[Marxism] Iran's right to nuclear technology wins wide "Third World" backing

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/hir

Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
by DILIP HIRO

[posted online on August 31, 2005]

Beneath the dispute between Iran and the European Union Troika (EU-3) on
uranium enrichment rests a far more fundamental issue: Do Third World
countries have the right to develop and use all nuclear technology,
including enrichment, as authorized by the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT), or not?

Iran says, categorically, "Yes," and the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) agrees. The EU-3--consisting of Britain, France and Germany--does
not deny the right. But it wants Tehran to give up its prerogative
forever in return for the Europeans' commitment to build nuclear power
plants in Iran and upgrade trade ties with the Islamic Republic. As a
result, when the last round of the Iran/EU-3 negotiations started last
November, the two sides ended up at a stalemate.

To make sure the United States did not sabotage their diplomatic effort,
the Europeans kept Washington abreast of their plans. By contrast, they
paid little heed to the Iranians' repeated statements that they would
not countenance the prospect of permanently abdicating their right to
complete the whole nuclear cycle--enriching uranium, which is abundant
in Iran, using it as fuel for power plants and reprocessing the spent
fuel--as allowed in Article IV of the NPT.

The Iranians were focused on providing the EU-3 with "the objective
guarantees" of the peaceful nature of their nuclear program. In March
they submitted detailed proposals for strict monitoring by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Iran's nuclear program. The
regime they proposed went further than the provisions of the Additional
Protocol on the NPT that they had signed in December 2003. EU
negotiators received the Iranian document without officially accepting
it.

"The Framework for a Long-Term Agreement," which the Europeans proposed
to Iran in early August, made its offer of commercial incentives and
building of nuclear electric generating plants conditional on Tehran's
permanent renunciation of its rights under the NPT. At the same time,
they demanded that Tehran promise not to leave the NPT under any
circumstances--which North Korea had done.

Iran rejected the European package. It resumed its work at the plant
near Isfahan, where uranium oxide (called yellowcake) is converted to
uranium hexafluoride gas--but only under the watchful eyes of the IAEA
inspectors. This gas is the feedstock for centrifuges that enrich
uranium to varying degrees: 4 percent for power plants, 20 percent for
research reactors and 90 percent or higher for weapons.

This was a clear breach of Iran's agreement to suspend "all uranium
enrichment related activities" while talks with the EU-3 continued,
cried the Europeans.

They threatened to take Iran to the United Nations Security Council. It
was an empty threat. Only the IAEA governors can do so.

At the emergency meeting of the IAEA governors in Vienna in August, the
Europeans discovered they did not have the wide majority they had hoped
for among the thirty-five governors. So they settled for a call to
Tehran to revert to suspending its activities related to uranium
enrichment, and for the IAEA secretary-general to report on the issue by
September 3.

In their agitated state of mind, the EU-3 negotiators failed to realize
that the only valid basis for hauling Iran before the United Nations
Security Council was its breach of the global nuclear nonproliferation
regime as enshrined in the NPT. In its latest statement on the subject,
the IAEA said that it had not found any evidence that Iran was engaged
in a nuclear weapons program, which is banned under the NPT. (Later, the
IAEA announced that its tests vindicated Iran's claims that traces of
enriched uranium found two years earlier by its inspectors at the
Iranian nuclear facilities were from the imported equipment, believed to
be of Pakistani origin.)

Not surprisingly, Washington dismissed the IAEA findings as meaningless.


Among those who remained coolly cognizant of the facts on the ground
were fifteen IAEA governors belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement. The
NAM includes such heavyweights as Brazil, India, Indonesia and South
Africa.

At the IAEA's emergency session, Rajmah Hussein of Malaysia, the current
NAM chairman, reiterated NAM's position that all countries have a basic
and inalienable right to develop atomic energy for peaceful
purposes--the prime objective for which the IAEA was established in 1953
at the initiative of US President Dwight Eisenhower.

By design or happenstance, Iran has emerged as a champion of the
developing world with the courage and conviction to stand up to the
Western world. This has won it quiet admiration by NAM governors, who
fear that the limitations imposed on Iran could be extended to them
eventually.

Little wonder that Ali Larijani, the newly appointed secretary-general
of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said that he welcomed talks
with all IAEA governors and NAM members.

This went down badly with both the EU-3 and the United States. It is
clear by now that further pressure on Tehran to abdicate its right would
cause a major fissure between the West and the developing world.


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