The US
shifts ground on Iran
The US has modified the
unremittingly hostile stance it has maintained towards Iran since the Islamic
revolution in 1979. What lies behind the
shift must be the US administration’s desire to extricate itself from Iraq.
I may be wrong about this, but the
evidence is compelling. Consider the
following, which happened in November 2005, but has gone largely unreported in
Britain:-
(1)
President Bush authorised Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador
to Iraq, to talk to Iran about Iraqi issues
(2)
President Bush has endorsed a Russian compromise proposal about
Iran’s uranium enrichment programme and the US didn’t press for Iran to be
referred to the Security Council at the November meeting of the IAEA Board.
This has happened despite the belligerent
noises towards Israel coming from Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
US
extremely hostile
Since the Islamic revolution in 1979
and the seizure of US embassy staff in Tehran, the US has been extremely hostile
towards Iran, has had no diplomatic relations with it and has applied rigorous economic
sanctions against it. The US did sell
Iran military equipment in 1985, in exchange for Iran’s help in freeing
American hostages in Lebanon (and the funds so generated were used to supply
the right-wing Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua with arms, contrary to US law). In recent years, the US has had occasional
diplomatic contact with Iran about Afghanistan (before and after the US
invasion) through the UN-sponsored Six Plus Two group – the six states
bordering Afghanistan, one of which is Iran, plus the US and Russia.
Despite this contact, President Bush
declared Iran to be a member of an “axis of evil”, along with Iraq and North
Korea, in his State of the Union address
in January 2002, in which he castigated it in the following terms:
“Iran aggressively
pursues these weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror, while an
unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.”
After it became public knowledge in
August 2002 that Iran was building a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the
US has been even more aggressive towards Iran, accusing it of developing
nuclear weapons (of which there is no evidence) and threatening military action
to halt the development. In late
September, along with the EU, the US tried to get the IAEA Board to refer Iran
to the Security Council, because of its alleged failure to comply with its
obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It failed.
In late October 2005, Iranian
President Ahmadinejad said
(quoting Ayatollah Khomeini) that “Israel must be wiped off the map”, which, you
might have thought, would have provoked unremitting hostility in Washington
towards Iran. But it didn’t.
Khalilzad
authorised to talk to Iran
On the contrary, in November 2005 President
Bush authorised his ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, to talk to Iran
about Iraqi issues. His authorisation to
talk to Iran was revealed in a Newsweek article entitled
The New Way Out, by Michael Hirsh,
Scott Johnson and Kevin Peraino. This is
liberally sprinkled with quotes from Khalilzad, and describes the US plan to
extricate itself from Iraq, without looking as if it’s running away.
The following passage reveals this “departure
and adjustment” in US policy towards Iran:
“To secure the country
with so few troops, Khalilzad and [General] Casey [the US commander in Iraq] have
had to swallow their pride. They are making compromises with Sunni supporters
of the insurgency that would have been unthinkable a year ago. President Bush
is also doing what he has been loath to do: asking neighboring countries for
help, even the rabid anti-American Islamists in Tehran. Khalilzad revealed to
NEWSWEEK that he has received explicit permission from Bush to begin a
diplomatic dialogue with Iran, which has meddled politically in Iraq. ‘I’ve
been authorized by the president to engage the Iranians as I engaged them in
Afghanistan directly’, says Khalilzad. ‘There will be meetings, and that’s also
a departure and an adjustment.’”
At
a press briefing
on 28 November 2005, US State
Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, confirmed that President Bush had given
permission for a meeting, but played down its significance, saying:
“It's a very narrow mandate that he has, and it deals
specifically with issues related to Iraq”.
McCormack also cited as a precedent
for these meetings the US’s diplomatic contacts with Iran in the Six Plus Two
group (see above).
However, this is, as Khalilzad said,
“a departure and an adjustment”: what is being proposed are one on one
diplomatic meetings between the US and Iran of a kind that haven’t taken place
since 1979.
At the time of writing, there has
been no confirmation that any meetings have taken place. In fact, it seems that Iran has refused to
meet the US about Iraqi issues. When
this was put to McCormack at a press briefing on 1
December 2005, he replied: “I believe we did hear back in that regard from them”. Perhaps, Iran takes the reasonable attitude
that Iraqi issues are the business of the Iraqi government, and not of an
occupying power from the other side of the world, which claims to have handed
over sovereignty to an Iraqi government a year and a half ago in June 2004.
