" because it did not dismantle its arch-enemy's enrichment programme, made its position clear ahead of the Vienna talks.

"We are giving a chance for (a) diplomatic solution on condition that it provides a comprehensive and satisfactory solution that doesn't leave Iran with a nuclear breakout capability," Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said.

"In other words, that it doesn't leave (Iran) with a system ... that would permit it to remain close to a bomb," Steinitz he told Israeli radio.

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