Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Laura Rozen reports on Politico.com:

In what was being reported as a potentially significant shift, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iranian State Television today that Iran is ready to send its uranium abroad.

“We have no problem sending our enriched uranium abroad,” Ahmadinejad told state television, according to Reuters.

“We say: we will give you our 3.5 percent enriched uranium and will get the fuel. It may take 4 to 5 months until we get the fuel,” he said. “If we send our enriched uranium abroad and then they do not give us the 20 percent enriched fuel for our reactor, we are capable of producing it inside Iran.”

The U.S. reacted cautiously to the interview, saying it was willing to listen if Iran has genuinely changed its position on the fuel swap deal, while indicating it was continuing preparations with key allies on sanctions for further pressuring Iran. Iran has previously publicly said it was willing to send its low enriched uranium abroad, but it had balked at sending it out all in one batch, as a proposal worked out by the UN atomic energy agency last fall had stipulated. U.S. officials said it remained to be seen if Iran had changed its position on that.

Without detracting from the importance of the uranium/nuclear weapons issue, we note the following from Ms. Rozen’s post:

Ahmadinejad also reportedly told Iranian State TV that Iran would consider exchanging U.S. citizens being detained in Iran for Iranians being held abroad. “We are having talks to have an exchange if it is possible,” Ahmadinejad was cited. “We are hopeful that all prisoners will be released.”

[National Security Council spokesman Mike] Hammer stressed that the reports of what Ahmadinejad said are fragmentary, and the U.S. has not entered into any discussion with Iran about an exchange.

“We have made clear that we would like the cases of all our missing and detained Americans citizens to be resolved,” Hammer said, including those of “Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal, Shane Bauer, Kian Tajbakhsh, Reza Taghavi, and Robert Levinson.”

Shourd, Fattal and Bauer have been detained in Iran since accidentally wandering into Iran while hiking in northern Iraq last summer. Tajbakhsh is an Iranian-American scholar arrested in Iran in the post-elections dispute. Robert Levinson is a former FBI agent who went missing while meeting a contact in Kish Island almost three years ago.

“If President Ahmadinejad’s comments suggest that they are prepared to resolve these cases, we would welcome that step,” Hammer continued. “But we have not entered into any discussion with Iran about an exchange. As we have indicated publicly, if Iran has questions about its citizens in U.S. custody, we are prepared to answer them.”

POLITICO previously reported that Swiss diplomats acting as intermediaries have told U.S. officials that Iran was seeking to link the case of the three U.S. hikers detained in Iran, and several Iranians detained in the U.S., Europe and Canada, many on export control violation-related charges.

We’re prepared to listen’: U.S. reacts cautiously to Ahmadinejad uranium offer,” by Laura Rozen on Politico.com.

Investors.com reported in November, 2009, that Iran was threatening to execute various prisoners.  Payvand News of Iran is reporting (here) that reformists rally Green Movement for demonstrations on Feb. 11, 2010, the anniversary of the Islamist revolution.