Iran denies making any concessions on nukes

On Friday, AP reported on a US document that listed the concessions that Iran supposedly gave to extend the nuclear negotiations:

The authenticity of the document was confirmed by three U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with closed-doors discussions in recent days that have included top U.S. nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman and Jake Sullivan, formerly Vice President Joe Biden's national security adviser.

The U.S. says Iran will further limit its development of new technology for enriching uranium that could be used for energy generation, as Tehran says is its objective, or for use in a nuclear warhead, which Washington and its international partners fear may be Iran's ultimate intent. It also seems to patch up what critics of last year's interim nuclear agreement described as loopholes on Iran's research and development of advanced centrifuges.

For one centrifuge model Iran has been working on, the U.S. says Tehran won't be able to pursue the industrial-scale operation needed for any "breakout" effort toward producing enough material for a nuclear weapon. For other models in the pipeline, Iran won't be permitted to feed the centrifuges with uranium gas or begin testing on a cascade level, which are needed steps in their development.

Iran also has agreed to turn 35 kilograms of higher-enriched uranium oxide stocks into fuel, making it unusable in the event Iran tries to secretly reach nuclear weapons capacity. That amounts for almost half of Iran's remaining stockpile of material that could in theory be converted into a form that is close to weapons-grade uranium.

In addition, the administration says Iran will grant international inspectors expanded access to its centrifuge production facilities, allowing the U.N. nuclear agency to double the amount of visits it makes to sites and to undertake unannounced or "snap" inspections. The monitoring aims to deter Iran from producing centrifuges for any covert facility.

Lastly, Iran will refrain from any other forms of enrichment, including through the use of laser technology. Last year's agreement halted Iran's progress on its gas centrifuge program, but U.S. officials feared the Iranians could experiment with other technology designed to do the same thing. Iran has attempted laser enrichment in the past, the U.S. believes, but now has committed to refrain from exploring it any further.

One other point, though:

There is no proof Tehran has agreed to or will follow through on the steps outlined,

Now, Iran is denying everything in the report:

In response to the AP’s initial report about the White House’s claims, a top Iranian official said that no further concessions have been agreed to by Iran.

“The conditions for extending the nuclear negotiations to July 1, 2015, were like the conditions reining the extension of the previous deadlines and no new undertaking has been added to it,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI,), told the country’s state-run media over the weekend.

Other Iranian officials also rejected the terms of the deal as presented to Congress by the White House.

“A source close to the Tehran-powers negotiations said that ‘this is not true at all and the trend of R&D on enrichment is moving along its natural track at the AEOI,’” Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.

So, who do you believe?

NewsMax reports something that, if true, makes the answer pretty clear:

Reza Kahlili (pseudonym for a former CIA operative inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards) wrote in The Daily Caller that Tehran has adopted a policy of "elongation" of talks with the United States and five other international powers (Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) in which it prolongs the talks "as it develops nuclear weapons."

He quoted Alireza Forghani, a prominent strategist with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who explained in his blog last week that the negotiations with the six nations were "never supposed to be brought to a successful conclusion … whether positive or negative."

Forghani warned that soon he will promote the slogan "nuclear weapon is [sic] our definite right," and that there will be people in the streets demanding a nuclear-armed Iran. He hinted that these events would lead to the destruction of Israel, adding that this "is exactly what Almighty God wants."

He declared that soon the world will face "a nuclear Iran that not only has nuclear power, but also is equipped with nuclear weapons. Hence, Tehran will not negotiate with Washington anymore."

(h/t TIP)