Iran “no imminent threat”, says ElBaradei
“Our assessment is that
there is no imminent threat [from Iran], if you want to call it
- there is no clear and present danger, you know. We - we still have lots of
time to investigate that. We still have lots of time to negotiate with Iran in the international
community.” (Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA Director
General, Monterey, California, 30 May 2006)
By 31
July 2006, Israel’s military assault on Lebanon had been going on for
almost three weeks. Hundreds of Lebanese
civilians had been killed and Lebanon’s civilian
infrastructure had suffered billions of dollars worth of damage. The previous day a large number of civilians,
many of them children, had been killed in Qana.
From 12
July 2006, when the Israeli assault began, the US and the UK stopped the Security
Council calling for an immediate ceasefire.
They did so because they wanted the hostilities to continue - because
they supported the Israeli action, hoping that it would damage Hezbollah and, by
so doing, weaken the influence of Iran and Syria, the supporters of
Hezbollah, in the Middle East.
They were in a position to do so, because they have vetoes on the
Security Council.
But, on 31 July 2006, having
remained silent for three weeks about Israel’s ongoing assault on Lebanon as
the death toll rose, the Security Council declared Iran, not Israel, a threat
to peace - because of its nuclear activities - and passed a Chapter VII
resolution (number 1696 [1])
against it. Resolution 1696 demanded,
inter alia, that
“Iran shall
suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development”
(Paragraph 2)
and threatened
economic sanctions against Iran if it
failed to do so by 31 August
2006, expressing the Security Council’s intention
“in the
event that Iran has not by that date complied with this resolution, then to
adopt appropriate measures under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the Charter of
the United Nations to persuade Iran to comply with this resolution and the
requirements of the IAEA” (Paragraph 8).
The resolution was passed by 14
votes to 1, the only dissenter being Qatar which opposed the resolution being
brought before the Council “at a time when our region is inflamed”, saying “our
Council has waited longer to act on much more burning issues” [2]. Indeed.
The Iranian ambassador to the UN, Javad Zarif, was allowed to
address the Security Council, but only after the vote was taken. His remarks [2]
were very relevant. Here is what he said
about the rush to indict Iran and the
failure to take any action against Israel:
“Compare
this rush to the fact that some of the very same Powers have for the past three
weeks prevented any action - not even a 72-hour humanitarian truce - by the
Security Council on the urgent situation in Lebanon, which has been officially
and publicly interpreted by the aggressors as a green light to continue their
onslaught, unfortunately including the recent carnage in Qana.
Security Council members can be the judge of how much credibility this leaves
for the Council. Millions of people around the world have already passed their judgement.”
Israeli
privilege
Could there be a clearer example of
the privileged position enjoyed by Israel compared with Iran, thanks to being under
the protection of the US veto in the Security
Council?
Israel has at one time or
another invaded every one of its neighbours, many times in the case of Lebanon, contrary to Article 2.4
of the UN Charter. It has even annexed
parts of its neighbours’ territory, for instance, the Golan Heights belonging to Syria. Yet the Security Council has never declared Israel to be a threat to peace
and passed a Chapter VII resolution against it.
Iran, on the other hand,
hasn’t attacked any of its neighbours in living memory. Unlike Israel, it has signed the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and its nuclear
facilities are under IAEA supervision, as required by the NPT. It is universally agreed that Iran has no nuclear weapons
and the IAEA has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme. It is universally agreed that it would
take it years to develop nuclear weapons - if it decided to do so.
(By contrast, Israel has refused to sign the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and it has developed nuclear weapons,
and the means of delivering them. Today,
it may have as many as 200 warheads. Its
nuclear activities are entirely hidden from the outside world, without any IAEA
supervision whatsoever, so public knowledge about its nuclear activities is
limited. Yet, strangely, the West is
forever accusing Iran, but not Israel, of engaging in
clandestine nuclear activities.)
The IAEA has found no evidence that Iran is in breach of its NPT
obligations not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. So what possible basis is there for the
Security Council to declare it a threat to peace?
Proposals
by P5 & Germany
The recent background to this is as
follows. On 6
June 2006, Javier Solana, the EU’s High
Representative on Foreign and Security Policy, presented Iran with proposals on
nuclear matters and a range of other issues, on behalf of the 5 permanent
members of the Security Council (the so-called P5) and Germany. The text of the proposals, which are entitled
Elements of a long-term agreement,
was published in Security Council document S/2006/521 dated 13 July 2006 [3].
