Iran Nuclear Snapshot: How the US Media Missed the Important Story About the Talks

US newspapers, recapping the failure of the discussions on uranium enrichment in Istanbul, seem to be oblivious to the core issue.

We reported yesterday, drawing from information from Reuters, that the 5+1 Powers (US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China) appear to have put a much tougher proposal to Iran than the offer in October 2009, which led to weeks of negotiations before stalling.

Later Analysis: So Why Did the Istanbul Discussions Collapse?strong>

In the talks 15 months ago, the 5+1 asked that Tehran send 60% of its low-enriched uranium, which is about 3.5% quality, to Russia and France --- later Russia and Turkey --- for processing. In this weekend's discussions, the 5+1 proposed that Iran send about 90% of its low-enriched uranium abroad. In addition, Iran would have to send all or almost all of its 20% quality uranium, which it began producing last year, to other countries.

If Reuters' information is correct, I would suggest that this is probably a leading reason why Iran, who entered the talks asking that all of the uranium stay inside the country for processing, and the 5+1 did not exactly advance towards an agreement.

The New York Times has a vague notion of the proposal, but it garbles the explanation and hides it in the middle of its article:

The six want to modify the proposal in order to leave Iran, again, with less low-enriched uranium than required to build a bomb, and with no uranium enriched to 19.75 percent. But Iran here did not even agree to an expert-level meeting on the proposal, diplomats said.

The Los Angeles Times has no clue at all: "The diplomats were trying to revive an offer by the United States, France and Russia for a swap of some of Iran's low-enriched uranium stockpile." The Washington Post does not even have that shred of information.

And the Christian Science Monitor misses the important point because it is lost in the spin of US officials: "It’s hard to say what [Iranian] expectations were. What seems clear is what their tactics were about, which was to try to split the group and see if they could extract those preconditions up front, and...what they were met with was a very clear message and response."