The Wrong Discussion

by CKR

What bothers me about that question on Dipnotes, and this New York Times editorial, and numerous other discussions of Iran’s nuclear program, is that it’s off on the wrong foot, thanks to the Bush administration’s preference for ignoring treaties and the media’s unwillingness to dig for the facts.

I’ve said much of this before, but it’s probably worth saying again.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty guarantees that its non nuclear weapon signatories can have full access to peaceful nuclear technology. Iran is a non nuclear weapon signatory.

Article IV
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.

2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.

That means that it is not up to George Bush, or the United States, to decide whether Iran can have peaceful nuclear technology.

The IAEA found Iran in violation of its NPT obligations to report certain types of experimentation, and therefore the UN General Assembly has called on Iran (Resolutions 1696, 1737, and 1747) to suspend its activities in uranium enrichment until Iran explains those experiments satisfactorily.

However, the United States led the effort to pass these resolutions, in much the same way it led the effort to pass resolutions against Iraq, ignoring the findings of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. The continuing rhetoric from the United States government against Iran suggests that a similar process is under way.

Additionally, the US itself has obligations under the NPT that many nations believe it is shirking or actively working against.

Article VI
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

Whether the United States has lived up to these commitments can be argued, but the use of preventive war against Iraq, its rhetoric and expressed ambition to build a new generation of nuclear weapons have convinced many that it is in breach of Article VI. Congress has slowed down progress toward that new generation of nuclear weapons, but the administration has come close to threatening that it will take up nuclear testing and break its self-imposed moratorium (this in place of ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty).

Finally, we have the numerous UN resolutions on Israel’s actions that the United States and Israel have ignored.

The Times editorial is right to be afraid:

The further along the Iranians get, the greater our fear that President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney, will decide that one more war isn’t going to do their reputation much harm.

But the answer is not for Mohamed ElBaradei to ratchet up his demands on the Iranians as if he were part of the Bush administration. The answer lies in the Bush administration’s discovering the rule of law in international relations.

Comments

[zenpundit]

"That means that it is not up to George Bush, or the United States, to decide whether Iran can have peaceful nuclear technology"

No but using the NPT provisions of access to nuclear technology to jump start a nuclear weapons program, as Iran has done with it's massive, formerly covert,centrifuge program, renders that question moot. Their use isn't peacefully intended, that's the reason for the widespread alarm at Iranian violations and the question now is to what degree has Iran cheated and to what extent are they continuing to do so, if at all? And if they are, what to do about it.

"Additionally, the US itself has obligations under the NPT that many nations believe it is shirking or actively working against"

Cheryl, you yourself know better than most the extent of reductions of American ( and Russian) nuclear arsenals. They are large and significant reductions, involving entire classes of nuclear weapon delivery systems and thousands of warheads.

Those who would argue that America has not reduced its nuclear arsenal "sufficiently" and that therefore justfies the proliferation activities of Iran, Pakistan, North Korea etc. are engaging in special pleading, pure and simple.

I'm not in favor of attacking Iran but on the nuclear question that blame here lies squarely with the Iranian regime, not George W. Bush.

[CKR]

The problem with Article IV is that if a country has full fuel cycle capabilities, it can also manufacture nuclear weapons. IAEA safeguards are intended to prevent this. The impetus for the various recent proposals on centralizing or internationalizing fuel production is to avoid the proliferation of full fuel cycle capabilities.

It's not clear that Iran is looking to produce nuclear weapons. My guess is that they'd like to have the capability and then parade ambiguity, as Israel has done. The experiments that have been made public indicate an interest in nuclear weapons, but if they are the whole picture, they indicate only an inquisitiveness on this subject that many nations have displayed.

Nonetheless, we agree that it is not George Bush's decision and that Iran's actions are suspicious. That is why the IAEA has been negotiating with Iran, and the results have been generally positive. The analogy to US impatience with the inspectors in Iraq is too clear, and the prospect of more war in that region too dangerous to ignore. We now have a historical precedent and a president who seems unwilling to learn from previous experience.

I'll also agree that the United States has reduced its nuclear arsenal significantly, but 16,000 (or even the 2200 envisioned in the Moscow Treaty) is many, many more than the other nuclear powers, Russia excepted. I pointed out a while back that it will take, I think, 37 years to reach the 2200 that the Moscow Treaty commits to the year 2012.

