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http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/timmerman200508310814.asp
August
31, 2005, 8:14 a.m.
Mullahs'
Best Friend
Schroeder's
appeasement has brought Iran closer to the
bomb.
By Kenneth R.
Timmerman
Berlin -
Twenty
points down in the polls just one month
before the September 18 general election,
German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is up
to his old tricks.
Three years ago, facing a similar
disadvantage in the polls against his
Christian Democrat Party (CDU) opponent,
Schroeder placed his bets on the
anti-American fears and fantasies of a
certain portion of his electorate and ran
his campaign against President Bush and
the war in Iraq.
These
past weeks, Schroeder has made it clear he
was hoping to play the same card this
election season, accusing the Americans of
plotting a military campaign against
Iran.
"The military option must be taken off the
table," Schroeder told supporters at a
campaign stop earlier this month,
referring to the coming nuclear showdown
with Iran. "We have seen that this type of
thing does not work."
But if military action has become
increasingly likely as the only way of
tempering the nuclear ambitions of the
Islamic republic of Iran, it is precisely
because of Schroeder, the policies of his
government, and the actions of his
diplomats.
For the past three years, Iran has played
a cat-and-mouse game with inspectors from
the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in Vienna. IAEA director-general
Mohammad ElBaradei first informed the IAEA
board of governors that Iran had broken
its commitments to nuclear transparency in
June 2003, when inspectors discovered
extensive evidence in Iran of 18 years of
clandestine nuclear activity.
Instead of taking Iran to the U.N.
Security Council for further action —
most likely, some form of economic
sanctions — the United States agreed
to Schroeder's proposal that Germany,
France, and Britain be allowed to
negotiate a deal with Tehran to suspend
and ultimately eliminate its previously
clandestine uranium-enrichment
program.
In exchange for Iran's cooperation with
the EU-3, the United States agreed not to
press for sanctions.
The Iranians initially agreed to
"temporarily suspend" work at a
uranium-conversion plant in Isfahan, and
to stop producing uranium-enrichment
centrifuges.
Despite
that pledge, in September 2004 Iran
introduced 37 tons of natural uranium into
the processing lines at Isfahan in order
to produce uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas,
the feedstock for centrifuge
enrichment.
Faced with this act of open defiance,
Germany's top arms-control official,
Friedrich Groening, insisted that Iran was
keeping its promises and accused the
United States of playing politics with
Iran's nuclear program.
When
the IAEA board of governors met in
September 2004 behind closed doors to
discuss Iran's violations of its
safeguards agreement with the agency and
the temporary nuclear freeze, Groening led
the charge against the Americans. "We have
no evidence that the Iranians are seeking
to build weapons," he told U.S. delegate
Jackie Wolcott Sanders.
Out in the corridors, Groening told
reporters that there was "no way" the
Europeans were going to hand President
Bush a diplomatic victory just two months
before the U.S. elections, especially
since the Europeans were absolutely
convinced that Bush was going to lose.
On November 22, 2004, the Iranians again
pledged to the Europeans that they would
freeze all nuclear activities, not just
centrifuge production. Throughout the
"freeze," however, they continued to build
centrifuges and worked to complete the
Isfahan facility and the enrichment plant
at Natanz.
They
also continued to produce uranium
tetraflouride (UF4) — an
intermediate step needed to make UF6 gas
for enrichment.
In December 2004, Iran's IAEA delegate,
Hossein Mousavian, told reporters in
Vienna that such violations were Iran's
right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty. "It is natural that the Islamic
Republic continues all its nuclear
activities.
Iran has only suspended the fuel cycle
voluntarily, in the framework of its
policy to build trust, without any legal
obligations," he said.
On the eve of an emergency session of the
IAEA's board of governors in Vienna
earlier this month, Mousavian revealed to
an Iranian television interviewer that
Tehran had used the Europeans to "buy
time" to complete their nuclear
facilities.
This
is exactly what the Bush administration
had been warning about for more than a
year.
The IAEA had initially given Iran a 50-day
ultimatum to cease all nuclear-fuel
activities, including work on centrifuges
and construction at the uranium-conversion
facility (UCF) in Isfahan. "But thanks to
the negotiations with Europe we gained
another year, in which we completed the
[UCF] in Isfahan," he said.
Only Europe's policy of appeasement,
driven enthusiastically by Schroeder,
allowed Iran to become the nuclear threat
it is today. Moussavian explained in
detail how Iran got the better of the
EU-3.
"We suspended the UCF in Isfahan in
October 2004, although we were required to
do so in October 2003," he said. "If we
had suspended it then, [the UCF]
in Isfahan would have never been
completed. Today we are in a position of
power: [The UCF] in Isfahan is
complete and UF4 and UF6 gases are being
produced.
We
have a stockpile of products, and during
this period we have managed to convert 36
tons of yellowcake into gas and store it.
In Natanz, much of the work has been
completed. Thanks to our dealings with
Europe, even when we got a 50-day
ultimatum, we managed to continue the work
for two years."
Even France has seen through Schroeder's
dangerous charade.
When Iran announced it was resuming
nuclear-enrichment work on August 1,
French foreign minister Philippe
Doust-Blazy said that Iran's continued
defiance meant "we will need to go to the
Security Council" for sanctions.
The Bush administration turned over
negotiations with Iran to the EU3
precisely to avoid military action. That
military action — by Israel, if not
the U.S. — has grown more likely is
the fruit of Shroeder's starry-eyed
acceptance of the bald lies from Tehran's
leaders.
The time of nuclear reckoning with the
Islamic republic of Iran has come. German
voters must now judge the reckless
policies of a German chancellor who has
helped the world's most dedicated
terrorist regime acquire the capabilities
to build the world's most deadly
weapons.
— Kenneth R. Timmerman's latest book, Countdown to
Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with
Iran, was released in June. His
articles are available at
www.kentimmerman.com
<http://www.kentimmerman.com>
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/timmerman200508310814.asp
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