The P5 and Germany undertook to enter into
negotiations with Iran on these proposals,
providing Iran met certain
pre-conditions, which are set out in the proposals themselves. This would have meant the US talking directly to Iran on a wide range of
issues for the first time since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.
Chief amongst the pre-conditions is
the familiar demand that Iran
“Suspend all
enrichment-related and reprocessing activities to be verified by IAEA, as
requested by the IAEA Board of Governors and the Security Council, and commit
to continue this during these negotiations.”
In return, the proposers
say that they would “agree to suspend discussion of Iran’s nuclear programme in the Security Council upon the resumption of
negotiations”, which would rule out the Council applying economic sanctions to Iran during the
negotiations.
In August 2005, the so-called EU3 (the
UK, France and Germany) made
proposals to Iran on nuclear
and other issues [4]. In the previous 9 months while negotiations
with the EU3 were going on, Iran had voluntarily
suspended its uranium processing and enrichment activities. The EU3 proposals
required Iran to make
this suspension permanent and to shut down all the facilities it had
established for processing uranium ore into reactor fuel (Paragraphs 34), albeit
with a review after 10 years. Iran was
required to get its reactor fuel from abroad and return spent fuel to the
original foreign supplier (Paragraphs 36(d)).
Had the EU3 proposals been
implemented, any nuclear power generation in Iran would have been dependent on
a supply of fuel from abroad (which could be cut off at any time), even though
Iran has a domestic supply of uranium ore and had made considerable progress
towards building the facilities necessary to manufacture fuel from this
indigenous ore. Understandably,
therefore, Iran rejected
the EU3 proposals out of hand - and resumed its uranium processing and
enrichment activities.
The new proposals from the P5 and Germany are more
equivocal: they do not say, in so many words, that Iran is forbidden
to enrich uranium on its own soil. They
do suggest, in a section entitled Fuel
Guarantees, Iran’s
“Participation
as a partner in an international facility in Russia to provide
enrichment services for a reliable supply of fuel to Iran’s nuclear
reactors. Subject to negotiations, such a facility could enrich all uranium
hexafluoride (UF6) produced [at Isfahan] in Iran.”
In other words, Iran would be
allowed to operate its existing facilities for processing uranium ore into
uranium hexafluoride, but the latter would be exported to Russia for
enrichment rather than being enriched in the facilities that Iran is
constructing at Natanz. This implies that Iran would be
forbidden to have facilities to enrich uranium hexafluoride at Natanz, but the proposals do not specifically say so.
So, while the proposals “reaffirm Iran’s right to
develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”, they seem to rule out for the
indefinite future Iran engaging in
uranium enrichment on its own soil. The
suspension of uranium enrichment, which the proposals say is “to create the
right conditions for negotiations”, appears to be a non-negotiable element of
the long-term agreement that Iran is being
invited to negotiate.
Review of
moratorium
A section in the proposals entitled Review of moratorium allows for the
possibility that Iran might one
day be permitted to enrich uranium on its own soil. It says:
“The
long-term agreement would … contain a clause for review of the agreement in all
its aspects, to follow:
•
Confirmation by IAEA that all outstanding issues and concerns reported by it,
including those activities which could have a military nuclear dimension, have
been resolved;
•
Confirmation that there are no undeclared nuclear activities or materials in Iran and that
international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s civil
nuclear programme has been restored.”
It is possible to envisage the IAEA
resolving the first point. However,
barring a change of regime in Tehran to one
doing the bidding of the US, is there
the slightest chance that the US will agree
that “international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s civil
nuclear programme has been restored”? And if the US doesn’t
agree, then its veto in the Security Council would ensure that there would be
no review, let alone a change of stance to permit Iran to enrich
uranium on its own soil.
Iranian
response
These proposals were presented to Iran by Javier
Solana on 6 June 2006. Iran did not
reject them out of hand but continued to discuss them with Solana in subsequent
weeks, and announced that it would make a formal response on 22 August 2006. But, the proposers
refused to wait for this and brought a Chapter VII resolution to the Security
Council on 31 July
2006, demanding that Iran suspend
enrichment by 31 August
2006 and threatening sanctions if it didn’t.
Iran responded
on 22 August 2006, as
promised. What purports to be an English
translation of the response is available on the website of the Institute for
Science and International Security (ISIS) [5]. It doesn’t reject the proposals as a basis
for negotiation, nor does it agree to the suspension of enrichment as a
pre-condition for negotiations, though it leaves open the possibility of
suspension once the negotiations get under way (see Section 7).
