I don't know which channels you watch, but all the news programs I've seen today have been about Iran, Iran and more Iran.
As such, I thought it was a good idea to see what is
really going on. First, the
Washington Post:
Iran threatened on Friday to block U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities and end all voluntary cooperation with the nuclear watchdog if it is referred to the U.N. Security Council as the long confrontation over Iran's nuclear program moved closer to crisis level.
"The Iranian government will have to stop all its voluntary cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog" if the case is referred to the U.N. Security Council, Mottaki said to the state news agency. Mottaki insisted that Iran's "right to access nuclear technology is not associated with the will of any particular country." Last year, Iran's parliament passed a law mandating that cooperation with the U.N. nuclear group be terminated if it was sent to the Security Council.
Iran's latest threats came one day after the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France called for Tehran to be referred to the Security Council for violating its nuclear treaty obligations, saying that their long negotiations reached a dead end this week when the Iranians resumed enriching uranium.
So Iran says it will end cooperation with the IAEA (a UN agency) if it is referred to the Security Council for sanctions. The three Foreign Ministers of Britain, Germany and France are openly lobbying for Security Council sanctions for "violating its nuclear treaty obligations". That's a key phrase and we'll analyze it further below.
The other issue is that the "long negotiations" ended when Iran "resumed enriching uranium". Some more WaPo:
The issue came to a head Tuesday when Iran, under the supervision of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, broke the agency's seals on a nuclear plant in Natanz to resume uranium enrichment research. Highly-enriched uranium can be used to produce nuclear bombs.
In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also endorsed a Security Council referral. "There is simply no peaceful rationale for the Iranian regime to resume uranium enrichment," she told reporters Thursday.
So with the full supervision of the UN, Iran began uranium enrichment work at a single facility (Natanz). The WaPo adds the phrase that it can be used to produce nuclear bombs, which is only slightly less disengenuous than saying "steel can be used to make a ballistic missile". They're both true statements but there are other uses for enriched uranium than the building of nuclear bombs.
In fact, there are two ways of building nuclear bombs and, via the BBC, it doesn't look like Iran is close to building either kind:
There are two routes to producing an atomic weapon: using either highly enriched uranium, or separated plutonium, and Iran could pursue either or both routes.
It has produced reconstituted uranium - what is known as "yellow cake" - at its uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.
However, the influential London-based think tank The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in a report in September that this was contaminated and was not currently useable.
Supposing Iran solves this problem, it then needs to embark on the process of enriching the uranium.
For uranium to work in a nuclear reactor, it needs only a small amount of enrichment. Weapons-grade uranium must be highly enriched.
Got it? For a nuclear reactor providing energy, only a small amount of enriched uranium is needed. To make a bomb, you need a lot.
That Natanz facility that Iran opened earlier this week (again, with IAEA supervisors on hand) has only 164 centrifuge machines. Assuming all of them work, that's only a fraction of the thousands of centrifuges necessary to build a single bomb.
Furthermore, the centrifuges at Natanz are designed to make Low Enriched Uranium and would need to be retooled to make the kind of super highly enriched uranium needed for a bomb.
The normally even-handed C.S. Monitor ratchets up the rhetoric:
Thumbing its nose at the West, Iran has resumed research on refining uranium into bomb-grade quality. Its crossing of a nuclear "red line" calls for a firm response because this may be the last chance to really stop creeping global nuclear proliferation.
Bomb-grade quality? The facility at Natanz is not equipped to do any such thing, neither in terms of equipment or in terms of volume of centrifuges. And again, the entire thing is under IAEA supervision. Iran may or may not be building a secret nuclear bomb somewhere, but it surely isn't at Natanz.
American SecState Condoleezza Rice blasted Iran yesterday:
There is simply no peaceful rationale for the Iranian regime to resume uranium enrichment.
Yet the Wapo correctly notes:
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has ratified, allows it to have a nuclear energy program that includes uranium enrichment.
Iran has not only signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it also signed the Additional Protocal in December 2003. More on the NPT:
The treaty gives every state the inalienable right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and as the commercially popular light water reactor nuclear power station designs use enriched uranium fuel, it follows that states must be allowed to enrich uranium or purchase it on an international market. Peaceful uranium enrichment can arguably be considered a small step away from developing nuclear warheads, and this can be done by withdrawing from the NPT. No state has successfully constructed a nuclear weapon in secret while subjected to NPT inspection.
Got it? Inalienable right to enrich uranium AND use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (i.e. as power plants).
Not only is Iran's secular government saying it has no intents to make a nuclear bomb/weapon, the supreme religious leader in the country (and de facto head of state) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei forbid it in August, 2005:
We as members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) are proud to underline that none of the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] members of the NAM rely on nuclear weapons in any way for their security. That is not the case of many other states, who either possess nuclear weapons or are member of nuclear-armed alliances and it is such states that have taken on the self-assigned role of denying Iran its legal rights under the NPT to access the peaceful uses of nuclear technology in conformity with the treaty's non-proliferation obligations.
