Global Nuclear Divide

But they are unlikely to get their way. The Europeans -- represented in thenegotiations by the troika of Britain, France, and Germany -- claim that beforethe latest round of talks, starting in mid-November, Tehran promised to freeze"all uranium enrichment-related activities." What the Iranians have,in fact, done is not to start the actual enrichment of uranium hexafluoride (UF6gas), but to convert uranium yellow cake into a precursor for UF6. According toa non-European diplomat in Vienna, the non-aligned governors of the IAEA Boardwill accept the Iranian argument that this is uranium-conversion work and noturanium-enrichment work.

The emerging crisis is the result of a stalemate between Iran and the EUtroika. The Europeans are aiming to get Tehran to cease all uranium-relatedactivity permanently and depend instead exclusively on imports of low-enrichedfissile material produced by the Europeans for Iran's civilian nuclear program.This is totally unacceptable to the Iranians.

On May 3, addressing the UN conference to review the nuclearNon-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi hinted atthe real reason for the devolving Iranian nuclear situation. He spoke of thedemands being made on Iran as "arbitrary and self-serving criteria andthresholds regarding proliferation-proof and proliferation-pronetechnologies" which violate "the spirit and letter of the NPT anddestroy the balance between the rights and obligations in the Treaty."

At the core of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is Article IV. It gives anysignatory "an inalienable right to develop, research, produce, and usenuclear energy for peaceful purposes," and to acquire technology to thiseffect from fellow-signatories. In practical terms, removing Article IV from theNPT -- as some in the Unites States have proposed -- would mean terminating theright of the signatory to "the nuclear fuel cycle."

Fueling What?

This nuclear fuel cycle consists of mining uranium ore, processing it intouranium oxide (yellow cake), transforming yellow cake first into uraniumtetrafluoride (UF4) gas and then into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas, followedby the enrichment of UF6 to varying degrees of purity for the lighter U235isotopes: 3.5-4% for use in nuclear power reactors; 10-20% for researchreactors; and 90%-plus pure for use in the building of nuclear weapons.

After the fuel rods in a nuclear power plant have yielded their energy,transforming water into steam to run electricity generating turbines, they arecalled "spent rods." They can then be reprocessed with the aim ofextracting from them plutonium (Pu239 or Pu241), which can be used as yet morefissile material. Nuclear fuel thus produces both electric power and morenuclear fuel, and is therefore in principle a renewable source of energy.

"The termination of the fuel cycle activities demanded of Iran [by theEU] means you have killed off the nuclear NPT," said Hassan Rouhani, Iran'schief negotiator with the EU troika and secretary of the country's SupremeNational Security Council (SNSC). "If you take out Article IV, alldeveloping countries will step out of the Treaty."

This is not a fanciful scenario. Just before the UN conference of 188countries opened in New York on May 2 to review the Non-Proliferation Treaty,the non-nuclear weapons signatories to the NPT met in Mexico City under theauspices of the New Agenda Coalition (NAC).

Seven foreign ministers from Asian, African, European and South Americancountries that do not have nuclear weapons summarized the NAC's stance in the InternationalHerald Tribune in the following fashion: ‘When the nuclear NPT came intoforce 35 years ago, the central bargain was that non-nuclear-weapons states likeus would renounce their right to develop nuclear weapons while retaining theinalienable right to undertake research into nuclear energy and to produce anduse it for peaceful purposes… while the five declared nuclear-weapon statesreduced and then eliminated their nuclear weapons [Article VI]."

By now, it has become crystal clear that this bargain has not been -- andwill not be -- kept. The New Agenda Coalition criticized the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for spending all its time and energy monitoring andenforcing compliance by non-nuclear-weapon countries suspected of wanting todevelop such weapons, while overlooking the obvious -- that the nuclear powershave not implemented the commitments they made at the NPT review conferences of1995 and 2000 .

For instance, in 2000 the U.S. government pledged to ratify the ComprehensiveTest Ban Treaty but has not done so yet and shows no signs that it will. It alsopromised to sign a verifiable accord to end the production of new fissilematerial for nuclear weapons but has failed to do so. To make matters worse, theBush administration has been trying for two years to get Congressionalauthorization to fund research on a new generation of nuclear weapons includingsmall yield mini-nukes and nuclear bunker busters. It has also mandated nuclearlabs in the U.S. to come up with ways of upgrading the present nuclear arsenalby making it more robust and longer lasting.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker carefully pointed out tothe NPT review conference that the Bush administration's Moscow Treaty withRussia in 2002 required sharp reductions in the number of operationally deployednuclear warheads it retained by 2012. What he failed to say was that thesewarheads would be mothballed, not destroyed, and that the bilateral treaty lacksverification procedures.

The New Agenda Coalition representatives also brought up another sore pointfor non-nuclear NPT signatories. They highlighted the 2000 NPT review conferencewhere nuclear-weapon countries once again formulated an "unequivocal"undertaking to completely eliminate their nuclear arsenals. "This goal isall the more important in a world in which terrorists seek to acquire weapons ofmass destruction," they wrote. "The nuclear-weapons states shouldacknowledge that disarmament and non-proliferation [are] mutually reinforcingprocesses: What does not exist cannot proliferate."

