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Iran's Growing Nuclear Threat

June 15, 2004
Intellectual Conservatism.com
Joe Mariani

After months of playing hide-and-seek with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has taken a hard-line stance against any restrictions on its nuclear program.

For years, the Iranian government has been playing games with the world about its nuclear program, claiming it was only interested in peaceful nuclear development. That lie is about to be disproved in the most terrible way possible -- by the emergence of Iran as a nuclear power.

For reference, ordinary natural uranium has an atomic weight of 238. Only .72 percent of naturally-occurring uranium consists of an unstable isotope with a weight of 235. Various complex methods can be used to separate the lighter uranium from the mix; the most common is by gas centrifuge, of the sort that was found buried under a rosebush in Iraq. Highly-enriched uranium (HEU) contains more than 20 percent Uranium-235. Weapons-grade HEU consists of more than 90 percent pure U-235. A power-generating reactor can be fueled with lower grades of uranium; there is no need for HEU unless you want a sustained nuclear fission reaction -- in other words, a nuclear bomb.

After months of playing hide-and-seek with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has taken a hard-line stance against any restrictions on its nuclear program. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said, "Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club. This is an irreversible path." The "nuclear club" consists of those countries that admit to having nuclear weapons -- the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, and most recently Pakistan and India. North Korea claims to have working nuclear weapons, but has not yet openly tested one, and Israel is suspected of having them. Libya was close to achieving nuclear capability, but Moammar Ghaddafi wisely gave up his ambitions in that direction after the US-led coalition removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in March 2003. Though Iran claimed to have halted its uranium enrichment program, inspectors from the IAEA have repeatedly found traces of highly-enriched uranium at multiple sites in Iran.

Iran has been caught in lies regarding its nuclear weapons programs before, and has covered up very badly. When IAEA inspectors tried in May 2004 to visit suspicious sites they had seen only months earlier, they found that the sites themselves had vanished. The buildings that the inspectors believed contained working enrichment facilities were gone, and in their place were freshly-planted flowerbeds. The Iranians pretended that no buildings had ever been there, even when shown aerial and satellite photographs of the missing buildings. Now, they refuse to keep up even a weak pretense. What else could it mean but the imminence of their nuclear ambition being fulfilled?

A radical fundamentalist government which sponsors global terrorism gaining nuclear capability is a horror that cannot be allowed to happen. If terrorists are willing to blow themselves up in cars packed with explosives or strap on "bomb belts" in order to kill innocent civilians in restaurants and buses, why would they balk at using nuclear weapons in the same way? If they believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife for killing a few children on a schoolbus, what reward do they think they'll receive for wiping an entire city off the map? It's no longer a matter of if, but when. If we allow Tehran to create nuclear weapons, how long will it be before we wake up to find that a nuclear bomb has destroyed a major city like Tel Aviv, Baghdad, Paris, New York, London or Washington DC? Every place on Earth that terrorists have struck, they would have attacked with nuclear weapons if it had been possible. Next time, it might be.

What can be done to stop this threat? If we think we have the time -- and that depends entirely on our intelligence services, which have not exactly had a good track record in the Middle East -- we can attempt to impose sanctions. Most of Iran's oil exports are shipped through the Straits of Hormuz, which can be blockaded with just a small percentage of America's naval force. With the bulk of its oil income halted, the Iranian economy would collapse, but not overnight. Will we have the determination to keep up the blockade long enough? Other oil-exporting nations would undoubtedly halt their exports to any participating nations, and gas and oil prices would rise higher than ever before. (One has to wonder whether this is why President Bush refuses to release oil from the nation's emergency reserve.) The only other option is to strike Iran's suspected nuclear facilities before they can enrich enough uranium to build a weapon, although knowing their locations depends on our intelligence services as well.

The only certainty either way is that the "mainstream" media, Democrats and Liberals would vilify President Bush even more than they already do, if that's even possible. One really has to wonder whose side they're on. Of course, they wouldn't be too kind to him if whole cities began to disappear, either.

Joe Mariani was born and raised in New Jersey. He lives in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are less restrictive and taxes are lower. His essays and links to articles are available at http://guardian.blogdrive.com.

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3522.html

The World Bank Props Up the Iranian Mullahcracy

June 15, 2004
National Review Online
Mohammad Parvin

Even as the Islamic Regime of Iran accelerated the number of arrests, tortures, and death sentences it carried out, on May 29, the World Bank awarded it with two loans totaling $369 million. As justification for granting the loans, the World Bank claims they were awarded to help the people of Iran.

