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Iran buys some
time
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - Iran scored a small diplomatic
victory on Thursday when the Vienna-based
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted
a relatively mild resolution calling on Tehran to
revert to the suspension of all of its nuclear
activities, but stopping short of referring the
issue to the United Nations Security Council for
possible economic sanctions.
The
resolution of the 35 members of the governing
board of the UN nuclear watchdog was unanimously
adopted after three days of difficult bargaining
between the European Union's so-called Big Three,
or EU-3 - Britain, France and Germany - on the one
hand, and the 14 members of the governing board
who are part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) on
the other.
The draft, drawn up by the EU-3
and presented to the board, requested the IAEA's
Egyptian general director, Mohammad ElBaradei, "to
provide a comprehensive report on the
implementation of Iran's NPT [Non-Proliferation
Treaty] Safeguards Agreement and this resolution
by September 3."
Iran immediately rejected
the move, saying it violated the NPT. "The
European Union's resolution is unacceptable and
illegal and we reject it," the deputy head of
Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad
Sa'idi, a senior member of Iran's delegation to
the IAEA meeting, told the British news agency
Reuters.
The adoption of the draft by full
consensus astonished the Iranians, as Tehran was
expecting a new round of consultations on Friday
and blamed Singapore for "creating divisions"
among the NAM group.
"The atmosphere in
the IAEA is of surprise and bewilderment, as the
Europeans were able to present and adopt a draft
that was slightly changed. Experts and observers
think that Singapore's change of attitude in
breaking away from the NAM and joining the
Westerners could be the reason," Mehr news agency,
which speaks for the Iranian negotiators, reported
from Vienna.
Gregory Schulte, the US
ambassador to the IAEA, said the resolution "shows
the international community is united in its
determination that Iran move off the dangerous
course it is on".
The resolution urges
Iran to reestablish full suspension of all
enrichment-related activities and to permit the
director general to reinstate the seals that have
been removed at the Isfahan center. Iran this week
broke the seals placed by the IAEA and resumed
work at the uranium conversion plant at Isfahan.
Iran had voluntarily suspended work while
negotiating with the EU-3.
Cyrus Nasseri,
a senior Iranian negotiator, told reporters after
the meeting that Iran would continue working with
the agency, but reiterated that it would not bend.
The latest showdown between Tehran and
both the IAEA and the EU-3 started 12 days ago
after Iran announced suddenly that it would resume
activities as the uranium conversion facility
situated near the central and historical city of
Isfahan in central Iran.
On Monday, Iran
started taking off the seals placed on the
facility's installations by the IAEA and cheering
as technicians fed the first barrels of
yellowcake, or raw uranium ore for being conversed
in low-grade gas, in the presence of tens of
Iranian and foreign journalists and international
technicians.
At about the same time, the
ruling ayatollahs rejected as "without value and
meaningless" a package by the EU-3 offering
incentives for nuclear, economic and political
cooperation with the Islamic republic. "The offer
is an insult to both the government and the people
of Iran," Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the country's new
president, told the general secretary of the
United Nations, Kofi Annan, but adding that Tehran
would not leave the negotiation table.
"I
have some new initiatives [about the nuclear
standoff] that I will disclose when I present my
new cabinet [at the weekend]," he told Annan
during a telephone conversation.
Both the
Europeans and Washington welcomed the declaration,
but continued to urge Tehran to go back to
suspension of nuclear activities, as agreed in
November 2004 in Paris. Washington is concerned
that Iran will use its purported civilian nuclear
program to make nuclear weapons.
Iran's
new, tough attitude towards the EU-3 was drawn up
by Ali Larijani, the top strategist on foreign
affairs to the new president. He replaced Hasan
Rohani as secretary to the Supreme Council on
National Security, the body that supervises the
country's nuclear affairs. Larijani and his elder
brother Ardeshir, also an advisor to the ruling
conservatives, have profiting from a string of
events giving Iran a solid edge over its European
interlocutors: the steady rise in oil prices, the
engulfment of the US in Iraq and the weakness of
the European Union following the French and Dutch
rejection of a proposed European constitution.
Ali Larijani was one of only a handful of
candidates allowed to stand in Iran's recent
presidential elections. The conservatives-backed
candidate, a former head of the state-controlled
radio and television, fared poorly behind the top
two winners in the first round, who then went into
a runoff before Ahmadinejad emerged as the winner.
With oil prices hovering at US$65 a
barrel, there is no way the UN Security Council
can impose meaningful sanctions on Iran should the
IAEA's directors decide to send the nuclear issue
to the Security Council. Hence, Iranian officials'
repeated statements that they are not afraid of
the Security Council.
The presence of more
than 150,000 American troops in Iraq makes any
plan for attacking Iran highly unlikely, unless
saturation bombing of the country is planned and
aimed at the destruction of the nation's military
installations, and above all its nuclear
facilities.
According to US Central
Intelligence Agency estimates, there are more than
450 major strategic targets in Iran, including
numerous suspected sites producing nuclear
weapons. Many of the targets are hardened or are
deep underground and could not be taken out by
conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option.
"As we are gathered here, one nation that
now champions the role of non-aggression and not
using arms of mass destruction was the only one
that used the terrible atomic weapon, killing
hundreds of thousands of innocent people and
wounding millions of others, some of them disabled
for their entire life," stated Nasseri at the IAEA
meeting of Tuesday, referring to the nuclear
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago by
the Americans.
On the domestic front, the
nuclear crisis is initially paying off well for
Ahmadinejad, an "Islamic-populist" described
randomly by the Western media and Iranian
pro-reform press and political circles as
"ultra-conservative", with ideas taken from
orthodox Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Ahmadinejad surprised all Iranian and
international political analysts when he crushed
the influential and powerful Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani in the second round of the Iranian
presidential elections, which most of the defeated
runners, except Larijani, said was "massively
rigged" because of the huge support he received
from the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militias.
These forces belong to the new president, a former
mayor of Tehran - a job he won with only 12% of
the votes.
An austere, simple-living man
and faithful Shi'ite Muslim, the uncharismatic,
poorly-dressed, peasant-lumpen looking
Ahmadinejad, 49, married with three children, is
the perfect image of how he once portrayed
himself: the "street sweeper" of the people.
Using their good ties with the local and
international media, his detractors from left and
right did their best to project a negative image
of Ahmadinejad, describing him as a "dangerous
religious fascist" and insisting on his "complete
lack of political experience".
But the
resumption of activities at Isfahan has
popularized the president since, by standing firm
to international pressures, he has relieved the
sense of humiliation suffered by the Iranians
frustrated by the "gross and inadmissible
interferences of the international community,
mostly Europe's three-most savage nations", namely
Britain, France and Germany, in the words of
Ardeshir Larijani.
At the same time, the
unfolding confrontation at the IAEA shows that
Ahmadinejad, a civil engineer, is the man for the
moment, using old Western tactics of "carrot and
stick" to ride a crisis. He has left the door open
for further negotiation with the EU-3, despite
pressure from hardliners in Iran's clerical-led
establishment to shut the door and get out of the
talks.
Safa Haeri is a
Paris-based Iranian journalist covering the Middle
East and Central Asia.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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