Page 2 of
2 Iran: Switching the nuclear
tracks By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
with access to declared
nuclear material and facilities, and has provided
the required nuclear-material accountancy reports
in connection with such material and facilities."
A member of Iran's nuclear negotiation
team, Said Jalili, has stated, "Iran has no
problem with transparency." Comparing
confidence-building to a "two-way street", Jalili
and other Iranian officials have called on the
other side to demonstrate goodwill
toward
Iran by taking "strategic initiatives". Various
French diplomats, including former foreign
minister Roland Dumas, have spoken in favor of
Iran by stating "nuclear-fuel enrichment is Iran's
right".
And the United Kingdom's former
ambassador to Iran, Richard Dalton, has similarly
stated that "no one has asked Iran to suspend its
nuclear program permanently". Clearly, Ambassador
Dalton has not been paying close attention to the
US policymakers who have repeatedly insisted that
"not even one centrifuge in Iran should be
spinning", to paraphrase the US envoy to the IAEA
speaking at the 2005 NPT review conference in New
York.
Henceforth, we can expect a growing
gulf between the US and Europe on this matter,
particularly if Iran makes good on its pledge to
"provide a full guarantee" regarding its peaceful
nuclear program, to paraphrase the former
president, Hashemi Rafsanjani. "You say we do not
trust Iran, that it would not take advantage of
its nuclear advances for military purposes, but we
are willing to give full assurances regarding this
matter," Rafsanjani said last week.
This
is echoed by Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar
Soltanieh, who has stated Iran's "preparedness to
engage in constructive, and not make-believe,
negotiations toward movement in resolving all the
issues with the IAEA". Soltanieh has warned that
another UN resolution would translate into added
pressures on the government to exit the NPT
altogether, in a veiled reference to an impending
bill in the Majlis (parliament) that seeks this
ultimate objective.
However, both
Rafsanjani and Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali
Larijani, have gone on record this past week
stating Iran's readiness to enter into
comprehensive negotiations "without
preconditions". The question is, of course, how
does this jibe with President Ahmadinejad's and
other officials' rejection of the possibility of
any suspension of enrichment activities?
Reflecting on this question, an unnamed
Iranian specialist has been quoted on the
semi-official website Baztab.com questioning the
wisdom of Ahmadinejad's metaphoric language of a
"train without brakes", which also connotes that
"the nuclear dossier is out of control and not
even the highest government officials are in
charge". The same specialist criticizes
Ahmadinejad for using a language "outside the
diplomatic vocabulary" and for adopting a position
that "carries consequences for Iran in the realm
of negotiations".
Another editorial, in
the government-controlled daily Etelaat, has
predicted that the nuclear issue, "instead of
moving toward resolution", is "becoming more
complex than before", predicting that within a
month or two another UN resolution will pass and
"will expand the scope of sanctions". A Tehran
University professor, Raisi Tousi, addressing a
conference on Iran's foreign policy and national
interests, has articulated the view of many
Iranians by stating: "It is true that nuclear
energy is our evident right, yet we are faced with
an unchained leviathan called America that has
succeeded in getting the world and Iran's
neighbors to its side."
What is to be
done? Clearly, Iran's stated objective of
returning its nuclear dossier from the hands of
the Security Council to the IAEA cannot be
achieved short of a major diplomatic breakthrough
signaling Iran's willingness to reach a
compromise. There are unconfirmed reports that
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is
entertaining replacing Larijani with his adviser
on international affairs, former foreign minister
Ali Akbar Valayati, who visited Moscow recently
and has come out in favor of more flexible
approach by Iran.
Nor should Iran vest any
hope in Russia and China backtracking or reversing
course on Iran at the Security Council,
irrespective of Russian President Vladimir Putin's
stated misgivings about the United States'
military option against Iran.
Iranian
government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham has
categorically stated: "We do not accept the
suspension, and any discussion that raises
suspension is rejected. We have done our peaceful
nuclear activities with full transparency and
under the IAEA's inspection. Therefore, this
demand for suspension is illogical and not in line
with national interests."
But repeatedly
in the past, eg in 2003, various Iranian officials
have admitted, even apologized, to the IAEA for
the past failure to be fully transparent,
promising to correct the shortcoming, viewed as
egregious by the IAEA standards, through various
"corrective steps" cited above. Today, Iran must
continue the same path of "corrective steps" and
avoid the policy-supplanting rhetoric that
precludes meaningful negotiations. To do so is in
fact tantamount to setting the obverse
precondition for negotiations, ie, no suspension,
which clogs up the diplomatic channels for a
peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis.
In fact, Iran's response to the
international incentive package clearly raised the
possibility of suspension as a "result of
negotiations" and, several months later, that
appears to be the wisdom that Iran needs to return
to as soon as possible.
Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After
Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy
(Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating
Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World
Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with
Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's
nuclear potential latent", Harvard International
Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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