After recent provocative statements from Tehran, the International Atomic Energy Agency will discuss Iran's nuclear programme again this month, and could decide to report the country to the UN Security Council. But is US pressure on Iran about suspected weapons programmes, or is it really about securing a western monopoly on nuclear energy?
By Cyrus Safdari
Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2005
IF YOU read the media coverage of the presentation given to the United Nations General Assembly on 17 September by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you could be forgiven for picturing him pounding his shoe on the podium, old Soviet-style, and yelling "We will bury you!" Press reports on this speech in the United States described him as "threatening", "aggressive" and "unyielding". Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post went so far as to claim that he had said that Americans "brought the devastation of Hurricane Katrina upon themselves" (1).
Why was his speech presented in this way? The usual pundits who dominate US newspaper column inches and television talk shows would reply that Iran is not to be trusted because it ran a clandestine nuclear enrichment programme, dramatically exposed in 2002. Like previous assertions on Iraqi weapons, this claim has been conveniently stripped of significant nuances, and has assumed fact status through mindless repetition. It deserves more careful scrutiny.
First, we should note the technical details of the nuclear fuel cycle. Uranium is sold all over the world as yellowcake, which typically contains 70%-90% uranium oxide. It is then purified to obtain uranium hexafluoride. Iran already carries out these transformations under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The final stage is known as enrichment, a process that generates a sufficient amount (3%) of one isotope, uranium 235, to produce nuclear power. To be used in a weapon, the proportion has to reach 90% U-235. Article IV of the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (better known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT) guarantees the "inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes". Signatory countries have the right to enrich uranium.
A review of nuclear industry literature shows that if Iran's uranium enrichment programme was ever clandestine, it was a poorly guarded secret. Tehran's intentions to obtain the full nuclear cycle date from the 1970s, when its nuclear energy programme was set up in cooperation with the US and some European governments. In 1974 the Ford administration offered to contribute directly (2), and Iran continued to work on the fuel cycle until the 1979 revolution. In 1981 the new government decided to continue Iran's nuclear energy projects, and in 1982 Iranian officials announced that they planned to build a reactor powered by their own uranium at the Isfahan nuclear technology centre. The IAEA inspected that and other facilities in Iran in 1983, and planned to assist Iran in converting yellowcake into reactor fuel. The IAEA report stated clearly that its aim was to "contribute to the formation of local expertise and manpower needed to sustain an ambitious programme in the field of nuclear power reactor technology and fuel cycle technology". But the agency's assistance programme was terminated under US pressure (3).
In 1984 Iranian radio announced that negotiations with Niger on the purchase of uranium were nearing conclusion, and in 1985 another broadcast openly discussed the discovery of uranium deposits in Iran with the director of Iran's atomic energy organisation (4). An IAEA spokesman, Melissa Flemming, confirmed in 1992 that its inspectors had visited the mines and Iran had announced plans to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle (5).
Tehran had openly entered into negotiations with several nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine and Spain, for the purchase of nuclear energy facilities and components. Almost all of these deals ultimately fell through after pressure from Washington. The Chinese informed the IAEA of plans to build a uranium enrichment facility in Iran in 1996, and when they too pulled out under US pressure, the Iranians informed the IAEA that they would continue the project none the less. Iran's nuclear efforts were not entirely clandestine.
"Corrective actions"
After Tehran agreed to implement the NPT's additional protocol (which allows the IAEA to carry out more intrusive inspections), an IAEA report did find that Iran had failed in the past to report "nuclear material, its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material had been processed and stored". But subsequent IAEA reports stated that Iran had taken "corrective actions" about many of the failures, and that "good progress has been made in Iran's correction of breaches". The remaining unresolved issues would be "followed up as a routine safeguard implementation matter". The Iranians blame US obstructionism for making them resort to secrecy in obtaining technology to which they were entitled under the NPT (6).
The US assertion that the programme was intended for weapons production is flimsy. In 1995 Thomas Graham, Washington's chief negotiator for the extension of the NPT, had to admit that the US had seen no actual evidence of an existing weapons programme in Iran (7). Ten years later that is still the case. In March 2005 the New York Times reported that an intelligence review commission report to President Bush had described US intelligence on Iran as "inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs" (8). Despite almost three years of intensive inspections under the additional protocol, the IAEA has yet to find any evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran.
According to Article 19 of Iran's safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the agency may refer Iran to the UN Security Council if it is "unable to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material required to be safeguarded under this agreement, to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices". The IAEA has reported that all declared fissile material in Iran has been accounted for, and none has been diverted. So why, in September 2005, did it state that there was an "absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes"?
Why does the IAEA claim that it is not in a position to guarantee that there are no "undeclared facilities" in Iran after all these intensive inspections?
Students of rhetoric are familiar with this pattern. Others may recognise it from its application to Iraq. The US used the dramatic and over-hyped exposure of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme to transfer the burden of proof: it is now up to Tehran to refute the charge of secretly building nuclear weapons. Through a campaign of innuendo and fallacious argument in the US media, the Bush administration has changed the accusation, making it almost impossible for Iran to refute the charge.
Iran struggled to meet the challenge by implementing the additional protocol, permitting expanded inspections and suspending uranium enrichment. But at each step the finishing line was moved farther away. Iran is now in the position of having to prove the impossible: that it does not have secret weapons facilities magically immune to years of IAEA inspections, and that it could not use legitimate nuclear technology to make weapons in the indefinite future. In this manner, accompanied by the exercise of political strongarm tactics over the members of the IAEA board of governors, the Bush administration almost managed to have Tehran referred to the UN Security Council.