Indeed, it is not only Iran but also many members of NAM that are denied the peaceful uses of nuclear technology by some of the NPT nuclear-weapon states and their allies through the mechanisms of export controls and other denial arrangements. In 1995, they adopted the so-called "Iran clause" under which they agreed to deny nuclear technology to Iran in any circumstances.
You can then understand, why Iran after being denied nuclear technology in violation of the NPT, had no other option but to rely on indigenous efforts with precaution on full transparency and we succeeded in developing our nuclear technology. Iran is a nuclear fuel cycle technology holder, a capability which is exclusively for peaceful purposes.
The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office just recently, in his inaugural address reiterated that his government is against weapons of mass destruction and will only pursue nuclear activities in the peaceful domain. The leadership of Iran has pledged at the highest level that Iran will remain a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the NPT and has placed the entire scope of its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards and additional protocol, in addition to undertaking voluntary transparency measures with the agency that have even gone beyond the requirements of the agency's safeguard system.
Ok, ok, you can argue that they are all liars and that the Ayatollah's fatwah (equivalent to a Papal bull) is just so much smoke and mirrors and really it's a big elaborate trap to trick the west.
For the UN Security Council to "review" anything on Iran, first the case has to be sent to the Security Council by the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors. When might that happen?
International Atomic Energy Agencydirector Mohamed ElBaradei is expected to make a special report on Iran's lack of cooperation with agency inspectors, a diplomatic source said Thursday.
"The reason ElBaradei said he is losing patience is not just about the unraveling" of the agreement to suspend enrichment research, but "it is also about inspections," said a Western diplomat close to the IAEA., according to AFP.
According to several sources, the ministers will ask for a special meeting of the IAEA board of governors, probably in late January or early February, to discuss referral to the UN Security Council.
So despite all the hubbub, Iran has several weeks before the IAEA Board of Governors will even meet and potentially refer the case to the Security Council.
Note the use of the "unnamed official", which always is an indication that the news is being spun a particular way. But that's irrelevant - what's important is that the IAEA makes the call here and they're not going to do anything for weeks.
As a matter of note, Iran says the research it resumed this week is not even about enriching uranium:
Tehran's move was announced Tuesday by Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, who said: "Nuclear research officially resumed at sites agreed upon with (U.N.) inspectors."
He said Iran was not resuming the production of nuclear fuel, a process that would involve uranium enrichment.
According to the IAEA's own website, Iran plans on installing small-scale centrifuges for research purposes and the manufacture of a "limited number of new components". They will be using some previously-enriched uranium but there's not a word about actually enriching uranium.
So it looks like all the hyperbole this week is simply because Iran chose to do some research, under UN supervision, that is potentially not even dealing with uranium enrichment. And even if it were, the facilities do not exist to make weapons-grade uranium. And all the strong talk about Iran being referred to the Security Council is something that won't even potentially happen for weeks.
Britain, France and Germany (EU-3) are angry because they had been negotiating with Iran since November 2004. Since then, Iran promised to suspend uranium enrichment while negotiations were underway. The EU-3 say that the resumption of research has "violated" those negotiations.
Iran has not only allowed IAEA inspections throughout the negotiation period but also allowed more stringent than normal inspections. Why? It looks to me like they were hoping to get some kind of concessions out of the EU.
In fact if you read the original agreement (PDF), you will see that the EU will "actively support the opening of Iranian accession negotiations at the WTO" if the negotiations go well. Funny how you never hear that in the media.
There's a lot of media chatter about how Russia is going to let Iran be referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions. Here is what they actually said:
"We again call on Iran to reconsider its decisions and return to the state of moratorium and implement full and transparent cooperation with the IAEA, as is foreseen in the appropriate resolutions of the agency's board," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a press statement.
Kamynin said Russia was "attentively considering" proposals to call a special session of the IAEA to determine the next steps, including whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council.
That's not nearly the put down that the western media is spinning it as. In fact, Sergei Ivanov said:
"I believe that political and diplomatic methods have not been exhausted and we must do everything so that the situation does not develop into confrontation,"
Nonetheless, the IAEA has indeed been upset with Iran in the past. In Septmber 2005, it passed a resolution (PDF) harshly criticizing Iran, which stated in part:
Noting that the Agency is still not in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran,
Finds that Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement, as detailed in GOV/2003/75, constitute non compliance in the context of Article XII.C of the Agency's Statute
In other words, the IAEA isn't 100% certain that it's in compliance and can't rule that it isn't developing nuclear weapons. Definitely a cause for concern.
Let's compare Iran to some other countries:
North Korea - North Korea was a member of the NPT until January 2003, when it withdrew from the treaty after a diplomatic clash with the United States. In February 2005, it announced openly that it possessed nuclear weapons. There are no IAEA inspectors at any of North Korea's nuclear facilities.