Understandably, the response
vigorously reasserts Iran’s rights
under Article IV(1) of the NPT to engage in nuclear
activities for peaceful purposes:
“The Islamic
Republic of Iran has, from the outset, stressed the need for observing the
balance between its rights and its responsibilities under the NPT. Development
of its peaceful nuclear program is based on its specific and undeniable rights
under the NPT. It can not accept deprivation from its legal rights in
development and use of peaceful nuclear energy including the fuel cycle, and
continuing research and development of enrichment process …” (Section 2)
It also vigorously contests the
justification for Iran being
declared a threat to peace and being subjected to a Chapter VII resolution for
merely exercising its rights under Article IV(1) of
the NPT:
“You are
well aware that no legal, logical or even political justification exists for
involvement and action by the Security Council on this issue. To interpret
exercise of the ‘inalienable rights’ of a state as threats against
international peace and security is absurd by nature and outrageous as
precedence. Particularly as the IAEA Director General Dr. El-Baradai has stated that Iran’s nuclear
program is no threat to international peace and security.” (Section 1).
Economic
sanctions
Since 22 August 2006, negotiations have gone on between
Javier Solana and Iran about its
response. These negotiations continued,
with the consent of the US, even after
the Security Council deadline for the suspension of Iran’s
enrichment activities on 31 August
2006 (which Iran
ignored). Economic sanctions have not
been applied by the Security Council, despite the threat to do so in resolution
1696.
At the time of writing (8 October
2006), the US, supported as usual by the UK, is pressing for a Security Council
resolution applying economic sanctions, but Russia and China are resisting
their application, despite having signed up to them in resolution 1696.
Iran a threat to peace
Chapter VII of the UN Charter [6],
under which resolution 1696 was passed, is entitled Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace,
and Acts of Aggression and is made up of Articles 39 to 51. As its title implies, this chapter lays down
the rules that the Security Council is supposed to follow when “threats to the
peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression” exist.
But on what basis does the Security
Council decide that a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of
aggression” exists or has taken place?
The answer is on any basis it likes – Article 39 of the Charter simply
states:
“The Security Council
shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace,
or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures
shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore
international peace and security.”
(Article 41 provides for the
imposition of economic sanctions and Article 42 for military action, if
economic sanctions fail to deliver the desired outcome).
Though resolution 1696 isn’t
specific, it seems that Iran’s crime lies in the
“threat to the peace” category (rather than in having committed a “breach of
the peace” or an “act of aggression”).
The preamble of the resolution states that the Security Council is:
“Concerned by
the proliferation risks presented by the Iranian nuclear programme,
mindful of its primary responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations
for the maintenance of international peace and security”,
which seems to be
saying that Iran’s crime is
being a “threat to the peace” because of its nuclear programme.
Iran no imminent threat
On 30
May 2006, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA Director
General,
gave a wide-ranging interview at the Monterey Institute for International
Studies in California [7]. Here is part of what he said about Iran’s nuclear activities:
“… we
know that Iran has developed a
knowledge of the so-called fuel cycle, how to enrich uranium, but that is not
synonymous with saying that this is a weapon program. A lot of countries are
enriching uranium for peaceful programs without necessarily using it for
weaponry.
“Iran has developed that
program and started to develop that program in the mid ‘80s, you know, during
the war with Iraq. Whether
they developed that program with the intention of converting it later on into a
weapon program or not, that’s a question of intention, which is very difficult
to assess. We have not seen a linkage, necessarily, between their
program or activities and a parallel weapons program.
“We haven’t also seen any
production of nuclear material in Iran today. All what we have
seen in Iran is experiments with gram
quantities, milligram quantities. To develop a weapon, as you know, you need
significant quantities of highly enriched uranium, highly enriched uranium or
plutonium. That we have not seen - we have not seen in Iran.
“Our assessment is that there is no imminent threat, if you
want to call it - there is no clear and present danger, you know. We - we still
have lots of time to investigate that. We still have lots of time to negotiate
with Iran in the international community.” [my
emphasis]
This is the view of the man charged
with monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities and
determining whether Iran is in breach of its NPT
obligations not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. On 30 May
2006, he offered the opinion that there was “no imminent threat” from Iran’s nuclear
activities. Two months later, the
Security Council declared Iran to be a threat to peace
and passed a Chapter VII resolution against it.
Unable
to conclude …
Earlier, on 30 March 2006, Dr ElBaradei told Reuters [8]:
“Nobody has
the right to punish Iran for
enrichment. We have not seen nuclear
material diverted to a nuclear weapon …”
This reflected what he wrote in his
formal reports to the IAEA Board, which stated this repeatedly. Thus, for example, his report of 27 February 2006 stated:
“As
indicated to the Board in November 2004, and again in September 2005, all the
declared nuclear material in Iran has been
accounted for” (paragraph 53).
