Iran
nuclear talks produce a litmus
test By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - "We had a long
day of meetings and we were able to make progress
on the text of the structured approach to
resolving the outstanding issues on possible
military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program. We
have agreed to meet again on the 16th of January
of next year where we expect to finalize the
structured approach and start implementing the
plan shortly after that."
This statement
by Herman Nackaerts, Deputy Director for
Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), captures the result of the intense
one-day meeting in Tehran between an IAEA
delegation of seven headed by Nackaerts and the
Iranian officials, who have also sounded upbeat
about "constructive progress" achieved last
Thursday, which coincided
with the US Treasury
Department's slapping Iran with new sanctions on
seven companies and five individuals, including
Iran's atomic energy chief, Fereydoun
Abbasi-Davani.
According to Iran's envoy
to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, in a
conversation with the author, Iran has no
objection to the IAEA's request to inspect a
building at the Parchin military complex (just as
it has on two previous occasions in 2005) but only
within the context of "a mutually agreed
modality", the reason being that Parchin "is not a
nuclear site" and the IAEA's request is beyond the
terms of Iran-IAEA Safeguards Agreement. [1]
To elaborate on the Parchin issue, the
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in his November
2011 report on Iran had put Parchin in the
category of "possible military dimensions",
claiming credible information that Iran a decade
ago had conducted high explosive tests with a
nuclear application. Iran has denied this and the
related allegation that in the past several months
it has conducted an extensive cleaning of the
suspected building.
That Tehran feels
somewhat frustrated over this particular issue is
not difficult to surmise. According to Soltanieh,
in January 2005, as a "strictly transparency
measure," (ie, not a legal obligation), the agency
"selected five buildings and was given free access
to those buildings and their surroundings and was
allowed to take environmental samples". Ten months
later, on November 1, 2005, again "the agency was
given access to the buildings requested with the
area of interest at Parchin and, again, the agency
did not observe any unusual activities in the
buildings visited."
In fact, this was
reflected in the February 27, 2006 IAEA report
that stated:
On November 1, 2005, the agency was
given access to a military site at Parchin where
several environmental samples were taken. The
agency did not observe any unusual activities in
the buildings visited, and the results of the
analysis of environmental samples did not
indicate the presence of nuclear material at
those buildings.
What really is behind
all the hoopla over Parchin, according to
Soltanieh and other Iranian officials, is a
concerted effort at disinformation to keep the
bogus "Iran nuclear threat" alive, with some
unfortunate cooperation by the IAEA, whose
aggressive November 2011 report on Iran has been
widely criticized for having a biased approach.
Since then, under intense pressure by many
member states, particularly those belonging to the
Non-Aligned Movement, Amano has somewhat polished
his act, but apparently not enough to dissipate
suspicion that his primary loyalty is still with
the US government, as per a WikiLeaks disclosure
quoting him (see Mr
Amano goes to Washington, Asia Times Online,
November 8, 2011).
Thus, at a recent
appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York, Amano stated his readiness to share with
Iran the credible intelligence information on
Iran's "possible military dimensions". Yet, this
is contrary to the admission of his predecessor,
Mohammad ElBaradei, that the agency had no
trustworthy information regarding any clandestine
nuclear-weapons related activity in Iran.
This was essentially why the IAEA in
August 2007 agreed to "normalize" Iran's nuclear
dossier after the conclusion of a comprehensive
"Work Plan" that addressed all "six outstanding
issues" of concern to IAEA, which were fully
resolved in Iran's favor. Yet, for purely
political reasons, the IAEA failed to honor its
written commitment and, instead, suddenly raised
the issue of certain "alleged studies" afterward,
even though in one of its own reports admitted
that "the agency has not detected the use of
nuclear material in connection with the alleged
studies, nor does it have credible information in
this regard."
Lest we forget, in the Work
Plan, the IAEA had agreed to "cover all remaining
issues and the agency confirmed that there are no
other remaining issue and ambiguities regarding
Iran's past nuclear program and activities". So
the question in Tehran's mind is what happens
after the IAEA inspectors, who regularly visit
Iran's enrichment facilities and have confirmed
time and again that there is no evidence of
diversion of declared nuclear material, go to
Parchin and, again, come out empty-handed? Will
the IAEA then be satisfied or, instead, as it has
done in the past, find some new excuse in order to
avoid giving Iran a clean bill of health?
Indeed, this is an important question that
goes to the heart of the impending "structured
approach" about to be signed on January 16, 2013.
That is, the Iranian concern that the IAEA cannot
and should not constantly hit Iran with
extra-legal demands above and beyond the bounds of
its protocol with Iran based on any calibrated
"intelligence" hurled at the atomic agency.
This could be neutralized by producing a
new framework that actually "disciplines" the IAEA
to adhere to its own standard norms; for example,
stop pretending that it has a mandate to ascertain
the "absence of any undeclared nuclear
activities".
On a related note, all the
Western (and Israeli noise) about Parchin and
experimentation a decade ago, reveals a more
significant fact about the absence of any evidence
to corroborate an Iranian proliferation. For a
country that is suffering immensely under
"crippling" international sanctions over its
purported nuclear-weapons intentions, this is
indeed preposterous. In turn, this raises the
question of legality of Iran sanctions,
particularly those imposed unilaterally by the US,
European Union, Canada, and so on.
The
unilateral sanctions are strictly speaking illegal
from the prism of international law, simply
because they go well beyond the realm of UN
sanctions imposed under Chapter VII of the
organization's charter (ie, as an issue of
international peace and security), despite the
fact that Iran has never been found to be in
breach of its NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty) obligations, only "non-compliance" with
certain IAEA guidelines that the agency in other
cases - such as Egypt or South Korea - did not see
fit to report to the UN Security Council, even
though those were cases of "serious concern" to
the agency and pertained to the import and
experimentation with undeclared nuclear material.
In spite of all the talk about Iran's
remedial "corrective action", what matters is the
need for the IAEA to demonstrate its own
capability at self-correction, by treating Iran's
nuclear file objectively and without political
bias. The planned modality to be signed next
January is a litmus test and it won't be too long
before we know if the IAEA has achieved a
breakthrough in asserting its independence, rather
than a pawn of Western powers.
Note: 1. 1. See Afrasiabi's interview with Soltanieh: Iran prepares for Moscow, Asia Times Online, Jun 9, 2012.
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