Iran Offer at Informal Steering Committee Meeting

Khatami leads journalists on a tour of the Natanz enrichment facility,

Olivier Minkwitz sends the proposal that Iran offered at the informal meeting of the EU-Iran Steering Committee on 29 April 2005.

Entitled General Framework for Objective Guarantees, Firm Guarantees and Firm Commitments, the proposal outlines a series of reciprocal actions.

The controversial aspect of the proposal is that Iran wants to resume uranium conversion and operate some 3,000 centrifuges under IAEA surveillance. Iran originally intended to house some 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz.

Paul Kerr had the scoop on all this last month:

Iranian diplomats presented “certain ideas” at the steering committee meeting about such guarantees, according to its European interlocutors’ joint statement. The State Department official and European diplomat said Iran informally proposed to limit its enrichment program to an IAEA-monitored plant containing about 3,000 centrifuges. Iran has a pilot 164-centrifuge facility and has said it wants to build a more-than 50,000-centrifuge commercial facility.

But it is nice to see the actual document.

Corey Hinderstein tells ABC why Iran wants 3,000 centrifuges:

According to Corey Hinderstein, deputy director of the Institute for Science and International Security, the 3,000 centrifuges would form a single building block of a much larger cascade of 50,000 centrifuges that Iran has stated its intends to build one day.

This centrifuge “block” would be installed in underground “halls” at Natanz and give Iran a significant enrichment capability—enough to produce enough high enriched uranium for two to three bombs per year, according to ISIS, as well as critical experience in operating an enrichment facility.