This article was originally published in
The Hindu
The world has
forgotten everything and learned nothing from the charade over weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
BARELY TWO years after the United States invaded Iraq
in the name of weapons of mass destruction which never existed, the world is
being pushed towards a confrontation with Iran on a similarly flawed
premise.
On September 17, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations General Assembly that his
country would not give up its sovereign right to produce nuclear power using
indigenously enriched uranium. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which
Iran signed in 1974, allows Iran to build facilities involving all aspects of
the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment, subject to international
safeguards. Given the fact that the U.S. continues to impose sanctions on the
development of Iran's oil and gas sector (under the extra-territorial `Iran
Libya Sanctions Act'), it is only logical that the Iranians should seek a
civilian nuclear energy industry in which they won't have to be dependent on the
West for fuel like enriched uranium.
However, as a major concession to Britain, France and
Germany - the so-called EU-3 which has sought to prevail upon Iran to abandon
enrichment in exchange for guarantees of assured fuel supply - Mr. Ahmadinejad
offered to run his country's enrichment plants as joint ventures with private
and public sector firms from other countries. Britain and France have rejected
this offer, which the Iranians say is a demonstration of their intent to be as
transparent as possible. The EU-3 and the U.S. insist Teheran must not work on
enrichment because once the technology is mastered, the same facilities could be
used to produce not just low enriched uranium (LEU) for energy reactors but
highly enriched uranium (HEU) for bombs. Accordingly, they have circulated a
resolution in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors
meeting - which began Monday - calling for Iran's civilian nuclear programme to
be referred to the U.N. Security Council as a potential threat to international
peace and security.
It is not difficult for the U.S. and its European
allies to get a majority of the 35-nation Board of Governors to recommend
referral; however, the board has operated on the basis of consensus for the past
12 years - ever since the forced vote referring North Korea to the UNSC split
the IAEA - and the non-aligned group of countries and China remain opposed to
taking Iran to the Security Council. If the U.S. is convinced a consensus will
elude it for the foreseeable future, it could push for a vote this week rather
than wait any longer. Next month, following the annual IAEA General Conference,
a new Board of Governors will take over. And with Cuba and Syria entering the
Board in place of Peru and Pakistan, the ranks of those firmly opposed to an SC
referral are likely to increase.
Although the immediate trigger for the
European and American pressure is Teheran's decision last month to end its
voluntary suspension of uranium conversion at its Esfahan facility, the Iranian
case cannot be referred to the Security Council on this ground.
First,
the NPT allows uranium conversion and other processes central to enrichment.
Secondly, the Esfahan facility is under IAEA safeguards and as recently as September 2, i.e. nearly a month after
Iran resumed uranium conversion there, the Director-General of the Agency,
Mohammad El-Baradei, certified that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran
has been accounted for and, therefore, such material is not diverted to
prohibited activities." Thirdly, the agreement to suspend enrichment, which Iran
reached with the EU-3 at Paris last November, clearly states that "the E3/EU
recognize that this suspension is a voluntary confidence building measure and
not a legal obligation." In other words, if the voluntary suspension was not a
legal obligation, the ending of that suspension can hardly be made the grounds
for legal action by either the IAEA or the UN.
Myth of
'concealment'
If at all Iran is to be referred,
then, its desire to pursue a complete fuel cycle for its civilian nuclear energy
programme cannot be cited as legal grounds. Nor can the hitherto "secret" nature
of its fuel cycle facilities currently under construction. Though there has been
a surfeit of motivated and ill-informed commentary about how Iran "concealed"
its uranium enrichment programme from the IAEA "in violation of the NPT" until
it was "caught cheating" in 2002, the fact is that Iran was not obliged to
inform the Agency about those facilities at the time. David Albright and Corey
Hinderstein - who first provided the international media with satellite imagery and analysis
of the unfinished fuel fabrication facility at Natanz and heavy water research
reactor at Arak on December 12, 2002 - themselves noted that under the
safeguards agreement in force at the time, "Iran is not required to allow IAEA
inspections of a new nuclear facility until six months before nuclear material
is introduced into it." In fact, it was not even required to inform the IAEA of
their existence until then, a point conceded by Britain and the European Union at the March 2003
Board of Governors meeting. The Arak reactor is planned to go into operation in
2014. As for the pilot fuel enrichment plant (PFEP) at Natanz, it is still not
operational today.
