Who's going nuclear
Iran's nukes come under scrutiny. Azadeh Moaveni reports
When states vastly rich in energy reserves build nuclear power plants, their intentions are inevitably subject to great scrutiny. That scrutiny is exponentially magnified when the state in question is the Islamic Republic of Iran and the scrutiniser is the US of President George W Bush. Washington has long held that Tehran is actively seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that belief informed America's branding of Iran as part of an "axis of evil".
Given that US planners have been operating on this assumption for months, if not years, what, then, explains the fresh allegation by US officials last week that Iran has been secretly constructing nuclear facilities that could be used for weapons production? Satellite photos of nuclear facilities in Natanz and Arak were unveiled by CNN with an air of breathless discovery, and a State Department spokesman said the US had evidence of secret facility outside the purview of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "The circumstances [lead to the conclusion] that this nuclear programme in Iran is not peaceful, and certainly not transparent," said the spokesman.
For as long as Washington has made such accusations, Iran had denied them, and last week was no exception to the pattern. "I can categorically tell you that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme," Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohamed Javad Zarif, told CNN. The government's spokesman in Tehran, Abdollah Ramezanadeh, reminded reporters that Iran has consistently granted international inspectors access to nuclear facilities. "We have no nuclear activity or studies outside the supervision of the (IAEA)," he said.
Late in the week, Mohamed El-Baradei, the director general of the IAEA, disputed the official US characterisation of the facilities as "covert", saying the IAEA itself had commissioned the satellite photographs. "We saw them, we asked the Iranians about them, and they said, 'yes', and invited us to visit," he said. The plans could be used to produce enriched uranium and plutonium of the sort of grade required for weapons, he said. But as long as the Islamic Republic throws the doors open to IAEA inspectors, it is entitled to have the facilities.
But as is the case with Iraq, the approval stamp of IAEA teams may not be sufficient to quell doubts in Washington about Iran's intentions. European officials, whose countries have diplomatic relations with Iran, share the US's concern. Western diplomats in Tehran are also convinced Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, and believe the Islamic Republic is only about five years, perhaps less, away from that goal.
Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme pre-dates the Islamic Republic, and Iranian officials now privately argue the country has every right to acquire nuclear weapons, when other major and hostile powers in the region, such as Pakistan and Israel, have them.
To date Washington has preferred to deal with Iran's nuke ambitions diplomatically, by pressuring Russia to stop sharing nuclear technology with Iran, and demanding more invasive IAEA inspections of Iran's nuclear power facilities. The former strategy has had mixed success; Russia said in August it would help Iran build a second nuclear power plant at Bushehr.
Whether the US continues to try and change Iran's behaviour only through political pressure remains to be seen. Hawks in Washington advocate taking a hard-line with the Islamic Republic, and the fiercest among them even argue Iran is a higher priority than Iraq. That line of thinking is certainly still fringe, but the bottom line is that Iran's nuke designs pose a direct problem for the Bush doctrine that Washington has yet to fully confront.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 25 December 2002 (Issue No. 617)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/617/re9.htm