No US push for referral in November
This shift in US policy to dealing
directly with Iran for the first time since 1979 has been accompanied by a
dramatic shift in the US tactics for dealing with Iran’s nuclear
activities. After the failure to get
Iran referred to the Security Council at the September meeting of the IAEA
Board, it was widely expected that the scheduled Board meeting on 24 November
2005 would be the occasion for another attempt.
But it hasn’t happened.
At the time of writing, the IAEA web page
devoted to its activities concerning Iran says, in a statement dated 24
November 2005:
“At meetings in Vienna
this week, the IAEA Board of Governors discussed the Agency´s verification of
Iran´s nuclear programme. It considered a report from IAEA Director General
Mohamed ElBaradei circulated 18 November.”
That’s all. No decision was taken to refer Iran to the
Security Council for its alleged failure to comply with its nuclear safeguards
agreements with the IAEA. No resolution
was passed about Iran at all.
No
diplomatic initiative
It is not as if a diplomatic
initiative about Iran’s nuclear activities was ongoing at that time. Negotiations between Iran and the EU3 – the
UK, France and Germany – which began in October 2003 came to an abrupt halt in
early August 2005, when Iran rejected out of hand EU3 proposals that it abandon
all nuclear fuel cycle activities, including uranium processing and enrichment,
permanently.
This would have meant that nuclear power generation
in Iran be dependent on a supply of fuel from abroad, which could be cut off at
any time, even though Iran has a plentiful domestic supply of uranium ore. It was no surprise, therefore, that Iran
rejected these proposals out of hand, since they flew in the face of its “inalienable right”, enshrined
in Article IV(1) of the NPT, to have
access to nuclear activities for peaceful purposes, as long as they are under
IAEA supervision.
As part of an agreement
with the EU3 in November 2004, Iran had suspended uranium processing and enrichment
activities. As the agreement was at
pains to state, this was “a voluntary confidence building measure” on Iran’s
part while negotiations were proceeding, and “not a legal obligation” required
by Iran’s treaty obligations. When the
negotiations broke down, Iran restarted uranium processing and enrichment
activities, as it was entitled to do, since they are not contrary to any treaty
obligations.
Russian
compromise
After the September meeting of the
IAEA Board, Russia made compromise proposals regarding Iran’s uranium nuclear
fuel cycle activities.
To prepare uranium for use in a
nuclear reactor, it has to undergo a number of steps - mining and milling,
conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication. These steps are known as the
“front end” of the nuclear fuel cycle. After
uranium has been used in a reactor to produce electricity it is known as “spent
fuel” and may undergo a further series of steps including temporary storage,
reprocessing, and recycling before eventual disposal as waste. Collectively
these steps are known as the “back end” of the fuel cycle.
The EU3 demanded that Iran abandon all of these fuel cycle activities, and
import enriched uranium in the form of pre-fabricated fuel rods and export the
spent fuel for reprocessing, after the minimum cooling down period necessary
before transportation.
The Russia proposals are that Iran
mine, mill and convert its own uranium, producing uranium hexafluoride gas. Iran seems to have these capabilities already
– the Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan is producing uranium
hexafluoride. Iran planned to enrich
this at a plant at Natanz, which is not yet in operation. The Russian proposals are that uranium
hexafluoride produced at Isfahan be exported to Russia for enrichment in a
plant jointly run by Russia and Iran, then fabricated fuel rods be imported
into Iran for use in nuclear reactors and finally spent fuel rods be exported
to Russia for reprocessing.
In other words, whereas the EU3
proposals required Iran to forgo all
nuclear fuel cycle activities, the Russian proposals envisage Iran using their
own uranium and maintaining the activities at the front end of the cycle that
they already have in operation. The
Russian proposals therefore represent a compromise between the EU3 proposals
and Iran’s demand that there be no restriction at all on their fuel cycle
activities, as long as they are for peaceful purposes – which is their
“inalienable right” under the NPT.
