Iran can't shake the sanctions shackle
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The United States' push for a new round of United Nations sanctions on Iran has
met a formidable obstacle in the form of a new Iran report by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and it is clear by now that the sooner the UN
Security Council washes its hands of the Iran nuclear dossier, the better.
The report by the director general of the IAEA, Mohammad ElBaradei, has been
hailed by Iran as a "victory" since it confirms the satisfactory resolution of
all the thorny "outstanding questions", including those on procurement
activities, sources of contamination, Polonium-210, Gechine Mine, etc - "the
one major exception" being "alleged weaponization studies".
But, the nuclear agency, which has had extensive access to
Iran's nuclear facilities, some on short notice - such as nine "unannounced"
visits at Iran's uranium enrichment sites - in the same breath throws doubt on
those "alleged studies" by categorically stating that it does not "have
credible information in this regard". Nor has the agency "detected the use of
material in connection with the alleged studies" - which Iran has categorically
denied as "false and fabricated".
Thus the question: Why should the IAEA attach so much importance to dubious
information thrown at it by US intelligence that has all the markings of
systematic disinformation? The IAEA said it had confronted Iran with Western
intelligence reports of work linked to making atomic bombs.
In a tone reminiscent of the Iraq fiasco, when Saddam Hussein was pressed to
"prove the negative" over alleged weapons of mass destruction, ElBaradei's
report sets the bar artificially very high by stating that for the agency to
have confidence about Iran's nuclear program, it should "be able to provide
assurances not only regarding declared nuclear material, but, equally
importantly, regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities
in Iran". (The emphasis is the author's.)
How does one prove a negative? This question has the bad odor of bitter memory,
recalling how the same question was repeatedly posed by the Ba'athist regime's
envoy to the UN prior to the US's invasion (on false pretexts) in 2003. And
more importantly, since when is the IAEA in the business of placing demands on
a country to "prove the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities"?
That clearly exceeds the legal mandate of the IAEA and the terms of its
agreements with Iran.
To state the obvious, the reason this peculiar benchmark does not work, and,
indeed, is not even indirectly written into the IAEA's verification standards,
is that the sky can be the limit when one is trying to prove a "negative" or
"absence", leading to a vacuum of concrete guidelines and, yes, standards.
As far as Iran is concerned, the IAEA has completed its works with the
"outstanding questions" and therefore, in accordance with its procedures,
should stop placing Iran's nuclear dossier in a special category requiring
attention by the UN Security Council. Yet, the Security Council has acted as if
Iran is in material breach of its obligations, as if a "smoking gun" has
been found that would justify the urgency of punitive action under Title
VII, ie, regarding this an issue of a threat to peace and security.
Unfortunately, ElBaradei has indirectly fueled this false impression by
stressing in his various press interviews the need for a "durable solution"
requiring "a regional security arrangement". This is a false linkage that
reinforces the impression of a military dimension to Iran's nuclear program,
unsupported by the IAEA's own findings, the conclusion being that Iran's
nuclear program is a "security issue".
It is not, at least not by the wealth of the IAEA's empirical investigation
that, ordinarily, should have removed the word "major" from the "sole
exception" pertaining to US-fed intelligence on "alleged studies".
Regarding the latter, even David Albright, a former weapons inspector and the
current president of the Institute for Science and International Security in
Washington, DC, has admitted that "so many pieces are missing" in the US's
allegations, stemming from the information from a stolen laptop, regarding a
missile re-entry vehicle.
Still, it is rather remarkable how Albright and other US experts are willing to
question Iran's intentions but never bother to ask if the US has engaged in
deliberate misinformation on Iran, with the thought of the US not telling the
truth not even crossing their minds. Perhaps Noam Chomsky's "it would be
surprising if the US told the truth for once" is more relevant here.
Time to end the sanctions
ElBaradei's report also confirms that Iran has not complied with the UN's
demand to halt uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities and, what is
more, has experimented with new, more advanced, centrifuge technologies,
although the report cites slower Iranian progress than previously reported,
indicating Iran's continuing difficulties with "industrial scale" enrichment
activities.
Be that as it may, given the non-legal, confidence-building nature of the
IAEA's and the UN's requests for Iran's suspension of the nuclear fuel cycle,
the Iranian refusal, citing the articles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) allowing Iran's access to this technology and its tangible
benefits in the area of nuclear fuel self-reliance and potential ability to
export the technology and its products, should not be the basis for UN
sanctions, strictly speaking from the legal prism.
The intensification of UN sanctions without regard for either Iran's legal
rights or robust IAEA monitoring of Iran's sensitive nuclear activities will
undoubtedly sharpen tensions at the UN, in light of a letter sent by Iran's UN
envoy, Mohammad Khazaee, to the president of the UN Security Council and widely
circulated among the UN's member states. Without doubt, Iran will reject any
new UN sanctions and, in turn, this raises the question of why should the UN
Security Council adopt measures that have practically zero chances of success?
The process of reversing Iran sanctions at the UN can well begin with the IAEA,
whose governing board meeting next month could conceivably dispatch a
certificate of Iran's compliance with its NPT obligations to the Security
Council. The opposite course of maintaining the sanctions regime and of
escalating it through a third UN Security Council resolution against Tehran is
unfortunately more probable in light of the single-minded determination of the
US and its European allies to deprive Iran of nuclear fuel production
capabilities.
In this connection, Iran's continued cooperation, and confidence-building, eg,
by working with the IAEA to fine-tune the methodology of assuring compliance,
is in the realm of plausible possibilities. But, again, the outside world's
attention should revolve around the question of which strategy promises the
best chance of bringing about the desired results with respect to Iran? One
only needs to glance at the IAEA's new Iran report to infer the answer.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of
"Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping
Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author
of
Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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