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Why threats against Iran will not work

Atul Aneja

Threats to haul Iran to the Security Council on the nuclear issue could see Teheran harden its stand.

UNDETERRED BY threats of possible sanctions, Iran has made it clear it will not reverse its decision to carry out nuclear fuel research at Natanz, 250 km south of Teheran. On January 11, Iran, in the presence of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, removed the seals at the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP).

Teheran insisted it took this step in order to conduct nuclear fuel research and not to produce large quantities of enriched uranium. IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei also acknowledged that the Iran intended to produce enriched uranium on a "small scale." Seals were also removed from two other connected sites, Pars Trash and Farayand Technique.

The removal of the IAEA seals has triggered an aggressive response from key western countries, led by the United States and Britain. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her EU counterpart Javier Solana have demanded that the case be referred to the U.N. Security Council. From the Iranian standpoint, the most damaging statement has come from Mr. ElBaradei. In an interview to Newsweek magazine, Mr. Elbaradei said: "If they [Iran] have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponisation programme along the way, they are really not very far — a few months — from a weapon."

On January 16, the five Security Council members — the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China — along with Germany, met in London, where they called upon Iran to reverse its decision. An emergency meeting of the 35-nation IAEA board, of which India is a member, would now be held in Vienna on February 2, to discuss various options, including the possible referral of Iran to the Security Council for further action.

The Iranians had frozen all aspects of uranium enrichment, since November 2003, in deference to talks with the EU-3 countries — Germany, France, and Britain — and vigorous interaction with the IAEA that had since begun. After two years of hard negotiations, the Iranians concluded that the dialogue with the EU-3 had not made headway because, in their view, the Europeans were trying to freeze their enrichment programme permanently. They saw the European response as an implicit breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows members such as Iran to carry out the entire process of fuel enrichment on their own, provided their facilities are kept under IAEA supervision, ensuring that nuclear material was not diverted for weapons-manufacture.

In order to allay western fears about its intentions, Iran signed the Additional Protocol to the NPT. By doing so, it agreed to allow IAEA inspectors to visit its facilities at short notice, denying itself any lead time to cover up suspected covert enrichment for weapons.

While there appears to be a consensus in Iran about acquiring advanced nuclear technology, there is an active debate on whether this should be converted into weapons. But threats to haul Iran to the Security Council for punitive action, with the possibility of military action against it in the future, is likely to swing this debate in favour of those who advocate that acquiring atomic weapons alone will guarantee Iran security.

There are already enough arguments that can be cited to justify Iran's drive for weapons, should it choose to do so. Its neighbourhood is bristling with nuclear weapons. Three nuclear powers — Pakistan, Israel, and Russia — are on its doorstep, and two others — India and China — are not far away. Of these, Israel, with an estimated 100 nuclear warheads, is definitely hostile. Besides, arch-foe U.S. has a physical presence in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, and its warships, armed with long-range missiles, are lurking in the Persian Gulf.

Alarm bells are ringing in Iran as Israel, which bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, has moved to have an economic blockade against Iran imposed via the Security Council route.

The assertive new generation leadership in Iran is also less likely to accept an unfair compromise with the west. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is part of the Abadgaran group, which cut its teeth during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and moved into leadership positions in Iran over the last couple of years. The Abadgaran has close ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards — the elite defenders of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Some, in this new leadership, claim to have personally experienced the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi military during the eight-year war, forcing them to consider acquisition of atomic weapons as a possible security option.

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