A Financial Times editorial claims that Iran's refusal to abide by a UN Security Council demand to abandon "those parts of its nuclear programme that could help it build the bomb" means that there are only "three options" left:
The outside world must choose whether to do nothing, to strike Iran militarily, or to increase sanctions on Tehran while holding out the prospect of negotiations.
There are three major problems with this editorial by the Financial Times:
First, notice how the FT frames this an issue between "the outside world" and Iran. In fact, most nations of the world have expressed their support of Iran - as evidenced by the resolution of the Non-Aligned Movement in favor of Iran, which represents the majority of nations. This is only natural - the world (and especially the developing states) will inevitably have to rely to a greater degree on nuclear power, and as the Los Angeles Times reported:
“Developing nations are skeptical of the intentions of the five original nuclear states and are reluctant to give up the option of enriching uranium... Developing nations say they don’t want to give up their rights to uranium enrichment and don’t trust the United States or other nuclear countries to be consistent suppliers of the nuclear material they would need to run their power plants."
Second, the Financial Times editorial board is being a little disingenious when it claims that Iran is merely being asked to abandon "those parts of its nuclear program that could help it build the bomb." Rather, Iran is being asked to give up its "inalienable right" - as recognized by the Non-Proliferation Treaty - to a sovereign, independent nuclear fuel program, thus making it forever reliant on outside sources of fuel to power its economy which is growing ever more reliant on nuclear power.
To characterterize nuclear enrichment as something that "could help it make a bomb" is nothing more than cheap scaremongering - the whole purpose of the NPT and the IAEA is to ensure that the technology does not get diverted to military use, and note that the same enrichment programs in countries such as Brazil and Argentina are not similarly mischaracterized by the Financial Times. To speculatively equate Iran's perfectly legal, NPT-compliant, IAEA-monitored, economically-justified and US-supported nuclear program as "bomb-making" is just a cheap lie.
The third, and more important point, is to note how the FT conveniently limits the range of choices it presents and and leaves out a significant option: accept Iran's compromise proposals that would reddress any legitimate concern that Iran's nuclear program could be used to make bombs. No, that's not even an option worthy of being considered, according to the Financial Times. This is known as the False Choice fallacy.
In fact, Iran has repeatedly proposed to place several very strict limits on its nuclear program that go well beyond what its legal obligations require, and far beyond what other nations have agreed to impose on their own nuclear energy programs. The Arms Control Association has collected some of these offers on their website. In an editorial in the NY Times, Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the UN, listed these additional & voluntary restrictions that Iran was willing to accept:
Since August 2004, Iran has made eight far-reaching proposals. What’s more, Iran throughout this period adopted extensive and costly confidence- building measures, including a voluntary suspension of its rightful enrichment activities for two years, to ensure the success of negotiations.Over the course of negotiations, Iran volunteered to do the following within a balanced package:
Present the new atomic agency protocol on intrusive inspections to the Parliament for ratification, and to continue to put it in place pending ratification;
Permit the continuous on-site presence of IAEA inspectors at conversion and enrichment facilities;
Introduce legislation to permanently ban the development, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons;
Cooperate on export controls to prevent unauthorized access to nuclear material;
Refrain from reprocessing or producing plutonium;
Limit the enrichment of nuclear materials so that they are suitable for energy production but not for weaponry;
Immediately convert all enriched uranium to fuel rods, thereby precluding the possibility of further enrichment;
Limit the enrichment program to meet the contingency fuel requirements of Iran’s power reactors and future light-water reactors;
Begin putting in place the least contentious aspects of the enrichment program, like research and development, in order to assure the world of our intentions;
Accept foreign partners, both public and private, in our uranium enrichment program.
Iran has recently suggested the establishment of regional consortiums on fuel-cycle development that would be jointly owned and operated by countries possessing the technology and placed under atomic agency safeguards.
And what was the reaction of the US/EU to these perfectly reasonable and legitimate offers from Iran? Total disregard. The US/EU have never even deigned fit to formally receive the offers. Instead, the US insists that Iranians should remain totally ignorant of nuclear technology, and that whatever they have acheived in nuclear know-how should be "rolled back." Well, sorry, needless to say the Iranian population isn't likely to accept that, nor is it likely to permit the Iranian government to accept that. Any Iranian government that does cave in to such demands will likely be compared to the fickle and corrupt rulers of Qajar dynasty that essentially sold or gave away Iran's economic interests to the British and Russian Imperial powers at the turn of the 20th century, (causing widespread protests) which is why they're hated to this day.
As a side note, the UN Security Council's demand on Iran to abandon enrichment is itself illegal, but I will leave that matter to a new post.
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