Iran’s nuclear challenge

In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency has delivered a damning critique of the current status of Iran’s nuclear program. While acknowledging that the Agency had found no evidence that Iran had actually decided to build nuclear weapons, a fact conveniently overlooked by the international media, the report underlined the growing sophistication and expansion of the program suggesting a move in the direction of weaponisation. In specific terms, Iran was accused of carrying out computer simulations of nuclear explosives, developing detonators and creating over a dozen designs of warhead attachments to missiles.
The release of the report was preceded by ominous Israeli sabre rattling involving the test firing of a ballistic missile and hints of surgical strikes against Iranian nuclear installations. Following the release of the report, talk of military action acquired wider currency within Israel and in the Western media. Warnings of the direst consequences by the Iranian leadership inducted a measure of moderation in the debate prompting the US Secretary of Defence to caution against military strikes as these would have ”unintended consequences” for American interests and forces in the region. The Israelis are now calling for the imposition of “destructive sanctions” which would effectively neutralise Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The United Kingdom, France and Germany have also called for additional sanctions.
Already the Security Council has imposed four layers of sanctions against Iran since 2006 when Iranian non-compliance was first reported by the IAEA Board of Governors. According to the West’s own admission, these sanctions have not worked. Further proliferation of penal measures are unlikely to produce the anticipated results and are, in any case, opposed by China and Russia who have expressed a clear preference for the diplomatic option. Even the reticent Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, has come out against the use of force and has called for a negotiated solution.
The issue is relatively simple. Iran, consistent with the NPT and IAEA provisions is entitled to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Thirteen states are currently engaged in the production of enriched uranium and plutonium for use as fuel rods in power reactors. Japan, one of whose nationals currently heads the IAEA, boasts amongst the largest reprocessing plants in the world. These activities are closely monitored by the Agency through a stringent safeguards regime which has been significantly upgraded in recent years.
There are two reasons why this right is being denied to Iran: its radical Islamist orientation manifest principally in its unrelenting hostility towards Israel and the fact that its nuclear infrastructure was clandestinely constructed fuelling the fear that Iran was pursuing the path of nuclear weapons using peaceful applications as a façade. While the first has no locus in international law the second is considered legitimate even though the Iranians claim that secrecy was imposed on them as otherwise the West would have used its immense clout to pressurise its sources of supply to deny Iran the means to acquire the technology. The Iranians also contend that under the IAEA Statute, declaration of nuclear assets becomes mandatory only when nuclear material is introduced into the facility which was not done until 2003 and that too under intimation to the Agency. By those criteria, in strictly legal terms, Iran claims it had not breached any Agency regulations.
That the debate on the Iranian nuclear issue is driven in good measure by political considerations is beyond question. Three instances clearly bear this out.
The decision of the IAEA Board of Governors in 2006 to refer the Iranian dossier to the Security Council was taken through a vote which is unprecedented. The Board takes all its decisions by consensus, a time-honoured practice which was breached in this instance.
Several previous instances of non-compliance were never reported to the Security Council, the most glaring being the detection of highly enriched uranium in one of South Korea’s nuclear facilities. The enrichment was found to be in the range of 80 percent which is close to if not actually bomb grade level. Yet the Board did not take any action. According to Goldsmith, a former Deputy Director General of the IAEA, these discriminatory practices were actuated by purely political considerations.
As Pakistan’s former Permanent Representative to the IAEA in the late nineties, I would be most interested to know whether the information disclosed in the Agency’s latest report was available during the incumbency of Mohammad El-Baradei, the previous Director General. El-Baradei was a seasoned and astute Egyptian diplomat who understood well the political undercurrents of this issue. He tried not to allow political factors to impact on the evidence based approach of his organisation.
The moot point is that if this information was available earlier why it was not published.
If it was discovered recently all its sources should be made public in the interest of transparency particularly since these revelations have the potential to unleash war in the region.
Diplomacy offers the only sensible way forward which will be discussed next week.

The writer is Pakistan’s former Ambassador to the United Nations and European Union. He can be contacted at [email protected]