Doug Lorimer
Following two years of intense lobbying by the US government, an emergency meeting of the governing board of the UN's Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a resolution on February 4 requesting IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei to report on Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council after the next regular IAEA board meeting, scheduled for March 6.
The next day, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad informed the IAEA that in retaliation his government would cease its voluntary implementation of an additional protocol to Iran's 1974 nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA. The additional protocol, which Iran has not ratified and is therefore not legally bound to abide by, allows IAEA inspectors to make spot checks on Iran's nuclear facilities.
According to a report on Iranian state television, Ahmadinejad informed the IAEA that his country would henceforth only abide by its legal obligations under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its ratified safeguards agreement.
The February 4 resolution, which was presented by the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) with Washington's backing, was voted for by 27 of the board's 35 member-countries, including the five permanent members of the Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the US). Three countries (Cuba, Venezuela and Syria) voted against, while five (Algeria, Belarus, Indonesia, Libya and South Africa) abstained.
While reported in the Western corporate media as "referring" Iran to the Security Council for possible punitive "action", the resolution, at the insistence of Russia and China, requests ElBaradei to "report to the Security Council ... all IAEA reports and resolutions, as adopted, relating to" the following steps that the IAEA board "deems it necessary" that Iran undertake:
- "re-establish full and sustained suspension of all [uranium] enrichment-related and processing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the agency.
- "reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;
- "ratify promptly and implement in full additional protocol" to its current nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
Neither the NPT nor Iran's safeguards agreement requires Iran to comply with any of these demands. Non-fulfilment of them therefore does not put Iran in "non-compliance" with its international treaty obligations, the only legal grounds for the Security Council to authorise punitive "action".
Associated Press reported on February 5: "In recent days, the diplomatic debate at the United Nations on the issue has focused on two words — 'reporting' Iran to the council or 'referring' it.
"The distinction reflects a fundamental difference in view. The Russians and Chinese do not mind if the council is informed of the IAEA's dealings with Iran, but they do not want the IAEA to 'refer' Iran to the council. That, they believe, would give the impression that the IAEA was washing its hands of Iran and asking the council to take the lead."
"We and China can accept informing of the Security Council, which is quite normal", Russia's UN ambassador, Andrey Denisov, told AP. "That is the right of the Security Council to get any information it needs. But not referral, not official submitting, not handing it to the Security Council."
However, John Bolton, Washington's UN ambassador, told reporters that "there is no difference" between having the IAEA board "report" or "refer" Iran's case to the Security Council. He added: "It's been the view of the United States that the Iran clandestine nuclear weapons program should be on the agenda of the [Security] Council. That has been our view for three years."
For several years now, Washington has alleged — without being able to provide any evidence — that Iran's research into the production of low-enriched uranium (uranium containing at least 5% of the rare, fissionable, uranium 235 isotope) as a fuel for nuclear energy production is a cover for a secret program to make a nuclear weapon. Weapons-grade enriched uranium is extremely difficult to produce, as it requires at least 25 kilograms of uranium with a U-235 concentration of at least 90% to make a nuclear weapon.
Washington's case against Iran is based on the same sort of lies and misinformation that US President George Bush peddled in the lead-up to his March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Providing an example of how US officials publicly distort the facts to make their case against Iran, in testimony given on February 2 to the US Senate intelligence committee, US national intelligence director John Negroponte claimed that "Iran conducted a clandestine uranium enrichment program for nearly two decades in violation of its IAEA safeguards agreement".
In fact, Iran has yet to begin operations of its planned "uranium enrichment program". It has only conducted research into how to make low-enriched uranium as a nuclear fuel, research that it was not required to report to the IAEA under its safeguards agreement.
Under the unratified additional protocol to its safeguards agreement, which it voluntarily agreed to abide by in December 2003, Iran was required to provide full disclosure of all its nuclear-related activities since its safeguards agreement came into effect in 1974.
As a result of these disclosures, the IAEA learned that Iran had imported small quantities of fissionable materials, with a total U-235 content of 0.13 kilograms, and had engaged in laboratory-scale activities involving those materials that ought to have been reported to the IAEA, but were not.
Washington used this minor technical breach by Iran to pressure the IAEA board to adopt a resolution in September 2004 finding Iran in "non-compliance" with the additional protocol. Since then, however, Iran has provided full disclosure on these activities, thus meeting the requirements of the additional protocol.
In 2004, the IAEA also learned about similar unreported activities by South Korea. However because South Korea is militarily allied to the US, neither Washington nor its EU allies have pushed for the IAEA board to report or refer South Korea to the Security Council.
Washington's goal in getting Iran referred to the Security Council is to prepare the way for a future Iraq-style US-led invasion of Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter.
In January 2005, renowned US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that in interviews with past and present US intelligence and military officials, "I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran".
Hersh was also told that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to update its invasion plans for Iran. Writing in the January 16, 2005 New Yorker magazine, he reported: "Strategists at the headquarters of the US Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military's war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran."
As was the case with the US invasion of oil-rich Iraq, the aim of a US invasion of Iran will be to install a pro-US government that will enable the big US oil corporations to take control of Iran's nationalised oil industry. This will give the US capitalist rulers a stranglehold over Persian Gulf oil exports, and thus the dominant position in the world oil market.
The biggest obstacle facing Washington in implementing this plan is that its military is bogged down in neighbouring Iraq, trying — unsuccessfully — to defeat a large-scale war of guerrilla resistance by patriotic Iraqis. Invading and occupying Iran, a country with almost four times the territorial area and three times the population of Iraq, would place far greater strain on the already overstretched US Army.
According to a 136-page study for the Pentagon by Andrew Krepinevich, a retired US Army officer, the US Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to defeat the anti-occupation insurgency. Some major army divisions are serving their second year-long tours in Iraq, and some smaller units have served three times.
In addition to the strain on the US Army of having to impose prolonged multiple tours of duty, the Iraqi insurgency has also forced the US military to refuse to release around 50,000 soldiers whose service contracts have expired.
"As the war in Iraq drags on, the army is accumulating a collection of problems that cumulatively could call into question the viability of an all-volunteer force", US defence analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think-tank told Reuters on January 28. "When a service has to repeatedly resort to compelling the retention of people who want to leave, you're edging away from the whole notion of volunteerism" toward a conscript army.
Reactivation of the draft would be highly unpopular, unless Washington, using the UN as "legal" cover, can convince the majority of the US public that it is necessary to defeat an imminent threat of direct nuclear attack upon US cities. This is why Washington needs to portray Iran as posing just such a threat.
From Green Left Weekly, February 15, 2006.
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