|
Iran announces nuclear program, invites U.N. inspections
By Will Revfem
News Editor
FILE PHOTO
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami addresses a crowd during a rally to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution at Azadi Square in Tehran Tuesday.
|
The Islamic Republic of Iran joined its partners in the “axis of evil” when it announced Sunday that it has reserves of uranium ore and will reprocess spent fuel, insisting its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only.
Many observers speculate that the announcement was made to avoid embarrassment when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. non-proliferation watchdog, inspects the country’s nuclear capabilities later this month.
Iranian president Mohammad Khatami made the announcement in a televised speech Sunday.
Khatami said that uranium had been taken from Savand, 125 miles from the central Iran city of Yazd, and that reprocessing plants had been installed in the nearby cities of Isfahan and Kashan.
At press time the Bush administration, which has repeatedly accused Iran of being a nuclear threat, including the country in the “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea, had not commented on Iran’s declaration.
Despite Washington’s policy of disengagement and isolation from Iran, which, unlike the other members of the axis, is not an impoverished dictatorship, European governments have striven to forge ties with the Islamic Republic. Chris Patten, external affairs commissioner for the European Union, recently visited Tehran, presumably to voice concern about Iran’s human rights record—neither torture nor the death penalty, which sometimes occurs by stoning, are banned—and its support for extremist groups that attack Israeli civilians.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair followed a similar policy when he hosted Iran’s foreign minister last week. The meeting was part of Britain’s engagement policy, engineered by Robin Cook, with respect to countries like Iran and North Korea. Cook said the aim of engagement is to take a different approach than that of the United States, the theory being that open engagement and exchange are the best, and certainly a more peaceable, alternative to armed conflict in bringing about reform.
Yet despite Khatami’s insistence that Iran’s recently announced nuclear program is for civilian purposes, most analysts are skeptical about the utility of such a program. Iran’s vast gas and oil reserves already give it a natural source of energy.
One possibility is that Iran wants to look for alternative sources of energy so it can free up oil for export. But comments made by defense minister Ali Shamkhani suggest that the regime’s purposes go beyond the civilian. State television in Iran quoted him as saying that Iran had the capability to manufacture solid fuels for its missiles, a key step in increasing its capacity for delivering nuclear warheads.
Regardless of its nuclear intentions, Tehran has taken a decidedly different track than either Baghdad or Pyongyang, both of which have resisted efforts to inspect their respective nuclear programs. While North Korea evicted U.N. inspectors monitoring its nuclear facilities and pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and Iraq has continued its game of smoke and mirrors, Iran remains a signatory of the treaty and has actually invited inspections by the IAEA.IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei praised the Islamic Republic, saying, “The Iranians have always indicated that they are committed to a peaceful nuclear program.”
Besides efforts at engagement with Iran by European countries and the United Nations, Russia has been the raspberry seed in Bush’s wisdom tooth for some time.
Who has agreed to help build a nuclear plant in the southwestern port city of Bushehr, though it has assured an irritated United States that the agreement with Tehran stipulates that all spent fuel from the plant must be returned to Russia.
Nuclear expert David Albright, who is also head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said, however, that Russia will have difficulty retrieving spent reactor fuel if Iran is producing its own fuel.
Spent fuel can be reprocessed to retrieve plutonium, which is typically about one percent of the spent fuel. Plutonium can then be used to make nuclear warheads.
|
