In the same issue of Arms Control Today where Mousavian's article appears, there is another article by former IAEA deputy head Olli Heinonen, in which he basically claims that any negotiation with Iran "requires" Iran to accept the Additional Protocol.
First, a little background: The Additional Protocol ("AP") is a treay separate from the Non-Proliferation Treaty which, once signed and ratified by a country, allows the IAEA to make more intrusive inspections of that country's nuclear program.
The "basic safeguards" agreement of any country with the IAEA requires countries to declare their nuclear activities and material, and the job of the IAEA inspectors is then simply to visit the nuclear facilities and certify that the activities there and the amount of fissile material stored in the country correspond to what was declared by the country. That's the "exclusive" role of the IAEA inspections according to the basic safeguards agreement: confirm that the material/activities its inspectors saw correspond to what the country has declared. (Note that if the IAEA has evidence that a country has failed to declare nuclear material/sites, it has to present the evidence to the IAEA Board of Governors to obtain a "special inspection" permit that allows broader inspections. The country in question is obligated to allow such special inspections.)
However, Saddam showed that a country can get away with having an UNdeclared nuclear program which can go undetected for years, and so the AP was drafted, which gives inspectors wider access to nuclear sites. And once the verification under the AP is completed, the IAEA not only certifies that all the nuclear material/activities are accounted for, but also that there are no UNdeclared nuclear material/activities. Only then does the IAEA further certify that a country's nuclear program is "exclusively peaceful".
IAEA statements in its reports on Iran which say that the IAEA is "not able to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program" are often characterized as reasons to fear Iran's nuclear program, but in fact such IAEA statements are simply legal jargon: the IAEA does not verify the "exclusively peaceful nature" of ANY country's nuclear program unless the AP is in force -- and it is not for Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, etc.
So anyway, with that background covered, lets get to Olli's article, where he makes this funny claim:
Iran’s increasing enrichment capacity, together with its reported possession of a crude design of a nuclear weapon, shows that Iran is positioning itself as a virtual or latent nuclear-weapon state.
Boogah boogah! Sounds so scary huh! The old "Iran intends to obtain the capability to make nukes" argument, aka "breakout capability".
Well, lets take a look at this reasoning employe by Olli here.
First, he argues that Iran's possession of "crude design of a nuclear weapon" is reason to fear Iran. I'm assuming this is some sort of reference to a chart or diagram though Olli isn't clear what specifically he's referring to. Perhaps the infamous "spherical uranium" document which supposedly roughly shows the core of a nuclear bomb and which was given by Khan to Iran but which the Iranians never followed-up on?
Well, in any case, as I'm sure Olli knows himself, possession of crude diagrams isn't proof of anything since this information is not "secret". In fact, much more high-quality step-by-step guides to making nuclear weapons have already been declassified and made public. Years ago it became quite apparent that two guys can come up with a pretty good design of a nuclear weapon all by themselves, armed with nothing more than pencils and library cards. And that was in the "pre-internet" days!
So aside from the nuclear document claim, what other justification does Olli have to portray Iran's nuclear program as a potential threat that "requires" Iran to sign the AP? The enrichment of Uranium in Iran makes Iran a "virtual nuclear weapons state", or so Olli says.
The problem with this, aside from the fact that the enrichment program in Iran is carried out in full view of IAEA inspectors, is that about 40 other nations have already achieved this "virtual nuclear weapons state" status. THis is simply due to their technological advancement, not due to a secret intento to make nukes. There are about 190 nations on the planet, so basically Iran shares that status with 1 out of every 4 or 5 countries on the planet.
In short, when you take a slight second look at Olli's argument, it turns into a pile of crap.
The irony in Olli's claims that these things "require" Iran to sign the Additional Protocol is in the fact that Iran voluntarily implemented the Additional Protocol for 2 years -- even though it was in no way obligated to do so -- with no evidence of any nuclear weapons found. Iran has also already offered to permanently implement the AP (and measures beyond even the AP) as long as its right to enrichment is recognized, yet the US refuses to acknowledge any of these Iranian offers.
