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Gulf Crisis Weekly
15 June 2012
Moscow: A Turning Point in the Iran
Crisis?
Milan Rai, Justice Not Vengeance
The nuclear crisis over Iran may be facing
a turning point as negotiators head for Moscow on Monday 18 June.
The latest round of negotiations began optimistically
in April, and has grown steadily more depressing with each successive
meeting. The signs are that the process will break down immediately
after Moscow, but not actually in Moscow, in order to spare Russia
the embarrassment.
Before the first round of talks in Ankara,
there had been positive signs from Iran, including an indication,
way back in November, from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
that Iran was willing to cease production of 20%-enriched uranium:
'If they give us the 20% enriched uranium
this very week, we will cease the domestic enrichment of uranium
of up to 20 percent this very week. We only want the 20% enrichment
for our domestic consumption. If they give it to us according
to international law, according to IAEA laws, without preconditions,
we will cease domestic enrichment. This is not something we
wish to produce and sell on the open market. 20% enriched uranium,
as you know, is not useful for much of anything other than the
production of cancer treatment medication. It is not useful
for a power plant.' (Interview with the New
York Times, 21 September 2011)
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi
wrote in the Washington Post just ahead of the talks:
'Despite sanctions, threats of war, assassinations
of several of our scientists and other forms of terrorism, we
have chosen to remain committed to dialogue. In the upcoming
talks, we hope that all sides will return to the negotiating
table as equals with mutual respect; that all sides will be
committed to comprehensive, long-term dialogue aimed at resolving
all parties’ outstanding concerns; and, most important,
that all sides make genuine efforts to reestablish confidence
and trust.' (The
Washington Post, 12 April 2012)
Salehi (accurately) explained the background
to Iran's production of 20%-enriched uranium:
'Forty-five years ago, the United States
sold my country a research reactor as well as weapons-grade
uranium as its fuel. Not long afterward, America agreed to help
Iran set up the full nuclear fuel cycle along with atomic power
plants. The U.S. argument was that nuclear power would provide
for the growing needs of our economy and free our remaining
oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.
'That rationale has not changed.
'Still, after the Islamic Revolution in
our country in 1979, all understandings with the United States
in the nuclear field unraveled. Washington even cut off fuel
deliveries to the very facility it supplied. To secure fuel
from other sources, Iran was forced to modify the reactor to
run on uranium enriched to around 20 percent. The Tehran Research
Reactor still operates, supplying isotopes used in the medical
treatment of 800,000 of my fellow Iranians every year.
'... In 2009, we put forward a request
to the International Atomic Energy Agency for fuel for the reactor
as its supply was running out, threatening the lives of many
Iranians. When we agreed to exchange a major portion of our
stock of low-enriched uranium for reactor fuel in 2010 —
a proposal by the Obama administration — the response
we got from the White House was a push for more U.N. Security
Council sanctions.
'... Thanks to the grace of God and the
hard work of our committed and growing cadre of scientists,
we managed to do something we had never done before: enrich
uranium to the needed 20 percent and mold it into fuel plates
for the reactor.'
(The
Washington Post, 12 April 2012)
The US and the European Union had made ending
the production of 20%-enriched uranium into one of their three
major objectives. The second objective is to get Iran's 140kg
of 20%-enriched uranium out of the country, through a swap of
the kind referred to by Ahmadinejad. Iran would get militarily-useless
20% fuel rods for its medical research reactor, and would give
up its stocks in return.
Why all the fuss about 20%-enriched
uranium?
Because it takes Iran closer to being a threshold state
like Japan, a country capable of making a nuclear bomb if it
chooses to.
It takes a roughly similar effort to get from uranium ore (which
is 0.7% Uranium-235) to 20%, as it does to turn 20%-enriched
into 90%-enriched (or 'weapons-grade') uranium. Fuel for nuclear
power stations only needs to be 5%-enriched.
The third major demand of the US and the
EU was the closure of Iran's new Fordow uranium enrichment facility
inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom. The deeply-buried
Fordow facility cannot be destroyed by a conventional military
attack.
