Doug Lorimer

In an 11-page report on Iran’s nuclear program circulated on February 27 to the governing board of the UN’s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in advance of its March 6 meeting, IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei declared that after a three-year investigation his agency has found “no evidence about any deviation from peaceful nuclear activities in Iran after inspecting all the suspected cases” raised by the US government.

Despite this, according to the February 28 New York Times, ElBaradei’s report makes “no definitive judgment about whether the program was peaceful, or intended to create the capacity to produce weapons. That surprised some governments and even some agency officials who had predicted that the report would be harsher.”

The governments that had “predicted” — or rather, hoped — the report would be “harsher” were those of the US and its EU-3 allies (Britain, France and Germany).

At an emergency meeting of the IAEA board on February 4, these governments succeeded in getting a resolution adopted that requested ElBaradei to “report” to the UN Security Council after the March 6 IAEA meeting on Iran’s response to the demands made in the same resolution. These included the demand that Iran abandon “all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development” — even though these activities are perfectly legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

According to Iran’s IRNA news agency, ElBaradei’s report merely notes that Iran’s uranium enrichment research activities are “covered by agency safeguards containment and surveillance measures”. It notes that Iran has informed the IAEA that it is preparing to introduce some of its 85 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into a cascade of 20 centrifuges for research into production of enriched uranium “within the framework of the NPT”.

Nuclear power plants typically use uranium enriched to a concentration of 3-5% of the fissionable uranium-235 isotope. Natural uranium (and UF6) contains about 0.7% U-235. According to IAEA documents, 1000 cascaded centrifuges running 24 hours a day for a year would be needed to produce the 22 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (with at least a 90% concentration of fissionable U-235) necessary to build a crude nuclear weapon.

ElBaradei’s report, which will be discussed by the IAEA board on March 6, also said: “Although the agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran.”

The report said that further verification would take time — an indication that ElBaradei is reluctant to bow to Washington’s demand that he officially “refer” Iran to the Security Council. Doing so without any evidence that Iran is violating the NPT or its nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA would risk discrediting the IAEA among UN member countries, the majority of which support Iran’s right to produce nuclear fuel for electricity generation.

At the end of his report, ElBaradei stated that he would continue to report to the IAEA board of governors as appropriate, which means Iran’s nuclear dossier should remain at the IAEA rather than be “referred” to the Security Council for possible punitive “action”.

Completely ignoring the actual content of ElBaradei’s report, Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA, told reporters in Vienna on February 28: “Iran’s leaders are forging ahead to acquire the material, equipment, and expertise to produce nuclear weapons.”

On February 26, Iranian negotiators said they had reached “basic” agreement with Russia on a joint venture, to be carried out on Russian soil, to enrich uranium for use in the Bushehr nuclear power plant. “We think we can come to an agreement that a joint venture on the soil of the Russian Federation will be able to meet Iran’s needs fully”, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference during a visit to Hungary on February 28.

The Russian offer of a joint venture to produce low-enriched uranium for Iran has been publicly backed by Washington, which claims its only aim is to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Washington’s real aim, however, is to get Iran referred to the Security Council so as to give public credibility to the totally unsubstantiated allegations that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. As with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the US capitalist rulers hope to use an Iranian WMD scare to win US public support for a future “regime change” invasion of Iran so as to conquer its vast oil resources.

While claiming to support the Russian joint-venture offer to Iran, US officials continue to demand that Iran renounce conducting any research into the process of uranium enrichment. They claim that such research will give Iran the technical expertise to make weapons-grade enriched uranium. But an Iranian commitment to renounce enrichment research would make it impossible to participate as equals with the Russians in an enrichment “joint venture”.

From Green Left Weekly, March 8, 2006.
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