Ehud Ya'ari
Ehud Ya'ariIsrael news photo: Flash 90

Channel 2's veteran Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari revealed Sunday that Iran is already making some offers of concessions regarding its nuclear project, but that these concessions do not include “the important things.”

Yaari reported that a close advisor to Rouhani, Abbas Araghchi, “said that Iran is willing to negotiate over the amount of uranium it will enrich. In other words – it is willing to limit the amount it enriches.”

In addition, according to the Iranian official cited by Yaari, Iran is willing to negotiate over the degree of enrichment of uranium – a hint, says the analyst, that it may be willing to stop or limit the 20%-level enrichment it is currently carrying out.

Iran is also willing to discuss the locations at which it will enrich uranium – “a hint, possibly, that it does not have to carry this out both at Natanz and at Fordow,” said Yaari.

What the Iranians are refraining from saying, he added, “are the important things.” These include the following questions:

Are they willing to allow inspections at the installations suspected as being military ones – mostly Parchin? Are they willing to allow the removal of tons of materials they have already enriched? Are they willing to abide by UN Security Council resolutions, seeing as they are always saying that they will abide by international law? And lastly, are they willing to accept “an invasive inspection regime with surprise inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna"?

What is clear, said Yaari, is that the Iranians are telling Obama “No – we are not willing under any circumstances to completely stop enriching uranium. In other words – they are saying 'no' to Obama, and it goes without saying that they are very far from the conditions set by Binyamin Netanyahu.”

Yaari has been an Arab affairs correspondent since 1969 and is widely viewed as having excellent sources throughout the Middle East.