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The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's nuclear programme is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the agency confirmed once again that it has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme, but, on the other hand, it utilised an unusually forceful and blunt language for describing what it perceives as Iran's lack of cooperation regarding clarification of some documents that western intelligence agencies have provided to the IAEA, which might be indicative of a secret parallel programme for nuclear weaponisation up until 2003. Iran, however, has rejected the documents as "fake" and "fabricated".
Iran has been making rapid progress in mastering uranium enrichment technology, to the point of manufacturing the more advanced IR-2 and IR-3 centrifuges that spin five times faster than the primitive P-1 centrifuges that it has installed in its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. The faster centrifuges would enable Iran to produce enriched uranium much more rapidly. Therefore, the redline that President Bush has drawn for Iran - namely, acquiring knowledge that could be used for making nuclear weapons - has already been crossed. A nation cannot be told to forget what it already knows.
The referral of Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN security council has not produced any tangible result (and, indeed, may not have been entirely legal), but it has made Iran more resolute in defending its uranium enrichment programme under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and its Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. Although the sanctions imposed on Iran by the three UN security council resolutions have begun to have some impact, they have mostly hurt ordinary Iranians.
Given that the oil price hovers around $130 a barrel, which generates close to $100bn in annual income for Iran, the government of President Ahmadinejad is well-positioned to resist the sanctions. Moreover, since the military is playing the leading role in Ahmadinejad's government, the pursuit and completion of the nuclear fuel technology has been given the highest priority. That does not imply that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but only that the completion of the fuel cycle will enable Iran to make nuclear weapons in a relatively short time in a national emergency.
Realistically, so long as its dossier is before the UN security council, Iran will not suspend its uranium enrichment programme, because the Iranian leaders correctly recognise that if they suspend the programme on the order of the security council, ending the suspension will also require its authorisation, which will never come because the US will veto any such attempt, implying that Iran would effectively give up its rights to the enrichment technology.
Therefore, under such conditions, if the US and the west are interested in keeping Iran's nuclear capability latent, and would like to accomplish this goal peacefully, they need a new paradigm in their approach to Iran and its nuclear programme, as all other efforts have failed.
The prudent starting point for the new paradigm is the return of Iran's nuclear dossier to the IAEA. Iran has indicated that if this is done, it will implement the additional protocol that allows for intrusive, unannounced visits to anywhere in Iran by the IAEA. According to the latest IAEA report, 14 unannounced visits to Iran's nuclear facilities were conducted over the past year, implying that Iran is already in substantial compliance with the protocol.
In its latest proposal to the EU, Iran also hinted that it would be willing to negotiate suspension of its uranium enrichment programme for a fixed period of time. Thus, the second step is for Iran to suspend the enrichment programme, once its nuclear dossier is back with the IAEA.
Given Iran's great advancements in enrichment technology, it is no longer realistic to demand that it give up its rights to uranium enrichment. An alternative solution must therefore be found, two of which already exist.
One is the "delayed-limited enrichment" proposal of the International Crisis Group, according to which Iran must first "graduate" from the temporary suspension phase in order to go forward with pilot-scale enrichment. If it graduated from the second phase, Iran could start large-scale enrichment. Clearly, what constitutes "graduation" must be defined unambiguously. In return, Iran must agree to severe restrictions on its enrichment programme.
The second possible solution is along the lines proposed by the IAEA on multinational fuel activities, including enrichment, in February 2005. In its latest proposal to the EU, Iran declared its readiness for setting up an international consortium on its soil for making enriched uranium.
The consortium proposal is, surprisingly, also in line with what the Ford administration had agreed to 33 years ago. Specifically, National Security Decision Memorandum 292, dated April 22, 1975, stated that the US shall "permit US materials to be fabricated into fuel in Iran for use in its own reactors and for pass-through to third countries with whom we have agreement." In NSDM 324, dated April 20, 1976, President Ford authorised the US negotiating team to "seek a strong political commitment from Iran to pursue the multinational/binational reprocessing plant concept, according the US the opportunity to participate in the project."
It is time for a new paradigm for dealing with Iran in order to keep Iran's nuclear potential latent
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