Iran and the Invention of a Nuclear Crisis- Part I of a Three Part Series

BARELY TWO years after the United States invaded Iraq in the name of weapons of mass destruction which never existed, the world is being pushed towards a confrontation with Iran on a similarly flawed premise.

On September 17, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations General Assembly that his country would not give up its sovereign right to produce nuclear power using indigenously enriched uranium. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran signed in 1974, allows Iran to build facilities involving all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment, subject to international safeguards. Given the fact that the U.S. continues to impose sanctions on the development of Iran's oil and gas sector (under the extra-territorial 'Iran Libya Sanctions Act'), it is only logical that the Iranians should seek a civilian nuclear energy industry in which they won't have to be dependent on the West for fuel like enriched uranium.

However, as a major concession to Britain, France and Germany — the so-called EU-3 which has sought to prevail upon Iran to abandon enrichment in exchange for guarantees of assured fuel supply — Mr. Ahmadinejad offered to run his country's enrichment plants as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries. Britain and France have rejected this offer, which the Iranians say is a demonstration of their intent to be as transparent as possible. The EU-3 and the U.S. insist Teheran must not work on enrichment because once the technology is mastered, the same facilities could be used to produce not just low enriched uranium (LEU) for energy reactors but highly enriched uranium (HEU) for bombs. Accordingly, they have circulated a resolution in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meeting — which began Monday — calling for Iran's civilian nuclear programme to be referred to the U.N. Security Council as a potential threat to international peace and security.