Diplomats Fight Uphill Battle for Consensus on IAEA Nuclear Resolution to Pressure Iran

By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire

VIENNA — With hopes for reaching a consensus apparently lost, European Union diplomats here haggled today to find the support needed to report Iran’s nuclear activities to the U.N. Security Council (see GSN, Sept. 19).

Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board have been debating the terms of an EU text that calls for notifying the council of Iran’s “failure in a number of instances” to comply with its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitments.

The EU push represents a major change for France, Germany and the United Kingdom, which earlier this year resisted U.S. calls for similar action against Iran. At that time the three nations were in active talks to persuade Tehran to end its uranium enrichment program, which U.S. officials believe is the heart of a nuclear weapons program. Since acknowledging its long-secret nuclear program in 2003, Iran has persistently said its aims are peaceful.

The negotiations failed in August, however, after Tehran withdrew and claimed that EU demands were excessive. Iran elected to end its voluntary suspension of enrichment activities by restarting a uranium conversion site, and the European nations subsequently joined the U.S. push to refer the situation to the U.N. Security Council. That body has the power to take enforcement actions that the international nuclear agency here lacks, including the imposition of economic sanctions.

In an early draft resolution circulated today among some of the agency’s board members, the European nations called for IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei “to report to all members of the agency, and to the Security Council … Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT safeguards agreement.”

The text says that “history of concealment of Iran’s nuclear activities [and] the nature of these activities” justify notifying the Security Council, “the organ bearing the main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The text recommends no Security Council action other than “making clear to Iran” that the nuclear controversy would best be resolved if Tehran complied with IAEA requests for more information about and access to Iran’s nuclear program.

Support for this text, while drawing majority support from the 35-member board, is far from universal and lacks the backing of both Russia and China, two key nuclear powers with veto power on the Security Council. 

In addition, “there are at least three or four very important countries on the board that so far have not committed themselves to supporting the EU-3 approach,” a Western official disclosed today.

Nevertheless, the European nations have pressed forward and appear willing to seek board approval by a vote rather than by traditional consensus. All previous board decisions on nuclear safeguards have been adopted by consensus, so new ground could be broken here this week.

“It will set a bad precedent if that happens,” said a second Western diplomat familiar with agency affairs who opposes reporting the matter to the council. Taking a vote would force some nations to come out against the measure, or abstain, and could wrongly imply that those nations do not support nuclear nonproliferation.

The first Western official, however, pressed for council referral.

“Our objective is to reinforce and strengthen the work of the IAEA in Iran, not to replace the IAEA and not to take the action away from the IAEA, but to have the higher moral, legal and political authority of the U.N. Security Council brought to bear [and] pressure applied to Iran,” the official said.

Still, the second Western diplomat expressed concern that Iran could respond to a Security Council report by ending the voluntary measures it has taken to grant the agency access to its nuclear facilities.

Iran has recently hinted that it could take severe steps if Western nations refuse to recognize its right to establish a domestic nuclear fuel production capability.

Calling pressure to abandon it nuclear program “an apartheid regime,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reaffirmed in a U.N. speech Saturday that Iran’s nuclear efforts are peaceful, but warned that “if some try to impose their will on the Iranian people through resort to language of force and threat with Iran, we will reconsider our entire approach to the nuclear issue.”

Moreover, Tehran’s top nuclear negotiator threatened today to stop adhering to the Additional Protocol to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the agency, according to the BBC. Iran has signed but not ratified the protocol, which allows the agency to conduct more intrusive nuclear monitoring than standard safeguards permit.

This week’s board meeting was expected to end Friday, but could last longer as the IAEA annual conference begins next week, so many diplomatic delegations will remain in Vienna.

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