Turkey and Brazil in a meeting with Iranian President Ahmadinejad managed to secure an agreement which few international observers had thought would be possible. Prior to the meeting, leaders such as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev put the chances of an agreement at 30 per cent, while American leaders scoffed at reaching any achievable agreement. The significance of the 17 May 2010 agreement was that it offered Iran an alternative to processing nuclear fuel to weaponized status, and addressed concerns of enrichment being in the hands of states which it did not trust. However, the caveat to the deal was that it offered too little and came too late for legitimacy with the international community.

According to the agreement, Iran was to send over 1,200kg of its enriched uranium across the border to Turkey, in exchange for about 125kg of uranium enriched to 20 per cent for use in their low-wattage Tehran Research Reactor. The deal is very similar to a deal which was offered to Tehran in October 2009, but was rejected then. Under the original proposal led by the IAEA, Iran would have shipped most of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for further processing. Russia would then send the material to France, where it would be converted into fuel rods for use in a medical research reactor in Iran.

The idea was to disable Tehran from having a stockpile of nuclear fuel thereby stemming their race towards weaponization of their nuclear program. Furthermore, the deal would have negated Iran’s argument that under present UN sanctions, since it cannot buy enriched nuclear fuel from abroad, it is justified in producing its own. Iran in a bid to counter that proposal, suggested that it would send the nuclear material to Russia in stages, rather than in one large consignment, thereby allowing for an available stockpile of nuclear fuel. It further argued that Iran should be entitled to getting fuel from abroad since the enriched fuel for their reactors from France would arrive only nine to 12 months later.

To the Western powers, the new agreement indicated two developments: One, the significant rise of Brazil and Turkey in international crisis diplomacy, and secondly, the ability of Iran to play these countries against the West and create further divisions within the Security Council, where both these states are presently non-veto member states. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has in recent years been critical of the West’s dealings with Iran, and despite historic rivalries has lent weight to the Iranian voice in the international arena, while Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has argued for a new nuclear world, which is sympathetic to Iran’s nuclear program.

An important reason why the West is unwilling to trust the Iranian regime and the new agreement is that while uranium enriched to 3-4 per cent is suitable enough for electricity and civilian purposes, uranium enriched to 20 per cent is sufficient enough to produce a crude nuclear weapon. The Iranian nuclear program is hovering around 19.75 per cent at the present rate, and its capabilities to significantly improve enrichment are quite high. Under the original proposal, US President Barack Obama favored Iran’s transfer of 1,200kg or 68 per cent of its LEU because it would have easily set Iran’s nuclear program back by five months. This time frame could have been used for international negotiations to pursue Iran to give up its nuclear program.
Under the present agreement, Iran is willing to provide nearly about the same amount of fuel to Turkey as it was asked to last October. However, based on IAEA reports on the cycle of uranium volumes produced, Iran would have generated more than 2,497 kilograms of LEU.  Therefore, Iran would only be sending half of its stockpile to Turkey, while having significant amounts of LEU left with it, for use in further enrichment activities. This would defeat the original purpose of the fuel exchange. Additionally, the deal falls silent on another key feature of the original proposal- inspections for the nuclear facility at Qom. By failing to acknowledge the suspected enrichment facility in the city, and demanding for international inspections of the site, the proposal was fated to be a non-starter with the international community.

Iran is using the agreement as an argument against the West, citing the failure of the acceptance of the resolution as evidence that the West is implacable. The agreement did raise significant voices of support and detraction in the international community, including an initial welcome from the French Foreign Minister’s office, and outright support from Japan. Iran would have wanted to use the deal as a means of dividing the Security Council over future deliberations on stricter sanctions. Indeed, despite the international community’s rejection of the deal, rifts within the Security Council continue to be witnessed over the Iranian question.