Iran looks to fight back
By Safa Haeri
PARIS - Officially, Iran has reacted guardedly to a resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of directors calling on it to sign up to the additional protocols to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and also to immediately stop all its uranium enriching programs - in effect, prove by October 31 that it is not building an atomic weapon.
If Iran does not cooperate and it is officially declared in non-compliance of the NPT, "Iran will forfeit it's right to share nuclear technology for peaceful purposes" and Russia will not be able to provide critical nuclear fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant, an IAEA official said. Although Russia is the main foreign contributor to Bushehr, China, Pakistan and some Western countries also provide dual-use technology and equipment and "that would no longer be legal under international law if Iran was not a country in good standing" under the NPT, he said.
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry senior spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, "The Islamic Republic is examining how to continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency," even though Iran's delegation had stormed out of a closed-door meeting with the IAEA in Vienna on Friday, accusing Washington of having new invasion plans after Iraq.
Following intense US pressure for action against Iran, the 35-nation board, effectively the United Nations' watchdog of nuclear activities, passed the resolution setting the deadline, which gives Iran a last chance to prove that it has been complying with the NPT.
"The Islamic Republic from the beginning had declared that the IAEA must act professionally and had warned the agency not to enter a political game," Asefi said, "regretting that the agency has been misused by certain Western states, particularly the US, and the process of debates and the behind-the-scene lobbies showed that Iran's warnings were right and that the IAEA has overlooked its professional work and has entered political bickering."
In the absence of any firm answer from Iran's leaders to the resolution, it has been the press, both reformist and conservative, that has taken up the matter. In angry editorials that reflect the views of officials from the two sides of the Iranian clerical leadership, editorialists and columnists expressed outrage and urged the authorities to expel the ambassadors of the three nations that initiated the resolution - Canada, Australia and Japan; to get out of the NPT and review Iran's relations with all the nations that approved the decision.
Many Iranian political analysts consider the resolution adopted on Friday without a vote - a procedure that IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming described as "very unusual" - as a "humiliating defeat" for the Islamic Republic.
Iran's delegation at the board, led by Ali Akbar Salehi, its ambassador at the IAEA, walked out of the meeting, stating that "such an offensive text risks to kill an otherwise constructive process". "My country can possibly not accept a decision taken under political considerations," he told journalists in Vienna, accusing Western powers of the board of presenting Iran "biased, illegal and illegitimate" demands that could not be met in the time limit of October 31.
"The Iranian walkout was a protest against the resolution and against the procedure," an IAEA spokesman explained.
Salehi on Sunday also accused the US, Britain, France and Germany for their "extreme position" that, he said, was "nothing new".
What angered Salehi most was that not only had Russia, the country that is building Iran's first controversial nuclear-powered electrical plant, backed the resolution, but also some members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), despite assurances offered a day before the Friday meeting by Malaysia's ambassador, Hoseyn Hanif, that the NAM would press for a compromise solution.
But Mohammad ElBradeh'i, the Egyptian director of the IAEA, expressed satisfaction, saying that the resolution sends a clear and strong message to Iran, and calling on it to cooperate with the IAEA "fully and immediately". "I reiterate that in the weeks ahead we have a lot to do in regard with Iran's nuclear projects, as I have to submit to the board [of directors] a precise report concerning the state of Iran's cooperation with the resolution," he stressed at the end of the meeting.
In a report submitted to the 35 directors, IAEA experts indicated that in one or two years from now, Iranian scientists would master the whole cycle of uranium enriching, a technology needed for developing an atomic bomb. In an August 26 report, the IAEA said that it had found traces of weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium at an enrichment facility at Natanz.
"They advance fast and it is in every one's interest to fix them a time limit. We must have a very precise idea of what's going on in Iran and what they are up to," an expert told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.
The US and Israel, joined by the EU, allege that Iran's civilian nuclear programs are a front for building atomic bombs aimed at destroying the Jewish state. But both Tehran and Moscow reject the accusation, insisting that all atomic projects are for civilian and peaceful purposes, mainly producing electricity.
