Bush: fails on Iranian Nukes. Bush fails on Iraq and Afghanistan also. Bush has never succeeded in a single thing he's ever done without Poppy's help in his entire life.
Why should this be any different? It's just more deadly and may cost us our country and the world. BOOOOOOOOOOOM...don't worry you may not even know it has happened.
nytimes.com
September 17, 2004
U.S. Push for More Scrutiny of Iran Nuclear Program Fails
By CRAIG S. SMITH
IENNA, Sept. 17 — The United States failed again today to persuade the International Atomic Energy Agency that it should refer Iran's suspect nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council, accepting instead a repetition of calls for the country to stop uranium enrichment activities and clear up remaining questions about its nuclear ambitions.
A resolution making those calls is expected to be passed by the agency's 35-member board on Saturday, though several countries were trying to further water down the resolution's language late this afternoon. According to the current draft of the resolution, it will demand a full response by Iran before the agency's Nov. 25 board meeting.
The United States has been pressing the United Nations agency for nearly a year to find Iran in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty after the discovery two years ago that the country had hidden much of its nuclear activities for nearly 20 years. Iran has been slow to divulge details of its clandestine research; the United States is convinced that Iran harbors a nuclear weapons program.
But many other countries, led by Britain, France, Germany and Russia, favor a softer approach, not convinced that Iran is intent on building a bomb.
Iran's nuclear program dates to the late 1960's when it began developing nuclear energy on the advice of the United States, which argued that the country should sell its oil rather than burn it to generate electricity. Iran eventually contracted the German company Siemens to build a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in the port of Bushehr.
But construction of the plant was stopped during the Islamic revolution of 1979 and Iran soon became an international pariah. As a result, the country argues, it was forced to rely on the black market to save its nuclear program, in which it had already invested billions of dollars. It bought centrifuge designs from Pakistan and imported technology from a secret network of suppliers that spanned the globe.
In 1995, Iran signed a contract with Russia to resume work on the Bushehr plant and soon began assembling centrifuges, which are used to concentrate uranium's unstable 235 isotope at levels necessary for a nuclear reaction. Iran will need uranium with 3.5 percent of the isotope to fuel its Bushehr plant. But the same centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium to much higher levels — 80 or 90 percent — for use in a nuclear bomb.
Under the nonproliferation treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants, but failure to disclose the enrichment program was a clear breach of its obligations under the treaty. The program was revealed by a group of Iranian dissidents in August 2002.
Last year, Britain, France and Germany persuaded Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment efforts in order to build confidence among the international community while it clarified questions about its nuclear program. In return, the three European countries promised to transfer nuclear energy technology to Iran and to resist United States efforts to send the country's case before the Security Council. Iran plans to build six more 1,000-megawatt reactors.
Since then, the I.A.E.A. has been trying to answer all remaining questions about Iran's nuclear program and has carried out more than a dozen unannounced inspections of Iranian facilities.
The agency's head, Mohamed ElBaradei, this week praised Iran's cooperation and said most issues had been clarified. He said, for example, that traces of highly enriched uranium found on imported centrifuge parts in Iran might well have come from outside the country, as Iran insists.
But the United States remains certain that inconsistencies in the program and other clues point to a secret weapons program. Besides resuming work on the Bushehr light-water reactor, Iran had secretly begun work on a heavy water reactor, which would use natural uranium fuel.
Bomb-grade plutonium can be extracted from the spent fuel of both kinds of reactors, though it is much easier from heavy-water reactors. In June, the I.A.E.A. asked Iran to stop work on the heavy-water reactor, though the country has not complied.
The United States also suspects that a partially buried bunker on a munitions plant in Parchin, 20 miles southwest of Tehran, could be used to test high-intensity explosives used in a nuclear implosion bomb, in which a sphere of explosives surround a core of highly enriched uranium or plutonium.
Hossein Mousavian, the head of the foreign policy committee of Iran's Supreme National security Council, said today that Iran would grant the I.A.E.A. access to the site, though it was not required to do so. "We have never rejected an I.A.E.A. inspection," he said.
Most troubling to the United States is Iran's insistence on continuing its enrichment program.
While Iran says the program is to produce low-enriched uranium to fuel its Bushehr power plant, the centrifuges could quickly be converted for making weapons-grade uranium.
Experts say that it will take Iran decades to build the tens of thousands of centrifuges necessary to produce a year's worth of fuel for the Bushehr plant, but that it needs only about 2,000 centrifuges to make enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb a year. It would need even fewer if it started with the low-enriched uranium promised by Russia as fuel for the Bushehr plant.
Frustrated by continued I.A.E.A. pressure and lack of action on the European promises of technology transfers, Iran announced in June that it was resuming the production and assembly of centrifuges. It has maintained a yearlong freeze on the use of those centrifuges, but warned this week that the suspension would not be forever.
"Suspension is not cessation," Mr. Mousavian said. He noted that Iran has the right to uranium enrichment under the nonproliferation treaty and that, given Iran's experience, it cannot rely on the international community to guarantee a supply of nuclear fuel. He argued that accepting discrimination under the treaty would set a bad precedent for the country.
The country raised alarms earlier this month by confirming that it was ready to convert more than 40 tons of yellowcake, or uranium oxide, into the uranium hexafluoride gas that is fed into centrifuges for enrichment. Iran's uranium conversion plant operates under I.A.E.A. controls, but the agency has urged the country to stop using the plant to ease international concerns.
Mr. Mousavian argued that Iran was being unfairly penalized, noting that the country had proposed making the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone while Israel, which has nuclear weapons, has never signed the nonproliferation treaty or accepted I.A.E.A. inspections.
"There is clearly a double standard," Mr. Mousavian said, adding that Iranian religious leaders issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1996 that forbade the use of all weapons of mass destruction.
"For Iranians, a religious fatwa is more important than any international convention," he said.
Mr. Mousavian said Iran was prepared to accept any I.A.E.A. initiative to ensure that its enrichment did not exceed the 3.5 percent level needed to fuel the Bushehr plant. But he said preventing Iran from enriching uranium was beyond the authority of the I.A.E.A.
A former Iranian president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, warned today in Tehran that Iran would lodge a complaint at the International Court of Justice against the I.A.E.A. for acting outside its powers if the agency demanded that the country stop its enrichment activities.
The United States had lobbied hard to give Iran an Oct. 31 deadline to stop all enrichment activity and meet other I.A.E.A. demands, but agreed today to the British, French and German preference for a more flexible resolution.
According to the current draft of the resolution, Iran must clear up "outstanding issues" in time for Mr. ElBaradei to prepare a report for the November meeting and "immediately suspend all enrichment-related activities." It says the I.A.E.A. board will decide in November "whether or not further steps are appropriate."
Members of the Non-Aligned Movement continue to object to the resolution's wording regarding a suspension of enrichment activities, arguing that the right to those activities are enshrined in the nonproliferation treaty.
The vaguer language, similar to that of previous resolutions on Iran over the last year, leaves the I.A.E.A. the option of closing its investigation without referring the country's case to the Security Council. |
