Bought off?

last updated 8 January 2015

Tehran

Iran agreed this week to stop enriching uranium in exchange for European aid and freedom from U.N. sanctions. Germany, France, and Britain made a similar deal last year, which Iran broke, but the EU said this new deal would be better monitored. Inspectors from the U.N. atomic agency will begin closing and tagging Iran’s enrichment facilities—which produce an isotope that can be used in energy production or in bomb making—this week. Iran’s commitment to the deal, however, remains in doubt, as Iranian negotiators said one thing in talks with Europeans and another in statements to the Iranian media. “We have accepted the suspension as a voluntary step,” negotiator Hossein Mousavian told Iranian state television. “It does not create any obligations for us.”