After months of halfhearted, fruitless attempts at engagement, the United States and its European partners are effectively re-enacting George W. Bush's Iran policy. In 2006, after Iran had ended a nearly two-year voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, then-U.S. president pushed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send Iran's nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council, which duly imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic. But the sanctions did not prove "crippling," as Bush had hoped: Iran continued to expand its nuclear infrastructure, and the risks of a military confrontation between the United States and Iran climbed.
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Unfortunately, Barack Obama's administration has decided to repeat this sorry history. Last Friday, the IAEA passed a resolution urging Iran to send most of its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium abroad. It also reported Iran once again to the Security Council. Iran has wasted no time in upping the ante rather than backing down, saying it would restrict cooperation with the IAEA only to those measures "statutorily" required. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also announced that the Islamic Republic would build 10 new enrichment facilities in coming years. He later added, "Iran will produce fuel enriched to a level of 20 percent," the level required for Iran's research reactor in Tehran. This would be well above the 3 to 4 percent level that Iran has already achieved in producing low-enriched uranium and would take Iran closer to the 90 percent-plus level required for weapons-grade fissile material.
These developments again demonstrate the counterproductive futility of enshrining uranium enrichment and sanctions as the keys to resolving the nuclear issue. By prompting Tehran to reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the United States and its European partners have done real damage to the international community's ability to monitor the state of Iran's nuclear program. More broadly, U.S., British, and French insistence on "zero enrichment" in Iran makes successful nuclear diplomacy with Tehran impossible. At this point, there is no chance that Tehran will accept "zero enrichment" as a negotiated outcome, for at least two reasons: It is a country-specific formulation applied to Iran but not to anybody else, and it requires Iran to forswear its sovereign right to the full range of civil nuclear technology.
If the United States and its partners continue on their present course, the Islamic Republic will continue to expand its nuclear infrastructure, and the risks of an eventual military confrontation between the United States (or Israel, with U.S. support) and Iran will, once again, rise inexorably. There is no set of sanctions the Security Council might plausibly authorize that would change this reality, and various unilateral and secondary sanctions initiatives moving through the U.S. Congress will not work either.
A more constructive approach would seek to maximize international monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities by emphasizing country-neutral formulations for curbing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. This would require international acceptance of enrichment on Iranian soil. Getting Iran to ratify and implement the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be an important step in this direction, but the most effective country-neutral initiative would be the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region.
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Office of the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran via Getty Images
Flynt Leverett directs the New America Foundation's Iran Initiative and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State University. Hillary Mann Leverett is the chief executive officer of Stratega, a political risk consultancy. Together, they have more than 20 years of experience working on Middle East issues for the U.S. government, including at the National Security Council and the State Department, and now publish www.TheRaceForIran.com.
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SIR_MIXXALOT
10:00 PM ET
December 4, 2009
Thank you. amen
Thank you. amen
SIR_MIXXALOT
10:07 PM ET
December 4, 2009
zero enrichement
Enforcing zero enrichment in Iran is also in direct contravention of the letter and spirit of the NPT.
It is the accusers, not the accused, who have breached the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The long-established nuclear powers have manifestly failed to meet their treaty obligation to pursue negotiations toward nuclear disarmament, while Iran is entitled under the treaty to enrich uranium for nonmilitary purposes.
The UN Security Council, in demanding that Iran permanently cease uranium enrichment, assumes that it has the right to abrogate international treaties. It should, instead, declare that Israeli and American threats ("all options are on the table"�"�) to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities are a threat to international peace.
Better still, tell Iran that if it forgoes its rights as a signatory of the existing international nonproliferation treaty in a fully verifiable form, the Security Council will ensure that Israel becomes a signatory and surrenders its nuclear weapons. The collective national interests of the West demand no less.
The problem is that even in nominally impartial WONKY blogs like armscontrolwonk.com there are pro-zionist apologists that censor any open debate -- any comments that are mildly critical of Israel are censored.
If you'd like to really know the REAL origin of this problem: it has nothing really to do with nukes. The problem is explained in detail on the FP website here:
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/04/haaretz_says_us_officials_face_pro_israel_background_check
SIR_MIXXALOT
10:46 PM ET
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