Progress on Iran?

There’s encouraging news from the first negotiations between Iranian and US diplomats on Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran agreed on Thursday in talks with the United States and other major powers to open its newly revealed uranium enrichment plant near Qum to international inspection in the next two weeks and to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium outside Iran to be turned into fuel for a small reactor that produces medical isotopes, senior American and other Western officials said.

Iran’s agreement in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing — if it happens — would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit.

If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow, a senior American official conceded.

The officials described the long day of talks here with Iran, the first such discussions in which the United States has participated fully, as a modest success on a long and complicated road. Iran had at least finally engaged with the big powers on its nuclear program after more than a year and had agreed to some tangible, confidence-building steps before another meeting with the same participants before the end of this month.

But despite the relatively promising outcome, the Obama administration was at pains to strike a cautious tone, given Iran’s history of duplicity, its crackdown on its own people after the tainted June presidential elections and President Obama’s concern about being perceived as naïve or susceptible to a policy of Iranian delays... [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

While I do understand Obama’s concerns, I also recognize that Iran must be equally, if not more cautious.  After all, Eisenhower and the GOP overthrew their elected government and installed a dictator (the Shah).  Reagan and the GOP armed Iran’s chief enemy, Saddam Hussein, and provided him with the means to acquire and training on how to use chemical weapons against Iran.  GW Bush and the GOP funded terrorists within Iran’s borders to destabilize Iran.  If nothing else, this gives us reason to hope that a peaceful resolution is possible, and at least a temporary vindication of my repeated position that we should be talking to Iran, not making threats and bellicose gestures at them.