Iran nuclear talks: west demands closure of Fordo underground facility Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, tours a nuclear research reactor in Tehran. The US and Europe are to demand that Iran dismantle its fortified underground nuclear facility and halt higher grade uranium enrichment at a new round of talks this week as a condition for lifting sanctions and the threat of a military attack. Barack Obama has reiterated that Washington is prepared to accept Tehran maintaining a peaceful nuclear power programme but at the same time the White House is becoming more explicit in warning that the negotiations beginning in Istanbul on Friday are "perhaps a last chance" for diplomacy to work. Diplomats say that Iran will be pressed by the permanent UN security council members plus Germany, known as the P5+1, to shut its underground nuclear facility at Fordo, to stop enriching uranium to 20% and to hand over the estimated 100kg of uranium already enriched to that level. The demands match those made by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, at a White House meeting last month at which Obama pressed the Israeli prime minister to hold off from a military attack on Iran and give sanctions and diplomacy an opportunity to work. Britain and France are also pushing for Iran to dismantle those parts of its nuclear programme that could be used for weapons. Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, warned on Sunday that for the major powers to accept anything less than the demand for an end to uranium enrichment would be a victory for Tehran. "We told our American friends as well as the Europeans that we would have expected the pressure for successful negotiations to be clear - namely that the P5+1 will demand clearly - no more enrichment to 20% [and] all the already enriched 20% material out of the country," Barak told CNN. But if the P5+1 will settle for a much lower threshold, like just stop enriching to 20%, it means that basically the Iranians, at a very cheap cost, bought their way into continuing their military programme. Slightly slower but without sanctions. That will be a total change of direction for the worse. The Israeli defence minister went on to say that while oil and banking sanctions have clearly had an impact, causing inflation in Iran to nearly double to 21.5% in urban areas, he doubts they will be enough to force Tehran's hand. "We hope for the better but I don't believe that this amount of sanctions and pressure will bring the Iranian leadership to the conclusion that they have to stop their nuclear military programme," he said. Barak repeated his view that while matters will not come to a head within weeks, it will not be years either. Israel is itself an undeclared nuclear power with an undetermined number of atom bombs. Obama continues to throw his weight behind diplomacy and sanctions while warning that he will use force as a last resort. Washington, however, does not believe there is the urgency that Israel claims, in part because the White House is sceptical that Iran is as close to being able to develop a nuclear weapon as Netanyahu says. Last month in Washington, the Israeli prime minister publicly derided sanctions and claims that Tehran is not already engaged in developing a nuclear weapon. The US president has sent out several messages to Tehran in recent days warning that this is perhaps the last chance to negotiate an end to the crisis. The most recent was passed via the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a meeting in South Korea on nuclear non-proliferation. The US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, has also pressed the message that time is running out for negotiations. She said last week that the US is taking part in the talks in Turkey because they may be "a last chance to demonstrate a way forward that can satisfy the international community's concerns and have Iran come forward and accept limitations on what they are able to do." Clinton warned that she does "not want the Iranians to go into it with the attitude of that we can just keep it open and never have to come to any outcome." The talks will be the first in more than a year. The last round failed after Iran refused to abide by UN resolutions to stop enriching uranium to higher grades. The signals from Tehran are not encouraging, although they may also be a negotiating position. In recent days several prominent political and military figures have made belligerent statements. A leading Iranian legislator, Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, said Tehran "has the scientific and technological capability to produce a nuclear weapon but will never choose this path." On Saturday, the head of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said western powers would soon have to accept the reality of Iran's nuclear advances and warned that "confronting the Islamic Republic will not be to their benefit." Last week, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, Massoud Jazayeri, was quoted as saying that if any country attacks Iran's nuclear programme, Tehran will hit back at the US. In the face of any attack, we will have a crushing response. In that case, we will not only act in the boundaries of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, no place in America will be safe from our attacks," he said. America, the Zionists and reactionary Arabs should pay attention that we will seriously confront them wherever the Islamic Republic's interests are threatened.