In fact, Olli is well aware of this because he wrote the following about Iran's cooperation during that time period:
"Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency, and to act as if the Additional Protocol is in force, including by providing in a timely manner the requisite declarations and access to locations."
So lets poke another hole in Olli: Considering that US and even Israeli intelligence agencies agree that there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, and that there's no real evidence that the Iranians have even decided to pursue nuclear weapons, what exactly would the IAEA inspectors, acting under the Additional Protocol even, be inspecting in Iran? If all there is, is some sort of inchoate fear about Iranian "virtual capabilities" to make nukes, how does the IAEA "inspect" that? Certainly, no laws or rules are broken by having this "capability" and the NPT in fact promotes the distribution of nuclear technology which "could" be used for nuke-making since it requires the sharing of nuclear technology "to the fullest extent possible" and "without discirmination". I've already mentioned that many other countries have this "virtual capability" already. And yet we're being told that the "capability" to make nukes is the same as actually making nukes and constitutes a worldwide threat suddenly.
The "Iranian threat" is posited in such a speculative manner because (apart from the fact that this formulation allows the US to skip over the absence of any hard evidence of a nuclear program in Iran) it sidelines IAEA inspection reports and makes the results of such inspections -- which have thus far consistently given Iran an all clear -- essentially irrelevant. I wrote this long ago:
According to Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, Iran is to be denied nuclear technology not because it is currently building bombs but merely because it “could” do so. Stated in this form, the charge against Iran is irrefutable: after all, there is no way for Iran—or the IAEA inspectors for that matter—to prove that Iran “could not” do something in the indefinite future.
Lets be clear: though Iran has not formally ratified the AP, Iran did voluntarily implement it for a few years, and in fact on several occasions since then has allowed inspections that far surpass what even the AP would require of Iran. The result has been nothing more than compounded allegations and scaremongering about Iran. This is because the US side in this debate is simply acting in bad faith.
A perfect example of this bad faith: Parchin, an Iranian military testing site which was the subject of a great deal of baseless speculation promoted by David Albright and ISIS. As a non-nuclear site, Iran is absolutely under no obligation whatsoever to allow IAEA inspector there, but allowed them to pick any 5 buildings for their inspections, which turned up nothing. In fact Iran allowed inspections there twice. And yet the scaremongering about that site continues, despite being hyped and inaccurate as noted by former weapons inspector Kelley.
So, even if Iran formally ratified the AP, why assume the scaremongering wouldn't continue? Sure, maybe the IAEA would then drop that misleading assertion about its "inability to verify the purely peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program"... or maybe not, since apart from the fact that such a verification under the AP takes years to complete once a country does ratify the treaty, it is quite obvious by now, and especially with the appointment of biased Amano as the new IAEA head (who is much less likely to get in the way of the US as was Elbaradei) that the IAEA has become hopelessly politicized and has started to make up its own rules and authority on an ad hoc basis regarding Iran. India for example slammed the "departure from standard verification language" used by Amano in his reports, and other IAEA officials have already complained that the US intelligence on Iran's nuclear program has not actually panned out. In fact, years ago, IAEA officials themselves raised the issue of "hidden agendas" being pursued by the West behind the guise of non-proliferation:
"Some people do not want to see the Iran issue resolved because that would contradict their hidden agendas, he said, adding that "people should have learned from their mistakes in the past, when all the hype over alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq turned out to be just that -- hype".
And IAEA Director Elbaradi apparently agrees and the West has had ulterior motives in its nuclear negotiations with IranL
“They weren’t interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change – by any means necessary,” reported ElBaradei.
Of course the US doesn't want this fact to be explicitly acknowledged, though it is by now an open secret.
Bottom Line: This dispute between the US and Iran never had anything to do with nukes and certainly has nothing to do with the Additional Protocol. The Iranian nuclear threat has always been just a pretext used by the US to impose regime change in Iran, just as "WMDs in Iraq" was just a pretext. And the last thing the US wants is for this nuclear dispute to be resolved peacefully, whilst the regime is in power in Iran.
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