Obama Hopes to Break Iranian Nuclear Deadlock By December

Barack Obama said today that the US should be able to measure whether Iran is serious about nuclear negotiations by the end of this year.

The US president told the BBC that he did not want to put artificial timetables on the talks with Iran, but he did confirm that the diplomatic approach would be reviewed by December.

Obama also laid out a strategy for those talks, linking them to US-Russian – and ultimately global – negotiations on cutting the use of nuclear weapons as a means of breaking four years of deadlock over Iran's right to enrich uranium.

"Without going into specifics, what I do believe is Iran has legitimate energy concerns and legitimate aspirations. On the other hand the international community has a very real interest in preventing a nuclear arms race in the region," Obama said.

He recalled his agreement with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to pursue significant cuts in the two countries' nuclear stockpiles, and added: "To the extent that Iran feels they are treated differently from everyone else, that makes them embattled.

"To the extent that we are having a broader conversation about how all countries have an interest in containing and reducing over time the nuclear proliferation threat, that I think has to be part and parcel of a broader agenda," Obama said.

The remarks are a clear sign that the new US administration sees little future in the carrot-and-stick approach to Iran that the international community has until now adopted towards the country's nuclear programme. It will seek to broaden the dialogue and come at the problem from a different angle.

Unspoken, but hovering in the background, is the possibility that the west could concede Iran's right to carry out some uranium enrichment, perhaps under control of an international consortium, in return for more intrusive UN inspections and safeguards.

"Although I don't want to put artificial timetables on [the negotiation] process, we do want to make sure that by the end of this year we've actually seen a serious process move forward. I think we can measure whether or not the Iranians are serious," Obama said.

"My personal view is that the Islamic state of Iran has the potential to be an extraordinarily powerful and prosperous country. They are more likely to achieve that in the absence of nuclear weapons that could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region," the president said. "And if what prevents them seeing that reality is 30 years of loggerheads between Iran and the US this may be the opportunity for us to open the door and see if they walk through."

Obama was speaking on the eve of a first visit to the Arab world. He will be in Saudi Arabia tomorrow and then in Egypt on Thursday, when he will deliver a keynote speech in Cairo.

He gave away few clues as to what would be in that speech, but made it clear he would not be mounting a serious attack on Egypt's and the region's human rights record. He described the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as a "stalwart ally" and said that his country's job is "not to lecture".

Obama said he thought that democratic rights reflected universal – not just western – values, but added: "The danger I think is that when the US or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture … I think the thing we can do most importantly is serve as a role model."

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said he was hopeful he would be able to get "serious negotiations back on track". He stuck to the US demand for Israel to halt all settlement building on the West Bank, and shrugged off Israeli government refusals to do so.

"It's still early in the conversation," Obama said.