Nuclear watchdog displays blind
faith By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
With the credibility of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tarnished by recent
WikiLeaks revelations - notably that the head of
the United Nations' nuclear watchdog was "in the
US court" on Iran's nuclear program - the body
became serious about polishing its image by
upgrading its standards for "information security"
following complaints by Tehran.
It came as
a surprise, therefore, on Tuesday that IAEA chief
Yukiya Amano captured headlines by saying the
agency was in possession of new information
suggesting that Iran's nuclear weapons-related
work went beyond 2003, the year that the United
States intelligence community insists Iran halted
such work. It would be odd if the IAEA had vital
intelligence on Iran that was
either new or did not come
directly or indirectly from the US and its allies.
According to one wire report, "The
information pertains to activities Iran could have
carried out before late 2003 and after 2004, Amano
said - adding that it was more related to the
earlier date rather than to the latter one. He did
not provide further explanation."
That is
to say, Amano did not completely contradict the US
intelligence report; he only introduced some new
cracks, perhaps to the delight of US officials who
are nowadays concerned that Iran's rising sun over
the turbulent Middle East skies indicates the
eclipse of American influence.
Ratcheting
up the Iran nuclear fear in the region is
seemingly the West's, and Israeli's, best
antidote. In this sense, they seem to have an ally
in Amano. His predecessor, Mohammad ElBaradei, had
dismissed most of the intelligence on Iran's
"alleged studies" as sheer fabrication. In
comparison, Amano, who per the WikiLeaks
disclosures has assured Washington of being on the
same page on "all the key strategic issues", has a
blind faith in the (dis)information on Iran that
is fed by "third parties".
IAEA's
demand for negative nuclear assurance “Iran is not providing the necessary
cooperation to enable the agency to provide
credible assurance about the absence of undeclared
nuclear material and activities in Iran, and
therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in
Iran is in peaceful activities,” Amano repeated
this week, on the surface a perfectly legitimate
concern, except that it is a clear affront to the
IAEA's own norms, reflected in the IAEA-Iran
Safeguard Agreement.
No less than in two
dozen reports on Iran, the IAEA has repeatedly
confirmed that it "continues to confirm" the
non-diversion of declared nuclear material. It has
done this as a result of one of the most
exhaustive and rigorous inspection regimes with
respect to a member state, involving thousands of
hours of physical inspections, dozens of
short-notice inspections, and a 2007 "Work Plan"
that resulted in resolving all the so-called
"outstanding questions" in Iran's favor.
Another important fact is that the IAEA
has to date given a complete "clean bill of
health" on a peaceful nuclear program to only
about a third of its member states. In addition to
being a cumbersome and exceedingly time-consuming
and costly endeavor, the agency's certificate of
non-military dimensions of a country's nuclear
program is actually not within the IAEA's legal
framework and represents a de facto responsibility
that the agency has occasionally taken on in view
of the importance of non-proliferation.
Unfortunately, this is an extra-legal task
that opens the door to political influence and
manipulation of the agency by big powers,
especially the United States, that is in league
with the government of Israel, a clandestine
nuclear proliferator. As a result, the IAEA has
failed to apply even minimum heat on Israel, which
refuses to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty and to subject itself to any outside
inspections, focusing instead on countries such as
Iran and Syria.
With respect to Iran, in
the absence of any evidence of diversion of
nuclear material to weapons-related activities, as
confirmed in the IAEA's own reports, the agency
has no empirical grounds to claim a discrepancy
between the "declared" and any "undeclared"
nuclear material, a discrepancy that is more
likely a figment of Western and Israel
intelligence aimed at fettering Iran's rising
power.
As a clue to that power, through
deft diplomacy in league with the Non Aligned
Movement (NAM) countries, Iran has now managed to
force the IAEA to reluctantly admit that its
inspectors need "better training" on keeping
country information confidential, instead of
leaking it to either other countries or the media.
IAEA rules on this matter are perfectly
clear and there is no need for "upgrade", only a
faithful implementation, so that confidential Iran
nuclear information cannot be leaked to wire
services and US diplomats would not be privy to
private sessions with inspectors returning from
Iran (per WikiLeaks documents).
Lest we
forget, Amano vigorously defended his inspectors
late last year after the WikiLeaks disclosures,
refusing to reprimand those inspectors who
violated IAEA standards, criticizing Iran instead
for refusing future visits by those inspectors
whose integrity had been cast into doubt.
Amano's behavior raised serious questions
from both Iranian and other NAM diplomats at the
IAEA. For example, at a joint television
appearance with this author on PressTV, Iran's
envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, complained that Iran
and the IAEA had already reached an agreement on a
new list of inspectors and he failed to see why
Amano continued to raise the issue publicly.
Amano has also chosen to remain silent on
the dangerous cyber-attacks on Iran that have
targeted the nuclear reactor at Bushehr. The issue
warrants a special IAEA seminar on the new safety
risks presented by the Stuxnet computer worm that
Western media have reported can cause
"Chernobyl-like disasters". The Bushehr reactor's
opening has been delayed due to safety concerns
and it is unclear when the problem will be fixed;
a setback that Iran can ill-afford.
Nor
has Amano pushed for the "nuclear swap" for the
Tehran reactor, despite the fact that the agency
took part in a multilateral meeting with Iran on
the sideline of the January nuclear talks between
Iran and the "Iran Six" nations in Istanbul. The
failure of the IAEA to provide technical
assistance to Iran as called for by the terms of
the Iran-IAEA agreements will have serious
repercussions, adversely affecting the future of
Iran's cooperation with the agency and its nuclear
transparency.
The mere silence of Amano on
this matter, compared with his vocal proliferation
concerns, reflects badly on his image as an
impartial and independent director general.
With the nuclear fuel for the Tehran
reactor running out, the IAEA should discontinue
any effort to tag the issue of fuel for that
medical reactor to the nuclear standoff, indeed
the whole idea of a "swap" is questionable from a
legal standpoint, no matter how the West leans on
the IAEA to force Iran to trade a major bulk of
its stashed low-enriched uranium for fuel rods.
This points at the main flaw of the
"IAEA-proposed draft" unveiled in October, 2009,
which called for the nuclear exchange: that is,
the small but significant point that the IAEA
transgressed its own norms by making technical
support to Iran conditional on Iran satisfying
certain requirements.
The conditions were
an ironic development for an agency that
constantly makes a fuss about "respecting the
rules and living up to international obligations".
The IAEA chief should take a hard look in the
mirror and ponder, who is flouting the rules,
really?
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.
He is author of Reading
In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11
(BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and his
latest book, Looking
for rights at Harvard, is now available.
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