The Wall Street Journal yesterday published comments made by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in which the Paris official expressed skepticism that Iran is willing to verifiably dismantle its nuclear program.

“We have to implement honestly the first phase,” Mr. Fabius said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Then my main concern is the second phase. It is unclear if the Iranians will accept to definitively abandon any capacity of getting a weapon or only agree to interrupt the nuclear program.”

Mr. Fabius played a central role in toughening terms of the first deal with Iran. His warning that world powers risked being drawn into a “fool’s game” by Iran nearly derailed the talks in November. Mr. Fabius said Western powers need to focus their efforts on how to deprive Iran of “breakout capacity,” the ability to restart a bomb-making program from dormant nuclear sites and make a quick dash to a weapon before world powers can react. “What is at stake is to ensure that there is no breakout capacity,” Mr. Fabius said.

Talks aimed at disabling the Iranian nuclear program – which half a dozen United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions have demanded be suspended – are due to take place during a six-month interim period following the implementation of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) worked out in Geneva. The State Department conceded under reporter questioning weeks ago that the JPA’s six-month clock has not begun ticking since Iran has not agreed on how the deal should be implemented. Talks to clarify implementation were suspended by Tehran in recent days. Lawmakers and analysts have expressed increasingly pointed concerns that Iran may be preparing to extract as many concessions as it can from the JPA and then walk away from talks on the basis of some pretext, thereby pocketing the West’s JPA concessions without slowing Iran’s nuclear program.

[Photo: MEDEF / Flickr]