This `six months' clause was a standard part of all
IAEA safeguards agreements signed in the 1970s and 1980s. It was only in the
1990s, following the Iraq crisis, that the Agency sought to strengthen itself by
asking countries to sign `subsidiary arrangements' requiring the handing over of
design information about any new facility six months prior to the start of
construction. Many signed, some did not. Iran accepted this arrangement only in
February 2003. Later that year, it signed the highly-intrusive Additional
Protocol. Though it has yet to ratify it, Teheran has allowed the IAEA to
exercise all its prerogatives under the protocol, including more than 20
"complementary accesses," some with a notice period of two hours or less. Dr.
El-Baradei also reported that "Iran has, since October 2003, provided the Agency
upon its request, and as a transparency measure, access to certain additional
information and locations beyond that required under its Safeguards Agreement
and Additional Protocol."
What Iran has yet to do is provide the IAEA
sufficient information on the history of its centrifuge programme for it to
satisfy itself that there are no "undeclared nuclear materials or activities."
However, this alone can hardly constitute grounds for referring the country to
the Security Council under Article III.B.4 of the Agency's Statute since the
IAEA, in the past two years, has found discrepancies in the utilisation of
nuclear material in as many as 15 countries. Among these are South Korea, Taiwan, and Egypt. In 2002 and 2003, for
example, South Korea refused to let the IAEA visit facilities connected to its
laser enrichment programme. Subsequently, though Seoul confessed to having
secretly enriched uranium to a 77 per cent concentration of U-235 - a grade
sufficient for fissile material - neither the U.S. nor EU suggested referring
the matter to the UNSC.
In contrast, there is no evidence whatsoever that
Iran has produced weapon-grade uranium. Despite intrusive inspections, no
facility or plan to produce weapon-grade uranium has been discovered, nor have
any weapon designs surfaced.
Those findings involved six instances of Iran's
"failure to report" certain nuclear activities, mostly concerning enrichment and
laser experimentation and including the import of uranium from China in 1991;
two instances of "failure to declare" enrichment facilities; six instances of
"failure to provide design information or updated design information" for
certain facilities, and a general charge of "failure on many occasions to
cooperate to facilitate the implementation of safeguards, as evidenced by
extensive concealment activities."
Dr. El-Baradei then noted that Iran
had taken a number of corrective actions as a result of which "the Agency was
able by November 2004 to confirm certain aspects of Iran's declarations [related
to conversion activities and laser enrichment], which ... would be followed up
as matters of routine safeguards implementation." This was a major statement by
the IAEA because, in effect, it was saying that much of the "concealment" the
Iranians are accused of resorting to in the past had been effectively
neutralised and was no longer a source of extra concern for the
Agency.
If the IAEA was still not in a position to declare that Iran had
no undeclared nuclear material and undeclared enrichment activities, this was
for two sets of reasons. First, it was still assessing Iran's explanations for
questions raised by it about the Gchine uranium mines and two long-since
abandoned research projects into polonium (Po-210) and plutonium separation.
Secondly, questions still remained on two important fronts. In the course of its
visits to the not-yet-operational Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz and the
Kalaye Electric Company in 2004, the IAEA had found trace amounts of highly
enriched uranium (HEU) and low enriched uranium (LEU), giving rise to concerns
that Iran had already begun enriching uranium - presumably at an undisclosed
third location. The Iranians denied producing the HEU and LEU but the IAEA
needed to satisfy itself. Moreover, the Agency felt it had yet to learn the full
extent of Iranian research work on the P-2 gas centrifuge, the designs for which
had been procured from the A.Q. Khan clandestine network.
After analysis
of swipe samples, IAEA experts now say the HEU was Pakistani and presumably came
to be in Natanz because imported centrifuge components were contaminated. The
origin of the LEU contamination has yet to be established but there are some
indications it is of Russian provenance. As for the centrifuges themselves, the
IAEA wants more documentation to convince itself that Iran is telling the truth
about not pursuing any work on the P-2 design between 1995, when it first
acquired the technology, and 2002, when it made modifications necessary for
composite rotors. This, then, is the main outstanding question Iran needs to
answer.
No threat to peace
Not only
is Iran's failure in this regard far less dramatic than the American accusations
of a "clandestine weapons programme" and of "deception," it also cannot
conceivably be called a threat to international peace and security. Yes, the
IAEA has yet to conclude there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities
in Iran. But, as Dr. El-Baradei himself noted in his September 2 report, "the
process of drawing such a conclusion, after an Additional Protocol is in force,
under normal circumstances, is a time consuming process." Since the Agency
believes Iran has had a "past pattern of concealment," this conclusion "can be
expected to take longer than in normal circumstances."