"In many countries we have enfranchised civil societies," the Bank's president, James D. Wolfensohn said at a luncheon. "Should we stop doing that and wait until we had perfect countries before we lend?"

Wolfensohn added: "The easiest thing for me, for the Bank, would be to say, just wait until these countries are democratic, but that is impracticable. The bank is not the United Nations. Its goal is economic development. Sometimes this must go hand in hand with democratic development."

These are fair points, but surely Wolfensohn is aware that in Iran, 70 percent of non-oil revenue and 50 percent of the economy is controlled by the "tax-exempt organizations" (bonyaads), which are accountable only to the Supreme Leader. The people of Iran, in other words, will not benefit from these loans.

Since May 2000, Iran has borrowed $801 million from the World Bank and another $276 million has been approved for two more projects.

Based on information provided by the Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. has always opposed World Bank's assistance to Iran, but has been unsuccessful to block the approval of the loans to that country in recent years, mainly because other large Bank shareholders have sought to increase their engagement with Iran.

"I want to assure you that the Treasury Department and the U.S. Executive Director at the World Bank, while not fully successful, have consistently and actively sought to block all proposals for World Bank Group assistance to Iran," Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury William Schuerch said in his October 29 testimony before a panel of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Although the United States is the Bank's largest shareholder, with a voting share of 16.4 percent, it cannot block lending decisions without support from other major member-countries, Schuerch said.

He said that from July 1993 to May 2000 the Group of Seven (G-7) worked together to stop lending to Iran, but added that this consensus unraveled when some members — notably, European ones — began supporting reengagement with Iran.

"Some of this reengagement was due to their expressed view that engaging with Iran's 'reformers' would support them in their efforts against Iran's hardliners — a view which is still evident as the Europeans negotiate with Iran over their nuclear program," Schuerch explained.

However, the need of the Islamic Regime to stabilize its bankrupt economy is not going to be satisfied by these loans. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on the Iranian economy predicted that Iran needs to mobilize $4 billion a year in foreign loans and in direct investments if it is to achieve a level of growth that stabilizes unemployment.

There is a lot at stake for the World Bank, as we expect more loans to be awarded to Iran in the future. But, the World Bank should realize that supporting the present regime by granting loans is to ignore the will of the people of Iran. The World Bank should know that as the people of Iran do not recognize this regime as their legitimate representative, and as these loans will mostly be used to support the mischief of the regime (such as acquiring weapon of mass destruction or sending terrorists across the border to Iraq), and because they are not the beneficiary of these loans, the World Bank is putting its investments at a great risk.

Every tyrant regime — including this one — comes to an end. The World Bank should have the vision of the future that, when the people of Iran have freed themselves from this monstrous regime, Iran under its future democratic government will not have any responsibility to pay back these loans.

— Mohammad Parvin is an adjunct professor at the California State University and director of the Mission for Establishing Human Rights in Iran.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/parvin200406150847.asp

Negotiating Human Rights in Tehran?

June 15, 2004
Intellectual Conservative
Nooredin Abedian

The European Union's approach to Tehran is to engage in "dialogue," even as political detainees are being tortured in the presence of judges, held for weeks in absolute solitary confinement, and denied basic due process rights.

The European Union's human rights delegation to Iran began its two-day session with Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday, June 14. The Regime's official news agency, ISNA, speaks of the "fourth roundtable talks on human rights between the Islamic Republic and the EU," inaugurated, according to the agency, in an atmosphere of "friendship and mutual understanding" and far from "presumptions built by masters of power or forced by political pressures."

Before the delegation left for Iran, the Human Rights Watch Organization warned EU officials that they, "should take a much stronger approach in the upcoming E.U.-Iran human rights dialogue than they have in previous meetings with the Iranian government."

In fact, the organization had on June 7 published a priceless 73-page report entitled "Like the Dead in Their Coffins: Torture, Detention, and the Crushing of Dissent in Iran" which gave unprecedented details on how political detainees have been tortured in the presence of judges, held for weeks in absolute solitary confinement, and denied basic due process rights.

In recent weeks, hundreds of student protesters have been summoned to court around the country or sent to university disciplinary committees for punishment. Last month, a number of political detainees on medical leave received harsh prison sentences for articles they had published.

Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, urged the EU to "publicly condemn the crackdown currently underway."

The organization asked the EU to make further human rights negotiations with Iran contingent on certain steps, such as: releasing all political prisoners currently held for legal exercise of their right to free expression, creating specific enforcement mechanisms for its anti-torture laws, conducting a thorough investigation of its secret prisons granting full access to international observers, and providing for independent investigation of judges and prosecutors who violate local and international laws.

The HRW report covers mostly the so-called Khatami era (after President Mohammad Khatami). The report shows quite flawlessly that the two-term presidency of Khatami only worsened the human rights situation in Iran. Iran's record of human rights during the '80s and the '90s is well-known and documented, but especially since Khatami's second term, beginning in 2001, the degrading situation shows much more than mere rights abuses. This was supposed to be a period of "openness," one of "reform." Now with such a rights record, and with the recent parliamentary elections -- with virtually all candidates not belonging to the opposite faction, namely the Supreme leader Ali Khamenei's faction, put out of the game -- one can easily deduce that no reform will ever be in sight with the current regime in place.

Then the big question would be the use of "human rights negotiations" with such a regime. EU's policy of "dialogue" with the mullahs has always been criticized, justly so, because of the lack of a minimum of sincerity on the part of the mullahs. Because of this lack of sincerity, the whole outcome is an appeasement of the regime's most notorious factions.

The EU should insist on sending delegations to visit Iranian jails, secret torture chambers, and the indefinite array of solitary confinement cells in the notorious Evin prison of Tehran, not sit down at a roundtable negotiation with those who are responsible for all this mayhem. "Human Rights negotiations" with the regime is shivering enough, but going to Tehran to do this is ridiculous to the Iranian people. It is not without reason that the mullahs say brazenly that "since two years that this dialogue goes on, the EU has not sponsored any resolutions on rights violations in Iran in the UN Human Rights' Commission, and has even recently prevented such a resolution from being issued after opponents of the Islamic Republic instigated that." (Mehr news agency, June 9, 2004). What would those victims in solitary cells, or in torture chambers, or in unknown safe houses-turned-into-prisons say, when they hear about such "friendly atmospheres?"

More dangerous than neglecting rights abuses is letting such abuses be used by those who undertake them as bargaining chips.

Nooredin Abedian is an Iranian engineer based in Germany, and a former lecturer at Tehran University. He writes from time to time on Iranian issues and politics.

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3524.html

Diplomats float resolution that is a sharp rebuke of Iran

AP - World News
Jun 15, 2004

VIENNA - Europe's major powers floated a finely tuned draft resolution Tuesday that reprimands Iran for delaying an investigation into its suspect nuclear activities but refrains from direct threats of sanctions.

Even without such threats, the toughly worded document under consideration at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency maintains pressure on Iran to come clean on aspects of what was a covert nuclear program for nearly 20 years until discovered two years ago.

The new draft, written by France, Germany and Britain and seen by The Associated Press, toned down demands on Iran to abort plans to build a heavy water reactor and slightly modified tough language taking Tehran to task for hampering the IAEA probe.

But the overall wording remained tough. One key phrase "deplored" the fact that Iran's cooperation "has not been complete" _ strong terminology in diplomatic language.

Still, the draft contained no deadline or "trigger mechanism" as sought by the United States and its allies that could set into motion possible sanctions on Iran if it continued its foot dragging past a certain date.

Delegates, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, said that the draft was unlikely to undergo major changes before being formally submitted for a vote later in the week.

Earlier Tuesday, Iran rejected the IAEA criticism.

"We have no plans to produce weapons and all of our activities are for peaceful purposes and nothing is wrong," Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters in Istanbul, Turkey.

In a letter to the leaders of the European powers that drafted the text, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned them against giving in to "U.S. pressure." Quoting from the letter, the daily Sharq cited Khatami as saying that "Iran's cooperation with the international community for the peaceful use of nuclear energy" was at stake.

But in Vienna, Kenneth Brill, the chief U.S. delegate to the IAEA, said Washington remained convinced that Iran was "trying to hide ... a weapons program."

As a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors opened Monday, the agency's chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, reflected the general frustrations with Iran's delaying tactics, saying his agency's probe "can't go on forever."

The agency is mainly concerned with ambiguous, missing or withheld information on the scope of Iran's uranium enrichment program, and the source of enriched uranium found inside the country.

