The US media tries to scare you by repeating how "the International Atomic Energy Agency cannot verify the absence of undeclared nuclear activities in Iran" - here are the actual facts...
The International Atomic Energy Agency has stated that previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear activities had no relation to a weapons program, and furthermore that all declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for & none has been diverted to a nuclear weapons program. However, the IAEA has also said that it cannot verify the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities in Iran. This last issue has been presented by the media and the US government as proof of Iranian perfidy, and a reason why Iran "can't be trusted". However, a careful examination of the facts easily refute this allegation.
THe US was quite upset at the IAEA for stating that the declared nuclear material was accounted for, and tried to remove IAEA Director ElBaradei from his office as a result. Why? People who are not familiar with the law of the Non-Proliferation Treaty may not realize the reason and the significance of the IAEA's statement on that point: It meant that Iran was in compliance with its safeguards agreement and there was no legal basis for a referral to the UN Security Council, contrary to the Bush administration's game-plan. As a result, Bush had to create another pretext to find a way to refer Iran to the UNSC - this time by claiming that Iran's refusal to suspend enrichment was a violation of its "international obligations" (when in fact Iran is not so obligated, and never was) and that Iran's past failures to declare some nuclear activites amounted to a violation of its safeguards agreement.
This was a case of creative legal spin-doctoring by the US. For one thing, Iran was never obligated to suspend or give up uranium enrichment, and any such demand on Iran would have been illegal. Second, to the extent that Iran "failed" to disclose any nuclear activities in the past, the IAEA had already certified that those activities had no relationship to a nuclear weapons program and involved no diversion of nuclear material to military use - and so there was no violation of Article 19 of Iran's safeguards agreement which set the standard for a referral of Iran's file to the UNSC. Nor is Iran the only country to have failed to disclose such activity - both Egypt and S. Korea, for example, had failed to declare some of their nuclear activities for decades. In fact, Iran wasn't even obligated to inform the IAEA of the existence of Natanz or Arak nuclear facilities (since they were still under construction) though Iran's plans for nuclear enrichment were never a secret anyway (Iran had invited the IAEA to visit its uranium mines years before, had sought IAEA technical assistance in building its enrichment program until the US thwarted the aid, and the discovery of uranium sources had been openly announced on Iranian radio in an interview with the head of Iran's atomic energy program.)
As Siddharth Varadarajan has written:
Though there has been a surfeit of motivated and ill-informed commentary about how Iran "concealed" its uranium enrichment programme from the IAEA "in violation of the NPT" until it was "caught cheating" in 2002, the fact is that Iran was not obliged to inform the Agency about those facilities at the time. David Albright and Corey Hinderstein — who first provided the international media with satellite imagery and analysis of the unfinished fuel fabrication facility at Natanz and heavy water research reactor at Arak on December 12, 2002 — themselves noted that under the safeguards agreement in force at the time, "Iran is not required to allow IAEA inspections of a new nuclear facility until six months before nuclear material is introduced into it." In fact, it was not even required to inform the IAEA of their existence until then, a point conceded by Britain and the European Union at the March 2003 Board of Governors meeting... This `six months' clause was a standard part of all IAEA safeguards agreements signed in the 1970s and 1980s.
The US had to do quite a bit of arm-twisting and bribing to get the members of the IAEA Board of Governors to agree to this sophistry and report Iran to the UNSC - for example, by promising to share nuclear technology with India even though that would itself be a violation by the US of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In short, the "reporting" of Iran's file to the UNSC was illegal and ultra vires all along (and furthermore, the resultant UNSC resolutions which demand that Iran give up enrichment are ultra vires and non-binding too beause they violate the principle of jus cogens.)
As Michael Spies of the Lawyer's Committee on Nuclear Policy has explained:
The conclusion that no diversion has occurred certifies that the state in question is in compliance with its undertaking, under its safeguards agreement and Article III of the NPT, to not divert material to non-peaceful purposes. In the case of Iran, the IAEA was able to conclude in its November 2004 report that that all declared nuclear materials had been accounted for and therefore none had been diverted to military purposes. The IAEA reached this same conclusion in September 2005.
Of course the IAEA also said that it has not been able to verify "the absence of undeclared material or activities" and the media are trying to spin that for all it is worth to scare people - but that is actually not a valid basis for suspicion that Iran has a hidden nuclear weapons program. Rather, the IAEA simply does not formally verify the absence of undeclared nuclear activities in countries until they have ratified the Additional Protocol, and have permitted the required inspection process (which can take several years to complete.) As Michael Spies of the Lawyer's Comittee for Nuclear Policy has explained:
For some it is tempting to declare, based on the inability of the IAEA to presently draw a conclusion on the absence of nuclear activities, that Iran continues to operate concealed facilities and that any such facilities must be for a military program. But the IAEA has cautioned that the lack of a conclusion does not imply suspicion of undeclared nuclear materials and activities, as the matter is frequently spun in the media and by some governments.
According to the IAEA's own Annual Safeguards Implementation Report of 2004, of the 61 states where both the NPT safeguards and the Additional protocol are implemented, the IAEA has certified the absence of undeclared nuclear activity for only 21 countries, leaving Iran in the same category as 40 other countries including Canada, the Czech Republic, and South Africa. Note especially the last sentence:
"With regard to 21 States with both CSAs and AP in force or otherwise applied, the Agency concluded that all nuclear material in those States remained in peaceful nuclear activities. For 40 other such States, the Agency had not yet completed the necessary evaluations, and could therefore only draw the conclusion that the nuclear material placed under safeguards remained in peaceful nuclear activities."
Nevertheless, even though Iran has not yet ratified the Additional Protocol, it has stated repeatedly that it is willing to do so as long as its nuclear rights are recognized, and Iran voluntarily acted as if it was bound by Additional Protocol anyway during the course of the Paris Agreement, by permitting the additional inspections at sites such as the Parchin military complex - and no evidence of a secret nuclear program was found then either. (A string of similar "tips" about "secret Iranian nuclear sites" which turned out to be duds ultimately led IAEA officials to publicly complain about the quality of US intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.)
So the next time the US media tries to scare you about how "according to the IAEA, Iran may have undeclared nuclear activities" - now you know the facts behind this claim.
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