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2 Iran: Switching the nuclear
tracks By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has compared
Iran's nuclear program to a train that has left
its station, adding that "we have thrown away the
brakes". In reaction to Iran's defiance, the
United Nations is on the verge of imposing tougher
sanctions, and there are new, alarming reports
about a planned air offensive against Iran by the
US.
All this raises the question of
whether or not at least switching the tracks is
possible or even desirable, since the speed bumps of
punitive measures by the
international community may in fact derail Iran's
civilian nuclear program.
On the
diplomatic front, the momentum for the various
options floating around is on the fast track of
disappearing, with Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki, who only two weeks ago spoke
warmly about the proposals by Javier Solana, the
European Union's top foreign-policy diplomat, and
the Swiss, now all but dismissing them as mere
suggestions and far below the bar of serious
"proposals".
At a conference on "Persian
Gulf and Iran's Peaceful Nuclear Program" held in
the city of Isfahan this week, Mottaki's deputy
for foreign relations, Kazem Gharibabadi, outlined
Iran's latest stance by arguing that "there is no
guarantee in the international arena for the
supply of nuclear fuel to Iran and no
international and regional mechanism is capable of
delivering nuclear fuel to Iran". Insisting that
"we are not willing to reduce even one link from
the chain of complete nuclear-fuel cycle",
Gharibabadi assured the audience that Iran has no
intention of exiting the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) and has been fully transparent.
"In
the past three years until now, some 2,000
inspectors have visited Iran's nuclear sites. More
than 20 complementary visits have been arranged,
and in 36 cases they have inspected our military
facilities, and at the end it became clear that
there is no diversion regarding Iran's military
activities," Gharibabadi elaborated.
In
fact, the latest report by the director general of
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
Mohamed ElBaradei, confirms Iran's claim by
stating unequivocally: "The agency is able to
verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear
material in Iran." According to a top Iranian
nuclear official, Mohammad Saeedi, the ElBaradei
report shows Iran's program is "peaceful and
transparent" and "states the facts about Iran's
nuclear activities, and the Western countries
should understand these facts".
But, of
course, there is the other side of ElBaradei's
rather Janus-faced report(s) on Iran, decried by
an Iranian lawmaker, Javad Jahangirzadeh, as
"constantly containing positive and negative
layers". The latter refers to ElBaradei's
now-familiar complaint that there are still a
number of "outstanding questions", particularly
with respect to the contamination of Iranian
equipment with low- and highly enriched uranium
and the chronology of its enrichment activities,
leading him to conclude that "the agency is unable
to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear
material and activities in Iran".
The
trouble with ElBaradei's position - that only by
Iran's implementation of the Additional Protocol
to the NPT and full transparency is the IAEA able
to verify the peacefulness of Iran's nuclear
program - is twofold. First, given the difficulty
of proving a negative, and the fact that so far
the IAEA has given a "clean bill of health" to
only a fraction of its member states, one wonders
if the bar has been unreasonably set so high as to
be unachievable. Second, ElBaradei's report
refers to confidence-building "steps" that are
essential to build confidence in the Iranian
nuclear program, and this impacts the duration of
suspension of enrichment activities by Iran
demanded by both the IAEA and the UN Security
Council. In other words, how long a suspension is
necessary before the required confidence is
restored? Is it unreasonable to demand an answer
from the IAEA to this important question?
In light of the pressure by the United
States and certain European countries for a
permanent suspension, Iran has every right to ask
what a temporary, albeit long, suspension would
achieve, given the fact that for nearly two years
Iran voluntarily imposed such a suspension.
Another legitimate Iranian question,
reflected in a letter to the IAEA dated January
23, concerns the IAEA's request for "remote
monitoring" of Iran's centrifuges. The letter asks
for the legal basis of this request and the
examples of instances in other countries where the
IAEA has implemented such requests.
The
fact is that ElBaradei has repeatedly gone on
record calling on Iran to go even beyond the scope
of Additional Protocol, which, strictly speaking
from the prism of IAEA's own standards, lacks a
sound legal basis. Sidestepping the legal
framework, ElBaradei nonetheless states in his
report: "Iran has not agreed to any of the
required transparency measures, which are
essential for the clarification of certain aspects
of the scope and nature of its nuclear program."
Yet, a few pages earlier in the same
report, we read: "Pursuant to its NPT Safeguard
Agreement, Iran has been providing the
agency
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