Shift towards more sanctions on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The week got off to a bang in Iran, with the country staging its biggest-ever
military exercises, which will include tests of its air defense system during
the five-day drill across more than a third of Iranian territory.
On the diplomatic front, too, much maneuvering lies ahead following the latest
meeting on Friday of the "Iran Six" countries, at which they expressed
disappointment with Tehran's response to an offer of a deal on its nuclear
program.
After talks in Brussels, the six - the United Nations Security Council's
permanent members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - plus
Germany, said Iran had not responded positively to a suggestion that its
low-enriched uranium
be processed out of the country before being returned for use in a medical
reactor in Tehran.
A decision on the next step in dealing with Iran's nuclear program, which some
countries suspect is being used to develop nuclear weapons, is expected within
a few weeks, and the indications are that there will be an increased shift from
dialogue towards sanctions.
Last Thursday, US President Barack Obama said while in South Korea that the US
would consult its allies regarding new sanctions against Iran, accusing it of
dragging its feet on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's)
"fuel-for-fuel" agreement.
Iran has already been slapped with three rounds of UN sanctions aimed mainly at
restricting its nuclear program. Both houses of the US Congress are currently
considering legislation that would give Obama the authority to target Iran's
energy sector by penalizing foreign companies that sold or shipped refined oil
products to Iran.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is on record as hinting at his government's
willingness to go along with new sanctions if the current nuclear talks fail.
The chances are that China will follow suit, despite Beijing's strong
reservations. In this event, the nuclear standoff will qualitatively worsen and
perhaps escalate toward a full-blown crisis.
This would mark a dramatic turnaround since the October 1 Geneva talks at which
a confident Obama announced that Iran had agreed to the deal whereby most of
its low-enriched uranium (LEU) would be shipped out for further enrichment in
Russia and France.
The problem stems from Tehran's inability to reach internal consensus, although
the chief of staff of Iran's Joint Armed Forces, Hassan Firouzabadi, recently
gave strong support in favor of the IAEA proposal, stating that Iran saw no
problem with shipping its LEU to another country.
But then Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who had earlier echoed
Firouzabadi's line, backtracked by voicing his opposition to the proposal and
calling for fuel exchanges "inside Iran".
"For sure, there are several proposals floating around and it is at this stage
unclear which will have the upper hand," said a Tehran University political
science professor on the condition of anonymity. "I personally find this
disconcerting because I believe the Iranian leadership should make up its mind
one way or another and give a final answer to the P5 plus one [Iran Six]."
Meanwhile, a new IAEA report on Iran [1] was released on November 16, giving
ammunition to both sides. On the one hand, it confirming the absence of any
evidence of military diversion, confirming the consistency of Iran's
declarations. On the other hand, the agency expressed its "reduced confidence"
about still-unanswered questions, or what the IAEA calls "alleged studies".
The IAEA report also cites a letter from Iran, dated October 28, 2009,
justifying its construction of "new contingency centers", such as the
enrichment facility known as Fardow near the city of Qom, due to the perception
of external military threats.
Also, Iran, while assuring the agency that it had no other undeclared nuclear
sites under construction, nonetheless added that it would declare any such new
ones in accordance with its obligations, that is, six months prior to the
introduction of nuclear material.
Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard, has come up with the novel idea that
Iran must place its nuclear fuel cycle under 24/7 international inspection and
"international ownership", an idea that has no legal justification as Iran is
entitled under the articles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to
which it is a signatory, to possess a peaceful nuclear fuel cycle as long as it
is under robust IAEA inspections.
In the absence of any smoking gun, and as long as the US government abides by
its own intelligence conclusion that Iran's nuclear program today is peaceful,
mere anxiety about a future Iranian misuse of its nuclear know-how does not
suffice to deprive the country of its nuclear technology. That is, to supplant
NPT and IAEA standards with new standards that are applied on a selective
case-by-case basis instead of universally. In turn, this raises the question of
international law.
The targeting of Iranian assets
The interconnection between international law and US sanctions against Iran
dates to the 1979 seizure of hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran following the
Islamic revolution. President Jimmy Carter retaliated by freezing Iranian
assets in the US.
This was followed by a more robust, and institutionalized, sanctions regime
during the Bill Clinton administration and, more recently, the three rounds of
UN sanctions that have been imposed in response to Iran's continuation of its
nuclear fuel program.
The notion of compatibility between US (and European) national laws, directives
and court rulings on the one hand and the corpus of law known as international
law on the other is often taken for granted. This is reflected in a new
complaint against a non-profit organization, the Alavi Foundation, in New York.
The Iranian government and its envoys at the UN are accused of running the
foundation from behind the scenes and funneling funds to a European branch of
Bank Melli, which is accused of funding Iran's nuclear program. US citizens are
banned from dealing with the bank. US prosecutors have begun legal action to
seize four mosques and a New York city skyscraper that are owned by the
foundation.
The UN Security Council's resolutions on Iran call for close scrutiny,
particularly resolution 1803. This urges member states to exercise "vigilance
over the activities of financial institutions in their transactions with all
banks domiciled in Iran, in particular Bank Melli".
In essence, the resolution allows transactions with the bank as long as they
are carefully watched (that is, with due "vigilance") to make sure that they do
not involve proliferation-related purposes. There is no UN ban per se on trade
or investment with this bank; the US's and Britain's recent freezing of its
assets may as a result be illegal under international law.
Yet, the Alavi Foundation is now being pursued for its alleged dealings with
Bank Melli. The foundation's 30 years of charitable history, including grants
to Ivy League universities such as Harvard, are now imperiled.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry,
click here. His
latest book,
Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing
, October 23, 2008) is now available.
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