Noting that urging Iran to sign "immediately and unconditionally" the additional protocols to the NPT is the "most humiliating clause" of a resolution that denies the majlis (parliament) and other decision-making organs of the nation the exercise of their sovereign rights. The hardline evening daily Keyhan said on Saturday that the least officials can do is to immediately expel the ambassadors of the three countries that formulated the resolution and not allow them to return until their countries presented full apologies to the Iranian people and government.
In an editorial signed by Hoseyn Sharia'atmadari, a specialist in interrogating political and intellectual dissidents appointed as editor of the paper by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, Keyhan assured that if the authorities failed to expel the three ambassadors, "the Muslim people of Iran would do it by closing down their embassies in Tehran".
"Yesterday's [Friday's] resolution of the board of directors of the IAEA leaves not doubt about the fact that the recent cacophonies over the nuclear activities of our nation are a well calculated plot aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran, using the NPT as a pressure tool," added the daily that reflects the views of Khamenei.
"In other words, the IAEA board of the directors negates the existence of the Islamic Republic, dealing with our Muslim nation as a surrogate state of the Middle Age type," Sharia'atmadari noted.
The article prompted the pro-reform press to express concern that the proposed threats against Ottawa, Tokyo and Canberra might provoke "some people" to in fact attack the three nation's embassies, "as happened to the British embassy, which was gun fired [on September 3] after a similar article in Keyhan," it was noted.
For its part, Jomhuri Eslami (Islamic Republic), a radical daily belonging to Khamenei, went even further, saying that Iran should follow the example of North Korea, which on December 31 expelled all IAEA inspectors and later withdrew from the NPT. "It should be accepted that the correct way was the one North Korea chose," the paper said, advising the authorities to continue the controversial atomic programs "unabated, whether Washington likes it or not".
While the state-run, leader-controlled Tehran Radio run a commentary along the same lines, Resalat, another conservative-controlled newspaper that speaks for the bazaar and clerical oligarchy, questioned the government decision to allow the IAEA's experts to inspect Iran's nuclear sites, "knowing well that some of them [experts] are spies".
Yas No, the official organ of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, a coalition of groups and parties that back embattled President Mohammad Khatami and also control parliament, advised the government to "revise" its relations with all the countries that supported the resolution.
"The [IAEA] resolution was adopted under heavy pressures applied by the United States on other countries, including the European Union, and this is exactly what makes it partial, discriminatory and unusual," said Morad Veisi of Yas No. "Not only will the Iranian people stand up to the discriminatory decisions of the IAEA, but they will also consider revising relations with all the nations that supported the resolution," he wrote.
However, Veisi indirectly blamed the ruling conservatives for Iran's unprecedented isolation on the international scene, adding, "One must also ask why the position of Iran has degraded from its peak of the golden period of after the second Khordad [May 26, 1997, marking the surprising landslide victory of Mohammad Khatami in presidential elections] to the present situation where even nations such as Japan, Canada and Australia side against the Islamic Republic?"
This is the view of most of Iran's reformists, who accuse the conservatives of having plunged the nation into a political abysses by making the wrong decisions at the wrong time and in the wrong places. In fact, the unprecedented gap between Tehran and the IAEA is so deep that Iran has lost all of its traditional friends and supporters, such as the European Union, Russia, Japan, and even in the NAM.
In a recent visit to Tehran, Xavier Solana, the Spanish minister on the European Union's Security and Foreign Affairs committee, warned Iran to accept the additional protocols or face "bad news".
"The resolution of the IAEA giving Iran six weeks to comply has placed the regime in a very difficult situation. In the 25 years of its life, the ruling Iranian ayatollahs have never been in such an awkward position on the international scene," observed Sadeq Saba, a senior commentator of the BBC on Iranian affairs.
In his view, Tehran has no other choice but to bow to the IAEA's demands and convince the international community about its nuclear programs, or adopt the North Korean model and cut all of its ties with the IAEA and accept the consequences.
"In case Iran's answers fail to convince, then the United Nations Security Council can impose economic sanctions against it. But contrary to North Korea, Iran's economy is tied to international exchanges, making it vulnerable to international embargoes," Saba concluded.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EI16Ak01.html