PARIS -
Iran on Sunday surprised the international community,
and above all the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), by seeking to
join the world's atomic club, calling on its members for
a prompt entry.
"We want Iran to be recognized
as a member of the nuclear club, that means Iran be
recognized as a country having the nuclear fuel cycle,
and enriching uranium. This is very difficult for the
world to accept," Hassan Rohani, the secretary of the
Supreme Council for National Security (SCNS), announced
ahead of an important meeting this week of the IAEA.
Five countries are officially inside that club - the
United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.
The UN agency meets in Vienna to tackle Iran's
and Libya's nuclear programs, which have been fed by a
global black market linked to the father of Pakistan's
atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The governing board will
consider two resolutions during the meeting, expected to
last until Friday.
The first
is Libya's long-secret atomic-weapons program, which Tripoli
has agreed to dismantle under the supervision of the
IAEA. The second issue is Iran, long accused by
Washington, among others, of using its atomic-energy program as a
front to build a bomb.
Tehran insists that its
nuclear program is entirely peaceful and has called on
the IAEA to leave it alone. "The case concerning Iran's
peaceful nuclear activities should be completely closed
at the IAEA board of governors and removed from its
agenda," Rohani said on state television on Sunday.
He added that it was time for the IAEA, which
launched an intensive investigation into Iran's nuclear
program 13 months ago, to confirm the Islamic Republic's
innocence.
The "request" for membership
to the atomic club by Rohani, who handles
the complicated, complex and controversial issue of
Iranian nuclear activities and who conducts the difficult
and tortuous talks with the IAEA, means that Iran has the
capacity of making nuclear weapons, a potential that
most US and European experts and intelligence services put
at between three and five years to achieve.
Whatever the
reasons that motivated Tehran's move, diplomats and experts
say that Rohani's declaration not only will not appease
international concerns about Iran's determination
to set up a nuclear arsenal, but also convince
the United States and the European Union to increase
pressures on the Islamic Republic to stop all its atomic
projects, or face drastic international sanctions.
In a report to be published at the end of this
month, David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and
president of the Institute for Science and International
Security, a US-based non-profit research organization
specializing in nuclear matters, will disclose that Iran
has the capacity to produce enough enriched uranium to
build some 30 nuclear warheads a year.
In Tehran
on Sunday, Rohani told the inaugural session of the
Assembly of Experts, a body made up of 82 senior clerics
that has the power to elect or dismiss the leader of the
regime: "We have two goals ahead of us that we must
achieve. One is closing Iran's nuclear dossier with the
IAEA and bringing the board of governors to take it out
of their agenda, and the other is to have Iran
recognized globally as a nuclear country."
As
Rohani was briefing the Experts, a hardline newspaper
warned the IAEA to be "more realistic in its dealings
with Iran or the whole game would be jeopardized", and
an unidentified Iranian diplomat in Vienna threatened
that Iran would resume uranium enrichment and revise its
agreement to cooperate with the international nuclear
watchdog if the dispute is not resolved in line with
last October's agreement.
The envoy was
referring to an accord signed on October 21 in Tehran
between Rohani with the foreign ministers of Britain,
France and Germany under which Iran agreed to sign the
Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) and suspend enriching uranium in return for
getting access to advanced nuclear technologies for
peaceful purposes, like the construction of
nuclear-powered electrical plants.
"Iran will
not wait forever to restore its legitimate national
right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities and will not
accept that the IAEA continue its double-standard
policies toward Iran," the diplomat added, quoted by
Mehr, a news agency close to the ruling conservatives.
At the same time, and in an obvious
coordinated campaign aimed at intimidating the IAEA's board
of governors, Mohsen Rezai, the secretary of the
powerful Expediency Council that is chaired by former
president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said
cooperation with the IAEA would become more difficult if
the IAEA decided to limit Iran's peaceful and civilian
nuclear activities.
Rohani, in his lengthy and
detailed report to the Assembly of Experts, explained
why he had to bow to the IAEA's demand to sign the
Additional Protocol, revealing that in the event that
Iran did not obey, "it would face the same fate as
Iraq", meaning a possible military invasion of the
country authorized by the UN Security Council.
"The pressures applied on Iran were so great
that most of the world's leading industrial nations
conditioned trading with us to the signing of the
protocol, as seen in the Azadegan oilfields that the
Japanese refused to develop," the SCNS influential
secretary told a bewildered assembly. (See Japan, Iran sign major oil deal, US
dismayed , February 20.)
However, Rohani expressed the hope that because
of Iran's "clear-cut and full" cooperation with the
IAEA, the board would not take the case to the Security
Council for economic sanctions. "Even the Americans have
indicated that they would not insist on the matter," he
added.
Diplomats in Vienna said a draft
resolution prepared by the US, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand does not mention the Security Council and
balances criticism of Iran with praise for granting the
IAEA access to sites and agreeing to suspend all
activities linked to the enrichment of uranium.
The IAEA will also discuss technology and
equipment for enriching uranium sold to Iran by
Pakistan's Khan. According to a report by Malaysian
police based on the apparent confession of a wealthy Sri
Lankan who serves as a middleman, Khan sold Iran a
number of centrifuges for US$3 million. But Tehran has
constantly denied the accusations, saying that it
obtained second-hand material on the black market, with
no information about its origin.
IAEA
inspectors who found traces of aluminum enriched with new
equipment known as P-2 say Iran concealed this equipment from
them, but the radical daily Keyhan on Sunday accused the
agency of "gross lies and total dishonesty", reiterating
that Iran had told inspectors about all of its
activities and installations.
In a sharp-tongued
comment, Hoseyn Shariatmadari, a high-ranking
intelligence officer appointed by Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as editor, said that although the
October 21 agreement with the foreign affairs ministers
of Europe's big three was a choice between bad and
worse, the IAEA, under pressure from the "US and Zionist
circles has gone far beyond honesty in dealing with the
Islamic Republic".
Quoting Khamenei as having
warned the IAEA and the leading powers "not to try to
challenge Islamic Iran's right to possess nuclear
technology", Shariatmadari called on the authorities to
be ready for "the big showdown" and urged lawmakers
elected to the next Iranian parliament not to approve
the protocol if the IAEA failed to accommodate Iran.
The additional protocol, which allows IAEA
inspectors to carry out "instant" and unrestricted
inspections of all Iranian nuclear installations and
projects, has not yet been approved by the outgoing
Iranian majlis (parliament).
According
to Mehr, continuing
accusations against Iran, despite its cooperation
with IAEA inspectors, has irked the Iranian delegation,
which has accused the agency of dealing with Iran
in an "illogical manner ... There is nothing
permanent. We signed the additional protocol ... and
when to resume is in the hands of our system [the ruling
Islamic establishment]," Rohani said at the assembly on
Sunday, reiterating that Iran's atomic projects, like an
electric plant that is under construction at the Persian
Gulf port of Booshehr, with assistance from Russia, are
for civilian purposes.
But Washington insists
that Iran's ruling ayatollahs want to use atomic
installations, and Booshehr, for advancing military
aims.
The IAEA's latest report on Iran said that
agency inspectors had unearthed designs and parts for
the advanced P2 uranium enrichment centrifuge, capable
of producing bomb-grade uranium at twice the speed of
Iran's first generation P1 centrifuges. The agency also
uncovered experiments in the creation of plutonium,
which can also be used as the explosive in nuclear
weapons, and polonium, which can spark a chain reaction
in a nuclear weapon.
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