IRAN-US NUCLEAR TALKS UNDER SHADOW OF PROTESTS AND WAR
Tehran and Washington renewed negotiations on Feb 6 on their decades-long dispute.
Washington and its close ally Israel believe Iran aspires to build a nuclear weapon that could threaten Israel’s existence. Iran says its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, even though it has enriched uranium far beyond the purity needed for power generation, and close to what is required for a bomb.
Since the June strikes, Iran’s Islamic rulers have been weakened by street protests, put down at a cost of thousands of lives, against a cost-of-living crisis driven in part by international sanctions that have strangled Iran’s oil income.
Unlike last time, the US has now placed what Trump calls a massive naval armada in the region.
Iran has joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which guarantees countries the right to pursue civilian nuclear power in return for requiring them to forgo atomic weapons and cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Israel, which has not signed the NPT, neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weaponry, under a decades-old ambiguity policy designed to deter surrounding enemies.
Scholars believe it does, having acquired the first bomb in 1966. Israeli journalists, circumscribed by military censorship, often refer cryptically to such capabilities or cite foreign media reporting on them.