US hopping
mad at IAEA “work plan” for Iran
On 21 August 2007, the International
Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] agreed a “work plan” with Iran, the objective of which is to answer the
IAEA’s outstanding questions about the history of Iran's nuclear activities by the
end of 2007.
These outstanding questions are
described in paragraphs 8 to 16 of the latest report (dated 30 August 2007) on Iran’s nuclear
activities by IAEA Director, Dr Mohamed ElBarardei [1]. A copy of the “work plan” is appended to this
report. Dr ElBarardei comments:
“The work plan is a
significant step forward. If Iran
finally addresses the long outstanding verification issues, the Agency should
be in a position to reconstruct the history of Iran’s nuclear programme.”
(paragraph 23)
If this happens, then the IAEA will
most likely be in a position to remove all the question marks about Iran’s past
nuclear activities in a matter of months.
Very
significant
This is very significant, since the
existence of these unanswered questions from the past enabled the US/EU to work
up suspicions that Iran was
engaged in nuclear activity for military purposes and to cast doubt on the
veracity of Iran’s
continual assertions that its nuclear activities were, and are, solely for
peaceful purposes.
The IAEA has never found any
evidence that Iran’s
nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment, are for anything other than
peaceful purposes. But, these unanswered
questions from the past enabled the US/EU to persuade the IAEA Board to demand
that Iran suspend its
uranium enrichment, even though Iran
wasn’t breaching its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) by engaging in it. This suspension
was, it was said, a necessary confidence-building measure to reassure the
outside world that, despite its failure to give a full account of its past
nuclear activities, Iran
was not developing nuclear weapons.
Far from being in breach of its NPT
obligations by engaging in uranium enrichment, Iran is exercising its “inalienable
right” under the NPT to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Article IV(1) of the NPT states:
“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.”
This guarantee of access to nuclear
technology for peaceful purposes is central to the NPT. By signing up to the NPT, states without
nuclear weapons forfeited their right to acquire nuclear weapons, but as a quid
pro quo they were guaranteed the right to access to nuclear technology for
peaceful purposes. What’s more, according
to the Treaty, states possessing this technology are supposed to assist states
without it to acquire it.
Safeguards
Agreement
However, in order to get access, states
must agree to their nuclear facilities being under the supervision of the IAEA. This requirement is set out in Article III of
the Treaty, which states:
“Each non-nuclear-weapon
State Party to the Treaty undertakes to accept safeguards, as set forth in an
agreement [a so-called Safeguards Agreement] to be negotiated and concluded with
the International Atomic Energy Agency …, for the exclusive purpose of
verification of the fulfilment of its obligations assumed under this Treaty
with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to
nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
Iran signed a Safeguards
Agreement with the IAEA in 1974 and its nuclear facilities, including those at Isfahan and Natanz
engaged in the uranium enrichment process, are subject to IAEA monitoring.
Central to this monitoring is the
tracking of nuclear material through the various processes within these
facilities to make sure that none is diverted, possibly for military
purposes. The IAEA has found no evidence
of nuclear material being diverted from its nuclear facilities. Dr ElBaradei’s latest report was able to
conclude:
“The Agency is able to
verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has been
providing the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided
the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared
nuclear material and facilities.” (paragraph 22)
In other words, no nuclear material
has gone missing in the course of processing through the nuclear facilities
declared by Iran
to the IAEA.
(It is, of course, conceivable that Iran has other
nuclear facilities that it hasn’t declared to the IAEA, where work is going on
for military purposes – see below.)
Technically
capable
Uranium enrichment involves
increasing the proportion of the isotope U235, which is about 0.7% in natural
uranium, at the expense of the isotope U238.
Enriched uranium to fuel a reactor to generate electricity requires a
relatively low level of enrichment, typically around 5% U235. However, the same enrichment technology can
also be used to produce “weapons grade” highly enriched uranium, typically with
a U235 content of over 90%. So, Iran is on the
way to being technically capable of producing highly enriched uranium suitable
for a nuclear weapon.
However, Dr ElBaradei’s latest
report states that
“the highest enrichment
[Uranium-235] level measured from environmental samples taken so far by the
Agency from cascade components and related equipment is 3.7%” (paragraph 4).
So, at the moment, there is no
question of Iran
being close to reaching levels of enrichment suitable for a nuclear weapon.
