By
Kenneth R.
Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com |
November 25, 2005
Vienna, Austria --
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammad
ElBaradei is pressing members of the agency's board of governors to
make one last effort to find a diplomatic solution before sending
Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for possible
sanctions, IAEA officials and European diplomats said in Vienna.
The decision to refer Iran the UN Security Council could come as
early as today, as the IAEA Board of Governors meets to discuss new
information discovered by inspectors in Iran.
Dr. ElBaradei discussed a potential "face-saving" deal European
negotiators could offer Tehran during meetings with U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleeza Rice in Washington on November 8. The following
week, Russian foreign minister Ivanov and South African diplomat
Abdul Minty flew to Tehran, to discuss possible ways of winning
Iranian cooperation with the nuclear agency. ElBaradei is also
expected to visit Tehran.
"Our message to Iran is that they have an opportunity to influence
the timing and nature of the report to the UN Security Council," a
State Department official said..
This latest meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors has riveted the
attention of all those involved because of its earth-shattering
gravity. What happens next in Vienna will determine the future of the
entire non-proliferation regime, not just Iran's nuclear program. It
could also determine the fate of the Middle East.
A failure to act will encourage other nations to follow Iran's
example, and develop nuclear weapons on the sly. But referring Iran
to the UN Security Council also has its cost. "So we go to New York,
the [IAEA] inspectors get tossed out, and we get a war. Then
what have we achieved?" an exasperated European negotiator told me in
Vienna.
Thanks to the persistence of IAEA inspectors on the ground, we now
have a fairly detailed picture of Iran's nuclear archipelago - at
least, those facilities the Iranian government has been forced to
open. As described in eight successive reports to the Board of
Governors, we know that Iran discovered, mined and milled natural
uranium, the basic building block of any enrichment program, without
telling the IAEA.
We know that Iran built a Uranium Conversion Facility in Isfahan to
convert uranium yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6), the
feedstock for uranium enrichment, without the required prior
notifications to the IAEA.
We know that Iran built an underground centrifuge uranium enrichment
plant at Natanz, hardened against missile attack, and erected dummy
buildings on the surface to conceal it from overhead surveillance.
They agreed to open this facility to the IAEA only after its
existence was confirmed in commercial satellite imagery, and appear
to have swept the underground halls of whatever equipment had
previously been installed before the inspectors could arrive.
Once fully operational, these facilities will give the Islamic
Republic of Iran mastery of the entire nuclear fuel cycle. For
eighteen years, the Iranian government successfully concealed these
activities from the IAEA, in clear violation of its safeguards
agreement. For this reason alone, the IAEA Board must refer Iran to
the UN Security Council for further actions, as required by the
agency’s charter.
"Iran argues that it is promoting the peaceful use of nuclear
technology. It is not. It is subverting peaceful use to pursue a
dangerous course," U.S. ambassador Greg Schulte told the IAEA board
in August. "Iran has no need for its heavy investment in an
indigenous fuel cycle. Unless, of course, it wants nuclear weapons.
Iran doesn't even have enough natural uranium to enrich for a civil
nuclear program. But it has enough for a small stockpile of nuclear
weapons," Schulte added.
The problem is that the technology needed to enrich uranium to four
percent to fuel civilian power reactors, is identical to what''s
needed to enrich uranium to 93 percent to make weapons. The only
thing separating the two is a matter of intent.
"With Iran, we realized that mastery of the fuel cycle makes you a
virtual nuclear weapons state," a top aide to ElBaradei told me in
Vienna. "That was a wake-up call for all of us."
But a wake-up call that just allows the IAEA board to go back to
sleep is useless. For two and a half years, the European Union has
made every possible effort to get Iran to fully cooperate with the
IAEA and make a clean breast of its nuclear activities, to no
avail.
Intentions have always been key to the nonproliferation regime.
Because the technologies needed to build a bomb are essentially
identical to those needed for civilian nuclear programs, the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) enshrined civilian
intent as a precondition - not as an after-the-fact declaration -
to nuclear technology transfer to non-nuclear states.
Under Article II, non-nuclear signatory nations pledge to abandon all
efforts to develop nuclear weapons.. In exchange for that pledge,
which is unconditional and irrevocable, they are given access to
nuclear technologies.
That pledges requires complete, transparent cooperation with the
IAEA. Instead, Iran has been playing cheat and retreat. Consider:
• When the IAEA
announced it wanted to inspect a suspected enrichment cascade within
the Revolutionary Guards complex at Lavizan-Shian, the Iranian
government stalled for months until it could raze the site and remove
the evidence. To make it more difficult for inspectors to take
environmental samples, the Iranians even carted away bushes, rubble
and dirt.
• When the IAEA asked
to visit a suspected weaponization lab within the Parchin defense
production plant, the Iranians stalled. When they finally allowed a
small team onto the site, they limited their movements, in clear
violation of Iran’s commitments to the agency.
• If you comb through
the eight IAEA reports, you will find dozens of similar examples. Is
this the behavior of a government that takes its non-proliferation
pledge seriously?
ElBaradei has stated that the IAEA has found "no evidence" of a
weapons program in Iran. Tehran's leaders have used that statement as
proof of their peaceful intentions.
By its statute, however, the IAEA has no authority to determine
whether a country has a nuclear weapons program or not. That is up
for the UN Security Council to determine. The IAEA's job is to
determine whether a nation has violated its safeguards agreement.
ElBaradei made that finding official in November 2003, and reiterated
it in his September 2, 2005 report to the IAEA board. When that
happens, the IAEA charter requires that the board refer the violator
to the UN Security Council.
