Archive for December, 2006

An emboldened Iran will not quickly yield to Security Council demands

Posted on: December 30th, 2006 by Ernie Regehr

It takes few prophetic powers to predict that the UN Security Council’s new demands and sanctions on Iran will not have the desired effect.

Progress in ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program conforms to its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to the monitoring and inspection requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is frustrated by seriously compromised non-proliferation norms, an unexpectedly emboldened Iran , and an ambiguous case.

A persistent double standard in nuclear non-proliferation means that what is being required of Iran – the immediate termination of all uranium enrichment and nuclear reactor fuel reprocessing – is not required of other non-nuclear weapon state signatories to the NPT. Furthermore, India, which is not an NPT signatory but which has used enrichment and reprocessing technologies to produce nuclear warheads, is in the process of being offered full civilian nuclear cooperation by the United States. From Tehran ‘s vantage, the issue seems to be not what you do but who’s friend you are.

In the meantime Iran has clearly become bolder and more influential. Even though President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intemperate rhetoric on the state of Israel and his audacious anti-Semitism should strip his Government of all international credibility, the country’s oil wealth,[i] its influence in Iraq (in the context of growing American desperation and dependence on Iran’s help to quell the civil war now raging), and its proxy role in the Middle East via Hezbollah and Hamas forces, have given the Iranian regime unexpected, and unwelcome in most of the world, confidence as a regional player – and a disinclination to be compliant.

Added to that, the international community’s case against Iran is genuinely ambiguous. The only hard charge is a lack of transparency. The secrecy charge is a very serious one and there is no ambiguity about Iran being in violation of its safeguard obligations. The fact that for many years it kept nuclear programs hidden from the IAEA, along with a continuing refusal to cooperate fully in answering the IAEA investigators’ questions, means it cannot expect the international community to adopt a business-as-usual approach to its civilian nuclear efforts. But ambiguity does enter inasmuch as there is no direct evidence that Iran is in pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, and Iran cites some credible reasons why its special circumstances prevent it from meeting the international community’s legitimate transparency demands at this time.

First, when Iran is asked why it initially conducted its nuclear enrichment program in secret if its only interest is the perfectly legal pursuit of nuclear power, it replies that it in fact tried to acquire the relevant technology in the open market but was persistently frustrated by US interference and pressure on other states not to cooperate with Iran. So, for Iran to acquire technology to which it should have been given open access, it had to turn to clandestine efforts to get around US obstruction.

Second, Iran is asked why it continues to refuse full disclose all of its nuclear activities and open all its relevant facilities for IAEA inspection if it has only peaceful purposes in mind? Iran replies that as long as the United States is still drawing up plans to attack and bomb its nuclear facilities it cannot disclose the location and depth of its facilities – for any disclosure to the IAEA will end up being known by the US. So disclosure now, it says, would only help the US refine its war plans.

And finally, in addition to the transparency question, Iran is legitimately challenged to explain why, if it is truly only interested in electricity generation by nuclear means, it cannot accept the offer from international negotiators of guarantees of all the enriched nuclear fuel it needs (removing the need for domestic uranium enrichment). Virtually no country just beginning to acquire nuclear power reactors relies on domestic fuel production, so why does Iran require its own production rather than rely on imports. Iran answers, with much less credibility since it has to rely on imports to build its domestic capacity, that as long as the US vendetta against Iran continues, e.g. its listing of Iran as part of the axis of evil, how can Iran be sure that pledges of access to fuel will be honored?

And so the stalemate will continue. It is likely that the international community will ultimately have to bend on two counts. On the matter of uranium enrichment, it may finally be necessary to accept Iran ‘s current level of enrichment (still at an experimental or research level, but with steadily growing capacity)[ii] under strict IAEA safeguards while the IAEA completes its work of confirming the legitimacy of the rest of the program.

The preferred option of course is that Iran suspends all enrichment activity, cooperates fully with the IAEA in clearing up all outstanding questions about Iran ‘s earlier clandestine efforts and current operations, and then resumes enrichment only under full inspections and in accordance with its rights under the NPT. But, despite some slim hopes that the indirect reproach that Iranian voters in local elections handed to Ahmadinejad and the extremists could yield a change of approach,[iii] there are few indications that Iran is in a mood to be cooperative and to give up uranium enrichment as a gesture of goodwill.

The complete termination of Iranian enrichment and reprocessing efforts will ultimately have to be linked to a wider international agreement to internationalize control over the civilian nuclear fuel cycle – and the success of the latter will be critical to the success of long term non-proliferation.