In effect, Dr.
El-Baradei was saying that the IAEA's inspectors should be allowed to do their
work. For this, "Iran's full transparency is indispensable and overdue." What he
did not - and could not - say was that the inspections process should not be
short-circuited or politicised by interested parties. A case in point is the
polonium-beryllium controversy, which Washington had hoped would emerge as
Iran's proverbial smoking gun.
When asked about bismuth irradiation
experiments it had conducted at the Teheran Research Reactor (TRR) between 1989
and 1993 to extract polonium, Iran pointed out that it had not
been required to inform the IAEA under the safeguards agreement and that "in any
case, details of the experiments were in the logbook of the TRR reactor, which
has been safeguarded for 30 years." Polonium has many civilian applications but
also plays a role, when combined with beryllium, as a neutron initiator in some
nuclear weapon designs. Seizing on this, the U.S. insisted Iran had imported
beryllium as well. When the IAEA investigated this and ruled out any such
imports, U.S. officials planted stories about how Dr. El-Baradei had "succumbed to Iranian pressure."
These stories were then used to build a campaign to deny him another term as
Director-General, a campaign which ultimately failed.
Regardless of U.S.
motivations, however, Iran, at the end of the day still has a responsibility to
demonstrate to the world that it is in full compliance with its safeguards
obligations. And the world has the right to satisfy itself that Iran is not
planning to make nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, Bruno Pellaud, former IAEA Deputy
Director-General for safeguards, was asked by Swissinfo whether Iran
was intent on building a nuclear bomb. "My impression is not," he replied,
adding that "the IAEA says there is no evidence of a weapons programme." Dr.
Pellaud then posed a rhetorical question - Is this naiveté? - and elaborated on
his assessment: "My view is based on the fact that Iran took a major gamble in
December 2003 by allowing a much more intrusive capability to the IAEA. If Iran
had had a military programme they would not have allowed the IAEA to come under
this Additional Protocol. They did not have to."
As matters stand, the
only major unexplained issue is the extent of Iran's research work on the P-2
centrifuge. Even if the Agency's worst fears are true - that Iran actually
worked on the P-2 design during that time - this matters only if that knowledge
was used to set up another enrichment facility somewhere else in the country.
Though this is unlikely, especially given the rather modest achievements on
display at Natanz (which itself was supposed to be a "concealed" facility), the
Additional Protocol gives the IAEA a broad licence to inspect any facility it
wishes. Using those powers - and relying on intelligence inputs from the U.S. -
Agency inspectors recently visited military sites at Kolahdouz, Lavisan, and
Parchin. Nothing was found. If a secret enrichment plant exists, the enforcement
of Iran's safeguards and inspection obligations is a far better way to unearth
it than the threat of sanctions. The world must
stand firm on diplomacy
WHEN
BRITAIN, France, and Germany volunteered last year to try and find a diplomatic
alternative to the punitive measures the United States was demanding against
Iran, the expectation was that the European-3 would have the skill - and the
gumption - to craft a solution that would address the legitimate concerns of
both Teheran and the `international community.'
What were these concerns?
The world needed assurance that Iran's pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle,
including uranium enrichment, would not lead to nuclear weapons, and Iran needed
assurances that it would not be denied access to civilian technologies or
subjected to sanctions or the threat of aggression by the U.S. and Israel, both
of which possess nuclear weapons. Accordingly, the Paris Agreement signed by Iran and
the E3 on November 15, 2004, spoke of a solution that would "provide objective
guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes."
In exchange, Iran was to be provided "firm guarantees on nuclear, technological
and economic cooperation and firm commitments on security issues." Given this
framework, Iran said its voluntary suspension of enrichment-related and
reprocessing activities "will be sustained while negotiations proceed on a
mutually acceptable agreement on long-term arrangements."
Last month, the
E3 slammed the door on the possibility of a "mutually acceptable agreement" by
presenting proposals that turned the spirit of the
Paris accord upside down. Iran was told permanently to abandon its enrichment
and reprocessing facilities and heavy water reactor and provide "a binding
commitment not to pursue fuel cycle activities other than the construction and
operation of light water power and research reactors." In other words, the only
possible "objective guarantee" the E3 was prepared to accept against misuse of
enrichment facilities was for Iran not to have them at all.
