Ties on Iran's nuclear program
loosen By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
It's a tough pill for Washington and its
European allies to swallow, yet the fact that the
new US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
warrants a considerable revision of Western
strategy toward Iran's nuclear program is
inescapable and, already, new cracks in the
previously rigid US stance on Iran can be
discerned.
Case in point, Matthew Bunn, a
leading nuclear expert at Harvard University, has
maintained that the US's option of "zero
centrifuges" is no longer viable, in light of
Iran's rapid advances in
mastering the nuclear fuel
cycle, and the US should now probe a range of
other options. [1]
According to Bunn, a
viable option is an international consortium
producing nuclear fuel for Iran, while allowing a
limited number (ie one to four) cascades of
centrifuges to operate in Iran. Each cascade
contains 164 centrifuges. This would be well below
the 3,000 centrifuges that Iran has reportedly
assembled already, considered a "magic number"
because of the potential for diversion to bomb
production.
Considering this a
"face-saving" option for Iran, which prides itself
for making the scientific breakthrough with
centrifuge technology, Bunn argues that Iran's
limited centrifuges would give Iran a fallback
option in case the international guarantees on the
delivery of nuclear fuel did not pan out. Per
Bunn's proposal, Iran has a medium to high
probability of accepting this "package". It would
be linked to various incentives, such as a
security guarantee. Iran's alternative of
rejecting such a package would be continued
sanctions and even threats of military action.
Bunn's proposal has certain merits and
represents a welcome step forward compared to the
rigid and unrealistic White House's demand for a
complete halt to Iran's sensitive nuclear
activities. As the "Five plus One" diplomats
(United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia
and China plus Germany ) continue to confer on the
next steps regarding Iran, in light of Iran's
defiance of UN Security Council resolutions
demanding a full suspension of uranium enrichment
activities, Bunn's proposal deserves a healthy
pause. This is principally because it turns an
absolute position (no centrifuges) into a relative
one and, in turn, opens a new space for
negotiations.
Iran's main objection would
be, of course, on what grounds should it refrain
from "industrial scale" centrifuge technology,
something enjoyed by other nations, as long as
thorough inspections by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) are in place. The Iranian
experience with outside nuclear contractors is
rife with bitter memories of betrayed promises.
It's all the more reason why today Iran is
unwilling to forego its right to produce nuclear
fuel on its own soil, instead of becoming
permanently dependent on foreign sources.
Another Iranian objection would be why
limit it to a maximum of four cascades, when even
by US's own admission, even with 18-20 cascades
Iran would still not be in a position to yield
sufficient highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear
bomb. To meet this potential objection, then, the
US may need to consider a higher number of Iranian
cascades. The qualitative issue of a "threshold"
regarding bomb-making capability involves a
quantitative haggling over the number of cascades
that, theoretically speaking, can be negotiated
without preconditions).
Interestingly, a
number of other US pundits, including former
senior director for Middle East affairs at the
National Security Council, Flynt Levertt, and his
wife Hillary Mann, a former Foreign Service
officer who participated in the United States'
discussions with Iran from 2001 to 2003, have
dispensed altogether with the idea of any such set
limits on Iran's nuclear program.
In an
article in the New York Times they called simply
for strict nuclear transparency and full IAEA
monitoring of Iran's nuclear program, without
directly mentioning the issue of Iran's
centrifuges. In comparison, Bunn's proposal at
least has the merit of directly addressing the
heart of the matter and pointing at a concrete
option that may signal the end of the Iranian
nuclear crisis.
Yet another problem with
any such proposal, however, is that Iran's
domestic politics is predisposed against any
serious concessions and the combined factional
politics intermixed with upcoming parliamentary
election's prerogatives and pressures "from below"
by nationalistic Iranians actually militate
against it.
The premium put on the
politicians' ability to reach a compromise is, at
the same time, tempered by the increasingly
painful result of international sanctions on Iran,
hitting the Iranian economy. This, in turn, has
led to a growing call by prominent Iranians for
greater flexibility and compromise. The question
is what level of compromise is politically
expedient, beyond which it amounts to political
suicide.
In conclusion, there is yet
another option that from Iran's vantage point
seems more, and not less, probable in the
aftermath of the NIE report, that substantially
reduces the risks of military confrontation
between Iran and the West over the nuclear issue,
and that is "zero sanctions, 100% transparency".
After all, the Iranian case against UN
sanctions has just been bolstered in the form of
the NIE report, putting the West on the defensive
(See The case against sanctions on Iran
Asia Times Online, May 2, 2006).
The time to end the UN sanctions has
arrived, and the US's own sanctions on Iran too
are now candidates for reconsideration,
particularly if the US heeds President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad's call to take further concrete steps
to prove its goodwill toward Iran.
Note 1. Constraining Iran's nuclear
program. Matthew Bunn, Managing the
Atom Project, Harvard University Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, November 15, 2007.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear
Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.
He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review, and is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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