|
|
 |
Iran Breaks with the IAEA
// Iranian atomic crisis
The standoff between Teheran and the International Atomic Energy Agency has reached the critical point. Yesterday, the Iranian parliament directed the government to stop observation of the supplemental protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The law passed by the parliament opens the way for Iran to create nuclear weapons and deprives the IAEA of the right to inspect Iranian facilities. Now the reporting of Iran to the UN Security Council and the impositions of sanctions against it, possibly including the use of force, is unavoidable. Teheran has threatened world powers with retaliation.
Nuclear Blackmail
“With the goal of guaranteeing the rights and national interests of Iran, the Majlis obliges the government to suspend the supplemental protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty until the right of Iran to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes is acknowledged,” reads the draft law passed yesterday by the Iranian parliament by an overwhelming majority. Although the law formally still must be confirmed by a supervisory committee, a state organ directly subordinate to spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, no one doubts that the country's highest leader, a supporter of all possible atomic programs in Iran, will approve it. After that, it becomes mandatory for the government to implement it.
In practical terms, the suspension of the protocol means that the IAEA is deprived of its right to carry out intensive surprise checks at Iranian nuclear facilities. Teheran has not only slammed the door on IAEA, it has taken away its right to stop work in Iran on uranium enrichment.
Iran signed the supplemental protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in December 2003, during a period when it was cooperating with the IAEA. It said that its unexpected step was an effort to gain the trust of the world community for its atomic programs. Iranian authorities did not let it be forgotten, however, that its adherence to the protocol, which was never ratified by the parliament, was entirely voluntarily and may be discontinued if Iran finds its cooperation with the IAEA unsatisfactory.
Yesterday's decision by the Iranian parliament marks the end of the two-year search for a compromise between Teheran and the IAEA and the exhaustion of both sides' arguments. Iran called the resolution passed by the IAEA last week “unacceptable.” It demanded that Iran cease all work on enriching uranium and sign additional agreements with the IAEA to expand the authority that agency's experts in Iran.
International observers commented yesterday on the possible consequences of Iran's nuclear blackmailing of the world community. Robert Einhorn, senior adviser in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former high U.S. State Department official, said that, in spite of the fact that Iran does not yet have an atomic bomb, and the creation of one may take it at least five years, the Iranian nuclear threat at present is immeasurably more serious than that of North Korea. “In the case of Iran, the main danger is that the nuclear material it possesses may fall into the hands of the radical Islamic groups that Teheran sponsors, just as Hezbollah and Hamas, which could use that material to build a dirty bomb,'” Einhorn said at a press conference in Washington. Director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Joseph Cirincione said that, although North Korea has a higher nuclear potential than Iran, “the North Korean threat, unlike the Iranian, has been effectively contained.” In this connection, experts have concluded that the mainly nuclear threat today is not Pyongyang but Teheran.
Economic Blackmail
It is noteworthy that the Iranian parliament yesterday also required the government to present a detailed account of economic ties with the countries that voted in favor of the “anti-Iranian resolution” of the IAEA governing board. That resolution was supported by 22 of the 35 members of the board. Teheran is ready to take economic steps to “bring around” those who did not vote the way Teheran wanted in Vienna.
Unlike resource-poor North Korea, Iran has the world's second largest reserves of oil and natural gas, which may used for blackmail and subject to tough trading with world powers. The first victim of this blackmail may be India, which has few energy resources of its own and a rapidly growing economy that needs greater oil and gas supplies. The Indian delegation voted with Western powers in favor of the resolution, to the great disappointment of the Iranians.
Teheran's response was rapid. India's well-informed newspaper The Hindu reported yesterday that Iranian authorities cancelled their agreement with India for long-term supplies of liquefied natural gas. That agreement was signed in June of this year and envisaged deliveries of 5 million metric tons of liquefied gas per year for 25 years beginning in 2009 for a total value of $22 billion. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office immediately denied the newspaper's report and promising to clarify the situation with the contract.
Nonetheless, Teheran's intentions of punishing India for its betrayal are not a secret. Iranian Foreign Minister Hamid-Reza Asefi spoke openly of that possibility on Tuesday, saying that his country was examining the possibility of breaking of trade with a number of countries, including India. If Teheran lives up to its threats, India has more to loose than just the liquefied natural gas contract. Kommersant has already reported on plans to build a gas pipeline between Iran and India through Pakistan. That contract, which was to be finalized by the end of the year, is worth $7 billion. If India does not overcome its quandary with Iran, that project too will be endangered.
Being well aware of these issues, the Indians made a peace gesture to Iran yesterday, expressing its hope that cooperation with Iran will continue. Such statements have been a small victory for Iranian diplomacy, showing that economic blackmail may be effective.
Military Blackmail
“Military action against Iran is unthinkable,” British Foreign Minister Jack Straw told SkyNews television yesterday. “No such decision is being considered, it is not on the agenda.” Straw's assurances were an attempt to pacify world public opinion, riled up after U.S. President George W. Bush's statement at the end of last week that “all options are on the table” in the Iranian nuclear crisis. His words were seen as a hint that force may be used.
Straw's repudiation of possible military operations against Iran is more likely conditioned by pragmatism, rather then pacifism. Besides it economic might, Iran has a military and political arsenal that is sufficient to counter an anti-Iranian coalition one way or another, should one arise.
Iran has its own ballistic missile, the Shahab, and six X-55 cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear devices, which it bought from Ukraine in 2001. In addition, it has three Russian kilo class submarines that it bought in the in the early 1990s that could block access to the Persian Gulf by closing the Straits of Hormuz, through which Near Eastern oil reached the West.
Finally, Iran can deliver pinpoint strikes against its opponents using other forces, since it finances and arms numerous Islamic radical groups in the Middle East. Those may be a threat not only to Israel and the coalition forces in Iraq, they may also undertake terrorist and subversive acts in Western Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Thus, of the three countries once labeled the “evil axis” by Bush (Iran, Iraq and North Korea), Iran has the greatest potential for acting up now. The Iranian Majlis showed its consciousness of that yesterday when it voted to show that it can impose its own sanctions against the world community, and not just the other way around.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 29, 2005
|
|
|
