Arash Aramesh

In an apparent attempt to offer an olive branch to the West, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a forceful but measured speech at the United Nations May 3, saying the idea of producing nuclear weapons was “disgusting” and the international community must work together to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Despite English-language media coverage, which indicated tones of hostility from Ahmadinejad, the state-owned Farsi media said the president’s objective was disarmament.

Ahmadinejad criticized President Barack Obama’s new nuclear strategy. In April, Obama said the US was not going to retaliate with nukes against any country except Iran and North Korea. The Iranian leadership interpreted this as a nuclear threat by the US. Ahmadinejad called this idea “shameful and disgusting” today at the UN.

Despite his criticism of the US and Israel, Ahmadinejad did not seem hostile to the idea of a nuclear fuel exchange. Press TV, Iran’s English language news channel, said before Ahmadinejad’s speech that Iran has accepted the nuclear fuel swap deal. According to this deal, Iran would send 1,200 kilograms of its low enriched uranium to another country for further enrichment.

Iran had consistently rejected this plan since it was first introduced by the 5+1 last October. During talks in Geneva, and when Ahmadinejad seemed inclined to make a deal with the West, surrogates of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei undermined the president and said that a uranium exchange deal taking place outside Iran was unacceptable. This remained the official position of the Islamic Republic until today.

The pro-government media in Iran started reporting on Ahmadinejad’s speech before he took the podium at the UN. Kayhan, the largest state-owned newspaper with intimate ties to the Supreme Leader, wrote today that Iran’s main objective at the Non Proliferation Review conference was to set a time limit for global nuclear disarmament hinting that the US and Israel must disarm first before asking other countries to stop their “peaceful nuclear program(s).” Kayhan, whose editor is also the representative of Ayatollah Khamenei, has not objected to a uranium exchange deal, potentially signaling that Ahmadinejad’s efforts were first cleared and permitted by the Supreme Leader.

IRNA, the Islamic Republic’s News Agency, immediately published Ahmadinejad’s full speech on its website while other pro-government sites such as Fars news, close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Raja, close to President Ahmadinejad, immediately praised Ahmadinejad.

Based on today’s developments, it seems that Iran is headed to accept the 5+1’s uranium exchange offer to show good faith. Iranians have grown frustrated by Russia’s unreliability as Iran’s main provider of nuclear technology and weapons systems. Jomhuri Eslami, a conservative newspaper which means the Islamic Republic, outlined a number of reasons in its editorial today about why Iran should limit its dependence on Russia.

Fearing Iran would be isolated without any of its international patrons supporting its cause, the Iranians might be more likely to accept the enriched uranium exchange deal, despite some of the rhetoric produced by the hardliners in recent months.