Are nuclear talks with Iran salvageable?

Efforts to resolve the crisis over Iran's nuclear program stalled yesterday when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced he was no longer open to nuclear talks and said the country would begin enriching its own uranium, bringing its stockpile closer to weapons-grade material. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the Associated Press that the process of moving from low-enriched stocks to 20 per cent enriched would take months, but the next stage -- enriching to weapons grade -- would need only a "couple of weeks". Thomas B. Cochran, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Ploughshares Fund grantee, told the New York Times that Iran would need more uranium that it currently possesses to make a bomb whose fuel was enriched to only 20 percent.  However, MIT's Jim Walsh said he believes a simultaneous swap on Iranian soil of raw LEU for fabricated fuel rods could be structured in a way that meets Iran’s need for supply assurance with minimal added risk to U.S. security, in a Huffington Post interview.