Recent Development
Analyzing all the efforts it is possible to say that sanctions and negotiations are useless and there is no progress. To press Iran to comply, the Security Council, the United States and the European Union created an increasingly painful set of economic sanctions on Iran, as part of a dual-track strategy — negotiations and sanctions. Iran had insisted that as a precondition for serious negotiations, the world should lift all the sanctions and recognize Iran’s “right to enrich,” which Iran asserts it has as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
At the beginning of 2012 Israel declared its readiness to destroy Iranian nuclear infrastructure because its unwillingness to cooperate with the IAEA from Israeli point of view is proved that Iran has intentions to build a nuclear bomb.
It is well know that Israel has not signed the NPT, formally it is under no legal obligation to submit its major nuclear facility at Dimona to IAEA inspections. Iran, in contrast, did sign the treaty and thus agrees to periodic inspections. IAEA inspectors are regularly in Iran, but the core of the current dispute is that Tehran is not letting them have unfettered access to all of the country’s nuclear installations.
2013 became the threshold for Israel. Since talks in Moscow last June, Iran has continued to increase its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, has begun to install a new generation of centrifuges and has not yet completed an agreement on inspection of suspect military sites with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a deal originally advertised as all but done last May.
Recent talks in Almaty in February, 2013 after a break of eight months showed that there is a general atmosphere of gloom about prospects for success.
With presidential elections in Iran scheduled for June, senior Western diplomats involved with these talks expressed skepticism that Tehran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili. They were sure that as a representative of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a religious leader ofIran, who defines the Iranian position on nuclear issues Mr. Jalili could not make any compromises otherwise it would be considered as weakness in Teheran. Moreover prior to the February round of talks Ayatollah Khamenei expressed continued mistrust of the United States and its intentions, saying that he would not allow the kind of bilateral talks between Washington and Tehran that most analysts think would be crucial to any resolution25.
As for statistics the total Iranian stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium has nonetheless grown since November 2011 to 167 kilograms from 135 kilograms, according to the most recent IAEA report - closer to, if still significantly below, the 240 kilograms or 250 kilograms many experts consider necessary, once enriched further, to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran repeatedly denied that its nuclear program has any military aim.
The negotiations in Almaty, Kazakhstan in February, 2013 were tedious, because Iran tried to be playing for time. The six powers had asked for a resumption of talks as early as December, but Iran rejected dates and sites before finally suggesting Almaty.
Western diplomats hoped that Kazakhstan could be a great example for Iran because in 1991, after disintegrating of the USSR, it freely relinquished the nuclear arsenal it had inherited from Moscow. Since 1991 Kazakhstan as one of the world’s largest producers of uranium and a maker of nuclear fuel has successfully developed its nuclear industry showing the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy and compliance with the IAEA.
While expectations were low, the six hoped to reach compromise with Iran by a reciprocal and step-by-step process of lifting sanctions in return for Iranian actions to comply.
Although Iran does not recognize that sanctions extremely hurt the Iranian economy, especially the sanctions on oil exports the statistics from French officials says that Iran’s annual economic output has fallen by 8 percent because of the sanctions, inflation is very high — officially at 27.4 percent in 2012 but unofficially much higher — and the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, has dropped by about half over the past year26.
The result of Almaty meeting was poor because Iran repeated that it had the right to develop peaceful atomic energy and is planning to build within the next 25 years about 20 new reactors. Consequently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the annual Aipac conference that there must be a “credible military threat” against Iran and the US Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. also assured the group that Mr. Obama would use force if needed27.
30 March, 2013 – Israel announced the data from its intelligence service that Iran is near to start building an atomic weapon so Iran refused to participate in negotiations which should be held on 5-6, April 2013. It was the signal for Israel to start bombing on April, 1.