Iran
has said it could suspend a part of its uranium-enrichment program and
is ready to resume nuclear talks with the major powers without setting
conditions, in what Western officials said Wednesday were signs that
Tehran has been taken aback by the scale of international sanctions
launched against it.
U.S. and European diplomats welcomed Iran's
offers, though with skepticism, given the tortuous history of Iran's
negotiations during a seven-year international tug of war over the
country's nuclear ambitions. Iran
denies international allegations that it is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Speaking in Istanbul on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu said his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, had
pledged on Sunday to stop enriching uranium to the higher grade needed
for a medical-research reactor, provided that world powers agree to a
fuel-swap deal Tehran outlined in May with Turkey and Brazil.
A fuel-swap proposal was a centerpiece of the past year's
talks with Iran,
as United Nations Security Council members proposed sending Iranian
uranium abroad in exchange for 20%-enriched fuel rods for its research
reactor. Iran
welcomed the deal, but then backed away, before formulating the May
swap plan.
But Iran
insisted it would also continue enriching its own nuclear fuel to 20%
-- a step, many international officials believed, toward creating
nuclear weapons. Last month, the U.N. imposed fresh sanctions against Iran.
The U.S. and European Union followed with their own harsher measures.
Mr. Mottaki said "there will be no need for Iran
to continue 20% enrichment if the Tehran Agreement was realized and the
country gets the fuel it needs," Mr. Davutoglu told a joint news
conference with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
A spokesman for Iran's
foreign ministry couldn't be reached to comment.
U.S. officials Wednesday said they were studying Iran's
recent discussions with Turkey as well as a letter Tehran sent Monday
to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But the Obama administration's initial response to the letter was
negative.
One official briefed on Tehran's correspondence said Iran
appears to be seeking to use the fuel-swap proposal as a tool to weaken
sanctions without addressing Washington's concerns about Iran's
broader nuclear program. The official said Iran
doesn't answer in the letter specific questions raised by the U.S.,
Russia and France -- the so-called Vienna Group -- about Iran's
May fuel-swap agreement.
And Iran,
through the letter, seeks to make Turkey, Brazil and the Vienna Group
its diplomatic interlocutor, instead of the five U.N. Security Council
members plus Germany.
"There's a concern that Iran
is pursuing the fuel swap as a way to weaken sanctions and avoid the
important questions," said a U.S. official working on Iran.
EU foreign policy representative Catherine Ashton also has
been in correspondence with Iran
about a September meeting, Western diplomats say. Here, too, they say,
Tehran has avoided committing to direct negotiations about its wider
nuclear program and has sought to include Turkey and Brazil in future
negotiations.
U.S. and European diplomats said they believe the rash of new
economic sanctions imposed on Tehran over the past two months has
rattled the Iranian leadership. They said they have heard from Iranian
officials, through interlocutors, that financial penalties the EU
imposed this week were much more expansive than Tehran anticipated. The
diplomats said there are already signs that the combination of new U.N.,
EU and U.S. sanctions are starting to have an impact on Iran's
economy.
More than a dozen Iranian cargo ships have been stuck in
Iranian ports in recent weeks, said a European official, due to their
difficulties in obtaining insurance. European air-traffic controllers
have also grounded Iranian airliners due to their failure to meet safety
regulations.
"We've been getting more messages than usual that they'd like
to get involved in talks," said the European official in Iran.
Iranian officials in recent days have publicly dismissed the
sanctions, saying they will be ineffective. "By imposing sanctions they
[can] not block the way of Iranian nation," President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said Wednesday.