According to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany (known as the EU-3 in their negotiations with Tehran on this subject), Iran is to be denied enrichment capacity regardless of whether IAEA inspectors have found actual evidence of a weapons programme in Iran. Why? Because the technology could be used to make bombs. In this form the accusation against Iran is almost irrefutable: practically any advanced technology could be used in a nuclear programme. Iran has allegedly been just five years away from building nukes for the past 25 years.
To claim that Iran should not obtain technology which could be used for nuclear weapons is contrary to the NPT, which encourages "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information". It also undermines the IAEA's inspection regime, since the IAEA cannot be expected to predict what technology will or will not be used for in future years.
The political nature of the IAEA's decision about Iran is clear when compared with the treatment accorded to South Korea and Egypt, two allies of the US. Both were caught red-handed conducting secret nuclear experiments over several years. They got no more than a slap on the wrist from the IAEA (9). Speculation that either could one day build bombs or had "undeclared facilities" did not get them stripped of their NPT rights.
The real Bush target
All this suggests that the emphasis on weapons proliferation is exaggerated. The real targets of the Bush administration's nuclear shenanigans are the economies of developing countries. The late 20th century was an amazing period of growth and human achievement, much of it fuelled by cheap oil from the Middle East, where it was directly or indirectly monopolised by the imperial powers. Analysts agree that the oil will not last forever, indeed, we may already have reached the point of peak oil. The developing world will bear the brunt of the imminent energy crunch. European countries already rely on nuclear power for a third to a half of their electricity needs, and both France and the US have invested in new enrichment plants. South Korea, China, Britain and the US have all recently announced plans for dramatic expansion of their nuclear power industries. Even Rice has conceded that developing countries will have to turn to nuclear energy (10).
Iran is no exception. Despite its large oil and gas reserves, it already had a clear case for diversifying its energy resources into nuclear power by the 1970s. Since then its population has tripled, while its oil production has almost halved, and it now consumes about 40% of its oil domestically. So when Bush jovially quips "Some of us are wondering why they need civilian nuclear power anyway. They are awash with hydrocarbons" (11), he is being disingenuous.
Iran has a legitimate economic case for using nuclear power, and the means to manufacture the necessary fuel domestically. It also has the legal right to do so. But the US and the European Union demand that Iran and other countries abandon any indigenous capabilities and rely solely on western fuel suppliers to power their economy. This is like Iran demanding that Britain drop all exploitation of North Sea oil and rely solely on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries for its energy needs. Under the guise of non-proliferation, the EU and the US are not only undermining the grand bargain between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear armed states that is the NPT; they also want to create an underclass of nuclear energy have-nots, concentrating what could become the world's sole major source of energy in the hands of the few nations that have granted themselves the right to it.
Iran presents a convenient opportunity to set a precedent to be used against other aspirants for nuclear power in the developing world. That is why Ahmadinejad was denounced as an uncompromising hardliner in the coverage of his UN presentation. But he did in fact suggest a compromise deal. While defending Iran's sovereign right to produce nuclear power using indigenously enriched uranium, and enumerating the reasons why Iran cannot rely on promises of foreign-supplied reactor fuel to power its economy, he proposed to operate Iran's enrichment programme as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries, to ensure that the programme remained transparent and could not be secretly diverted for military purposes. This was no small offer. It closely resembled a proposal previously put to the IAEA by a committee of experts looking into the risk that nuclear technology developed for peaceful purposes might be diverted to non-peaceful uses (12).
Instead of discussing this proposal, or looking for any workable solution, US, Israeli and EU officials continue to insist that the only acceptable objective guarantee of non-proliferation is to close what they describe as the loophole in Article IV of the treaty. These countries want to see the article re-interpreted to deny developing nations the right to indigenous nuclear enrichment technology. There has been a flurry of activity by US-based analysts and thinktanks seeking to legitimise this approach by characterising Article IV as too vaguely worded to be taken seriously. The EU's foreign affairs spokesman, Robert Cooper, opts for outright denial: "There is no such right" (13).
This is a problematic interpretation of the treaty. If the right to enrich uranium is either non-existent or too vaguely stated in the NPT, then by what right do signatory nations such as Japan enrich uranium? For US pundits, the answer to this is: "Iran is not Japan. Japan recognises all its neighbours; Iran does not accept the existence of Israel" (14). Since when was the exercise of an inalienable right conditional on the recognition of Israel? The suggestion is ironic: Israel is a nuclear-armed non-signatory to the NPT, and regularly threatens to bomb Iran's civilian nuclear sites.
Former US president Jimmy Carter once famously dismissed reminders of the US's CIA-engineered 1953 coup in Iran, which ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, after he decided to nationalise Iran's oil resources, as "ancient history". But it is not ancient history to Iranians, who still harbour a deep sense of betrayal. Iran is a proud nation with a long history, and it is a history of deep resentment against foreign powers that tried to control Iran. Iranians, from pro-western liberals to fundamentalists, have come to view the nuclear technology issue as a matter of national pride. Even if there were regime change in Iran, the future regime would be just as likely to pursue a nuclear programme as the current one is (and the previous one was). By insisting on humiliating Iran and depriving it of its nuclear technology achievements, the US can only undermine its own interests.
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Citation: Cyrus Safdari. "Iran needs nuclear energy, not weapons,"
Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2005.
Original URL: http://mondediplo.com/2005/11/02iran
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