However, as he had done on other
occasions, he went on to say:
“Although
the Agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or
other nuclear explosive devices, the
Agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no
undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran [my
emphasis].”
Proving that something does not
exist is no easy task, even if the IAEA is dedicated to doing so (which cannot
be guaranteed in this case, since the most powerful states in the world are not
going to welcome an IAEA conclusion that “there are no undeclared nuclear
materials or activities in Iran”).
Of course, being unable to prove
that something does not exist
doesn’t mean that it does. However,
insofar as the Security Council has a case against Iran with regard to its
nuclear activities, it is contained in this statement by Dr ElBaradei. It is referred to in the preamble to resolution
1696, where the Security Council notes
“with serious concern that … the IAEA is unable to conclude
that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran”
Reading this, you would never guess
that, of the 183 “non-nuclear weapon” states signed up to the NPT, the IAEA was
“unable to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or
activities” in 159 of them in 2005 (see the IAEA’s
Safeguards Statement for 2005 [9],
published in June 2006).
Ironically, of the 10 current
non-permanent members of the Security Council (Argentina, Congo, Denmark, Ghana, Greece, Japan, Peru, Qatar, Slovakia and Tanzania) only 3 (Ghana, Japan and Peru) had been
given a completely clean bill of health by the IAEA for 2005. The other 7 (and Germany, which
sponsored resolution 1696 along with the US/UK) share with Iran the
distinction that the IAEA was not in a position to say in 2005 that there are
“no undeclared nuclear materials or activities” within their boundaries. Nevertheless, all of them (apart from Qatar)
were prepared to vote with the P5 to declare Iran “a threat to peace”, because
the IAEA was not in a position to say that there are “no undeclared nuclear
materials or activities” in Iran.
(The P5 are in the privileged
position of being signatories to the NPT as “nuclear-weapon” states and are
therefore not required to declare any of their nuclear activities, either civil
or military, or to open any of their nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection.)
It is true that, in the vast
majority of the 159 states that weren’t given a completely clean bill of health
by the IAEA in 2005, there is a vanishingly small
probability that clandestine nuclear activities, either civil or military, are
going on. There is a possibility that Iran (and a few
other states out of these 159) has nuclear facilities that haven’t been
declared to the IAEA, perhaps even facilities with a military purpose.
But that is not the point: the
Security Council should not convict nations, and declare them to be “a threat
to peace”, on the basis of a possibility, but on the basis of facts, in this
case facts established by the IAEA, the international body responsible for
policing nuclear activities. And, as of
31 July 2006, when the Security Council declared Iran to be “a threat to
peace”, the facts as ascertained by the IAEA did not indicate that Iran’s
nuclear activities were for anything other than peaceful purposes, so much so
that two months earlier Dr ElBaradei offered the opinion that
there was “no imminent threat” from Iran.
NPT amended
for Iran
Strangely, in its preamble,
resolution 1696 recognises that signatories to the NPT have a right “to develop
research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without
discrimination”. This is written into
Article IV(1) of the NPT, which says [10]:
“Nothing in
this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the
Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy
for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I
and II of this Treaty.”
So, under the NPT, Iran has an “inalienable
right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
For the Security Council to demand in a mandatory Chapter VII resolution
that Iran cease
enrichment is tantamount to amending the NPT in respect of Iran, and Iran alone, to
take away its rights under the NPT, without its consent. In effect, Article IV(1)
of the NPT has now become:
“Nothing in this Treaty
shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to
the Treaty except Iran to develop research,
production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without
discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”
The Security Council should be in
the business of upholding international treaties. But, in this case, it has in effect amended
the international treaty on nuclear non-proliferation to make an exception to
the disadvantage of one state, Iran. It is an extraordinary precedent to set.
David Morrison
8 October 2006
Labour & Trade Union Review
www.david-morrison.org.uk
References:
[1] daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/450/22/PDF/N0645022.pdf
[2] daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/PRO/N06/449/64/PDF/N0644964.pdf
[3] daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/429/12/PDF/N0642912.pdf
[4] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2005/infcirc651.pdf
[5] www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/iranresponse.pdf
[6] www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
[7] cns.miis.edu/cns/media/pr060531_transcript.htm
[8] www.david-morrison.org.uk/other-documents/reuters-20060330-elbaradei.htm
[9] www.iaea.org/OurWork/SV/Safeguards/es2005.html
[10] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc140.pdf