Stalling for time?

last updated 8 January 2015

Tehran

Iranian and Russian negotiators failed to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program during talks in Moscow this week. The Russians have proposed allowing Iran to carry out the most sensitive part of the nuclear fuel process—uranium enrichment—on Russian soil under international supervision. But Iran has insisted on the right to conduct enrichment, which can lead to bomb fuel, domestically as well as in Russia. Russian diplomats said privately that Iran was not negotiating in good faith. “Their aim is to haggle, to put off as long as possible the hour when sanctions from the international community become unavoidable,” wrote the daily Izvestiya.