Posted on 02/11/2003 4:53:10 AM PST by AntiGuv
Tehran uses Washington's preoccupation with Iraq and North Korea to rattle its own sabre
US officials, preoccupied with the crises in Iraq and North Korea, are playing down the urgency of the announcement by Iran, the third member of Washington's "axis of evil", that it will produce and reprocess nuclear fuel.
But analysts said President Mohammad Khatami's statement was disturbing, since it represented nuclear ambitions beyond Iran's civil energy needs, and accused the administration of ducking the problem from political expediency.
President Khatami, speaking on television on Sunday, stressed that Iran had no intention of producing nuclear weapons. "The Islamic Republic is determined to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes," he said.
But his speech amounted to a nuclear declaration of independence, outlining a plan to undertake the entire nuclear fuel cycle, from mining the ore to reprocessing the spent fuel after its use in a reactor.
The White House has denounced the Iranian nuclear project before as the cover for a clandestine weapons programme, but it did not comment on the announcement yesterday, and did not respond to requests for comment.
Edwin Lyman, head of the Nuclear Control Institute, a non-proliferation watchdog, said: "Clearly the Bush administration can't deal with this right now, as it needs Iranian help against Iraq
"It is a totally cynical policy now, where situations fester because of political convenience, and I think the 'axis of evil' is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy."
He added: "The intention to reprocess and close the fuel cycle is disturbing... There is no indication Iran has any economic justification for it.
"Even in countries where there's an advanced nuclear industry it's totally uneconomic, wasteful, dangerous. There is no doubt that it will be used as a cover for making nuclear weapons."
The US and other western governments have been sceptical of the civilian benefits of Iran's nuclear programme, given the country's vast gas and oil reserves. But Iran says it has long sought to reduce domestic oil consumption to free more oil for export, and some Iranian analysts say the programme does have genuine civilian applications.
The primary motive for giving details of the programme seems to have been avoiding any embarrassing revelations when International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrive in a fortnight, Iranian analysts and diplomats said.
"They know they can't move without being recognised. So it's better to come out openly," a journalist said.
The head of the IAEA, Mohammed El Baradei, played down the suggestion that extracting uranium would mean that Iran had embarked on developing a full-scale nuclear weapons programme.
"The Iranians have always indicated that they are committed to a peaceful nuclear programme," he said in Athens as he returned from Iraq to his headquarters in Vienna.
It would be helpful if Iran were to sign an additional protocol allowing more intrusive inspections of its nuclear programme, he said, but this development was not new.
"We know that Iran has uranium... they know their obligation, that nuclear material and nuclear facilities are subject to our safeguards."
He said he hoped to be able to answer questions about Iran's programme when he went to Iran and inspected the new facilities later this month.
Iran has had a nuclear programme since the 80s. US pressure undermined its attempt to secure partnerships with western European companies, but Russia has agreed to help build a nuclear plant in the port of Bushehr, in south-western Iran.
Moscow had assured the US that all the spent fuel from the plant will be returned to Russia, but President Khatami's speech gave Iran the option of holding on to it and reprocessing it.
David Albright, a nuclear analyst and head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: "This is a huge deal. If Iran is producing its own fuel then its much harder for Russia to get it back."
Spent reactor fuel is usually 1% plutonium, which can be extracted. Plutonium can be used in nuclear warheads.
Britain and the EU have urged Tehran to sign on to a "go-anywhere" inspection regime, but so far it has declined, citing the refusal of other countries in the region.
Conservatives in the Iranian government, wary of the growing US presence in the region, may not be ready to discard the nuclear programme without gaining something from Washington or western governments in return, analysts say.
Cynical? I doubt it. Even the US military, vast as it is, can't take on the whole world by itself. First, take out Iraq, which just happens to be a neighbor to Iran, then line up the next target.
Self fulfilling prophecy? Only if you spent the last few decades asleep and just woke up on 9/11, as most people did. These threats have been quietly growing in the background for years. While America concerned itself with presidential genital gymnastics, OJ trials and dot com mania other people in other lands have had other things on their minds: how to evade and undermine First World (vs. Third World) power while benefiting from it's largesse. These efforts are now bearing fruit.
Why now? 9/11 demonstrated that the US is not invulnerable; the US is increasingly isolated internationally as the old alliances fail; they see that if the Lilliputians act together they can render the US impotent.
Well, they can try, and might yet succeed, though a number to them will be squashed in the process.
Possibly a reference to India and Pakistan? And Israel? Kazakhstan used to have them but gave them up...or so they say. Iran is an interesting case. While they have a radical Islamic clergy that hates us, they have a large and growing younger population that hates them. They have not recently been doing any power projection - they are not likely to try to invade anyone. They have been pretty darn quiet about Iraq (who they dislike, since Saddam invaded them and used chemical weapons on them.)
When we are occupying Iraq, they will be a next door neighbor. My prediction is they are going to try to pursue trade relations with "liberated Iraq". They are going to be pushed into a choice, and it will be interesting to see which way they go. But our occupation of Iraq will provoke a reaction. I see three possibilities:
1 - their clergy retains control, chooses to back Al Queda, puts troops on the Iraqi border, and we have a pissing contest until their clergy dies of old age or we invade them in turn in about 10 years.
2 - their "moderate" elements overthrow the clergy, remove them from the power structures, and pursues trade with Iraq and the US corporations that will move into Iraq.
3 - muddled chaos with elements of both the 1st two scenarios.
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