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On July 31, 2006 the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1696, demanding that Iran “suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.” The resolution came after Iran had ignored a series of requests from the IAEA, the EU-3, and the United States for Iran to cease its enrichment program until its peaceful nature could be confirmed by the IAEA. Iran claimed that neither the IAEA nor any member of the international community had the right to prevent Iran from pursuing a domestic nuclear energy program. Resolution 1696 undermines the legal basis on which Iran has resisted suspension. As the international community awaits Iran’s response to the Security Council’s demands, it is important to understand this new legal context.
1696 was adopted after three years of negotiations between Iran and France, Germany and the United Kingdom failed to resolve outstanding questions regarding Iran’s compliance with its IAEA safeguard obligations and its Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons obligation under Article II “not to seek or receive assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” Throughout these negotiations, Iran has been pressed to suspend uranium enrichment activities, as a confidence-building measure to facilitate negotiations over longer-term parameters to objectively guarantee that Iran’s nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes. Iran agreed as a voluntary, unilateral measure in November 2003 to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities as defined by the IAEA. It then intermittently broke the terms of the suspension until November 2004, when a more specific agreement was made with the EU-3. Iran then breached that agreement on August 10, 2005 when it removed the IAEA seals from its conversion plant in Esfahan in preparation for manufacturing UF6 gas to be enriched. (Read More)
Carnegie's Amr Hamzawy appeared on Al Jazeera TV to talk about the current crisis in the Middle East. Hamzawy discussed prospects of a national unity government in Palestine, Iran's nuclear ambitions, French-American differences regarding the war in Lebanon, America's strategic interests in the Middle East, and the confrontation between Hizbullah and Israel.
Rather than being primarily composed of a shadowy subversive network of international terrorists, most of the central players in the A.Q. Khan proliferation network were well-to-do Anglo-Saxons. They were clever and exploited voids in national and international export control laws to sell their wares. Greed was their central motivation.
Given the last two weeks in the Middle East — client entities like Hizbollah provoking a conflict, the Saudis and Egyptians speaking without power from the sidelines, Western uncertainty about the role of Syria and Iran — is it possible to draw a new map of the Middle East?
This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East, because the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon could easily escalate to involve the broader region. Any strategy to address the present crisis must deal with the realities of the Middle East as they are now, not try to leapfrog over them by seeking to impose a grand new vision. Such a vision would be bound to fail as it did in the case of Iraq.
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)
Carnegie Senior Associate and Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program Andrew C. Kuchins discussed the U.S.-Russian relations, conditions in Russia and U.S efforts to negotiate a spent nuclear agreement.
While deterrence as a concept has always been paradoxical, it is poorly equipped to handle today’s most significant nuclear challenges: proliferation and terrorism. Nuclear arms control must move beyond the deadlock of deterrence.
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