According to the CS Monitor:
Since 2002, the US has allowed North Korea's nuclear program to proceed with only minor sanction, relying instead on China and diplomatic talks to nip that nuclear bud.
Why is the U.S. so tolerant of North Korea? Why isn't there an imminent threat of referring them to the UN Security Council for sanctions? They've been talking about it since last summer, but so far no action.
And let's not forget that the IAEA's Board of Governors has yet to refer North Korea to the Security Council either, saying "a pause will not delay the inevitable". Except of course it has been one mighty long pause.
India - Not a member of the NPT, it has both nuclear energy plants as well as nuclear weapons. India has been conducting nuclear test explosions since 1974. India has between 60-120 nuclear weapons. India enriches its own uranium and weaponizes plutonium..
Not being members of the NPT, India is not subject to IAEA oversight. India has also refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Pakistan - Not a member of the NPT, it has both nuclear energy plants as well as nuclear weapons. Pakistan detonated its first nuclear test explosion in 1998. Pakistan enriches its own uranium and weaponizes plutonium. Pakistan has 24-50 nuclear weapons.
Pakistan's "Nuclear Godfather" is Abdul Qadeer A.Q. Khan, who was at the center of a black market nuclear weapons proliferation network, which transferred equipment and knowledge to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Despite this, Khan was pardoned of all crimes on February 5, 2004. Pakistan's primary uranium enrichment facility is still known as the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories. Furthermore, the Pakistani government will not allow IAEA officials to question A.Q. Khan about the material and knowledge he sold for cash on the black market.
Not being members of the NPT, Pakistan is not subject to IAEA oversight. Pakistan has also refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The majority of Pakistan's nuclear (energy) facilities as well as enrichment facilities were supplied by China.
Israel - Not a member of the NPT, it has both nuclear energy plants as well as nuclear weapons. Israel has never detonated a nuclear bomb, nor is the number of weapons in its inventory known but Israel is estimated to have between 100 and 200 nuclear explosive devices.
Israel has the facilities to enrich uranium and weaponize plutonium, largely due to (then secret) help from France. For more information see here. Last year the BBC reported that Britain sold Israel 20 tons of heavy water in 1959.
Not being members of the NPT, Israel is not subject to IAEA oversight. Israel has also refused to sign most weapons treaties, including the CTBT, Chemical Weapons Convention or the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
Compared to those four nations, how does Iran stack up?
If you read the text of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, it deals with more than just nuclear weapons development. It also deals with proliferation:
Article I
Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.
Based on Article I alone, the United States has violated the NPT on numerous occasions. Currently the United States has over 180 nuclear bombs in NATO countries, including Belgium, Germany and Turkey. Some argue that non-US NATO troops have some indirect control over these weapons, as they train on how to handle, store and load them. The American government says that they are in full control of the United States at all times, therefore there is no violation.
And as seen above, France and China have also contributed to the development of nuclear weapons technology in Israel and Pakistan. And a recent story says the CIA gave Iran the blueprints to build a bomb during a "botched operation".
Ironically it is Israel who is leading the charge that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon:
The Israelis are engaged in a careful effort to press the United States and the Europeans to deal more urgently with Iran. Israel has no intention for now of trying to deal with Iran alone or through military means, officials say.
But Israeli officials are worried that politicians in the United States and Europe are focusing on estimates of when Iran might actually have a bomb - rather than concentrating on the "point of no return," perhaps within the next year, when they argue Iran may gain enough technical knowledge to make the fissile material needed for a weapon. After that point, in the Israeli view, it is simply a matter of time until Iran is nuclear-armed.
Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeev-Farkash, who retired Jan. 5 as Israel's director of military intelligence, said Israel believed that the moment was no more than a year away, although estimates differ among governments, based on different views of how advanced Iranian technology has become. Once Iran starts enriching uranium, the general said, it will need just six months to a year to achieve the ability to produce fissile materials.
In a report released Thursday, David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security described a number of technical problems Iran had to solve before it could begin testing its enrichment technology.
"Absent major problems," they wrote, "Iran will need roughly six months to one year to demonstrate successful operation" of its pilot operation. "Iran could have its first nuclear weapon in 2009," they went on to say, though they noted that that estimate "reflects a worst case assessment, and thus is highly uncertain."
General Farkash had a similar estimate, saying that within another two and a half to three years, Iran will have enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it is able to construct and run 2,000 to 4,000 centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium.
I say "ironic" since the rules for Iran seem to be fundamentally different than those for Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel. I personally wish none of those countries had nuclear weapons, but then again I'm an advocate for peace.
In summary, Iran has not been completely compliant with the IAEA but it hasn't been proven by any stretch of the imagination that they are conducting secret research on building a nuclear bomb.
In short, the "sound and fury" this week out of the EU-3 and the United States is little more than political grandstanding as nothing is going to happen to Iran in the near future. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Iran is even doing "uranium enrichment" this week at their IAEA-supervised Nantaz site.
Cross-posted from Flogging the Simian
Peace