During the negotiating process, both sides
have taken steps that have undermined good will.
The escalations started just before the second
meeting in Baghdad, with the US administration adding pressure
on importers of Iranian oil such as Japan
to reduce their purchases, and the US Senate approving new
sanctions on Iran. Not the way to create a co-operative atmosphere
Tehran, for its part, indicated that it would
allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect Parchin,
a military facility which it had long been interested in, and
then started dragging
its feet. Talks between the two parties collapsed
on 8 June.
While Iran would have been well-advised to
have co-operated with the IAEA, when you look at the West's negotiating
stance, you can see why Iran is feeling disappointed.
DIAMONDS FOR PEANUTS
In the words of two Iranian commentators,
one formerly a spokesperson for the Iranian nuclear negotiating
team, the West has been 'demanding the maximum concessions from
Iran, in return for making minimal concessions themselves.' (Guardian,
15 June 2012)
In return for ending 20% enrichment, shipping
out all Iran's 20% stocks, closing Fordow and allowing IAEA inspections
of Parchin, Iran was offered... spare parts for civilian passenger
planes, help with acquiring a light water nuclear reactor, and
a fuel swap, trading 20%-enriched fuel plates for the Tehran research
reactor. (The Western proposal put forward in Baghdad are summarised
in the New
York Times, 23 May 2012, among other places.)
Incidentally, as noted by Salehi above, Iran
already has the technology to manufacture its own 20% fuel rods
for the Tehran research reactor. It has reportedly converted a
third of its 20% stock into such fuel. (Bloomberg
Businessweek News, 5 June 2012)
(We will leave aside the shameful
history of previous attempts to get the west to implement
a fuel swap of Iran's 20%-enriched uranium.)
Former Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein
Mousavian, now a visiting scholar at Princeton University in the
United States, has described the offer as 'diamonds for peanuts'.
(Mousavian held his negotiating position from 2003-2005 under
the more liberal Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.) (Reuters,
15 June 2012)
A senior US official told the International
Crisis Group in June: 'had I been an Iranian, I too would have
rejected the deal in Baghdad'. (International Crisis Group, The
P5+1, Iran and the Perils of Nuclear Brinkmanship, Middle
East Briefing N°34, 15 June 2012, p.11) The US official went
on, unpersuasively in my view: 'Our thinking was to begin with
such an offer. The question is how far we will be prepared to
go in Moscow.'
Actually, all the signs are that the US will
continue to follow a hard line, escalating sanctions, funding
covert
operations inside Iran (including through the terrorist People's
Mujaheddin of Iran), executing electronic sabotage through
viruses like Stuxnet,
and demanding maximum concessions from Iran in return for minimal
concessions by the West.
The International Crisis Group noted the
dilemmas facing the two sides:
'For Iran, shutting down Fordow would mean
doing away with what arguably is the chief obstacle to a unilateral
Israeli strike. Likewise, the 100-kilogram stockpile
of 20 per cent enriched uranium has come at astronomical cost,
in light of the ensuing sanctions regime. Tehran can neither
close down Fordow nor part with its 20 per cent enriched uranium
without receiving a major concession in return; swapping the
latter for fuel rods is unlikely to meet that bar. In like manner,
the U.S. and EU are very reluctant to begin relaxing the sanctions
regime, as both know how difficult it was to achieve in the
first place and how quickly it might unravel at the first sign
of softening.'
PATHS AWAY FROM DISASTER
The ICG are among many commentators making
sensible suggestions for the future.
Trita
Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council
have proposed that the Europe Union help to create more trust
by delaying the imposition of sanctions on Iran, in return for
an enrichment freeze:
'By delaying - not lifting - its
impending embargo on Iranian oil for six months, Europe
will give decisive breathing space to an otherwise constricted
negotiation process. The Iranians should, in turn, freeze the
enrichment of 20 percent uranium for that same period.
