Iran’s Foreign Minister Rejects Vienna Uranium Deal

It’s still not a definitive rejection of the deal reached in Vienna to reprocess Iran’s uranium abroad into a matter unsuitable for a nuclear weapon, but it’s not nothing, either:

Iran’s foreign minister said in remarks reported Wednesday that he opposes sending the country’s enriched uranium abroad under a tentative deal negotiated with the United States and other big powers last month. The foreign minister’s remarks cast further doubt on the deal, which the Obama administration had hoped would defuse a standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, told the student news agency ISNA that Iran would consider a simultaneous swap of its nuclear fuel for other uranium. But he told ISNA, “Definitely, Iran will not send its 3.5 percent-enriched fuel out.”

Don’t know how much enthusiasm would be there would be for such a substantial renegotiation of the deal. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has ruled it out. But the Obama administration also doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about sanctions, as Iran has been under U.S. sanctions for 30 years and multilateral sanctions will be extremely hard to enforce.