Don’t Bomb Iran

The IAEA’s report on Iran’s compliance with its NPT obligations has reached the public and is found here although it is officially still restricted. As expected Dr El Baradei finds no evidence of a military programme, finds that Iran is in compliance with their safeguard agreement, and has provided considerable information on historical anomalies in its hiding of information from the IAEA. The report does NOT say Iran could build a nuclear bomb within a year as the Guardian falsely reported yesterday. The report confirms Iran has continued to enrich uranium to 4% levels for fuel, as is its unalienable right under the NPT, although the Security Council has demanded it give up this right.

The report gives considerable space to explaining how Iran over decades legally tried to obtain nuclear technology it was entitled to, and how many western contracts fell through, causing Iran to lose billions of dollars and to seek the technology on the black market (see extract below). The report confirms there is no evidence of a military nuclear programme, and that “in the next weeks” many of the remaining question marks about Iran’s past nuclear activities will be clarified. For a longer discussion of the report, see Gordon Prather’s analysis, where he also attacks the NY Time’s false claim that Iran has missed non-existant “key deadline” with the IAEA.

4. According to Iran, in its early years, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) concluded a number of contracts with entities from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America to enable it to acquire nuclear power and a wide range of related nuclear fuel cycle services, but after the 1979 revolution, these contracts with a total value of around $10 billion were not fulfilled. Iran noted that one of the contracts, signed in 1976, was for the development of a pilot plant 1 for laser enrichment . Senior Iranian officials said that, in the mid-1980s, Iran started working with many countries to revitalize its nuclear programme to meet the State’s growing energy needs. Taking advantage of investments already made, Iran said it focused its efforts initially on the completion of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, working with entities from, inter alia, Argentina, France, Germany and Spain, but without success. At that time, Iran also initiated efforts to acquire research reactors from Argentina, China, India and the former Soviet Union, but also without success.

5. Parallel to the activities related to nuclear power plants, Iran started to build supporting infrastructure by establishing nuclear technology centres in Esfahan and Karaj. However, apart from uranium conversion technology acquired from an entity in China, Iran was not able to acquire other nuclear fuel cycle facilities or technology from abroad. As a result, according to Iran, a decision was made in the mid-1980s to acquire uranium enrichment technology on the black market.