Iran's response to the IAEA resolution -- analysis

I recommend reading Iran's latest submission the IAEA on the Board of Governors resolution against Iran. Three points are particularly interesting:

First is about the Workplan (aka the Modalities Agreement) and how Iran resolved all the "outstanding issues" listed on it by the IAEA: the IAEA's latest report has disregarded the plan that they had drafted with Iran, listing items that had to be resolved -- which were in fact resolved -- and now has put the "alleged studies" have magically become an "outstanding issue" even though according to the explicit terms of the Workplan, the iAEA was supposed to provide Iran with full documentation about these allegations before Iran is able to refute them  (note also: the  "Alleged Studies" are no longer referred to by that name by the iAEA in its reports, but are instead now referred to as "studies into militarization," leaving out the "alleged" nature of these studies. This didn't happen accidentally.)

Second is about the Fordow site. Leaving aside the dispute between Iran and the IAEA over when Iran should have declared the site (a largely irrelevant issue anyway, since the IAEA inspectors have visited the site and plainly state that there's nothing there but a "big hole in the mountain side") note how the IRanians again state that the purpose of the site was to act as an anti-bombing shelter. However, the "experts" in the West continue to insist -- without any evidence, of course -- that this was a "secret enrichment facility" that was actually intended to be part of a parallel enrichment program. They are creating "conventional wisdom" about the site and its supposed "real" purpose out of nothing except speculation and circular citation.

Finally, as the Iranians clearly state, they are under no legal obligtion to abide by the Additional Protocol's more stringent inspections requirements -- even though they did so for more than 2 years and no sign of any weapons program was found and even though they have offered to ratify the Additional Protocol once their nuclear rights are recognized. This is not just Iran's position -- the Argentinians and the Brazilians, both of which have a new nuclear program that "could be used to make bombs" have also refused the AP. Egypt, which was recently caught conducting secret nuclear experiments and has unexplained traces of highly-enriched, weapons-grade uranium, has also refused to sign the Additional Protocol, calling it a "voluntary thing".

So why won't the US just recognize Iran's nuclear rights so Iran will implement the AP? Because the issue is not about Iranian nukes nor about stringent inspections -- all those things are merely pretextual. It doesn't matter what IRan does -- even if it give s up enrichment entirely, they'll cook up some new accusation. This whole conflict is not driven by the facts about Iran's nuclear program but by another agenda entirely, and when the bloggers get distracted by the arcane technical details about Iran's nuclear program and US responses to it (how much LEU do they have? Can they weaponize it in 6 mos? Will sanctions work? etc.) they're simply missing this bigger picture.  

Comments

[k_w]

There are a lot of inconsistencies in the behaviour of the Americans. They sold the Iranians two Whole Body Counters in the 1990s for their Lazavin-Shian TRC facility, but kept quiet when Jerusalem accused Iran of doing WMD R&D activities there, a matter that vanished into thin air after inspectors had paid the site a visit. Interestingly, while the US, which are not threatened by Iran, pass sanctions, Israel does not. Hypocricy? :-D

[Cyrus Responds: ISrael actually does quite a bit of business with Iran via Turkey. And, the US accused Iran of removing soil from the Lavisan-Shian site -- but shut up after the IAEA inspectors said that was not the case. However the accusation is still repeated.

“Former U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Kenneth Brill, accused Iran in
June of using “the wrecking ball and bulldozer” to sanitize Lavizan
prior to the arrival of U.N. inspectors. ... But another diplomat close
to the IAEA told Reuters that on-site inspections of Lavizan produced
no proof that any soil had been removed at all.’”
SOURCE: No Sign of Nuke Work at Suspect Iran Site – Diplomats – Reuters
September 30, 2004
See also http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/29/content_2037228.htm

]

[Lysander]

Cyrus,

While I agree the west would concoct almost any excuse to try to demonize and isolate Iran, it has to be said that nuclear capability is important. For Iran to be able to produce nukes on short notice-even if doesn't have the slightest intention of doing so-is a game changer.

My guess is at the moment the U.S. has its hands too full in Iraq and Afghanistan to attack Iran. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't like to. The goal, I suspect, is to prevent Iran's nuclear capability so that a few years from now, when the US is in a better position to attack, Iran will not have any credible deterrent.

Thanx

P.S. do you have any info on the current protests in Iran and can you recomend a website with unbiased info? (or something close to it?)

[Cyrus responds: The Iranians don't believe that their nuclear weapons, if they built any, would be a deterrent to an attack. They'er not about to get into a nuclear exchange with the US, after all. that's the strange thing about nukes -- as a practical matter they're useless. The Iranians say that their real security will come from being integrated into the region, and nukes would harm that. REgardless, the bottom line remains that there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and there is good reason to believe the Iranians when they say they dont even seek the "capability" because thy have offered to place significant limits on their program that would make it impossible to be used for weapons. Like I keep saying, this whole thing is not about nukes.

I dont know which if any site is reliable abut the demos but there's plenty of them. I don't follow the closely.]