As for the larger question: what would evidence of a nuclear weapons
program actually look like? Does the "crime" of cheating on its NPT
obligations have such a high standard of evidence that a nation must
actually test a nuclear explosive device before we can all agree that
the crime has been committed?
Does it mean that IAEA inspectors or a UN Security Council member
state must discover secret weapons production labs? Weapons designs?
Actual nuclear warheads? Or that a nation must declare that it has
become a weapons state and withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did
in January 2003?
I do not believe that the framers of the NPT took nuclear weapons so
casually as to require this type of evidence to determine an Article
II violation. Instead, they placed the burden of proving honorable
intent on the signatory nations themselves, by requiring an
unequivocal and binding statement of civilian intent. Without
peaceful intent, declared and pursued in total transparency, there is
no right to nuclear technology. Period.
Iran made that binding statement of intent when it signed and
ratified the NPT in 1970. And it has broken it repeatedly, both in
word and in deed.
Understanding the intentions of Iran's leaders is not as difficult or
as ambiguous as some may feel. Eighteen years of concealing its
nuclear programs from the IAEA constitutes a powerful track record of
deceit. But it is equally important to listen to what the Iranians
say about their intentions.
• 1986. Then-president
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gives a pep talk at the headquarters of the
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran in Tehran. "Regarding atomic
energy, we need it now," he said. What Khamenei meant by "energy,"
however, has little in common with how the term is used in the West.
"Our nation has always been threatened from outside. The least
we can do to face this danger is to let our
enemies know that we can defend ourselves.
Therefore, every step you take here is in defense of your
country and your evolution. With this in mind, you should
work hard and at great speed." [italics mine].
• Are these words that
describe a program to build civilian nuclear power reactors or
medical isotopes? (At the time, Iran's sole nuclear power plant lay
in ruins in Busheir).
• Oct. 6, 1988. Majles
speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani addresses the Revolutionary
Guards Corps. "We should fully equip ourselves both in the offensive
and defense use of chemical, bacteriological, and radiological
weapons. From now on, you should make use of the opportunity and
perform this task."
• Jan. 27, 1992.
Rafsanjani scientific advisor Homayoun Vahdati tells Germany's Die
Welt newspaper: "We should like to acquire the technical know-how
and the industrial facilities required to manufacture nuclear
weapons, just in case we need them. This does not mean that we
currently want to build them or that we have changed our defense
strategy to include a nuclear program."”
• September 1995.
During a conference on nuclear proliferation in Castiglioncello,
Italy, I laid out evidence of what I believed was an apparent nuclear
weapons program in Iran to a top Iranian arms control official,
Hassan Mashadi. His response stunned an audience of well-known arms
control experts. "My government is keeping its nuclear options open,"
he said. Isn't that precisely what the NPT is supposed to
prevent?
• Dec. 14, 2001.
At a Jerusalem day rally at Tehran University, Hashemi-Rafsanjani
uttered what may be the most sinister of the regime's scarcely-veiled
threats. "The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy
Israel completely, while [the same] against the world of
Islam only would cause damages. Such a scenario is not
inconceivable."
• June 12, 2004. Foreign Minister
Kamal Kharrazi declared the regime's hostility to further
negotiations with the EU3. "We won't accept any new obligations. Iran
has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the
international community as a member of the nuclear club. This is an
irreversible path."
• March 6, 2005.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani reiterated Iran's intention not to dismantle its
nuclear fuel cycle facilities, as the EU3 and the IAEA had been
demanding. "Definitely we can't stop our nuclear program and won't
stop it. You can't take technology away from a country already
possessing it."
• Oct. 26, 2005. Iran's new president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that Israel must be "wiped off the
map." When challenged to retract that statement, instead he called
tens of thousands of supporters into the streets of Tehran to
reinforce it.
These statements, in addition to Iran's material infractions and
history of deceit, constitute prima facie evidence of nuclear weapons
intent.
The danger of doing nothing far outweighs the costs of referring Iran
to the UN Security Council.
First, there is the risk that Iran has been secretly enriching
uranium, possibly for many years. If it used the centrifuges it now
admits it purchased through the black market network of Pakistani
nuclear impresario A.Q. Khan - and if they worked - the Islamic
Republic today could have enough fissile material to produce between
twenty to twenty-five bombs, according to widely-accepted
calculations..
Then there is the breakout scenario. This has been described in
detail in a September 2004 study by Henry Sokolski and the
Washington, DC-based Nonprolifertion Policy Education Center. By
using the fuel from a single core of the Busheir reactor, Iran could
produce “a large arsenal of nuclear weapons - fifty to
seventy-five bombs- using a small, clandestine reprocessing plant,
and then announce that it was withdrawing from the NPT.
President Bush has warned repeatedly that nuclear weapons in the
hands of terrorists presents the gravest danger facing the world
today. Given the fact that the Iranian regime continues to shelter
top al Qaeda leaders, and materially facilitated the travel of eight
to ten of the "muscle hijackers" who carried out the September 11
attacks, the dangers of allowing the Islamic Republic of Iran to go
nuclear ought to be obvious.
Are we really willing to risk allowing the world's most open sponsor
of international terror to become a nuclear weapons-capable state?
That is the question the IAEA Board of Governors must address.
Mr. Timmerman is a former U.S. Congressional aide and New
York Times best-selling author. His latest book, Countdown to
Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, was published by
Crown Forum in June 2005. At the request of the Department of State,
he presented a longer version of this article to diplomats and the
press earlier this month in Vienna, Austria.