Doug Lorimer
On April 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that two days earlier Iranian scientists had succeeded in producing "nuclear fuel" — uranium gas enriched with 3.5% of the fissionable uranium-235 isotope (natural uranium has 0.7% U-235). The next day, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters that Washington would push for "strong steps" by the UN Security Council to stop Iran continuing to research uranium enrichment.
On April 14, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said that Washington would push for the Security Council to impose targeted sanctions on Iran, which could include travel restrictions on some members of the Iranian government and a freeze on assets. Russia and China, which have veto rights in the Security Council, strongly oppose sanctions against Iran.
Under US pressure, on March 29 the council approved a non-binding statement that, while noting that the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows all signatory states "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination", called on Iran to implement a "full and sustained suspension" of all research into the production of nuclear fuel within 30 days as a "confidence-building" measure. Defending its right under the NPT to produce nuclear fuel, Iran immediately rejected the demand.
US officials claim that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. On April 10, US Senator majority leader Bill Frist provided an example of these claims, telling journalists during a visit to Moscow: "Iran has been violating its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations and has pursued an illicit covert nuclear weapons program for as much [sic] as 20 years."
However, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, has repeatedly reported to the IAEA governing board that, as best as he can tell, all Iranian nuclear materials and activities that should be declared to the IAEA have been declared. He has said there is "no indication" that any declared materials have ever been diverted to a weapons program, and thus Iran has not violated its NPT obligations. Over the last three years, IAEA inspectors have spent 1700 working inspection days in Iran.
Commenting on Iran's enrichment "breakthrough", US assistant secretary of state for international security Stephen Rademaker told reporters on April 12 that, with an enrichment device using 164 centrifuges, it would take over 13 years to produce enough weapons-grade enriched uranium (at least 90% U-235) to make a nuclear bomb.
On April 14, Thomas Fingar, chairperson of the US National Intelligence Council, said Iran's announcement had not changed the assessment made by Washington's intelligence agencies that Iran was "years away" from being capable of making a nuclear weapon. Last August, the Washington Post reported that US intelligence agencies estimated it would take Iran at least 10 years to produce enough weapons-grade enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb.
Iranian scientists only succeeded in getting a cascade of 164 gas centrifuges to work long enough to produce less than 2kg of low enriched uranium (LEU). To produce enough LEU to provide fuel for a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant, such as the one Russia has nearly finished building at Bushehr in southern Iran, would require continuous operation of 54,000 gas centrifuges each spinning at 50,000-70,000 revolutions per minute.
The announcement of the LEU "breakthrough" came 48 hours before ElBaradei arrived in Tehran for talks about Iran's nuclear program. In the days before ElBaradei's visit, IAEA inspectors examined Iran's facility at Isfahan for converting uranium ore into uranium hexafluoride gas and the pilot plant at Natanz where Iranian scientists are researching LEU production.
"The mere existence of the inspectors in Iran shows our serious cooperation with the IAEA", Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Hamid Asefi told reporters on April 9. "All of our [nuclear] activities are under the agency's supervision."
That same day, lengthy articles appeared in the Washington Post, London's Sunday Times, and the New Yorker magazine detailing planning by the Pentagon for an attack on Iran. The New Yorker article, written by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, reported that the Pentagon was working on a plan for a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including — at the White House's insistence — the option of using bunker-busting nuclear bombs on the nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan.
In a January 16 article, Hersh reported that the Pentagon had been asked by the White House to update its "war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran". The new revelation in his April 9 report was the White House's insistence on including the option of using bunker-busting nuclear bombs.
While the White House dismissed this claim, saying that the Pentagon was only carrying out "normal defence and intelligence planning", it did not take issue with Hersh's claim that "President Bush's ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change".
"This is much more than a nuclear issue", a "high-ranking diplomat" at the IAEA's Vienna headquarters reportedly told Hersh. "That's just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the [US] administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next 10 years." The diplomat also told Hersh: "There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a [diplomatic] solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change."
"A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view", Hersh reported. "This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war", the adviser told Hersh. The "Pentagon adviser said that, in the event of an attack, the [US] Air Force intended to strike many hundreds of targets in Iran but that 'ninety-nine per cent of them have nothing to do with [nuclear] proliferation".
Washington's UN manoeuvres are not aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to a fictitious Iranian nuclear weapons program. Rather, the White House is preparing to use Iran's civilian nuclear program as a pretext for Iraq-style "regime change". This is why Washington has repeatedly rejected Iranian offers for direct negotiations on its nuclear program. As the April 6 Time magazine reported: "Long before the current nuclear standoff heated up, this preference for regime change has caused the White House to duck opportunities for dialogue with Tehran. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, says an Iranian offer of talks to address all US concerns was rebuffed in 2003 at the behest of the regime-change faction of the Bush administration."
According to William Arkin, a former US Army intelligence officer, the Pentagon was instructed to draw up a plan for a "full-scale war" against Iran in late 2002. Writing in the April 15 Washington Post, Arkin revealed that "According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to army general John Abizaid, now commander of CentCom, in 2002". (CentCom is the Florida-based US Central Command.) Arkin added that in "early 2003, even as US forces were on the brink of war with Iraq, the army had begun analysing a full-scale war with Iran", including a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps.
From Green Left Weekly, April 26, 2006.
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