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Thu Sep 8 12:00:27 PDT 2005

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THE CASE AGAINST IRAN
Sep 8th 2005  

Strengthening or weakening?

WHY is the pressure suddenly seeming to leak out of the diplomacy to
persuade Iran to end its nuclear dabbling--just when the regime is
flaunting its defiance? Despite frantic lobbying that will continue at
next week's United Nations summit in New York, Britain, France and
Germany are struggling to keep up support for efforts to coax a
recalcitrant Iran to give up--or else!--its plans to enrich uranium and
make plutonium, two ingredients of civilian nuclear fuel that can also
be fashioned into the fissile core of a bomb.

 Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
UN's nuclear guardian, confirmed this week that Iran has resumed work
at its uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan, where uranium ore is turned
into gas, ready for later enrichment. That breaks Iran's agreement with
the Europeans, bringing months of talks to an end. They now want the
IAEA's 35-nation board, when it meets on September 19th, to report Iran
to the UN Security Council--something it should have done two years
ago, when two decades of nuclear deception first came to light, but
deferred to give diplomacy a chance. Now Russia, among others, is
balking. So is Iran about to shake off all nuclear restraint?

Its new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will make new proposals,
possibly next week in New York, that his officials claim will reassure
the world about the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme. Yet
conversion work will continue, they insist; future talks can cover the
conditions under which Iran will resume full-scale enrichment work in
the fast-spinning centrifuges it had already been building at Natanz
before inspectors were tipped off three years ago.

Iran has played nuclear hardball like this with the Europeans before,
only to beat a retreat in the face of concerted diplomatic pressure.
But on this occasion the Europeans themselves acknowledge that, as the
diplomatic clock runs out, consensus on the issue at the IAEA is
starting to weaken.

Venezuela, increasingly friendly with nose-thumbing Iran, is unlikely
to go along with the Europeans. Others, such as Brazil and South
Africa, are critical of Iran but leery of reporting it to the UN for
activities that are not explicitly ruled out by the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and that they have an interest in
pursuing themselves. So Iran has been pressing what it claims is its
right to fuel-making technologies under the treaty.

In fact, the NPT promises only the benefits of civilian nuclear power
to its members, not particular technologies, and only to those with a
nuclear programme under proper IAEA safeguards. The Europeans have
offered Iran safer nuclear technologies. Russia is already contracted
to supply fuel to Iran's one nuclear power reactor, at Bushehr, and
would happily do more. Other countries use nuclear power without making
their own fuel.

TIMETABLES FOR BREAKOUT
Yet what's the rush? In a report this week, entitled "Iran's Strategic
Weapons Programmes", the London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies concludes that, even without technical hitches, Iran
is still some five years from having enough highly enriched uranium at
its declared nuclear facilities for its first bomb (America thinks it
might take the Iranians longer; Israel thinks they could do it a bit
faster). But that assumes Iran has no secret enriching under way. If it
has, skills acquired by restarting nuclear work the inspectors know
about could help it break out of the NPT more quickly. 

 So suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions continue. This week the
IAEA once again documented Iran's past nuclear transgressions: failing
to account properly for importing enrichment equipment and materials
from the nuclear black market; secretly enriching uranium and
separating plutonium; and experimenting with polonium and attempting to
import beryllium, two materials with civilian uses that also can be
used as triggers for bombs.

Though reasonably sure that the traces of highly enriched uranium they
found came from black-market equipment from Pakistan, the IAEA's
inspectors still have no explanation for extra traces of the
low-enriched sort. They cannot, they say, be certain that there are no
undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran.

Yet even some of those sceptical of Iran's nuclear motives fret that
referral to the Security Council might not help. Iran has already been
growling about disrupting oil supplies through the Gulf. If pushed, it
could end co-operation with the IAEA. North Korea's even more flagrant
breaches, and then its withdrawal from the NPT, were reported to the
UN, but China blocked further discussion. Will Russia do the same for
Iran?

The Europeans are keen to show this is not an argument between
themselves and Iran, but between Iran and all who would uphold the NPT
rules. Russia had been quite helpful. But this week its foreign
ministry--saying now was not the time to involve the UN--set a
different tone. So Russia's Vladimir Putin, like China's Hu Jintao, can
expect an earful about Iran from President George Bush in the wings of
next week's UN meeting.

Would bringing Iran to the UN simply give America or others an excuse
to take extreme measures, even using military force? The Europeans
insist their aim is to strengthen the authority of the IAEA and its
inspectors, not to usurp it. But they have a lot of persuading to do. 

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