Obama’s NSA on Iran: “Nothing is off the table”

The US president’s national security adviser James Jones said early Wednesday, Oct. 28: The United States will be ready to respond if Iran fails to take tangible steps soon to meet its commitments over its nuclear program. “Nothing is off the table,” he warned.
Jones delivered the keynote address as the founding conference of the new J Street Jewish lobby, which advocates US pressure on Israel for concessions in peace talks and diplomatic engagement with Iran and the extremist Hamas.
Iran has said it will reply – with changes – by Thursday, Oct. 29 or the next day
to the IAEA compromise proposal for the further processing of its 75 pc of enriched uranium in Russia and France. “We will see in a short amount of time if engagement is able to produce the concrete results that we need and will be prepared if it does not,” Jones said.
“If implemented, this arrangement would set back the clock on Iran’s breakout capability as it would reduce Iran’s stockpile far below the amount needed in order to produce a weapon, and it would take time to reconstitute the amount needed for a breakout,” he said.
debkafile‘s military sources report that the proposal calls for Iran to send overseas 900 kg of its 1,200-kg stock of enriched uranium. Replacing that amount at its Natanz plant would take 240 days of processing at the estimated pace of 3.75 kg per day. All the US administration can hope to gain therefore from the IAEA proposal is less than a year for negotiations with Iran before the situation is back where it started before engagement. For Iran, this is a pretty good deal.