Iran today said it is prepared to bar some international inspections at its nuclear facilities if the crisis surrounding Tehran’s nuclear activities is taken up by the U.N. Security Council, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 12).
“In case Iran is referred to the U.N. Security Council ... the government will be obliged to end all of its voluntary cooperation,” said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
France, Germany and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, yesterday announced they were suspending their two-year independent diplomatic effort with Tehran, but stopped short of calling on the Security Council to impose sanctions.
“We, like our partners, like the British and the Germans, consider that this co-request for sanctions is premature for the moment,” said French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei. Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday that he was interested in resuming “serious and constructive negotiations” with the European Union, but with a deadline, AP reported. Larijani told CNN yesterday that Iran wants to reach agreement with Europe and Russia. He said a Russian proposal providing for uranium enrichment on Iran’s behalf on Russian territory “would be a good basis for negotiations” (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press I/Idaho Press-Tribune, Jan. 13). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday also played down the threat of possible sanctions on Iran, Agence France-Presse reported. “Nobody is saying that there have to be immediate sanctions in the Security Council,” Rice told CBS News. The Security Council has “many, many more means of authority, many other levers that the International Atomic Energy Agency does not have on its own,” she added. “I don’t think anyone is talking about sanctions today. We’re talking now about the referral and then we’ll see what’s necessary,” she said (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Jan. 12). Security Council action would be expected to begin with condemnation of Iran’s actions and a demand that the country’s leaders obey IAEA decisions, AP reported. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said yesterday that Iran should imitate Libya’s decision to relinquish its nuclear program. “Iran holds the key in its own hands as to what is going to happen,” Bolton said. “By taking the matter to the Security Council, I think we change the political dynamic and increase the pressure on Iran” (David McHugh, Associated Press II/Yahoo!News, Jan. 12). Israeli officials have called on the West to boost the pressure on Iran, the New York Times reported today. Israeli officials are concerned that Western officials are focusing more on estimates of when Iran might produce an atomic weapon rather than on the “point of no return,” when Iran might acquire sufficient expertise to produce a sufficient amount of fissile material for a weapon. That point, some experts have said, could come within the next year. “Absent major problems, Iran will need roughly six months to one year to demonstrate successful operation” of its uranium enrichment pilot plant, David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a report released yesterday. “Iran could have its first nuclear weapon in 2009.” They added, however, that their estimate “reflects a worst-case assessment.” Retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeev-Farkash has made a similar estimate, the Times reported. “We have a crucial six months to a year to do something,” he said. “Unfortunately when I say this to our friends and allies, they like to focus on the third step (weapons production) rather than the first step.” “The first step is the most crucial, when Iran will achieve independent research and development capacity to enrich uranium,” he said. Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington, expressed doubts about a U.S. estimate indicating that Iran would be able to produce an actual nuclear weapon within six to 10 years (see GSN, Aug. 2, 2005). “What’s important is the ability to build a successful centrifuge and get it to work in a cascade,” Milhollin said. “How long will it take? No one really knows,” he said. “But I think that if the Iranians decide to go all out, they could make a bomb’s worth of material a year with 2,000 centrifuges running.” He said Israel’s estimates, while part of an effort to pressure Western governments, were not unrealistic. “I’d be surprised if the Iranians don’t make it in five years with one, two or three bombs,” he said (Steven Erlanger, New York Times, Jan. 13). Some experts questioned whether the European Union was willing to apply meaningful economic sanction on Iran, an important trading partner, AFP reported. “But there are other things you may be able to do: diplomatic sanctions, reducing the size of Iranian representatives abroad, reducing the size of the embassies, maybe barring some transfers of technology,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Tehran is counting on the current energy market to help it weather any potential financial storm caused by sanctions, said Jon Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Iranians have significant oil and gas reserves and the excess capacity in the system is quite tight,” Alterman said (Gerard Aziakou, Agence France-Presse II/IranMania.com, Jan. 12). “It’s a very proud civilization. They went through the (Iran-Iraq) war and the revolution. They’re certainly capable of suffering,” said George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. France, Germany and the United Kingdom have been carefully assessing which European goods could be withheld in order to hurt Iran while causing the least trouble possible for European companies, Perkovich told USA Today. Iran’s refining capacity is limited, requiring it to import around 40 percent of its gasoline, according to USA Today, while its manufacturing sector is heavily dependent on machine tool imports from Germany and Italy However, Iran has been making its own calculations, according to Siamak Namazi, an Iranian economist with the National Endowment for Democracy. “They know sector by sector what could be hit, and they have contingency plans,” he said. Tehran also has hard currency reserves from its oil revenue totaling $33.6 billion for the fiscal year that ended in March 2005, with profits still coming, according to the Institute of International Finance. “With oil prices at the current level, they’re not particularly vulnerable to sanctions,” says Paul Gamble, an economist at the institute who traveled to Iran last month. “No one volunteered to me they were worried” (David Lynch, USA Today, Jan. 13).