"These are two issues where we need accelerated and proactive cooperation," ElBaradei told reporters. "The way they have been engaging us on these issues has been less than satisfactory."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said ElBaradei's views provided "further evidence that Iran's troubling lack of cooperation with IAEA continues."

He said the United States believes IAEA's board must adopt a strong resolution that calls on Iran to cooperate with the agency and to resolve all the outstanding issues regarding its nuclear program.

Asked why the United States at present does not think Iran should be referred to the U.N. Security Council over its lack of cooperation with the IAEA, a move that could lead to formal U.N. sanctions against the country, Boucher replied that the agency's investigation and verification work in Iran must continue for the foreseeable future.

"We think the agency has continued to find out things about the program, to conduct valuable investigations, to continue to bring facts to light and to continue to keep the pressure on Iran to comply," Boucher said in Washington.

Under growing international pressure, Iran has suspended uranium enrichment and stopped building centrifuges. It also has allowed IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities without notice.

Iran has rejected U.S. allegations that its nuclear program is a smoke screen for making weapons. Instead, the country says its uranium-enrichment _ which could be used to make bombs, once fully operational _ is geared solely toward generating electricity.

The IAEA report, written by ElBaradei, says Iran inquired about buying thousands of magnets for centrifuges on the black market _ casting doubt on Iranian assertions that its P-2 centrifuge program was purely experimental and not aimed for full uranium enrichment.

On the traces of enriched uranium _ which include minute amounts at weapons-grade levels _ Tehran says they were not domestically produced but inadvertently imported in purchases through the nuclear black market.

The IAEA's investigators have not been able to fully test that claim because Pakistan, the main source of the equipment, has blocked free access to its nuclear material.

http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_6620.shtml

Iran Plays 'Cat and Mouse' with UN Nuke Body

June 15, 2004
Reuters
The New York Times

VIENNA -- An Iranian exile accused Tehran on Tuesday of playing a ``cat and mouse'' game with U.N. nuclear watchdog while it secretly develops atomic weapons, a charge that was vehemently denied by a senior Iranian official.

The latest allegation comes from Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh, formerly a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the man who reported in August 2002 that Iran was hiding a massive uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water production facility at Arak.

Jafarzadeh said his latest information -- that Iran's leaders have adopted an official policy of feigning cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) while forging ahead with hidden nuclear weapons activities -- comes from the same sources who told him about Natanz and Arak.

``Their (Iran's) cooperation is intended to confuse the IAEA, to divert their attention to buy time while they get closer to their goal -- a weapon,'' Jafarzadeh told Reuters.

``Their strategy is to keep this inspection process going as long as possible, to keep the inspectors busy, and then pull the plug and leave the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),'' he said. ``It's like cat and mouse, a nuclear shell game.''

Jafarzadeh is now president of the Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting Inc. and is not officially affiliated with the NCRI, whose Washington offices were shut down last year after the United States listed it as a terrorist organization.

Hossein Mousavian, secretary of the foreign policy committee of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said the charge was yet another baseless allegation in a string of false claims.

``During the last 15 months, they (the Iranian exiles) have made many allegations and given the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) such information, but all of it has been proven to be false information, all had no basis (in fact),'' Mousavian told Reuters in a telephone interview.

``More than 670 IAEA inspections prove that we are completely open. We have nothing to hide,'' Mousavian, who is in Vienna for an IAEA board meeting that is expected to pass a resolution rebuking Iran for failing to cooperate fully with the IAEA.

``GUERRILLA WAR STRATEGY''

Washington has long accused oil-rich Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic power program. Tehran denies this, insisting its program is designed solely to produce electricity from nuclear reactors.

Joe Circincione, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Jafarzadeh's allegation was credible.

``It certainly looks like Iran's strategy is a traditional guerrilla war strategy -- draw the enemy in deep,'' he said, adding that the majority of the 35 nations on the IAEA Board of Governors thinks Iran is playing ``cat and mouse'' with the U.N.

On Monday, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's said Iran's cooperation with the agency had been ``less than satisfactory.'' He also said the IAEA was still trying to determine whether Iran had declared all of its uranium enrichment activities.

ElBaradei has said there is no proof Iran has a weapons program, though he said recently ``the jury is still out.''

The IAEA declined to comment, but a Vienna-based diplomat who follows the IAEA said Jafarzadeh and the NCRI were credible.

