Barack Obama has displayed extraordinary flexibility in his approach to Iran’s nuclear programme. He has supported Iran’s “right to a peaceful nuclear energy programme”, declared his willingness to meet unconditionally and extended his own deadlines for Iran to begin serious negotiations. He has maintained that position despite Iran’s bellicose rhetoric and despite congressional pressure for sanctions.
Although it has produced no positive response from Tehran, the Obama administration’s flexibility has clearly demonstrated that the obstacle to resolving the Iranian nuclear issue is not a US refusal to negotiate. Even under the Bush administration, the US participated regularly in multilateral talks with Iran. But if there was any ambiguity about the previous administration’s willingness to negotiate, there has been none whatsoever about the Obama administration.
Last week’s revelation of a covert uranium enrichment facility makes it clear that Iran’s rulers are pursuing nuclear weapons. Common sense suggested this long ago. Iran’s proven reserves of natural gas are the world’s second largest (after Russia) and four times those of the US. With two-thirds of those reserves still undeveloped, expensive nuclear power plants are a waste of resources. Even for nuclear energy, it would be cheaper to purchase reactor fuel rather than enrich uranium. Most tellingly, why would Iran be developing long-range ballistic missiles if its nuclear intentions were peaceful? And why build a covert centrifuge plant that is too small to be of commercial use and at a military base? As a senior official of the Obama administration said last week: “Our information is that the Iranians began this facility with the intent that it be secret, and therefore giving them an option of producing weapons-grade uranium without the international community knowing about it.”
In 1994, proponents of the Framework Agreement with North Korea argued that Pyongyang would not cheat because the risks of being caught were too great. As it turned out, even the chances of being caught were not great and the consequences proved to be negligible. When the Clinton administration found signs of a secret facility in 1998, it was unable to prove it, perhaps because the North Koreans had cleaned up the site (as the Iranians are probably doing now). Definitive proof of North Korea’s centrifuge programme did not come to light until 2002, but when charged with this violation, Pyongyang rapidly broke out of the 1994 restrictions, reprocessed the previously “safeguarded” plutonium and tested a nuclear device. Faced with the prospect that North Korea could always do something worse, the US kept making concessions in order to resume negotiations.
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