Obama's plan to stop atomic Iran: Help them enrich their uranium

By Barbara Slavin

Iran said Friday it would respond next week to a U.S.-backed plan that would have Tehran send out much of its stockpiled nuclear fuel by the end of this year.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, had set Friday as a deadline for Iran's reply.

U.S. officials said they were willing to give Tehran more time but that their patience had limits.

"We can stretch things for a few days," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "But we're not going to wait forever."

Iran specialists said that divisions within the Tehran government were partly responsible for the delay and that some Iranians were having trouble digesting a proposal that would send out of the country about 2,600 pounds of partly processed uranium - nearly 80 percent of the material it has taken Iran many years to amass.

"It's a gamble for [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," said Kaveh Afrasiabi, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator now in the United States.

Under the deal, Russia is to further process the uranium and send it back to Iran for use in an old U.S.-supplied research reactor that makes medical isotopes.....