Doug Lorimer
Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran on July 16 that his government considers the package of proposals presented to it on June 6 by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana an "acceptable basis" for negotiations.
Two days later, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told reporters that Iran had specialised committees in key state agencies studying the package and would make a formal response by August 22.
The package was agreed to at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the five veto-weilding members of the UN Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the US) and Germany on June 1.
On July 13, the six powers circulated copies of the three-page package to all 15 countries represented on the Security Council. According to a July 14 Agence France Presse report, the document states that the six powers' "goal is to develop relations and cooperation with Iran based on mutual respect and the establishment of international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program".
It proposes "a fresh start in negotiations of a comprehensive agreement" between Iran and the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) "with the support of China, Russia and the United States and other members of the international community". Such an agreement would be deposited with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and "endorsed in a Security Council resolution".
In November 2004, Iran agreed to suspend its research into the production of nuclear power-plant fuel (low enriched uranium) during negotiations with the EU3 on a "comprehensive agreement" for nuclear energy cooperation. However, these talks broke down last August when the EU3 demanded that Iran agree to the "permanent cessation" of its IAEA-monitored uranium enrichment activities — a demand that contravened Iran's rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
In early May, Iran announced it had succeeded in producing a small quantity of fuel-grade enriched uranium — with 4.8% of the fissionable U-235 isotope. Natural uranium only has a 0.7% U-235 content, while weapons-grade uranium needs to be enriched to at least 90% U-235 content.
In the document presented to Iran on June 6, the six powers "reaffirm Iran's inalienable right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of the NPT" and offer to "cooperate with Iran in the development by Iran of a civil nuclear power program". Russia is already engaged in such cooperation, constructing Iran's first nuclear power station.
The package also includes an offer to provide a range of other economic benefits to Iran, including the lifting by the US of some of the economic sanctions that it imposed in the wake of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchist regime.
In exchange, Iran is asked to "commit to addressing all the outstanding concerns of the IAEA through full cooperation with the IAEA"; "suspend all enrichment-related" activities and "commit to continue this during these negotiations" on a comprehensive agreement; and "resume implementation of the additional protocol" that the IAEA has proposed Iran and other NPT signatures add to their safeguards agreements with the IAEA.
Iran's parliament has not ratified the proposed additional protocol, which requires NPT signatories that do not possess nuclear weapons, to allow the IAEA to carry out snap inspections of their nuclear facilities. In December 2003, Iran agreed to voluntarily cooperate with the IAEA as if it had ratified the additional protocol.
Iran ended this cooperation this February, after the IAEA governing board decided — under heavy US-EU3 pressure — to refer Iran's nuclear dossier to the Security Council because Iran had broken off the talks with the EU3. Since then Iran has limited its cooperation with the IAEA to its legally binding obligations under its 1974 NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
For several years now, Washington has been pushing for a Security Council resolution that would make it mandatory, under threat of "punitive action", for Iran to cease its uranium enrichment activities in order to be able to claim that its planned "regime change" invasion of Iran — the world's fourth-largest oil exporter and location of the world's second-largest proven reserves of natural gas — has UN endorsement.
US officials claim that Iran's IAEA-monitored research into the production of nuclear power-plant fuel (low-enriched uranium) is a cover for an "18-year-long" secret program to produce nuclear weapons.
This is despite the fact that after two-and-a-half years of full inspections, IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei has repeatedly reported that his inspectors have found no evidence of such a program.
The "evidence" cited by US officials is that prior to December 2003 Iran did not disclose nuclear activities to the IAEA that it was not legally required to report under its 1974 safeguards agreement.
In early May, the US, Britain and France presented a draft resolution to the Security Council declaring Iran's nuclear activities a "threat to international peace and security" and threatening international sanctions if Iran did not cease uranium enrichment research.
Washington and its EU allies were forced to shelve the resolution and agree to present a package of incentives for the resumption of talks with Iran after Moscow and Beijing made clear they would oppose any resolution containing threats of punitive action against Iran.
In an article published in the July 10 New Yorker magazine, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that "Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council aide for the Bush Administration, told me, 'The only reason [President] Bush and [Vice-President] Cheney relented about talking to Iran was because they were within weeks of a diplomatic meltdown in the United Nations. Russia and China were going to stiff us' — that is, prevent the passage of a UN resolution" against Iran.
Hersh reported that "Leverett told me that, without a change in US policy, the balance of power in the negotiations will shift to Russia. 'Russia sees Iran as a beachhead against American interests in the Middle East, and they're playing a very sophisticated game', he said. 'Russia is quite comfortable with Iran having nuclear fuel cycles that would be monitored, and they'll support the Iranian position' — in part, because it gives them the opportunity to sell billions of dollars' worth of nuclear fuel and materials to Tehran ...
"China, which, like Russia, has veto power on the Security Council, was motivated in part by its growing need for oil, he said." Leverett told Hersh that the Chinese rulers "don't want punitive measures, such as sanctions, on energy producers, and they don't want to see the US take a unilateral stance on a state that matters to them".
Hersh also reported that "senior officers in the Pentagon do not dispute the President's contention that Iran intends to eventually build a [nuclear] bomb, but they are frustrated by the intelligence gaps. A former senior intelligence official told me that people in the Pentagon were asking, 'What's the evidence? We've got a million tentacles out there, overt and covert, and these guys' — the Iranians — 'have been working on this for eighteen years, and we have nothing? We're coming up with jack shit.'"
From Green Left Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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