Doug Lorimer
On May 3, discussion began among the veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — over how to respond to a report on Iran's nuclear program circulated to all 15 council members on April 28 by Mohammed ElBaradei, director-general of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as was requested of him by a non-binding Security Council "presidential statement" adopted on March 29.
The statement called on Iran to indefinitely cease its attempts to produce nuclear fuel (enriched uranium) within 30 days as a "confidence-building measure". Iran is a signatory to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows it to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination", provided it does not divert nuclear material to military purposes.
According to Associated Press, ElBaradei's eight-page report stated that IAEA inspectors had found no evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program, as Washington alleges, but that because of gaps in Iran's disclosure to the IAEA of its nuclear research activities over the past 22 years, "including the role of the military in Iran's nuclear program, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran".
Such a statement could be made about any NPT signatory that has nuclear facilities. In February 2005, for example, the London Times reported that 30 kilograms of plutonium, enough for five nuclear bombs, was listed as "unaccounted for" at the British nuclear site at Sellafield. According to a November 2005 report by two US nuclear physicists for the Maryland-based Institute of Energy and Environmental Research, since it produced the first atomic bombs in 1945, the Los Alamos National Laboratories have been unable to account for 765kg of plutonium — enough to make at least 110 nuclear bombs.
ElBaradei's report stated that Iran's claim that its scientists had succeeded on April 9 in enriching nearly 2 kilograms of uranium to a level of 3.6% fissionable uranium-235 content — fuel-grade uranium, as opposed to weapons-grade enriched uranium which has to be at least 90% U-235 content — appeared to be true, according to initial IAEA analysis of samples taken by its inspectors.
The report noted that the Security Council's request that Iran cease producing enriched uranium had been formally rejected by Tehran. Indeed, the previous day, Iran's UN ambassador, Javad Zarif, told reporters in New York that Tehran will refuse to comply with any Security Council demand to halt enrichment activities because these are being carried out in accordance with its rights and legal obligations under its 1974 NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA. "If the Security Council decides to take decisions that are not within its competence, then Iran does not feel obliged to obey", Zarif said.
While Iran has refused to abandon research into uranium enrichment, on April 29 it offered to allow the resumption of snap IAEA inspections if its nuclear dossier was referred by the Security Council back to the IAEA. Iran ended snap IAEA inspections after the IAEA governing board voted in February to report its dossier to the Security Council. Scheduled inspections, however, have not been stopped.
Washington immediately rejected the Iranian offer. AP quoted White House spokesperson Blaine Rethmeier as saying, "Today's statement does not change our position that the Iranian government must give up its nuclear ambitions, nor does it affect our decision to move forward to the United Nations Security Council".
The US is leading a push in the Security Council to pass a resolution making Iran's compliance with the March 29 statement mandatory under chapter 7 of the UN charter. This can only be invoked if Iran's nuclear program is declared to be a "threat to international peace and security".
Moscow and Beijing are opposed to doing this, fearing that Washington is aiming to gain Security Council endorsement for a future Iraq-style invasion of Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter.
"The real fight here is not over whether [the Iranians] have a weapons program", Gary Samore, who headed non-proliferation efforts in the Clinton administration, said in an interview with the New York Times earlier this year. "It is over whether they can create a nuclear weapons option, and that is the smoke-and-mirrors game — convincing everyone that they have that capability."
On April 28, US President George Bush declared that "the world is united and concerned" about what he called Iran's "desire to have not only a nuclear weapon but the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon", none of which — as opposed to actually attempting to make a nuclear weapon — is illegal under the NPT. Indeed, information about how to make a nuclear weapon is available in most public libraries around the world.
For Iran to acquire the "capacity to make a nuclear weapon", it would have to be able to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium — a process that is vastly more difficult than producing fuel-grade enriched uranium. Even the US intelligence agencies estimate that even if it wanted to do this, it would take Iran at least 10 years to acquire such a capability.
Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking to produce nuclear weapons, and that its uranium enrichment program is aimed at making the country self-sufficient in the supply of nuclear fuel. To start up a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant, such as the one Russia has nearly finished building for Iran in the port city of Bushehr, will require 75 tonnes of low-enriched uranium, plus an annual supply of 25 tonnes.
From Green Left Weekly, May 10, 2006.
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