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U.S. Still Seeking Security Council Action on Iran as IAEA Meeting Nears By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — The United States is “disappointed” in a European strategy for addressing Iran’s nuclear program and will work this week to have the issue taken up by the U.N. Security Council, a Western diplomat said today (see GSN, Nov. 17). France, Germany and the United Kingdom have drafted a resolution on Iran for approval by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors, which is due to begin discussing Iran in Vienna Thursday, and U.S. and European negotiators met in closed-door talks today at the IAEA on the measure. The board’s meeting comes one month after Tehran told visiting European foreign ministers it was willing to accept more intrusive international inspections of its nuclear programs and to suspend uranium enrichment efforts (see GSN, Oct. 21). According to the diplomat, who is familiar with U.S. objectives, Washington is “disappointed” by the European text, under which the board would not find Iran in noncompliance with international agreements. Nevertheless, U.S. negotiators are trying to use the European draft as a basis for a final agreement and will not table a competing resolution unless it becomes “absolutely certain that [the United States] can’t work with the European resolution as it stands,” the diplomat said. The 35 board members passed a U.S.-driven resolution at their last meeting that set an Oct. 31 deadline for increased Iranian cooperation with the U.N. nuclear agency. This time, they are expected to discuss options that include a formal finding that Iran is in noncompliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement and a referral of the matter to the Security Council. Such measures appeared less likely following Iran’s Oct. 21 promise to step up cooperation. The outlook has been clouded, though, by an IAEA report to the board last week indicating that Tehran has for years systematically concealed nuclear activities such as small-scale plutonium production and uranium enrichment (see GSN, Nov. 11). The United States and European countries have disagreed about the significance of the report, with Washington stressing the IAEA’s documentation of a litany of Iranian concealments and the Europeans focusing on Iran’s apparent new frankness and the report’s lack of a definitive finding that Iran has been seeking a nuclear weapon. A second Western diplomat in Vienna said the “Europeans have taken the high road in this; to some extent, they’ve stolen the agenda” with their Tehran trip and subsequent draft resolution. “They don’t want to take a harsh line at the moment. … If the U.S. [seeks a finding of] noncompliance or breach that would then lead to this going to the Security Council … I don’t think they’ll get it,” said the second diplomat. Summing up the U.S. position, the first diplomat said, “It’s great to recognize Iranian progress in the last month and to have a forward outlook but … it’s … pretty important to at least reference” Iran’s secret nuclear activities. Although the United States is working toward a referral of Iran to the Security Council as an “end goal,” the diplomat said, it could also accept other measures, in part because “everyone wants to avoid a vote, including the United States.” One possible outcome is a finding of noncompliance without a referral to the council. In such a case, the diplomat said, the board could issue a “stiffly worded note” or a “stiffly worded resolution” using the term “noncompliance” and telling Iran, “We’re watching you.” Reacting to such sentiments, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Reuters today that the “members of the board should not allow a country to impose its views on them and should act independently. … America should abandon useless pressures and stop imposing its ideas on the agency.” The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rohani, added yesterday in Brussels after meeting with top French, German and British diplomats that “there is no justification, no reason, to refer Iran’s peaceful nuclear program to the U.N.S.C.” U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher refused yesterday under intense questioning by reporters to articulate a public U.S. position on whether Iran should be referred to the Security Council, but he stressed Iran’s alleged noncompliance with its obligations. “We want the board to focus seriously on … Iran’s history. We have something like, I think, 18 years now documented where Iran has been conducting programs that were not in compliance with the requirements of the IAEA. They say that they have provided … full information with regard to those programs. We’re going to have make sure that’s true,” said Boucher. He added that the IAEA “needs to verify the information. It needs to see them perform on the promises and, above all, needs to take a realistic attitude towards Iran’s past behavior, as well as the promises that Iran has made about its future behavior.” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana yesterday highlighted the “honest data” Iran has now provided to the IAEA on its past nuclear activities, prompting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to reply, after meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, “I wouldn’t have gone quite as far. The Iranians have provided us a great deal of information. It confirms what the United States has been saying for some time and which we believe, that the Iranian nuclear development program was for more than just the production of power, that it had an intent to producing a nuclear weapon.” U.S. Experts Criticize Europeans, IAEAMembers of an expert panel gathered yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute here largely agreed that the board is not likely to refer the Iran problem to the Security Council ― a development most appeared to find unwelcome, terming Iran’s concessions to the Europeans a bad bargain. Washington Institute for Near East Policy Deputy Director Patrick Clawson said the United States will press hard for the board to find Iran in noncompliance ― “If the Iranians are scared of it, then, well, we’re going to want it” ― but that it is unlikely the IAEA board will adopt that decision. Nixon Center Regional Strategic Programs Director Geoffrey Kemp agreed that the board is not likely to find Iran in noncompliance, adding that Iran will not “do anything extreme,” such as withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, “at this time.” European countries, said AEI Resident Fellow Reuel Gerecht, appear prepared to reject any significant sanction against Iran and to continue trying to convince Iran’s leaders that it is in their interest not to develop a nuclear weapon. Gerecht called the approach a flawed one because, he said, Iranian officials have already heard the European arguments and are not likely to deviate from whatever course of action they think will protect Iran’s security. “These are responsible, serious men who have been raised on a diet of realpolitik,” Gerecht said of Iran’s ruling clerics. He added that he does not believe a “serious internal debate” about the desirability of nuclear weapons is being conducted in Iran. Debate among various ruling factions, he said, centers on whether the consequences of nuclear weapon development, such as international isolation, would be bearable. Iranian leaders in favor of developing a weapon appear likely to convince others that “they can bluff us out,” Gerecht added. Several panelists stressed the importance of delaying Iranian nuclear efforts amid a dearth of other options. Clawson said the United States is likely to keep the pressure on Iran by highlighting the possible consequences of nuclear weapon development without being “very precise about what those consequences could be.” Meanwhile, he said, Washington will continue to reject the European “deal” with Iran, “remind” European countries of Iran’s alleged noncompliance and apply pressure to Russia, which is building a major nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran. Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Executive Director Henry Sokolski, a U.S. Defense Department nonproliferation official under former President George Bush, criticized both European countries and the IAEA over their handling of Iran. Sokolski, who is about to leave for Europe with a high-level U.S. delegation to discuss Iran with European defense officials, expressed opposition to the “European view that you can just talk about putting off some of the technical problems, but not all of them.” Bargaining with Iran, he said, would tell would-be nuclear proliferators, “You’re not going to get caught, and you might get rewarded.” Sokolski added that he has no confidence in safeguards as a way of detecting Iranian nuclear weapon development and that some IAEA officials share his view. IAEA safeguards officials, he said, have told him the language in last week’s report on Iran is insufficiently tough to express what has been learned about the country’s nuclear programs. The IAEA, according to Sokolski, has chosen to employ weaker language in describing Iran’s programs because it is loath to find the country in violation of its commitments. “From here on out, we need to all act as though, if the IAEA cannot find somebody in full compliance, they’re in violation,” he said.
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