Iran shakes pillars of nuclear
accord By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
In light of the latest news regarding
Iran's rapid advances in nuclear centrifuge
technology and Tehran's warning that it will
reject any new UN measures aimed at halting its
nuclear progress, it's clear that Iran's nuclear
standoff has entered a new phase - one that may
have global consequences and cause irreparable
harm to the pillars of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT).
The connection between the
two issues has been presented in a different light
by Western pundits who have maintained that the
NPT will deteriorate in the absence of effective
action to counter the Iranian "proliferation
activities". Foremost among such pundits is a
former official of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), Pierre Goldschmidt,
who has called for proactive initiatives by the UN
Security Council to address proliferation risks
often attributed to "NPT loopholes".
Of
course, first among the "loopholes" is the right
to produce nuclear fuel under Article IV of the
NPT. In the words of IAEA chief Mohammad
ElBaradei, this means that the non-nuclear weapons
nations exercising nuclear power would become
"virtual nuclear weapon states". The gap between
"virtual" and "actual" can be rather wide,
however, and may remain so as long as a robust
verification and inspection regime remains in
place.
But the problem with proposals of
Goldschmidt and other like-minded experts is that
they introduce new and potentially larger
problems, particularly with respect to the
relatively successful non-proliferation regime.
For one thing, the UN Security Council's attempt
to deprive Iran of the capability to produce
nuclear fuel has no legal precedent. Bottom line,
this is an anti-NPT initiative that will only lead
to an anarchy in rules and the collapse of norms
that other nuclear proliferators can take
advantage of.
So what exactly is the
purpose of these abnormal UN initiatives against
Iran? Is it to indirectly weaken the
non-proliferation regime, in order to benefit
countries such as Israel that have come under
increasing international pressure to conform to
the regime's norms? Or is it exclusively due to
the fears of Iran's proliferation?
Unfortunately, little attention has been
given to the various, intended or unintended,
implications of the UN Security Council's actions
against Iran, often under the lame argument that
"inaction is not an option". But improper action
is equally, if not additionally, harmful.
Indeed, if the UN Security Council
transforms itself into a new de facto arm of the
NPT, should we expect it to do the same for all
the other international regimes - chemical,
biological, developmental, disarmament, or
otherwise - that also suffer from various
"loopholes" and shortcomings? Clearly, we need a
more norm-guided UN approach toward the Iran
nuclear issue, otherwise, the negative spillover
effects on the NPT and a host of other
international issues, will soon be upon us.
Assuming that the IAEA's next report, due
out in a few weeks, will bolster Iran's position
that it has not breached any of its international
obligations (a position eloquently reiterated by
Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Soltanieh, at a
university in Geneva this week) then the Security
Council will have a hard time rationalizing its
sanctions regime, let alone toughening it.
Already, South Africa has put a damper on
the current "5 + 1" efforts to pass a third
sanctions resolution on Iran by counseling
patience and the need to avoid rash moves. With
the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) solidly behind
Iran's nuclear rights, the coming ElBaradei report
on Iran will likely sharpen the tensions at the UN
between the US-led coalition aiming to penalize
Iran for defying the UN's demands and the bulk of
the UN's member states defending Iran's rights.
With its plate overflowing with multiple
crises - Kenya, Chad, Darfur, Kosovo, and others -
the UN can ill-afford the divisive Iran issue that
will polarize its members if the UN leadership is
not careful.
Iran sanctions
rollback By all indications, the initial
news from Washington regarding a "5 +1" consensus
on new sanctions against Iran has been premature.
New signs of fissure and disagreement have
emerged, suggesting that the draft third sanctions
resolution is in trouble. As a result,
expectations are that the drastic measures
stipulated in the draft resolution will be watered
down, otherwise it will not pass and fall prey to
the quagmire of diplomatic wrangling.
For
their part, Tehran has been emphasizing the
"honesty and sincerity" of its cooperation with
the IAEA. A recent article by Iran's foreign
minister, Manouchehr Mottakin, in the British
daily The Guardian furthers this emphasis, as does
the fact that this cooperation has extended beyond
the Iran-IAEA protocol and involved "complementary
access and information".
In the absence of
any evidence of military diversion, the fact that
Iran has already mastered the enrichment
technology does not warrant an international
reprisal, particularly from the UN, which has
invoked Chapter VII and deemed it to be an issue
of global security and threat to world peace. The
US intelligence report on Iran, confirming that
Iran is not presently engaged in a nuclear weapons
program, has undermined the legitimacy of this UN
response, and the US and its allies are now
hard-pressed to find viable arguments to justify
the multilateral sanctions regime on Iran.
The argument that Iran's possession of
nuclear knowledge is "dangerous", repeatedly
stated by President George W Bush, is undermined
by the fact that Iran has already passed that
threshold and that its scientific progress is not
erasable.
Another argument, that Iran's
centrifuge activities represent a thinly-veiled
proto-proliferation, also falters by the
counter-argument that as long as the IAEA
inspection regime is in place, any diversion would
be detected.
A third argument, that Iran
has no need for nuclear fuel since Russia has
already provided it with what is needed for its
reactors, has been soundly defended by Iranian
nuclear officials who cite past broken promises,
the delay in Russia's completion of Bushehr power
plant, and the importance of technological
progress and self-reliance, not to mention the
possibility of Iran entering the lucrative market
of nuclear fuel.
In tandem with Iran's
cooperation and nuclear transparency, what is
needed is a phasing out of the UN sanctions regime
on Iran, instead of strengthening it. Iran's
former foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, who
advises the supreme leader on foreign policy
matters, has recently stated the importance of
Iran's diplomatic dialogue with the "5 +1". This
signals a growing Iranian willingness to enter
direct dialogue with the US on the nuclear issue.
The US must be prepared to revise its
defunct and unrealistic positions on Iran's
nuclear dossier, to focus on transparency and
confidence-building measures pertaining to the
various "objective guarantees" that Iran has been
putting on the table for some time. The
continuation of the present "coercive" course of
action against Iran by Washington will neither
solve the Iran nuclear crisis nor improve the
semi-crisis that the NPT finds itself in today;
rather, it will augment both.
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 ofIran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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