The international community, in this case primarily the United States, will also have to bend to provide Iran with a set of credible security assurances. Getting Iran into full compliance with IAEA safeguards will require the United States to make it demonstrably clear that regime change is off the table and that its sole objective is unambiguous compliance with non-proliferation standards (i.e. fullscope inspections and implementation of the additional protocol – an enhanced set of inspection arrangements with the IAEA). George Perkovich, a prominent US non-proliferation analyst, argues that the US has in fact largely abandoned regime change as a policy objective but that it will have to be diplomatically creative and persistent to persuade Iran and the rest of the world.[iv]

It is hard to believe that the United States, given the rate of its current descent into the Iraq quagmire and its spectacular failures in the rest of the Middle East, would actually contemplate adding to its failures with a military attack on Iran, but the depth of Washington’s folly has been underestimated before. Not only Iran, but many of America ‘s allies will have to see credible proof of the Bush Administration’s full commitment to non-proliferation diplomacy before they energetically promote the Security Council’s new formula.


[i] Iran’s oil revenue is expected to go into sharp decline over the next several years, due in part to growing (and subsidized) domestic consumption and a deteriorating oil industry infrastructure – a development that gives credence to Iran’s claim that it needs civilian nuclear power production to meet growing energy demand and that in turn suggests Iran’s current sense of invulnerability could be short-lived – perhaps making it more inclined to cooperate on non-proliferation standards. [“Iranian Oil Revenue Quickly Drying Up, Analysis Says,” WashingtonPost, Dec. 26/06.]

[ii]A recent report suggests that its uranium enrichment capacity has grown from two 164-centrifuge units to a total of 3,000 centrifuges (keeping in mind that industrial level production of low enriched uranium to fuel a reactor would require a complicated and integrated system of 54,000 centrifuges, but 3,000 such centrifuges clandestinely dedicated to producing highly enriched uranium could within a few years generate enough weapons grade uranium for one or two bombs per year). [“Iran may declare major enrichment feat,” Jerusalem Post Online Edition, Dec. 26/06, www.jpost.com. David Albright, “When could Iran get the Bomb?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2006.]

[iii]” Opponents of Iran’s ultra-conservative president won nationwide elections for local councils, final results confirmed Thursday, an embarrassing outcome for the hard-line leader that could force him to change his anti-Western tone and focus more on problems at home. Moderate conservatives critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a majority of seats in last week’s elections, followed by reformists who were suppressed by hard-liners two years ago. Analysts said the President’s allies won less than 20 per cent of local council seats across the country. The vote was widely seen as a sign of public discontent with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s stances, which have fuelled fights with the West and led Iran closer to UN sanctions. [Ali Akbar Dareini, “Local elections a blow to Iran ‘s Ahmadinejad,” GlobeandMail.com, Dec. 21/06 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061221.wiranelect12…).][iv] George Perkovich, Five Scenarios for the Iranian Crisis, Winter 2006 (Ifri: Paris and Brussels , 2006), p. 29.

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Nobel Peace Laureates on proliferation dangers

Posted on: December 15th, 2006 by Ernie Regehr

While nuclear weapon states, including their non-nuclear weapon state allies (see last posting, Dec. 12) continue to plan for the long-term retention of nuclear weapons, despite their Treaty commitment to disarm,[i] a group of Nobel Peace Laureates warns that “a world with nuclear haves and have-nots is fragmented and unstable.”

The declaration goes on to remind us that “The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) is a bargain in which nonproliferation is obtained based on a promise by nuclear weapons states to negotiate nuclear weapons elimination and offer peaceful uses of nuclear technology.” But, they say, “nuclear weapons states want to keep their weapons indefinitely and at the same time condemn others who would attempt to acquire them.”

That of course is an apt description of NATO’s insistence on its long-term need for nuclear weapons and the UK’s modernization plans. “Such flaunting of disarmament obligations,” they say, “is not sustainable.”

The Nobel Laureates also say they “are gravely concerned regarding several current developments such as NPT stakeholders enabling rather than constraining proliferation” – an equally apt description of the US initiative for civilian nuclear cooperation with India and accepting India as a de facto nuclear weapon state.

Those taking part in the Summit were: Frederik Willem De Klerk, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Lech Walesa, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, International Peace Bureau, United Nations Organization, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations Children’s Fund, International Labour Organization, Médecins sans Frontières, American Friends Service Committee, Red Cross, International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Pugwash Conference. Guests of honour were: Mayor of Hiroshima and President of the World’s Mayors for Peace Tadatoshi Akiba, Nobel Laureate for Medicine Rita Levi Montalcini, Man of Peace 2006 Peter Gabriel, Representative of the Weapons of Mass Distruction Commission Jayantha Dhanapala, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and Greenhouse Crisis Foundation Jeremy Rifkin,

Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Nobuaki Tanaka and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Jose Antonio Ocampo.

The 7th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates took place in Rome from November 17 to 19 and was held, as were previous Summits, on the initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni.[ii]


[i] Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

[ii] The Declaration is available at http://www.gsinstitute.org/docs/Rome_Declaration_2006.pdf.

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How the West undermines nuclear non-proliferation

Posted on: December 13th, 2006 by Ernie Regehr

While the United Nations Security Council struggles to achieve the verifiable disavowal of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea, Europe and North America are busy championing nuclear weapons as the ultimate security trump card and the preeminent emblem of political gravitas, thereby building a political/security context that is increasingly hostile to non-proliferation.