``While we don't support the NCRI in its methods, their public information about Iran's program has not infrequently proven to have some basis in fact,'' the diplomat said.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran-claim.html

Diplomats Near Agreement to Censure Iran

Tuesday June 15, 2004 7:46 PM
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Diplomats said they were near agreement Tuesday on a toughly worded draft resolution to censure Iran rather than punish it for its lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The document under consideration at the IAEA 35-nation board of governors meeting here said the document lacked a direct threat of sanctions but did keep pressure on Iran to come clean on aspects of its 20-year covert nuclear program that was discovered two years ago.

The draft resolution - written by Germany, France and Britain - was expected to be adopted later this week, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

The new draft toned down demands on Iran to abort plans to build a heavy water reactor and slightly modified language taking Tehran to task for hampering the IAEA probe. But the overall wording remained tough, according to the envoys.

One key phrase in the planned resolution ``deplored'' Iran's spotty record on cooperating with the agency. Other omissions by Iran were noted with ``concern'' or ``serious concern.'' All the phrases are tough language in the diplomatic context.

The draft contained no deadline or ``trigger mechanism'' as sought by the United States and its allies that could set into motion possible sanctions if Iran continued its foot-dragging past a certain date.

However, in an apparent nod to the United States, Canada, Australia and other nations calling for more action, the draft contrasted the ``the passage of time'' - a year since the IAEA probe began - and the still blurry contours of Iran's nuclear program.

The draft appeared to echo the sentiments of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who said Monday in unusually blunt comments that his agency's probe ``can't go on forever.''

Iran has rejected U.S. allegations that its nuclear program is a smoke screen for making atomic weapons. Instead, the country says its uranium-enrichment is geared solely toward generating electricity.

``We have no plans to produce weapons and all of our activities are for peaceful purposes and nothing is wrong,'' Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters Tuesday in Istanbul, Turkey.

In a bid to sway the meeting, the Iranian delegation met privately with ElBaradei for an hour Tuesday and lobbied the chief delegates of the three European nations who wrote the draft, said a diplomat close to the agency.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami also sent a letter to the European powers behind the draft resolution warning them against giving in to ``U.S. pressure'' and saying Iran may cut back its cooperation.

The United States wants the IAEA to declare Iran in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to refer Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

Kenneth Brill, the chief U.S. delegate to the IAEA, said in Vienna that Washington remained convinced that Iran was ``trying to hide ... a weapons program.''

One diplomat told The Associated Press that Washington recognized it could not get majority board support for a direct or implicit threat of U.N. sanctions.

Instead, he said, the Americans were looking ahead to the next board meeting in September with the expectation that new revelations about Iran's nuclear program would surface by then.

The results of analysis of enriched uranium traces found on military sites in Iran and now being evaluated by the agency could provide the trigger in September, said the diplomat, suggesting such a finding could support suspicions that Tehran enriched uranium domestically.

Iran denies working on enrichment beyond the experimental stage and says the traces found within the country, which include minute amounts at weapons-grade levels, were inadvertently imported.

Under growing international pressure, Iran has suspended uranium enrichment and stopped building centrifuges. It also has allowed IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities without notice. But recent revelations have raised new suspicions.

An IAEA report, written by ElBaradei, says Iran inquired about buying thousands of magnets for centrifuges on the black market - casting doubt on Iranian assertions that its P-2 centrifuge program was purely experimental and not aimed for full uranium enrichment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4208055,00.html

U.S. Presses Europeans To Toughen Tone Against Iran: German Envoy

VIENNA (IRNA) -- Americans are putting strong pressure on Europeans to change and toughen the second draft resolution proposed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors.

The German Board member, who spoke to IRNA on condition of anonymity here on Tuesday, said certain European states are now getting prepared to drastically change the resolution to meet the U.S. wishes.

The source said Americans are seriously and persistently calling for inclusion of two issues, namely condemnation of Iran and setting a timeframe and deadline for the country.

The German envoy said Americans believe that the second draft by the Europeans has adopted a very soft tone against Iran. He said European delegations predict they will have to put forward a third or even fourth resolution to settle differences with the U.S.

He predicted that the Board meeting will take until Saturday and Sunday.

The 35-nation IAEA Board has been studying Iran's case since Monday.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=6/16/2004&Cat=2&Num=005