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3 Debunking Iran's nuclear myth
makers By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) has requested that Iran suspend its uranium
enrichment and reprocessing activities as a
"confidence-building measure", in light of Iran's
18 years of non-transparency. Tehran now faces two
paths: either heed this call or face tougher
sanctions and, worse, the possibility of war.
Increasingly, the voices of dissent in
Iran on the nation's nuclear policy are getting
louder and louder, reflecting a growing
disenchantment with the confrontational policies
of President
Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, which according to many Iranian
pundits have put vital national-security interests
at risk.
"It is starting to look like a
real tragedy," a Tehran political-science
professor told the author, adding, "An
inexperienced mayor [of Tehran] with no previous
international exposure was put at the helm, and he
brought in his aides who were equally novices in
the realm of international politics, at a critical
time in Iran's foreign relations. The result has
been near-disastrous. But, hopefully, other
leaders will put a stop to this nonsense."
That hope is based on the fact that the
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, has
made known his displeasure with Ahmadinejad's
hardline politics through an editorial in the
newspaper Jomhuri Eslami, which has called on the
president to stay out of the nuclear issue.
This sentiment has been reflected by
another newspaper, Kargozaran, associated with the
technocratic elite, some of whom, such as Ali
Larijani, the head of powerful Supreme National
Security Council, proposed a temporary freeze
early last year (see Sideshows on Iran's frogmarch to the
UN, Asia Times Online, February 7,
2006).
What would a temporary suspension
achieve? The answer is: it would satisfy, albeit
temporarily, the United Nations Security Council's
demand, reflected in Resolutions 1696 and 1737,
for a halt to the enrichment activities, given the
fact that these resolutions refer to the IAEA
resolutions that requested these suspensions as a
"non-legally binding" and "voluntary" measure.
In
other words, no matter how insistent the
United States and its European allies are on a
permanent suspension, there is nothing in either
the UN resolutions and/or the IAEA resolutions
that would endorse their unreasonable demand,
which lacks a legal basis. Also, a one-year suspension
would deflect the US military threat and prevent
"lame duck" US President George W Bush from
initiating military action against Iran.
Since
2003, Iranian officials have admitted
that their previous declarations to the IAEA
were inaccurate and have promised to take "corrective
steps" to redeem the past shortcomings,
a promise they have executed in good faith
through increased transparency, IAEA access to
military sites, and a nearly two-year suspension
of the enrichment program as per the terms
of the so-called Paris Agreement (for more on the
collapse of the agreement, see Myth of the EU olive
branch, August 30, 2005).
Today, a re-suspension of the enrichment
program would fit in the framework of those
"corrective measures" and create the space for
negotiations and long-term agreements, not to
mention averting the crisis and putting a stop to
the collateral damage caused by sanctions and the
threat of war that have scared away foreign
investors, caused capital flight, and put the
nation's economic projects in jeopardy.
Otherwise, the present trend toward the
international isolation of Iran will continue, in
light of the statement of European Union foreign
ministers in Brussels this week that vowed to apply
the Iran sanctions and "if necessary" to "go
further than a UN list in targeting those linked
to Tehran's nuclear work".
Not only that: in the absence of an Iranian
compromise that would at least partially satisfy
the Security Council, the pressure on Russia to
curtail its nuclear cooperation with Iran further and,
at a minimum, to withhold the delivery of nuclear
fuel to Iran will undoubtedly intensify. In
fact, today in Iran there are few if any officials
or experts who are optimistic that the
Russian-built power plant in Bushehr will ever
become operational as long as the nuclear standoff
continues.
One of the few, apparently, is
the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency,
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who optimistically, and one
might add rather naively, stated that the Russian
delivery of nuclear fuel "will materialize in
December".
Ironically, in the same breath
Aghazadeh admitted that "today in the world there
is a global consensus against Iran that includes
even China and Russia and their 'red line' is the
suspension of our activities". In a clue to the
growing inter-elite rift on the nuclear policy,
Aghazadeh stated:
Unfortunately some officials in the
country were saying, "Aghazadeh, we were living
our lives, why did you ruin everything?" One of
the officials would say: "We have already
experienced war, so why should we face another
war?" - and all this at a time when some of the
members of the nuclear negotiation team did not
have much belief in the nature of the nuclear
activities and the nationalist
pride.
Another official of the
Iranian atomic-energy organization, Mohammad Saidi,
who has routinely told the Iranian press that any
suspension of enrichment activities would be a
"national
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