Additional
safeguards
Uranium enrichment is Iran’s
“inalienable right” under the NPT, providing it is being verified by the IAEA
as being for peaceful purposes. The
latter is the case today, and has always been the case.
In addition, Iran has
offered to provide safeguards over and above those required by the NPT to
reassure the outside world that its enrichment activities are not for military
purposes. For example, speaking to the
UN General Assembly on 17 September 2005 [2],
President Ahmadinejad stated that Iran would be prepared to invite
foreign, public or private, partners to help in the implementation of the
enrichment program:
“ … as a further
confidence building measure and in order to provide the greatest degree of
transparency, the Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to engage in serious
partnership with private and public sectors of other countries in the
implementation of uranium enrichment program in Iran.”
Needless to say, the US/EU ignored
this (and other) suggestions by Iran
aimed at providing further assurance that its uranium enrichment programme is merely
for power generation.
Mandatory
resolutions
When Iran
ignored the request of the IAEA Board to suspend its enrichment activities, in
February 2006 the US/EU pressed the IAEA Board into reporting Iran to the Security Council, which would, it
was hoped, force Iran
to comply.
To that end, the US/EU took the lead
in pressing the Security Council to pass a Chapter VII resolution making it
mandatory that Iran suspend its enrichment activities, which it did on 31 July
2006, when it passed resolution 1696 [3]. The “proliferation risks presented by the
Iranian nuclear programme”, which had caused no harm to anyone, were declared
to be a “threat to the peace” of the world, requiring a Chapter VII resolution.
(By contrast, Israel’s
assault on Lebanon,
which was going on at this time and had caused hundreds of deaths by then, was
never deemed to be a “threat to the peace” of the world, requiring a Chapter
VII resolution).
When Iran
still refused to halt its enrichment activities, two further Chapter VII
Security Council resolutions were passed at the instigation of the US/EU (1737
on 23 December 2006 [4] and 1747
on 24 March 2007 [5])
applying economic sanctions against Iran.
All along, Russia and China, the two veto-wielding
members of the Security Council outside the US/EU, have followed the US/EU lead
reluctantly. As a result, more than eighteen
months after the matter was referred to the Security Council, only rather mild
sanctions have been applied to Iran
by the Council.
As we will see, the US/EU’s latest
attempt to impose harsher sanctions has now been delayed, and perhaps thwarted
altogether, by the IAEA’s “work plan” with Iran.
Disparaging
ElBaradei
The US
has been hopping mad that the IAEA Director, Dr ElBaradei, agreed a “work plan”
with Iran. The US
hasn’t been able to express its anger officially, because for years it has been
complaining about Iran’s
failure to answer these questions. But
disparaging remarks about ElBaradei attributed to “US officials” have not been hard to
find in the media recently (see, for example, The Guardian on 18 September 2007 [6]).
A Washington Post editorial on 5 September 2007 was entitled Rogue Regulator: Mohamed ElBaradei pursues a
separate peace with Iran
[7]. The following is an extract:
“For some time Mohamed
ElBaradei, the Egyptian diplomat who heads the International Atomic Energy
Agency, has made it clear he considers himself above his position as a UN civil
servant. Rather than carry out the policy of the Security Council or the IAEA
board, for which he nominally works, Mr ElBaradei behaves as if he were
independent of them, free to ignore their decisions and to use his agency to
thwart their leading members -- above all the United States. …
“Three times in little
more than a year the Security Council has passed legally binding resolutions
ordering Iran
to end its enrichment program; two of them have had relatively weak sanctions
attached. Never mind that, says Mr ElBaradei: He’s decided that the world
should simply accept Iran’s
enrichment capacity and that sanctions are the wrong response. His frequent
public statements to this effect have been harmful, but now he’s gone further.
Last month, the IAEA struck its own deal with the Iranian regime, aimed not at
the enrichment but at a separate set of unresolved questions about Iran’s nuclear
activities. According to the agency, Tehran
agreed to a timetable for clearing up these matters by the end of this year.
“The answers to the
questions are important: The IAEA wants to know, for example, how Iran came to
possess Pakistani designs for molding enriched uranium into cores suitable for
bombs. But Mr ElBaradei’s freelancing has two major consequences. One is to
allow the Iranian government to focus on its past activities rather than its
present campaign to build and install centrifuges for uranium enrichment. …
“The other effect of the
IAEA agreement will be to hand Russia
and China -- which have been
taking advantage of Western economic pressure to rapidly increase their exports
to Iran
-- a pretext to resist another UN sanctions resolution. Moscow
and Beijing
could join Mr ElBaradei in arguing that nothing should be done before the end
of the year. By then, the options of the Bush administration and other
governments that believe Iran’s
nuclear program must be stopped, and not accommodated, may be greatly
attenuated -- thanks to a diplomat who apparently believes he need not
represent anyone other than himself.”
