Iran’s Khamenei does not yet trust the “west” on the nuclear negotiations:

“Western nations did not accomplish anything that can be construed as a concession, and instead they admitted Iran’s rights only to a degree,” Khamenei said in an address reported on his official website.

“To assess their integrity, we must wait until the next round of talks,” he added.

For Iran it is all about the right to nuclear research and production which is an “inalienable right” under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty but which the “west” wants to unilaterally restrict without renegotiating the treaty.

Khamenei’s quest for Iran’s right now gets support from a rather unsuspected direction. The states at the other side of the Persian Gulf also need nuclear energy to provide for their growing populations. The UAE and Jordan want to build nuclear reactors in their countries and are cooperating. The UAE has money from oil and gas while Jordan has little money and no oil and gas but has nuclear engineers and some other valuable stuff: Uranium. Jordan naturally wants to use and enrich its Uranium to feed its reactors and to pay back for the loans the UAE will put forward. The U.S. wants to block that. Here is Jordan’s reaction:

Amman has declined to sign an accord with Washington that, like a similar document agreed between the UAE and the United States, would commit it to not enriching uranium as part of its nuclear plan.

Toukan said while Amman had signed international commitments on nuclear nonproliferation, it would not ink a bilateral deal with the United States on enrichment.

“We can’t accept this,” [Khaled] Toukan[, chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission,] said. “We will not agree to sign any agreement that infringes on our sovereign rights or our international rights under any treaties.”

Jordan has the same stand on their rights under the NPT that Iran has. The UAE, if it wants its loans paid back by Jordan, will likely have to support that right. The Saudis want to build 16 nuclear reactors. Probably not coincidentally that is the breakeven number where fuel production by local enrichment is cheaper than buying fuel from the U.S., European, Russian oligopoly. The U.S. will try to divert the Saudis from enrichment, but while it has the ability to apply pressure against Jordan it has less so with the Saudis.

The situation now coming into view is the Arab Gulf countries haggling with the U.S. over their right to enrich just as Iran has been doing for the last decade. That is a great chance for an alliance against the U.S. plans of changing the rules under the NPT.

The U.S. “concerns” about enrichment are anyway not so much about nuclear proliferation. Plutonium, not Uranium, is the way to go for a bomb. But the U.S. has commercial reasons to keep the technology under its control. Reactors and their fuel are expensive stuff which is what the U.S. wants to sell:

Washington also wants the accord because it would open up opportunities for U.S. companies, which Jordan would otherwise be forbidden from hiring.

Iran would be well advised to talk to the Arab countries about their enrichment plans. It has the technology and know how to help them along their way. Cooperation on their nuclear development would help with otherwise sometimes frosty relations and would be good business for both sides. The issue of “inalienable rights” to nuclear technology and its use is a good starting point for such talks.