The Russian proposals fit in with existing
Russian commitments to supply Iran with enriched uranium fuel for the reactors
they installed for Iran at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. This facility has a long history. In 1975 a German consortium was contracted to
build a nuclear power plant there, but construction was halted with the plant only
partially built in 1979, after the Islamic revolution, and the plant was
damaged by Iraqi air attacks during the Iran-Iraq war. In 1995, in the teeth of fierce opposition
from the US, the Russian state-controlled construction company,
Atomstroyexport, contracted to supply and install Russian reactors at the site. Russia is also to supply the fuel and to take
back the fuel after use. The plant is
not producing electricity yet.
Crucially, both the EU3 and the
Russian proposals mean that Iran would have to forgo uranium enrichment, and
therefore the possibility of producing highly enriched uranium for weapons
production. However, the Russian
proposal means that, if Iran wanted to produce highly enriched uranium in
secret, it has only to implement the enrichment step, and not the others that
precede it in the fuel cycle.
US
backs Russian compromise
It is a measure of the shift in US
policy towards Iran that it is giving support to the Russian proposals in a way
that it never did for the EU3 proposal, which required Iran to abandon all fuel cycle activities.
Up to now, the US has constantly
portrayed Iran’s plans for nuclear power generation as a cover for the
development of nuclear weapons. Iran
couldn’t possibly want a nuclear power programme, the US said, when it was
floating “on a sea of oil and gas”. On
this basis it opposed Russia’s installation of reactors at Bushehr.
The implication of this was that,
notwithstanding its right under the NPT to civil nuclear power, the US was
going to move heaven and earth to prevent it developing civil nuclear power
capabilities. However, with its backing
of the Russian proposals, it seems to have accepted that Iran can have civil
nuclear power as long as uranium enrichment, and spent fuel reprocessing, is
carried out in Russia.
There is no doubt that the US is now
backing these Russian proposals. President
Bush met President Putin at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting
in Busan, South Korea, on 18-19 November 2005.
A Sunday Telegraph report
of 20 November 2005 about this meeting was entitled Bush backs offer that would allow Teheran to enrich uranium in Russia. It began as follows:
“President George W Bush
has backed a plan to allow Iran to enrich uranium in Russia. The sudden change
in tactics over Teheran’s controversial nuclear programme has angered hawks in
Washington and surprised European diplomats.
“Mr Bush, who met
President Vladimir Putin at a Pacific Rim summit on Friday [18 November 2005],
told him he would support Moscow’s plan to offer Iran the chance to conduct
nuclear enrichment at facilities in Russia. The US was previously against any
deal that would allow Iran to enrich its own uranium.
“The latest proposal
would allow Teheran to convert uranium if subsequent enrichment, which could
have weapons applications, took place only overseas, under Russian control.
“It is the first
compromise offer in which America has shown any interest and is designed to
develop a joint front with Russia, a long-term ally of Iran.
“Washington previously
adhered to a strict ‘hands-off’ approach to any negotiations with the Islamic
regime, including the offer that Teheran rejected earlier this year from the
so-called EU3 of Britain, France and Germany.”
This report probably exaggerates US
support for the Russian proposals, but it is broadly in line with what Stephen
Hadley, Condoleeza Rice’s successor as Bush’s National Security Advisor, said
at a press briefing
in Busan on 18 November 2005. Asked:
“… should we construe that
if the Iranians took the offer on the table by the Russians that they would
bring the enrichment out, that that would be acceptable to President Bush as a
solution?”
he replied:
“We have talked to the Russians about this, and we have
supported their proposal. It has been something that the Russians have been
talking [about] to the EU3 -- the U.K., France and Germany -- who are taking
the lead in the negotiations with the Iranians. They also support it. We think
it's a good avenue to explore, and we've said so.”
Pressed to confirm that the proposal
was “acceptable to President Bush”, he replied:
“If we didn't think it was acceptable, we probably wouldn't
encourage it to be explored.”
That a shift in US policy has taken
place is evident from the reaction from Danielle Pletka of the neoconservative American
Enterprise Institute, who was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph as saying:
“Iran is in
breach of its previous commitments to the EU3 and has restarted conversion.
… These were supposed to be the ‘red
lines’ on which we would not compromise.
But what do we do when the Iranians flout them? We offer them a
compromise that will allow them to enrich uranium, even if it takes place in
Russia. It sends all the wrong messages to Iran.”