At the end of November in Riga, though NATO leaders may have quarreled over Afghanistan , they were of a single mind in reaffirming the political and security advantages of nuclear weapons.[i] The leaders declared the continuing relevance of, and their full satisfaction with, the alliance’s 1999 strategic doctrine,[ii] which declares that “the Alliance ‘s conventional forces alone cannot ensure credible deterrence. Nuclear weapons make a unique contribution in rendering the risks of aggression against the Alliance incalculable and unacceptable. Thus, they remain essential to preserve peace.”

It is an assertion that begs a question almost too obvious to repeat? If NATO, with its collective command of some two-thirds of global conventional military capacity, feels unacceptably vulnerable without a nuclear back-up, what are North Korea and Iran likely to conclude? It is true that North Korea and Iran joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapon states and solemnly pledged to permanently disavow nuclear weapons, but so did most of the NATO states, including Canada, that have just proclaimed their enduring commitment to nuclear weapons. Five non-nuclear weapon states (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Turkey )[iii] even host nuclear weapons on their territories.

The United Kingdom followed the NATO paean to nuclear weapons with its own unilateral version. In its just released Defence White Paper, the Blair Government promises a new generation of submarine-based nuclear weapons, albeit reduced by 20 percent from its current arsenal of about 200 warheads.[iv] As the Leader in the Guardian put it, “the words ‚Äònuclear deterrent’ occur more than any other in the defence white paper published [December 4], but at no point is the document clear about who or what a new generation of British nuclear weapons is intended to deter.”[v]

Whitehall, of course, denies that its nuclear modernization program is in violation of Article VI of the NPT, which commits all nuclear weapon states to eliminating their nuclear arsenals, or a betrayal of its pledge, made at the 2000 NPT Review Conference along with other nuclear weapon states, of “an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI.”[vi] But it is hard to deny what the UK action says about the spirit of its nuclear disarmament commitments and what it does to the political climate in which nuclear non-proliferation is pursued.

To top it off, the US Administration and Congress then joined up to reward India for its nuclear weapons tests in violation of non-proliferation norms. The US-India nuclear cooperation agreement accepts India as a de facto nuclear weapons state and irgnores, even rewards, its continuing violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1172, which calls on India and Pakistan “immediately to stop their nuclear weapon development programmes, to refrain from weaponization or from the deployment of nuclear weapons, to cease development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.”[vii]

In addition to rewarding defiance of the Security Council, implement of full civilian nuclear cooperation with India will arguably put the United States in violation of Article I of the NPT which prohibits nuclear weapon states from assisting, encouraging, or inducing other states to acquire nuclear weapons. Providing India with civilian nuclear fuel assists its nuclear weapons development by freeing up limited domestic supplies for the production of fissile material for its expanding arsenal. And as to encouragement, there is little doubt that India takes encouragement from its new found favour in Washington and the equanimity with which its violations of the Security Council are met.

For North Korea and Iran the lessons are unmistakable. Western non-proliferation policy is not about eliminating nuclear arsenals or even stopping their spread. Instead, it is an art of selection – states within, or being wooed into, a US-defined orbit of friendliness are permitted to violate global non-proliferation norms, while states outside this axis of strategic convenience are to be punished to the full for their, in the case of Iran, much lesser violations.

Hans Blix and his Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission warned against this kind of selective non-proliferation, rejecting “the suggestion that nuclear weapons in the hands of some pose no threat, while in the hands of others they place the world in mortal jeopardy.”[viii]

If it is the intention of European and North American governments to build a political climate that is hostile to non-proliferation, then they will be well-pleased with their work of the last few weeks.

[i] “Comprehensive Political Guidance,” Endorsed by NATO Heads of State and Government on 29 November 2006, Riga, Latvia (http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/b061129e.htm).

[ii] “The Alliance’s Strategic Concept,” Approved by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington. D.C. on 23 rd and 24 th April 1999 (http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-065e.htm).

[iii] Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Where the Bombs are, 2006,” NRDC: Nuclear Notebook, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists(November/December, 2006, vol. 62, no. 6), pp. 57-58.

[iv] By Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, ” British nuclear forces, 2005,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,NRDC: Nuclear Notebook (November/December 2005, vol. 61, no. 06), pp. 77-79.

[v] “Why? And why now?” The Guardian, December 5, 2006.

[vi]2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document: Volume I, Part I: Review of the operation of the Treaty, taking into account the decisions and the resolution adopted by the 1995 Review and Extension Conference Improving the effectiveness of thestrengthened review process for the Treaty (Article VI and eighth to twelfth preambular paragraphs), para 15(6).

[vii] Security Council, Resolution 1172, June 6, 1998, operative paragraph 7.

[viii] Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons (Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, 2006, Stockholm ), p. 60.

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