As if this
was not provocative enough, the E3's proposals on the guaranteed supply of
enriched uranium and security assurances were so vague as to make a mockery of
the concepts of "firm guarantees" and "firm commitments." For example, far from
committing itself to assist whatever remains of the Iranian nuclear programme
once fuel cycle-related activity is excluded, all the E3 was willing to promise
was "not to impede participation in open competitive bidding." Not surprisingly,
the Iranians said this manifest demonstration of bad faith on the E3's part
meant negotiations had come to an end. Accordingly, Teheran ended its voluntary
suspension and notified the International Atomic Energy Agency of its intention
to resume conversion activities at its Esfahan facility. This, in short, is the
backstory to the current crisis
In an analysis of the E3 offer, Paul Ingram of the British American Security Information Council
(BASIC) - a leading Western arms control think-tank - called it
"vague on incentives and heavy on demands" and concluded that the European
proposals seemed "designed to fit closely with US requirements." "Even the
establishment of a buffer store of nuclear fuel is proposed to be physically
located in a third country, rather than in Iran under safeguards," he noted,
adding that the E3/EU "do not seem to have had the courage to offer either the
substantial, detailed incentives or a creative, compromise solution on
enrichment which could reasonably have been expected to receive Iran's
endorsement."
Pellaud proposals
Iran's
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took one step towards a creative solution when he
proposed running Iranian enrichment facilities as joint ventures with private
and public sector companies from other countries. Though it has been dismissed
out of hand, the latest Iranian offer is a variant of a formula that was proposed in February this year by an IAEA
expert group on "multilateral approaches" to the nuclear fuel cycle
headed by Bruno Pellaud.
The Pellaud committee had been tasked by the
IAEA to recommend measures that could bridge the gap between a country's right -
under the NPT - to the nuclear fuel cycle, and the proliferation concerns that
would arise from an increase in the worldwide number of facilities capable of
uranium enrichment or plutonium separation. The relevance of this issue to the
Iran question hardly needs elaboration.
Of the five proposals made by the
committee, three concerned different types of international fuel supply
guarantees as an incentive for countries to forswear their own enrichment
facilities, and two were based on the notion of shared ownership or control. The
latter involved "promoting voluntary conversion of existing facilities to
multilateral nuclear approaches (MNAs), and pursuing them as confidence-building
measures with the participation of non-nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-weapon
states, and non-NPT states" - precisely the kind of offer Mr. Ahmadinejad made
in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week - or "creating, through
voluntary agreements and contracts, multinational, and in particular regional,
MNAs for new facilities based on joint ownership, drawing rights or
co-management."
Could an MNA provide the international community with the
kind of assurances it needs that enriched uranium would not be diverted to a
clandestine nuclear weapons programme? While releasing his report earlier this
year, Dr. Pellaud said he believed it could. "A joint nuclear facility with
multinational staff puts all participants under a greater scrutiny from peers
and partners, a fact that strengthens non-proliferation and security ... It's difficult to play games if you have
multinationals at a site."
Instead of threatening sanctions,
the E3 should engage Iran in a dialogue which can develop the
Pellaud-Ahmadinejad proposals to a level where Teheran can provide "objective
guarantees" that its programme is entirely peaceful and Europe can give "firm
guarantees" and "firm commitments" on the issues which concern the Iranians. The
only problem, of course, would be what to do about the Americans.
The
fact of the matter is that it is impossible to separate the present "nuclear
crisis" from Washington's track record of unremitting hostility towards the
Iranian Government. Indeed, any solution that does not bring about a change in
U.S. behaviour is unlikely to be acceptable or durable as far as Teheran is
concerned. As part of its long-term framework proposals, therefore, the E3 must
undertake to get the U.S. to abandon its sanctions against the Iranian oil and
gas industry and drop its aim of bringing about `regime change' in
Iran.
Instead of falling in line with Washington's pressure on Iran,
Europe and the rest of the world should also ask themselves whether the cause of
international peace and security is served by selective concern about
`proliferation.' The NPT allows enrichment but Iran is being told it cannot have
a fuel cycle. The NPT mandates nuclear disarmament but the U.S. is conducting
weapons research and formulating military doctrines that will weaponise space
and increase the salience of nuclear weapons in its force posture. Britain and
France have no conceivable nuclear adversaries yet continue to deploy nuclear
weapons. Countries in West Asia are being told they can never walk out of the
NPT but nothing is done to denuclearise Israel. These issues too are very much
part of the "nuclear crisis" and it is time something were done to address
them.
