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U.S. Hopes Face-Saving Plan Offers a Path to a Nuclear Pact With Iran

Over the years, the United States has shown considerable ingenuity in its effort to slow Iran’s production of nuclear fuel: It has used sabotage, cyberattacks and creative economic sanctions.

Now, mixing face-saving diplomacy and innovative technology, negotiators are attempting a new approach, suggesting that the Iranians call in a plumber.

The idea is to convince the Iranians to take away many of the pipes that connect their nuclear centrifuges, the giant machines that are connected together in a maze that allows uranium fuel to move from one machine to another, getting enriched along the way. That way, the Iranians could claim they have not given in to Western demands that they eliminate all but a token number of their 19,000 machines, in which Iran has invested billions of dollars and tremendous national pride.

And if the plumbing is removed, experts at America’s national nuclear laboratories have told the Obama administration, the United States and its allies could accurately claim that they have extended the time Iran would need to produce enough fuel for a bomb — and given the West time to react.

That is one of the few ideas that may offer a glimmer of hope in closed-door negotiations in New York this weekend, before the arrival of President Obama and Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, for the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly. A year ago, when greater progress seemed in the offing, it appeared likely that the two men would move on from the first phone call between the two nations’ leaders in three decades to the first meeting in person.

No one is betting on that now.

“We’re open to it,” is the most a senior Obama administration official would allow on Thursday night, briefing reporters.

The time would seem ripe, with the United States and Iran finding themselves, uncomfortably, on the same side in the fight against the extremists of the Islamic State, and just two months away from an ostensibly final deadline to strike a nuclear accord.

Yet the atmosphere is sour, with the Americans saying they have no intention of “coordinating” action with Iran against the Islamic State, and the Iranians saying they want to solve the nuclear issues first, which the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said this week was “complicated enough.”

In fact, it has gotten more complicated. Tentative agreements on issues negotiated at great length in Vienna through July, when talks were extended, suddenly seem back on the table. The global nuclear inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency report stonewalling by Iran on details of the “possible military dimensions” of past research, while, within the country, the Revolutionary Guards push back against Mr. Zarif.

“There’s a bit of a sense of desperation about coming up with ways to break the logjams, on the nuclear talks and the larger relationship,” another participant in the negotiations said. “Because if we don’t figure this out in the next few months, it is not clear the opportunity is going to come again.”

The Iranians are clearly doing far better in public diplomacy in New York than are the United States or its allies. Mr. Zarif, who is American-educated, media savvy, and often humorous, has already given interviews to the radio network NPR, parried with members of the Council on Foreign Relations in an on-the-record meeting, and made Iran’s case in background briefings.

While he has taken many pokes at President Obama for being slow to confront the Islamic State, he has also mocked the conspiracy theorists in Tehran who claim the Sunni group was invented by the C.I.A.

By contrast, the Obama administration has rarely allowed its negotiating counterparts to Mr. Zarif to go on the record; after the first full day of talks, the officials spoke to reporters only on background, meaning their names could not be used. They complain that Mr. Zarif talks a good game, but has offered few meaningful cuts in the centrifuges. Both sides are clearly worried, because if they cannot win agreement on the main issue over the next 10 days or so — how much fuel-production ability Iran will be allowed to maintain, and how long an agreement to limit its production abilities will last — it is hard to imagine how the complex details of a final accord can be resolved in the remaining time. Which is where the plumbing comes in.

Disconnecting the pipes is one of several ideas that have emerged from the conversations between Mr. Obama’s negotiating team and the Energy Department’s national laboratories, which develop and maintain the American arsenal of nuclear weapons.

But the proposal is not without flaws. “To be credible, it would have to keep the Iranians from restoring operations for a considerable period of time,” said Robert Einhorn, a former member of the negotiating team who is now at the Brookings Institution.

It is far from clear that those suspicious of the deal, in Congress and in Israel, would buy it. And there is considerable opposition within the Iranian establishment, including the military. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, gave a speech in the summer calling, with great specificity, for an eventual 10-fold increase in the country’s enrichment capacity.

Clearly, Mr. Zarif cannot go home with a deal that seems to violate the course that the ayatollah wants to set.

“Unless the Iranians are talking about reducing their currently operational enrichment capability by around a half, it is not very impressive,” Mr. Einhorn said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Hopes Face-Saving Plan Offers a Path to a Nuclear Pact With Iran. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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