Big powers to offer sweeteners to Iran

The world’s major powers agreed in London on Friday to offer Iran new incentives aimed at coaxing the country to freeze its nuclear activities.

The agreement followed a meeting that brought together Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior officials from the foreign ministries of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
“We’ve got an agreement on an offer that will be made to the government of Iran,” the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, said in announcing the agreement on behalf of the six governments.

The gesture underscored a growing consensus that the current policy of punishing Iran into submission with sanctions has failed. Instead of backing down, Iran has steadily increased its production of enriched uranium, which can be used to produce energy and to make bombs.

Even more worrisome, Tehran has started to test a new generation of more reliable and faster centrifuges, the machines that spin highly enriched uranium, at its vast Natanz site. It is that development that has given new impetus to a strategy of economic, political, technological and security rewards.

Still, there is an inherent problem in this approach. It still requires Iran to do what it has consistently refused to do: suspend production of enriched uranium.

International Herald Tribune