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2 Iran goes down to the
wire By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
With the United Nations' 60-day deadline
given to Iran to halt its sensitive nuclear
activities now expired, the stage is set for the
next phase in what is increasingly shaping up as a
fully fledged crisis.
Iran remains
defiant, insisting that it is exercising its
"inalienable rights" to peaceful nuclear
technology, wondering aloud why it is asked to
deprive itself of aspects of the same technology
fully
enjoyed by others.
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due
to send its report to the agency's 35-nation board
and to the Security Council on Thursday. It is
widely expected to say that Iran has expanded
enrichment efforts, rather than frozen them as
demanded.
The United States and its
European allies are now gearing up for a third
Security Council resolution that could lead to
sanctions in addition to those imposed in
December. The issue then becomes one of whether
Iran will finally yield to the growing pressure of
economic and financial sanctions, backed by the
muscular US military presence in the Persian Gulf.
It is highly unlikely, yet there is
considerable anxiety in Iran today that its
much-cherished civil nuclear program may become
the casualty of this crisis. This is in light of
ominous news that Russia has delayed the delivery
of nuclear fuel and the completion of the Bushehr
power plant it has been building since 1995, under
the lame excuse of delayed payment, a charge
flatly denied by Iran.
Moscow has an
additional explanation that is music to
Washington's and London's ears - the impact of
sanctions. Thus, according to Irina Yesipova of
Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom),
"There are certain obstacles affecting our work in
Bushehr ... Because of the embargo, a number of
third countries declined to supply equipment [to
Iran]. That's why Russian producers have to
provide all the equipment all of a sudden. It's a
tough situation."
As a clue to the urgency
of Bushehr's completion, the former deputy
director of Iran's nuclear-fuel program, Dr Ahmad
Gharib, has questioned Russia's stated reasons for
the delay, urging government leaders to set aside
everything else and do whatever is necessary to
start the power plant. He cited the deleterious
consequences on Iran's energy needs should this
linger much longer. Another Iranian who once
worked for the IAEA echoed this sentiment and more
bluntly criticized the absence of political will
inside Iran to muster diplomatic and political
pressure on Russia to fulfill its contractual
obligations with Iran.
Russia's action has
elicited complaints from Iran's former president,
Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has stated that Iran does
not expect this kind of behavior from a "friend".
But Russia, by dizzying zigzags in foreign policy,
one moment holding the torch of anti-US
unilateralism and then quickly switching to the
United States' side against Iran at the Security
Council, seemingly has not even permanent
interests, let alone permanent friends.
If
Moscow is intent on earning the trust of its
neighbors and others, it must act more vigorously
to find a solution to the Iran nuclear crisis,
instead of seeking to exploit it for bartering
leverage with Washington and the European Union.
This would mean making more explicit the "Putin
proposal". This initiative of President Vladimir
Putin was reportedly submitted to Iran's former
foreign minister, Ali Akbar Valayati, during his
recent trip to Moscow as the special envoy of
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
While details of the Putin plan have not
been disclosed, sources in Tehran suggest it
combines elements of the "time out" option
suggested by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the
IAEA. This calls for the simultaneous suspension
of enrichment activities and UN sanctions on Iran
- and the past proposal for a joint
Russian-Iranian enrichment plant on Russian soil.
But the "time out" proposal has already
been rejected by the US, which has its eyes set on
a permanent cessation of all uranium enrichment
and reprocessing activities in Iran, irrespective
of the lack of any legal basis for this request.
Nor is the US any more inclined toward the other
two options floating around - the Solana proposal
and the Swiss proposal.
The Solana
proposal Javier Solana, the EU's
foreign-policy chief, has proposed that Iran limit
enrichment levels to 4%. Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki, on a visit to Turkey, referred
to the idea approvingly. Ali Larijani, the
secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security
Council and the country's chief nuclear
negotiator, has also told German papers that it is
technically possible to fit centrifuges in such a
way that they only produce low-enriched uranium.
Last year, Larijani and Solana had a
series of productive meetings that culminated in a
tentative agreement on "11 points", but this move
was scuttled by the abrupt UN Security Council
action culminating in sanctions on Iran in
December. Worse, today both Washington and London
oppose anything they consider undue interference
by Solana to mediate in the nuclear standoff.
According to the London Financial Times,
British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants to
jettison Solana from the Iran nuclear negotiations
altogether. The main reason is Solana's conclusion
that Iran has already mastered the centrifuge
process so it would be futile to dispossess it of
this nuclear-fuel cycle. Solana believes the best
remaining option is to guarantee that Iran does
not exceed beyond low ceilings.
The
Swiss proposal Akin to the "warm standby"
option with which the US experimented, the Swiss
proposal was reportedly submitted to
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