Who Do You Believe? The Mullahs or Your Own Eyes?
August 28, 2003
The Wall Street Journal
Review & Outlook
One test of whether the world is serious about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons is if it is willing to believe evidence when it sees it. We are about to find out if the United Nations and Europe believe what their own eyes see in Iran.
U.N. weapons inspectors have been playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Iran for months, and this week they disclosed that they've found traces of highly enriched uranium. The uranium particles were found in samples taken at Iran's Natanz facility, and U.N. officials say they are sufficiently enriched to be used in a nuclear weapon.
Iran acknowledged that weapons-grade uranium was discovered, but it claims the traces come from used imports that were contaminated before they arrived in Iran. Sure, the imports did it. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) is keeping mum but seems to want to give Tehran the benefit of the doubt. This is not reassuring for the cause of nuclear nonproliferation.
Everything we know about Iran's nuclear ambitions suggests that the mullahs in Tehran are still hiding their true capabilities and intentions. Iran has allowed the IAEA to inspect its sites but has refused access to key areas. As proliferation expert Henry Sokolski noted on these pages recently, Iran's nearly completed "peaceful" light-water reactor would be capable of generating weapons-grade plutonium for 50 bombs after a year of operation. IAEA Director-General Mohamed El Baradei saw for himself in February the advanced stage of the Natanz reactor, where hundreds of centrifuges to enrich uranium were on display.
The urgent question is whether the IAEA is now going to do anything about this. The Bush Administration has been pushing it to pass a resolution next month that would find Iran in "noncompliance" with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would result in Iran's violations being reported to the U.N. Security Council, for debate and presumably for action.
The problem is that many IAEA officials, Russia and other governments on its 36-member nation board are keen to avoid any confrontation with Iran. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton was in Moscow Tuesday lobbying Russian officials to sanction Iran, but usually reliable sources tell us Russia won't back off its aid to the country.
Tehran's mullahs are also smarter than Saddam Hussein. Instead of resisting inspections, they have recently changed their attitude in the hope of co-opting the IAEA and Europeans to believe whatever they hear. In an August 19 letter to the IAEA, Iran acknowledged that it had conducted "uranium conversion experiments" in the early 1990s that it should have reported but didn't. Iran is "taking corrective action," the letter said. Tehran's ambassador to the IAEA has also suggested that his country is willing to consider signing a NPT protocol that would allow surprise inspections.
Given Iran's record and ambitions, the only safe strategy here is don't trust but verify. Evidence of enriched uranium is a clear violation of the NPT, and if the treaty means anything the world can't allow it to go unsanctioned. The world made that mistake in North Korea a decade ago, and that country now has two rogue nuclear programs instead of one. The IAEA should understand that if it doesn't act to stop Iran from getting the bomb, someone else will have to.
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