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Predictably, the Vienna talks on Iran's Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile have already stalled. Iran is using all the rules in the book and any trick on the margins to delay and gain more out of the talks. First, they dispatched a low-level delegation to the talks — something guaranteed to delay a decision even if a deal is struck in Vienna. Second, they torpedoed a critical element of the deal. According to what was supposedly agreed on already, the LEU would be enriched in Russia to higher levels (20 percent, well below weapons' grade) but further processed into fuel rods by France before it could be delivered to Iran for use in its Tehran Research Reactor. Now Iran is saying that France cannot be relied on and cannot be part of this deal. So the Iranians are threatening to go ahead and enrich on their own up to 20 percent if no deal is reached; they are also suggesting that they want a supply of fuel while they keep their stockpile.

No doubt some will suggest that Iran is pandering. No doubt some will underscore the fact that this is a win-win situation, and it would be foolish for Iran to turn this deal down — they are doing this only for their domestic audience (presumably not the one they repressed since the June 12 elections but the one that backed the repression), or because the establishment is still divided over the deal, or for some other such reason.

Let us give the benefit of the doubt to all those well-meaning pundits and diplomats who desperately wish to believe that the Vienna talks may hold the key to a historic breakthrough. But even if a deal is struck, is it really a win-win?

Let us consider the consequences.

First, Iran has no right to enrich uranium — not since the UN Security Council said so in five successive Chapter VII resolutions that were triggered by the fact that the IAEA had found Iran in noncompliance of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations. By negotiating a deal over its illegally enriched uranium that does not also ensure immediate suspension of all future enrichment activities, the U.S., Russia and France — the three powers negotiating in Vienna — will effectively undermine the UN Security Council and hand a victory to Iran: its enrichment can continue.

Second, unless Iran's enrichment activities are verifiably suspended, the deal will gain only a little time for the international community. Part of the reason for the deal stems from a desire to reduce Iran's LEU stockpile to the point where Iran does not have sufficient declared fissile material to build a nuclear weapon (once it's been reprocessed). It is generally agreed that the minimum quantity of LEU required to do that is approximately one ton — and Iran would transfer more than that to Russia and France if the deal were reached. But Iran is currently capable of enriching 2.77 Kgs of uranium per day, on average, at least according to recent IAEA reports. At that pace, Iran would replenish the stockpile in less than a year if enrichment continues.

Third, the deal does not address the issue of undeclared nuclear sites. Given that Iran is still refusing to provide design information for the new nuclear-power plant it intends to build in Darkhovin, and given the recent exposure of the underground clandestine enrichment facility at an IRGC base near Qom, any Western offer of the kind under discussion should obtain, at a minimum, an Iranian agreement to immediately implement the Additional Protocol that it signed in late 2003 and that stipulates, inter alia, that under new provisions, facilities must undergo IAEA supervision from the moment they are being planned and not from the moment nuclear material is introduced into the facilities.

Fourth, the deal stands in contradiction to various clauses in the aforementioned UN resolutions, which expressly forbid third countries from taking nuclear material from Iran and prevents Iran from exporting it abroad. A negotiated deal of this kind stands against the UN resolutions in more than one way, in that, it would require the Security Council to reverse itself — a dramatic and unprecedented step, which, no doubt, will be noticed and taken stock of by any other nation planning to build a clandestine nuclear program in its own backyard.

Fifth, the deal is silent about Iran's ongoing breach of all its other NPT obligations and says nothing of the need for Iran to comply — or indeed to change course on the path of transparency and allow the IAEA to conduct a full, unrestricted series of controls across the country.

In short, even if you believe that diplomacy can do the trick, and that the IAEA is a force for good, it is hard to see progress in this deal. And then again, who knows that there is going to be one, given the way Iran is, as usual, circling around its hapless and mostly well-meaning interlocutors?

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