POLITICS: Solving the Iranian Nuclear Issue – Or Not

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Milla Sundström

HELSINKI, Nov 21 2005 (IPS) - Differences over Iran’s nuclear programme stand stark ahead of a crucial meeting this week at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA board of directors are due to meet Nov. 23 to decide whether Iran’s refusal to comply with its guidelines should be referred to the UN Security Council.

The main players all spelt out their positions at a meeting organised here by The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). The meeting under the ambitiously named title ‘Solving the Iranian Nuclear Issue’ confronted the deadlock whether or not Iran is developing its nuclear power programme to give it weapons capacity.

Much of the dispute centres on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970, which Iran says gives signatories the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But Iran is under pressure to open up this programme for inspection.

Three European powers – Britain, France and Germany – known as the EU-3 have since 2003 tried to persuade Iran to be more transparent for IAEA scrutiny.

Peter Jenkins, British representative at the IAEA said Article IV of the NPT, which guarantees the right to develop nuclear energy, “cannot and should not be read in isolation.” Article IV was never intended to be “at the expense of the non-proliferation objective,” he said.

“From this it follows, in our view, that the Article IV rights of a state which, through its own action, bring into question its commitment to the non-proliferation objective, are compromised until such time as confidence in its commitment to non-proliferation is re- established,” Jenkins said.

Iran insists that it wants fissile material production capability in order to become self- sufficient in nuclear energy production. Last week it resumed preparation for uranium enrichment at its nuclear plant at Isfahan, in the face of a directive from the IAEA Sep. 24 to halt all enrichment activities.

Dr. Mostafa Zahrani, director of the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) in Tehran pointed to deep differences in perceptions between Iran and the West. The very idea of the “international community” is “ethnocentrically western” in Iranian eyes, and “nobody buys it in the Islamic world,” he said.

Zahrani pointed out that Iran has signed the NPT but Israel, the undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has not. Why is it now so important that Iran sticks to the NPT while nobody seems to blame Israel, Zahrani said.

“In Egypt and in the region in general we are encouraged to acquire nuclear weapons,” he said. Iran sees the United States and Israel as the main threats to its security. But he pointed out the limited potential of an Iranian atomic bomb: it would never be capable of second strike.

The reason Iran has not opened up to the IAEA is that it was isolated and needed to survive, Zahrani said.

He warned the international community against trying to push Iran too far by threatening use of force. He said there are “powers” within Iran that would like to see an increase in tension.

But what is the way out of the stalemate?

“You have to know the Iranian people,” Zahrani said. He pointed out that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has upset the West on several occasions since coming to power in June, was elected democratically. The West is on a collision course with the Iranian people and not just its president, Zahrani said.

“What the people want is to develop and have technology, and not rely on the international community which has isolated and sanctioned Iran earlier,” he said.

Dr George Perkovich from the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said ambiguities in the NPT were partly to blame. The treaty “never defined what a nuclear weapon was,” he said. The IAEA was tasked to verify that technology is used for peaceful purposes only, but it has no access to military sites, he said.

Perkovich said the IAEA board meeting this week will be marked by “a sense that one can’t pretend any more that this should not be reported to the Security Council.” The United States is looking to the Security Council to slap sanctions on Iran.

At its Sep. 24 meeting the IAEA board broke its usual search for consensus and voted whether it should consider referring Iran to the Security Council.

Of the 35 IAEA board members 22 voted in support of the referral, one – Venezuela – against, and 12 abstained. Those included China and Russia, who may use their veto in the Security Council against any sanctions.