Doug Lorimer
Despite the fact that in a report to the September 19-24 meeting of the board of governors of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei acknowledged that Iran had not breached its obligations under its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards agreement, on September 24 the board adopted a resolution claiming Iran was in "non-compliance" with the agreement.
Only one board member — Venezuela — voted against the resolution, which was supported by 22 of its 35 members. However, 12 abstained, including Russia and China, both of which have the power to veto any action proposed at the UN Security Council. Only twice in the past two decades has the IAEA board voted on an issue instead of adopting it by consensus.
While much of the First World's corporate media reported or implied that the IAEA board had adopted a resolution that referred Iran to the Security Council for possible action, the resolution did not make any such referral. Rather, it urged Iran to resume suspension of its uranium enrichment-related research activity.
Under an agreement that Iran signed in Paris last November with Britain, France and Germany — the so-called EU-3 — Iran voluntarily suspended its research into developing the capacity to produce commercial quantities of enriched uranium for use as a fuel in the Bushehr nuclear power plant being constructed for Iran by Russia.
The suspension was only to last while Iran and the EU-3 negotiated a set of "objective guarantees" beyond the requirements of the NPT safeguards agreement that would satisfy the EU-3 that Iran's nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only. The EU-3 held out the promise to Iran of substantial technological assistance if it negotiated such a set of "objective guarantees".
Iran resumed its research into the conversion of concentrated uranium ore ("yellowcake") into uranium hexaflouride gas — an intermediary step in producing enriched uranium — after the EU-3 responded to Iran's package of "objective guarantees" with the demand that Iran abandon any attempt to develop commercial-scale nuclear fuel production.
As Dr Gordon Prather, a retired nuclear weapons physicist and the Pentagon's chief scientist during the Reagan administration, pointed out in an article posted on the WorldNetDaily website on September 17: "Last March, Iran did offer the Brits-French-Germans a package of 'objective guarantees' that included a voluntary 'confinement' of Iran's nuclear programs, to include forgoing the reprocessing of spent fuel and the production of plutonium.
"The Brits-French-Germans completely ignored the Iranian offer. So, four months later, the Iranians alerted the IAEA it intended to resume uranium conversion — subject to IAEA, oversight, of course.
"A week later the Brits-French-Germans finally made their offer — which was predicated on Iran's 'making a binding commitment not to pursue fuel cycle activities other than the construction and operation of light water power and research reactors'.
"No wonder the Non-Aligned Movement — which includes India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, as well as Russia and China — has officially declared their serious opposition to such discriminatory treatment of Iran by the IAEA and to the threats to 'refer' to the Security Council Iran's refusal to give up its inalienable rights under the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."
US war drive
While Iran has a legal right under the NPT to enrich its own uranium for reactor fuel, and the IAEA board's resolution acknowledged this, the US claims that Iran is seeking to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium for an alleged secret nuclear bomb program.
Washington's allegations that Iran's uranium enrichment research is a cover for a secret nuclear weapons program is aimed at creating the diplomatic and public-opinion climate to enable the US to claim that a future US-led Iraq-style invasion and occupation of Iraq's oil- and gas-rich eastern neighbour is being undertaken with the backing of the UN.
Associated Press reported on September 25 that Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that in moving the resolution that was adopted by the IAEA board, the EU-3 had violated last November's Paris agreement, under which the EU-3 had committed themselves not to support any anti-Iran resolution. "The three European countries implemented a planned scenario, already determined by the United States", he said on state-run television.
AP reported the next day that White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "The world is saying to Iran that it is time to come clean. The world has put Iran on notice. It is unacceptable the way Iran is behaving."
The AP report claimed that the IAEA board's resolution "cited Iran for 'a long history of concealment and deception' in its nuclear program". However, this was McClellan's interpretation of the resolution. The resolution itself claimed that "Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations with the NPT safeguards agreement ... constitute non-compliance" with the IAEA statute.
In a September 24 WorldNetDaily website article, Prather explained where this allegation arises from: "According [to the IAEA] statute, whenever inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency discover 'special nuclear materials' that are — or ought to be — subject to an IAEA safeguards agreement, being used 'in furtherance of a military purpose', the IAEA board of governors is required to report such use to the Security Council for possible 'action'.
"Way back in 1991, IAEA inspectors discovered that Iraq — a signatory to the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons — had attempted to produce fissile materials 'in furtherance of a military purpose'.
"Under Iraq's [then-]existing safeguards agreement, the IAEA had had no authority to look for 'special nuclear materials' and/or activities involving their physical or chemical transformation that should have been 'declared', but weren't.
"So, by 1997, the IAEA board had developed a model additional protocol — providing intrusive go-anywhere, see-anything authority similar to that provided the IAEA in Iraq by the Security Council — which all IAEA members were urged to accept.
"In 2003, Iran did sign an additional protocol, but the Iranian parliament has not 'ratified' it... Iran's existing safeguards agreement is virtually the same as Iraq's. Hence the IAEA is only authorized to inspect facilities and activities that Iran has 'declared'. However, pending ratification, the Iranians volunteered to cooperate with the IAEA as if the additional protocol was in force."
US-EU frame-up
Under their existing safeguards agreement with IAEA, signed in 1974, "the Iranians were not obliged to inform the IAEA about any of their activities that did not involve the acquisition, disposition, storage, physical or chemical transformation of 'special nuclear materials'.
"In particular, they were under no obligation to tell the IAEA they were buying or producing equipment that could be used to physically or chemically transform 'special nuclear materials'. They were under no obligation to tell the IAEA about the [uranium enrichment] plant they were building at Natanz, nor about the thousands of gas-centrifuges they had been attempting to manufacture for use in that plant.
"Under their existing safeguards agreement, the Iranians were obligated to tell the IAEA about Natanz only in sufficient time so that once 'special nuclear materials' were introduced into the Natanz plant, the IAEA would be in a position to determine whether or not those materials were diverted to some military purpose."
Hence, nearly all the alleged breaches that Washington acuuses "the Iranians were guilty of over the past 20 years, were not violations of their existing safeguards agreement at all.
"True, when the Iranians began to divulge everything they had done since 1974, there were some things they should have reported, but hadn't...
"But, the Iranians have now made those reports... Furthermore, after two years of go-anywhere, see-anything inspections, ElBaradei has found no indication that any special nuclear materials or activities involving them are being — or have been — used in furtherance of a military purpose" by Iran.
However, Washington and its Western allies — the EU-3, Japan, Canada and Australia — are now using Iran's past failure to report activities to the IAEA that it was not legally obliged to report under its NPT safeguards agreement to claim that Iran is now in "non-compliance" with the NPT and therefore should be referred to the Security Council for "possible action". Thus, the US-backed resolution adopted by the IAEA board on September 24 cites ElBaradei's report to board in November 2003 to back its claim that Iran has failed to meet its reporting obligations.
Rejecting the IAEA board's resolution, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on September 26: "We have many friends but would like to express our special gratitude for those countries who were not led astray by the propaganda against Iran: Russia, China, Venezuela, Algeria, the South African Republic, Mexico, Tunisia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Yemen, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Vietnam."
That same day's Moscow Kommersant business daily reported that while the Russian government has publicly advised Iran to comply with the requests made on it in the IAEA board resolution, "top officials within Russia's military-industrial complex" have decided to intensify their efforts to sell arms to Iran. It reported that "should the United States decide to go to war in Iran, Russia wants Iran to be well-armed to ensure that US forces become at least as bogged down there as they already are in Iraq".
From Green Left Weekly, October 12, 2005.
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