The prediction that “the IAEA
agreement will … hand Russia
and China
… a pretext to resist another UN sanctions resolution” was borne out a few
weeks later. On 28 September 2007, the
five permanent members of the Security Council (plus Germany)
met in New York,
along with Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and
Security Policy, to bring forward a further sanctions resolution. However, under pressure from Russia and
China, a resolution will not be put
before the Security Council until late November at the earliest and perhaps not
then if “the November reports of Dr. Solana and Dr. ElBaradei show a positive
outcome of their efforts” (see statement issued afterwards [8]). Solana is due to have more talks with Iran’s Ali Larijani about its enrichment
activities and ElBaradei will be processing the “work plan” agreed with Iran.
The US
doesn’t want these minor historic issues sorted out ahead of the main issue,
which, for the US,
is the halting of uranium enrichment. It
doesn’t want this, because the existence of these issues was the excuse for
referring Iran to the
Security Council in the first place and, therefore, the resolution of these
issues makes the US/EU case for having Iran before the Security Council
for its nuclear activity threadbare – since uranium enrichment is not in breach
of the NPT. Furthermore, as we have seen
already, in circumstances where Iran
is cooperating with the IAEA to resolve outstanding issues, it will be more
difficult to persuade Russia
and China to apply further
sanctions to Iran or to
persuade the world in general that Iran deserves to be sanctioned at
all.
Clean bill
of health?
There is even the possibility that Dr
ElBaradei will give Iran
a completely clean bill of health, with its uranium enrichment facilities in
operation. There is no reason why not,
since their operation does not breach the NPT, providing Iran gives the
IAEA sufficient access to verify that these, and its other, nuclear facilities
are for peaceful purposes.
Here, we are talking about nuclear
facilities that Iran
has declared to the IAEA. Dr ElBaradei
was able to state in his latest report, as he has done in many earlier reports,
that the IAEA saw no diversion of nuclear material from declared facilities. However, he went on to say:
“Once Iran’s past nuclear programme has been
clarified, Iran
would need to continue to build confidence about the scope and nature of its
present and future nuclear programme. Confidence in the exclusively peaceful
nature of Iran’s nuclear
programme requires that the Agency be able to provide assurances not only
regarding declared nuclear material, but, equally important, regarding the
absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, through
the implementation of the Additional Protocol.” (paragraph 24)
The basic Safeguards Agreement
between a state and the IAEA (which Iran entered into in 1974) is
concerned primarily with accounting for nuclear materials and, under it, a
state is only required to declare nuclear facilities to the IAEA 180 days
before introducing nuclear material into them.
Much of Iran’s
past nuclear activities, which are now pejoratively described as “clandestine”,
didn’t have to be declared to the IAEA under its Safeguards Agreement. The Additional Protocol, which is not
mandatory for a state, is designed to allow the IAEA to get a full picture of a
state’s nuclear activities by providing the agency with authority to visit any
facility, declared or not, and to visit unannounced. In addition, it requires a state to notify
the IAEA in advance about plans to construct nuclear facilities.
Iran signed and operated an
Additional Protocol from December 2003 until February 2006, even though it
wasn’t ratified by the Iranian parliament.
Iran
ceased operating the Additional Protocol in February 2006 when it was referred
to the Security Council, as a protest against its case being transferred to
this political arena, away from the IAEA, which is supposed determine cases
according to well-defined technical rules within the legal framework of the
NPT.
It is very likely that Iran will now
resume operating the Additional Protocol, in which case Dr ElBaradei may
eventually be in a position to conclude that, not only that there was no
diversion of nuclear material from declared facilities in Iran, but also that there
are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran. Just imagine the reaction of the US to that.
David
Morrison
Labour
& Trade Union Review
8
October 2007
References:
[1] www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2007/gov2007-48.pdf
[2] www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2005/iran-050918-irna02.htm
[3] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/2006-1696.pdf
[4] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/2006-1737.pdf
[5] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/2007-1747.pdf
[6] www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2171475,00.html
[7] www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/04/AR2007090401810.html
[8] www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/sep/92944.htm