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2 Dialogue amid rattling
sabers By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The new International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) report on Iran has reconfirmed the
country's steady progress on its centrifuge
technology, thus giving new impetus for a third
round of United Nations Security Council
sanctions, as this constitutes defiance of the UN
demand that Tehran halt enrichment-related
activities.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of
the IAEA, also warned for the first time that Iran
probably could enrich enough uranium to build a
nuclear bomb in three to
eight years, setting off new fears of Iran's
nuclear intentions.
In Iran, the four-page
report by ElBaradei elicited a more favorable
response, relatively speaking. Ali Larijani, the
chief nuclear negotiator who is due for another
talk with the European Union's foreign-policy head
Javier Solana next week, stated that the report
shows that IAEA inspectors have not found any
major problem, and this means "Iran is operating
within the scope of international standards".
Although ElBaradei's report complains of a
deterioration of the IAEA's access to Iran's
facilities during the past few months, this is
considered a backlash against the UN's atomic
agency for "politicizing Iran's dossier" and not
impacting the overall Iran-IAEA safeguard
agreements.
According to Mohammad Saeedi,
the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy
Organization, the report shows that Tehran is
committed to its legal and international
obligations and there is no obstacle to the IAEA's
access to the country's nuclear facilities. But
Kazem Jalali, a member of the Iranian Parliament's
National Security Committee, criticized
ElBaradei's report as "typically unfair,
double-sided and ambiguous".
In the United
States, on the other hand, officials are seething
at ElBaradei's candid statement last week that
Iran has pretty much reached the point of no
return on the nuclear-fuel cycle and the
appropriate response is to allow it limited access
to this technology instead of trying to dispossess
it completely through coercive sanctions.
"We vehemently disagree that somehow the
international community should allow Iran to get
away with all its international obligations," a
senior White House official told the Washington
Post. But has it?
Iran is entitled, under
Article IV of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), to acquire an independent nuclear-fuel
cycle, and given its "corrective steps" absence of
any "smoking gun", and Iran's continued
participation in both the NPT and the IAEA's
inspection regime, it is difficult to find the
legal justification for UN sanctions.
A
recent editorial in the New York Times proposed a
US-led "grand bargain" with Iran, offering more
carrots than before, including on security matters
or, alternatively, in case Iran refuses, a "more
painful punishment".
Again, conveniently
overlooked by the Times editorial and other US
media is the legality of punitive measures against
Iran - exercising its "inalienable rights", much
like nations such as Japan and Brazil. The UN
Security Council has sidestepped Iran's national
rights and has imposed sanctions because Iran has
refused to comply with a non-legally binding
confidence-building measure requested by the IAEA.
This is clearly a disproportionate response, the
flaws in which will be exposed when and if Iran
agrees to a temporary suspension followed by the
resumption of its enrichment activities.
Suspension is not, after all, termination,
and there is nothing in any of the UN resolutions
stating the duration of Iran's suspension.
Henceforth, it may be in Iran's interests to go
along with Solana's suggestion for a month-long
suspension, to take the steam out of the UN's
express train of sanctions after sanctions, not to
mention the "military option".
Weighing
the military option With its terminal
addiction to hard power, on the eve of the US-Iran
dialogue in Baghdad on Monday, Washington has
ratcheted up the pressure on Tehran by holding yet
another military maneuver close to Iran in the
Persian Gulf. This is widely interpreted by the US
media as another step in "the path to war with
Iran".
Adding a disturbing twist to this
familiar behavior, the White House has reportedly
authorized covert action inside Iran, according to
an exclusive report on the American Broadcasting
Co (ABC) network.
Interestingly, none of
the "experts" interviewed by the ABC or CNN on
this subject has bothered to remind the viewers
that legally speaking, the US government is barred
from any covert activities in Iran per the 1981
US-Iran agreement in Algiers. President George W
Bush's authorization, if true, violates the United
States' prior pledge "not to interfere directly or
indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's
internal affairs".
Unfortunately, the
White House is not alone in falling into
historical amnesia, and hawkish members of the US
Congress, who sponsored the Iran Freedom Support
Act calling for regime change in Iran, have
equally forgotten the United States' international
obligations. These preclude such initiatives as
interfering in Iran's domestic affairs in the name
of democracy or human rights, as the US$75 million
fund for democracy in Iran allocated by the Bush
administration clearly does.
The White
House's justification - that this is the "lesser
evil" compared with Vice President Dick Cheney's
aggressive push for military action - may convince
some gullible members of the US media, but cannot
pass the scrutiny of international law.
One of the unintended consequences of such
interventionist behavior by the US over Iran is to
foment a security paranoia in Iran, reflected in
the recent arrest of a number of Iranian-American
scholars visiting Iran, who are accused by the
government of trying to promote a "soft" or
"velvet" revolution.
In light of growing
signs of the United States' attempts to sow
discord and division among Iran's multi-ethnic
population, eg by supporting Azeri irredentist
groups operating in neighboring Azerbaijan, Iran's
stern reaction is likely to escalate even further.
In other words, the United States' "pro-democracy"
actions toward Iran have had, and will have, the
obverse effect of actually undermining the
democratic forces and chipping away at their
legitimacy.
That aside, the "military
option" has been openly backed by a limited number
of experts on international law, such as Alan
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