The talk about the RRW, including an implicit threat to Congress that if the agencies can't have the RRW, they will press for nuclear testing, is the sort of thing that unsettles many. Further, the Bush administration has continued to propose cuts to the cooperative threat reduction program with Russia, although Congress is more generous.

The Bush administration could frame the decreases in nukes in terms of Article VI. But they don't. They could take up the Russian offer to extend START I verification provisions so that there is some way to show the world that Russia and the United States are moving toward the Moscow Treaty goals. But they don't. They could urge negotiations on further cuts and safeguards with Russia. But they don't.

I'll agree that there is a lot of special pleading in some of the talk about Article VI. But the United States gives fodder for it that it could easily take away.

I would like to see the discussion center on these issues, rather than the "whaddya think" approach of the question at Dipnotes or the NYT's frightened insistence that Iran give in to bullying.

[James]

zenpundit: the question is not moot. When Iran entered into its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the protocols in place stated that they were not required to notify the IAEA of any new nuclear facility until six months before the facility was ready to receive nuclear material. In 1992, the Board of Governors changed the rules so that nations had to report the facilities while they were still in the planning stage.

Iran makes the legalistic point that they had an agreement with the IAEA and they stuck to it. One party to an agreement cannot alter it unilaterally. Moreover, given Osirak and the US' unremitting hostility to Iran, it was not unreasonable for them to assume they were going to catch hell when it was known they were interested in enriching uranium. The "six month rule" would allow them to get close enough to remain within the safeguards agreement and yet present their adversaries with a fait accompli.

This is sharp practice, but it was within the rules as they saw it and they had sound reason to believe that the US would attempt to deny them the fuel cycle regardless of their rights under the NPT. Thus, the "hiding" of the enrichment program is not "proof" of malign intent. It's only proof of the caustic and destructive impact of playing favorites in international law.

Iran has since offered to accept a more intrusive inspections regime than any yet implemented, but that offer will not be taken up. The object of the "negotiations" is to deny Iran the fuel cycle, plain and simple. If they suspend enrichment, essentially surrendering on a key issue before the talks begin, the US/EU will drag the meetings and resolutions out for years, keeping a multi-billion-dollar program in stasis while they hope (or plan) for "regime change."

Iran is skeptical of promises of foreign fuel for the excellent reason that they have heard such promises before. All nuclear assistance and fuel was cut off after the Revolution, costing them billions of dollars at a time when a billion dollars was still a lot of money. This is a reminder, incidentally, that interest in the fuel cycle is not an innovation of the mullahs: Iranians have always seen themselves as a "great nation-in-waiting" and the Shah pursued nuclear development even more energetically than the revolutionaries. You didn't hear the State Department dismissing with contempt the Shah's assertions of a need for nuclear power back in the 70's. The US, in fact, offered to build Iran a reprocessing plant to extract plutonium from spent fuel.

The Iranian nuclear program today has no such grand ambitions, is not as well-financed, and gets little technical support from the rest of the world. A firm inspections regime with permanent, onsite staff and good cooperation from suppliers isn't going to have any trouble keeping it in line. But such cooperation requires confidence in everyone's good faith and this is hard to come by when the US is loudly asserting that Iran should be permanently denied the fuel cycle and threatening war if it doesn't get its way. Iran cannot legally be denied the fuel cycle; there is no clause or precedent in the NPT that allows for permanent sanctions. War would accomplish nothing but to convince other governments that they had best keep their nuclear programs under wraps until they are too late to stop. And that's what got us here in the first place.

[CKR]

James: Good summary, but you left one thing out.

Iran did experiments with plutonium, polonium-210, and uranium metal that appear to have little explanation other than interest in nuclear weapons. The IAEA also found enriched uranium in samples taken at a university in Tehran which has not been explained adequately. Iran did not notify the IAEA of the experiments, as it is required to. That said, if what has been reported is the full extent of the experiments, all it proves is that Iran, like many other countries, wondered just how hard some of these things are to do.

Iran has now agreed with the IAEA to explain these concerns and straighten out some other outstanding issues relating to inspections. The US's complaint is that this allows Iran to stretch out the timetable. Again, far too much of a parallel to the impatience with the inspectors in Iraq.

There are reasons to be suspicious of Iran's motives, but the demand for it to give up its Article IV rights, especially as a condition of negotiation, go too far.