Iran Nuclear Program Attack Fears Ease


By Ladane Nasseri
Iranian and Israeli officials offered what may be conciliatory signs this week, easing concerns of a possible strike on the Persian Gulf country’s nuclear installations.
Iran’s envoy to Moscow, Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi, yesterday said officials are considering a Russian proposal to avert sanctions. Israel’s top military chief, meanwhile, said Iran’s leadership is “rational” and won’t seek to build a bomb, in comments that were
reported the same day.
Tensions over the Iranian program helped drive Brent crude prices to about $125 a barrel last month, the highest level in more than 3 1/2 years. Prices fell more than 2 percent on the next trading day after Iran and world powers broke a 15-month stalemate on the nuclear conflict in the April 14 Istanbul talks.
We’re seeing “signals of an easing of rhetoric on war, not an easing of pressure or sanctions,” said Scott Lucas, a professor at the University of Birmingham in England who founded a website that offers analysis into international affairs.
Odds compiled by Intrade.com that Israel or the U.S. will strike Iran by the end of 2012 have dropped to about 28 percent this week, from 33 percent at the end of March and as high as 62 percent in February.
Iran is studying a proposal under which it would halt the expansion of its nuclear program and may allow stricter inspections of its nuclear facilities, Sajjadi said in an April 25 interview at the Iranian embassy in Moscow.
Lucas said it’s not clear if Sajjadi was “speaking with the backup from the top.” It’s yet to be seen whether this constitutes “a productive process leading to the Baghdad talks,” he said.
The next round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program, in Baghdad, is scheduled for May 23.
A European Union oil embargo against Iranian crude is set to come into force in July.
In comments that preceded Sajjadi’s, Israel’s army Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz said in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz that a decision by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to build a bomb would be “an enormous mistake, and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile.”
“I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people,” Gantz said.