U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday said that success of the U.S.-Indian nuclear technology sharing agreement depends on the outcome of upcoming negotiations between the two nations, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, Jan. 12). Kerry made his comments after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. Critics of the agreement have said the United States is damaging the international nonproliferation regime by entering into the deal. “We're kind of twisting these rules into a pretzel for India's sake,” said former Defense Department senior nonproliferation official Henry Sokolski. Sokolski said the deal is not an acknowledgement that India is emerging as a nuclear power, but rather is meant to contain China. U.S. officials privately acknowledge, “that with China rising, you need to hitch your star to something else that is going up,” he said. “It is a private argument that's being made behind closed doors, and in the vaguest of terms,” Sokolski said. “Now, I'm not suggesting that India is hostile to China. They're not. But expectations can be raised, even with friends, that generate bad feelings.” China has already said that the agreement would “bring about a series of negative impacts.” “A domino effect of nuclear proliferation, once turned into reality, will definitely lead to global nuclear proliferation and competition,” a November editorial in the Communist newspaper People’s Daily said. India is not now testing nuclear weapons but is producing nuclear weapons material. Kerry said the Indian prime minister assured him that once the agreement was signed, India would be willing to join an international fissile material cutoff pact. “The question is: Can you arrive at that” treaty, Kerry said. “That is something that I think is going to have a lot more visibility in the days ahead. A lot of people are going to want to look at where that reality may or may not be, and what can be done to address those concerns.” India has 30 to 40 deployed warheads, while rival Pakistan has 50 weapons that could be used immediately, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. China is believed to have 400 deployed warheads, the organization said (Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 13).
The 1994 Agreed Framework between North Korea and the United States contained two profound flaws that enabled Pyongyang to continue developing a nuclear arsenal and led to the current nuclear crisis, former International Atomic Energy Agency Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt said this week (see GSN, Jan. 12). The agreement “sowed the seeds of the present potentially dangerous stalemate” by allowing North Korea to restrict agency inspections, Goldschmidt wrote in a policy brief published Tuesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Under the terms of the deal, the United States pledged to build light-water reactors for Pyongyang and to supply fuel oil in exchange for Pyongyang’s commitment to freeze its nuclear activities, including plutonium production. However, the Bush administration accused North Korea in late 2002 of cheating on the deal and pursuing a secret, parallel uranium enrichment program. Pyongyang retaliated by immediately expelling IAEA inspectors, then withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty the following year. It declared it had a nuclear arsenal in 2004, according to the Yonhap News Agency. Between 1994 and 2002, North Korea was able to continue developing its nuclear weapons program because the Agreed Framework “contained a clause that was interpreted by North Korea as limiting the IAEA’s inspection rights under the (Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement) until such time as a significant portion of the LWR project was completed,” Goldschmidt wrote. “The second flaw of the Agreed Framework was that it allowed North Korea to retain in storage all of its spent fuel containing weapons-grade plutonium and to maintain a reprocessing facility in a state of readiness so that North Korea could restart operation at any time,” according to Goldschmidt. “Only after completion of the LWR project would these facilities have to be dismantled. The U.S. negotiators and others recognized this flaw but could not persuade North Korea to remove it,” he wrote. While the agency has declared North Korea in noncompliance with its safeguard agreement every year since 1993, “still, there have been no tangible consequences for these actions by North Korea beyond the isolation the country already experienced,” Goldschmidt added (Yonhap News Agency, Jan. 13). Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Department officials are scheduled to visit South Korea to present evidence behind their allegations of North Korea’s illicit financial activities, the Korea Times reported today. U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said the visit would probably take place on Jan. 22. Vershbow said the officials would also visit Macau, home of Banco Delta Asia, which Washington has accused of aiding Pyongyang’s alleged laundering of counterfeit U.S. bills (Park Song-wu, Korea Times, Jan. 13).
Acting Australian Prime Minister Mark Vaile today sought to ease concerns about Canberra’s planned uranium exports to China, the Australian Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 11). Australian and Chinese officials are scheduled next week to begin formulating a safeguards agreement to prevent the materials from being diverted to weapons use, according to AAP. “I can understand Australians having those concerns but their expectations would be that their government should ensure that these things are in place and we certainly will,” Vaile told ABC radio. “At all stages we've made very clear and continue to make very clear that we expect any of our trading partners that wish to buy uranium from Australia there are international safeguards and protocols that need to be met,” he said (Australian Associated Press/The Age, Jan. 13).
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