The latest report on Iran
from the International Atomic Energy Agency, circulated to diplomats
in Vienna on Tuesday, shows once again that Iran has failed to comply
with the demands of the international community, as expressed by the
United Nations Security Council.
The IAEA report
documented that Iran was continuing to enrich uranium on a
large-scale in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 1696. It
also said that IAEA inspectors had found stashes of highly-enriched
uranium (HEU) and plutonium hidden at an Iranian nuclear waste
site.
Both materials are directly
useful in building atomic weapons but cannot be used in Iran’s
declared nuclear power program. (Download a PDF file of the complete
report here).
UN Security Council
resolution 1696, passed on July 31, gave Iran until the end of last
August to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing-related activities
in a verifiable manner. If Iran complied, the resolution opened the
possibility of economic aid and technology assistance. But if Iran
failed to comply, it called for economic and diplomatic
sanctions.
Nearly three months
have passed since that deadline. Instead of complying, Iran’s
leaders have chosen open defiance – bolstered in no small way
by the support they have received from Russia, China, and IAEA
Secretary General Mohammad ElBaradei, whose rosy pronouncements of
Peace in Our Time would be comic if the prospect of a nuclear-armed
Iran were not so real.
In their latest reply
to polite questions from Mr. ElBaradei’s IAEA, the Iranians
said they have no intention of cooperating further with the Agency
until “the nuclear dossier is returned back in full in the
framework of the Agency.”
Translated into
Brooklyn English: they are flipping us the bird.
But just in case we
weren’t able or willing to separate out this message from the
diplomatic cotton candy, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did us
all a favor by clarifying
his regime's intentions in remarks
on Tuesday.
“I'm very hopeful
that we will be able to hold the big celebration of Iran's full
nuclearization in the current year,” he said. (The Persian
calendar year ends on March 20.)
“Initially, they
(the U.S. and its allies) were very angry,” Ahmadinejad said. “Today,
they have finally agreed to live with a nuclear Iran, with an Iran
possessing (the whole) nuclear fuel cycle.”
Nuclear experts in the
United States, Israel, and Europe agree that mastery of the nuclear
fuel cycle will give Iran the ability to make nuclear weapons
virtually unimpeded by international restraints. No wonder
Ahmadinejad is so happy, and no wonder he continues to defy the IAEA.
Until now, no one has made Iran pay a price for its defiance.
On Monday, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited with President George W. Bush in
the Oval Office. Their discussions focused on Iran’s nuclear
weapons program.
Bush told Olmert that
the world must isolate Iran until it “gives up its nuclear
ambitions.” Olmert repeated Israel’s assessment that
Tehran’s goal is to “wipe Israel off the map,” as
Iranian leaders have repeatedly stated.
So here we are again,
doing the same old kabuki dance. The United States, Israel, and most
of Europe agree that Iran can not, must not be allowed to develop
nuclear weapons; and Iran simply ignores us and continues down the
nuclear path.
How long can we
tolerate Iran’s defiance of a very clear UN Security Council
deadline? If there is no enforcement of those deadlines, does a UN
Security Council threat mean anything at all?
These are questions we
faced just four years ago in deliberating Saddam Hussein’s
defiance of 16 UN Security Council
resolutions.
In
his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 12,
2002,
President Bush noted
that Iraq had “answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade
of defiance.”
The United Nations and
the world “faces a test,” he said then. “Are
Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast
aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose
of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”
We face precisely those
same questions today when it comes to
Iran.
What will it be, Mr.
President? Does the United States mean business? Does the United
Nations mean anything? Will free nations stand up to tyrannies openly
seeking to acquire nuclear weapons to hold their enemies hostage?
Former Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday what he told me
this past summer in Israel, during Iran’s proxy war to hold
Israel’s civilian population hostage to Hezbollah missile
attacks.
“It’s 1938,
and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu
said, “and
Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”
“Believe him and
stop him,” Netanyahu added, speaking of Ahmadinejad. “This
is what we must do. Everything else pales before this.”
Responding to angry
Israel civilians who had lived in bomb shelters for three weeks this
summer, Netanyahu told me he thought Israel must
“finish
the job”
against Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
His successor as
Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, ignored his advice.
Tehran's leaders are
betting that the United States fears Iran’s long reach, that we
fear Iran’s ability to inflict pain on U.S. forces in Iraq, and
on U.S. allies elsewhere in the Middle East and Europe through
terrorist proxies and missile attacks.
If Iran has succeeded
in deterring the United States of America even before it has acquired
nuclear weapons, what kind of reach will they have once they can
field a nuclear arsenal?
We still have options
other than a military strike. As I have advocated many
times in this space,
I believe our best
option is to develop a comprehensive plan to help the Iranian people
to get rid of this wretched regime, before it causes more harm to
them, to Iran’s neighbors, and to the world at large.
But the one option we
do not have is to do nothing.
The nuclear clock is
ticking, as Ahmadinejad himself now admits.
It's your move, Mr.
President.