After this, the expectation was that
the Russian proposals would form the basis of renewed negotiations between the EU3
and Iran. However, Iran rejected the
proposals initially and, at the time of writing, there is no sign that Iran has
changed its mind – and there is no word of negotiations between the EU3 and
Iran having been resumed. Sean McCormack
told a State Department briefing on 14
December 2005:
“… we are attempting
with, in support of the EU-3 and the Russian Government to, through
negotiations and through an offer of negotiations, deal with Iran's behavior
concerning pursuit of nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear
program. That offer of negotiations has been met with defiance and a failure to
engage the EU-3 on what are serious negotiations.”
To the best of my knowledge, Iran
has yet to accept the Russian proposals as a basis for negotiations.
“Evidence”
of weapons development
So, at the time of the IAEA Board
meeting on 24 November 2005, there were no diplomatic initiatives in play. Furthermore, just before the meeting the US/UK
were circulating “evidence” that Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons. This seemed to be designed to create an
atmosphere for Iran’s referral to the Security Council.
It took two forms. First, there were press stories that the US
had intelligence that Iran was trying to develop nuclear warheads for its
Shahab-3 missiles, which has a range of around 1,250km and is capable of
striking Israel. For example, on the day
of the IAEA meeting the Daily Telegraph carried a story
entitled US reveals details of Iran's
nuclear ambition, which said:
“US officials have in
recent months shared with experts from the IAEA and other countries classified
details of tens of thousands of pages of technical information recovered from a
stolen Iranian laptop.
“The documents, written in Farsi and
obtained last year, are said to reveal experiments with warhead designs
characteristic of nuclear devices. …
“According to leaks in US papers,
the documents include telltale details such as a sphere of detonators of
conventional explosives, used to compress fissile material to trigger a nuclear
reaction.”
Second, the IAEA Director General’s report
on Iran for the Board meeting was leaked to the press in advance and attention
was drawn to one sentence in it that said that Iran had given the IAEA a
document containing information “on the casting and machining of enriched,
natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms” (paragraph 6). This generated press stories with headlines
such as Iran given 'nuclear weapon' data,
which was over a BBC story
of 18 November 2005. This began:
“Iran has passed on to
United Nations inspectors documents on how to build a crucial part of a nuclear
bomb, the UN's atomic agency says.”
In
fact, the IAEA didn’t say this (at least not in any published document that I
can find). The one sentence on the
document in the Director General’s report went on to say that:
“Iran stated that it had been
provided on the initiative of the [AQ Khan] procurement network, and not at the
request of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI)”.
Since the Director General made no
other reference to the document in his report (or in his statement
to the Board) it must be assumed that he accepted Iran’s explanation – and that
he didn’t believe that it constituted evidence that Iran was trying to make
nuclear weapons.
Dogs called
off
It was against the background of
this “evidence” that Iran was trying to make nuclear weapons, and with no
diplomatic initiative in progress to sort the matter out (and with President Ahmadinejad
issuing threats against Israel) that the US called off the dogs and did not
press for Iran’s referral to the Security Council.
True, the “evidence” wasn’t very
compelling, but it was more compelling that anything produced before by the
US/UK, and sufficiently compelling for the US to take military action against
Iran, if it had a mind to. It had less
compelling “evidence” of an Iraqi nuclear weapons programme in March 2003. This only makes sense in the context of a significant
policy shift by the US towards Iran.
In the days leading up to the IAEA
Board meeting, the question of Iran’s referral to the Security Council came up
continually at the State Department’s daily briefings given by Sean
McCormack. He kept saying that the US
had the votes in the IAEA Board for a referral.
This seems very unlikely since it didn’t have the votes to get a
referral in September 2005, and since then 10 of the 35-member Board have been
replaced, and 3 of the replacements are Cuba, Syria and Belarus.
Be that as it may, the obvious
questions from journalists was why are you holding back, given the new
“evidence” that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons and is refusing to
talk to the EU3 about the Russian proposal.
McCormack had no answer but to witter on about giving diplomacy a chance
– which is an unfamiliar theme from Washington on relations with Iran in recent
times.
18 December
2005
Labour &
Trade Union Review