We are going to have to "do something" about Iran after the Election. Washington Post Editorial
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Iran's 'Serious Failures'
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A24
AT THE INSISTENCE of European governments, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board issued a pass to Iran in November on its violations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including its secret acquisition of equipment for enriching uranium. The board declined to recognize that Iran's purpose was to produce nuclear weapons, and instead it congratulated Iran on its promises to freeze the uranium program and accept stepped-up inspections. In a reluctant concession to the United States, the Europeans agreed to a statement that "further serious Iranian failures" would lead the board to consider all actions permitted by its statute, including the referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. The board and its European members must now face up to that language -- because the promises Iran made to the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany have proved to be nearly empty.
In exchange for a European promise of civilian nuclear cooperation -- and an implicit commitment to thwart the more aggressive policy of the United States -- Tehran said it would disclose its nuclear activities to the IAEA. That was its first lie. Last week officials of the U.N. agency said that Iran had failed to reveal its possession of plans for an advanced uranium centrifuge machine; the diagrams, drawn up in Pakistan, came to light only after they were first found in Libya. Officials believe Iran is probably still hiding its own copy of an atomic bomb design also supplied by the Pakistani network to Libya.
The IAEA's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, confirmed that Iran has not fulfilled its second commitment to the Europeans, which was to suspend its uranium enrichment. Tehran, he said, is still assembling centrifuges. Nor has Iran ratified the protocol for additional inspections of its nuclear facilities. Instead, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi has announced that Iran intends to begin exporting nuclear fuel -- a step that would flout President Bush's initiative to place new controls on such exports. These facts have come to light amid a slow coup by Iran's clergy against the country's democratic reform movement, which will probably reach a turning point today with the staging of rigged elections for parliament.
So far the European response has been a studied public silence, combined with quiet -- and apparently fruitless -- diplomatic scrambling. The French and German governments undoubtedly prefer to extract more promises from Tehran -- worthless as those may be -- rather than cooperate with a more forceful approach by the Bush administration. But the administration, which deferred to the European strategy last fall, now must be more insistent. Thanks in part to the intervention in Iraq, the United States has begun to convince would-be nuclear powers that the risks to their security of pursuing such a program are greater than the potential benefit of a bomb. Were the West to stand by as Iran openly builds centrifuges and violates its commitments to the IAEA, that progress would be undermined.
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