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In the latest move in the wrestling match with the international community, Iran is being pushed back to the UN Security Council. Iran’s unwillingness to negotiate over the recent international incentive package was too much for France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and even Russia and China to take. This is not the last move, however, and it is important that the international community not waver on the need for Iran to resume without further delay suspension of uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.
We say this because in Washington and elsewhere, the erroneous and unhelpful impression was being promoted that the United States is the actor holding up negotiations with Iran. Seymour Hersh’s insightful article in the July 10 & 17 issue of The New Yorker begins by reporting that the Bush Administration’s offer to join talks with Iran was conditioned on the President’s demand that “‘the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.’” Hersh continues that in essence “Iran, which has insisted on the right to enrich uranium, was being asked to concede the main point of negotiations before they started.” Herein lies a damaging fallacy.
The facts are that the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors has called for Iranian suspension nine times in resolutions between September 2003 and February 2006, and the UN Security Council Presidential Statement of March 29, 2006 also calls for Iran to re-establish “full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development”. In each case, the demand is for immediate Iranian suspension. The logic follows the November 15, 2004 Paris Agreement between the EU-3 (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) and Iran, whereby Iran agreed that “the suspension will be sustained while negotiations proceed on a mutually acceptable agreement on long-term arrangements”. The aim of the agreement was to provide objective guarantees that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes, while meeting Iran’s interests in developing peaceful nuclear technology and gaining the economic benefits of ties with Europe and the security benefits of broader rapprochement in the Middle East. Iran broke that suspension last August before it bothered to consider an offer of incentives by the EU-3. It is risible that Iran now says it needs months to analyze and respond to the more ambitious incentive package offered by the EU-3 and supported by the US, Russia and China.
In other words, the call for Iran to suspend enrichment now is an international demand, not an exceptional American one, and it does not prejudge the outcome of subsequent negotiations. (Read More)
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In a new report, Atoms for War?: U.S.-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and India’s Nuclear Arsenal, Carnegie Senior Associate Ashley J. Tellis argues empirically that natural uranium resources do not limit
The report states that
Tellis also addresses the contentious issue of whether the deal violates Article I of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He states that the NPT legally allows for nuclear cooperation between nuclear-weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states on safeguarded facilities, even if the country has not committed to full-scope safeguards. Tellis asserts that critiques that the U.S.-India nuclear deal violates Article I lead “inexorably to the conclusion that no party to the NPT should have any economic intercourse with
To access the full report, click here.
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