'Delaying the sanctions will not ease pressure
on Iran. According to renowned Iranian economist Bijan Khajehpour,
85 percent of the embargo is already in effect. Delaying its
formal imposition will not cause buyers to return to the Iranian
market. All it will do is to provide the West with an ability
to use the oil embargo as the bargaining tool it was supposed
to be -- and exchange it for tangible, verifiable Iranian nuclear
concessions.
'If the embargo is formally imposed, however,
it will become more difficult and costly to lift it and it will
serve as naked escalation that will beget Iranian escalation
rather than concessions. The risk of war will increase and the
threat of an Israeli strike may materialize.'
Former Iranian official Hossein
Mousavian, quoted twice above, has proposed that Iran agree
to hold no 20%-enriched material in its stockpile,
either by converting it to fuel, exporting it or lowering its
enrichment to 3.5 percent - the level usually required for nuclear
power plants. This 'would be the best objective guarantee for
non-diversion' to military purposes, he's pointed out. (Reuters,
15 June 2012)
Abbas
Maleki and John Tirman of the MIT Center for International
Studies have set out some immediate steps:
1. Both sides could agree that as long
as negotiations continue, they should avoid of provocative measures
against each other. This means that Iran should clearly
stop developing its nuclear installations and equipment while
the P5+1 should avoid adopting new resolutions and issuing provocative
statements, especially on the suspension of uranium
enrichment by Iran. It should also not impose new sanctions.
2. During the Moscow negotiations, the
P5+1 should affirm Iran's nuclear rights, as stipulated
by President Obama, and unequivocally recognize Iran's right
to enrich uranium up to 5 percent in its own facilities. Iran,
in return, should issue an official statement in which it declares
its readiness to stop 20 percent uranium enrichment.
3. The main concern of the United States
is to prevent Iran's achievement of nuclear weapons and the
most important problem for the Islamic Republic of Iran is to
have its nuclear rights recognized within framework of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT). Therefore, the two sides would be wise
to prepare a package on the best way for preventing diversion
in Iran's nuclear program toward military purposes under supervision,
for example, by the IAEA with additional monitoring by the United
States and two impartial representatives chosen by Iran. In
this way, the package can be discussed and approved in the fourth
round of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1. On the other
hand, Iran can propose a package on its nuclear rights in cooperation
with two impartial representatives appointed by the United States
for further discussion and approval in the fourth round of talks
between Iran and the P5+1. Proposals for preparing both packages
should be raised in Moscow.
The International
Crisis Group's eminently practical proposals run as follows:
'The Moscow meeting on 18 June should be
used an opportunity.... To begin:
'instead of periodic, one- or two-day high-level,
higher-stakes meetings, Iran and the P5+1 should agree on uninterrupted
talks at a somewhat lower level for several months;
'moreover, both sides need to drop some
of their demands: there will not be significant sanctions
relief at this stage, and it is equally unlikely
that Iran will shut down Fordow – the only installation
it possesses that could resist an Israeli strike.
'Instead:
'Iran should be prepared to put on the
table items that would seriously and realistically address the
P5+1’s proliferation concerns:
'suspending its enrichment at
20 per cent;
'converting its entire stockpile
of 20 per cent uranium hexafluoride into uranium
dioxide pellets to be used for nuclear fuel fabrication;
'and freezing the installation
of new centrifuges at Fordow, while agreeing to use
the facility for research and development purposes alone and
accepting more intrusive monitoring;
'the P5+1 should be willing to put on the
table items that genuinely address Iranian concerns:
'accepting up-front the principle
that Iran can enrich on its soil subject, until Tehran
clarifies matters with the IAEA, to limitations on the level
of purity and number of facilities;
'investing in a new research
reactor and cutting-edge technologies related to
renewable energies in Iran;
'and extending some form of sanctions
relief, including one or more of the following: refraining
from additional sanctions, postponing for a specified period
entry into force of (or, if already in force, suspending)
the EU oil embargo and/or ban on insurance for ship owners
transporting Iranian oil;
'and easing pressure on Iran’s
remaining oil customers.'
There are a wealth of sensible ideas out
there. The signs are that Washington is determined to ignore them,
and the EU will follow spinelessly along.
Uploaded 15 June 2012
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