In contrast, the three western nuclear-weapon counties (the United States,Britain and France) are primarily interested in closing what they see asloopholes in the NPT which, in their view, can be exploited bynon-nuclear-weapon states to fabricate nuclear arms -- especially, of course,"the inalienable right" to acquire dual-use technology which couldthen be deployed for civilian or military ends. For example, centrifuges usedfor enriching uranium to 3.5-4 % purity for nuclear-power plants or 10-20%purity for research reactors can also be harnessed to produce 90%-plus pureuranium for weapons.

Iranian Moves

In the case of Iran, its leaders have publicly offered the EU troika"objective guarantees" regarding the peaceful intentions of itsuranium-enrichment program (to be monitored by the IAEA). Washington, on theother hand, insists that Tehran is using the NPT as a cover to go to the brinkof nuclear weapons production; that it intends to withdraw from the NPT at atime of its own choosing (just as North Korea did) and then assemble a nuclearweapon within weeks. By so doing, Iran would break the nuclear weapons monopolyIsrael has enjoyed in the Middle East since 1968. Both the Bush administrationand Israel are determined to maintain this monopoly.

Washington also argues that Tehran has forfeited any rights under the Treatyby misleading the IAEA over the nature of its uranium-enrichment program. Irandoes not accept this assessment nor have the remaining 34 members of the IAEA'sboard of governors.

Iran attributes its cat-and-mouse behavior in the past to the economicsanctions applied against it by the Europeans and the Americans which deprivedit of access to civilian nuclear technology to which it is entitled as asignatory to the NPT.

These days, however, Iranian leaders are learning that transparency has itsvirtues. Following the publication in the March 13 Sunday Times of a leakfrom Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office regarding his country'spossible plans to raid Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, PresidentMuhammad Khatami escorted a party of 30 local and foreign journalists to theunderground facility.

That dispelled some of the fear-filled mystique about the place created bythe story Israeli officials had planted. Among the structures the visitingjournalists saw was a huge empty hall meant for the installation of thousands ofcentrifuges at some future date. A few weeks later, Iran broke another taboo. Ittook Elahe Mohtasham, a representative of the London-based InternationalInstitute of Strategic Studies, on a day-long visit to the Uranium ConversionFacility in Isfahan.

In a long report she published in the Sunday Times on May 1, shedescribed not just the equipment and buildings she saw, but also herconversations in Persian with scientists and other officials at the site. Thefacility, completed in March 1998, is visited by the IAEA every three or fourweeks. It was there that, in March 2004, the Iranians converted yellow cake intouranium hexafluoride gas UF6 for the first time. Iran thus became the tenthcountry in the world to do so -- the five members of the initial nuclear club,the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, and China; and later, Israel, India,Pakistan, and Brazil.

Within three months, the Isfahan facility had produced 45 kg of UF6. ByOctober, its stock of UF6 rose to 3,000 kg. The scientists and technicians,including women, had also managed to transform UF6 gas into liquid. It was then,with Iran entering talks with the EU Troika, that all such activity wassuspended. When asked whether they would be able to produce enough UF6 to feedthe prospective 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz, 90 miles to the north-east, thescientists replied, "Yes."

According to the IAEA, between April and October 2004, the number ofcentrifuge rotors in Iran rose from 1,140 to 1,274. And Rouhani revealed thatthe government had built and assembled all those centrifuges in a year andseveral months. Later, he stated that the reports of protective tunnels andunderground facilities being built by Iran for its nuclear facilities"might be true."

The scientists at the Isfahan uranium conversion plant were familiar with theSunday Times story about Israeli plans to attack Iran's nuclearfacilities. They told Mohtasham that they had no protection against militaryattack and that the tunnels were actually very narrow, just enough for twopeople to squeeze through. They believed, however, that any attack by the U. S.or Israel would destabilize the whole region and, at that point, Iran wouldprobably withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and start a genuinenuclear-weapons program.

The European negotiators seem aware of the dire consequences of military attacks on Iran by Israel or the United States. Until now, they seemingly wantedto keep the talks simmering along, hoping that a pragmatic winner in thepresidential election on June 17 could open the way for accommodation on theissue. "Pragmatic" is their code word for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani,a wily politician who, along with Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, is now the onlysurviving member of the top leadership that was instrumental in bringing aboutthe Islamic revolution in 1979.

The Iranians do not seem unduly worried that the emergency meeting of theIAEA governors will postpone the discussion of the Europeans' complaint to theirregular quarterly meeting, due to take place just a few days before the Iranianpresidential election. Even if the issue is referred to the UN Security Council,there is a very strong chance that China and Russia will veto any resolutionimposing sanctions on Iran. Overall, The Iranians feel that this issue, ifpushed into the international arena, will cause a global divide between thedeveloping world and the Western world. It may be that they are overestimating,but there is no doubt that this is an issue of paramount importance ininternational affairs.

Dilip Hiro is the author of TheIranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and Its Furies (just nowbeing published by Nation Books) and TheEssential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide. A printed version of this article is available in The Middle EastInternational, no. 750. Copyright 2005 Dilip Hiro. Courtesy, TomDispatch.com