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02.11.2009

NEW STATUS OF THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAMME

   

Sevak Sarukhanyan

1.Iran (original)At the second half of September new international political situation was created round the nuclear programme of Iran. During the summit in Pittsburg the IAEA stated that Iran is building new uranium enrichment plant near the city of Ghom. This statement brought the “Iranian issue” up to date and created basis for the restarting of the negotiations between Iran and “the six”.

The fact that the IAEA statement was made on the day of the “G20” summit is, probably, the result of the information and propaganda struggle by the US against the head of the IAEA and the main content basis of that struggle was the allegations brought against the IAEA that this structure concealed from the international community very important facts regarding Iranian nuclear programme. The “anti-Iranian” statement of the IAEA, probably, was a mean to “justify” after those allegations. It, with some reservations, came as a bombshell in international media field and the leaders of the leading states were compelled to make statements about the nuclear programme of Iran at the summit in Pittsburg. Even the leaders of Iran’s traditional partners and “defenders” Russia and China could not avoid making such statements.

The leader of China was content with the statement that “Iran’s new steps bother us seriously” and the estimation of Russian president was probably the toughest ever made public. D. Medvedev said that Iran took steps which also hit the states which want to find a peaceful settlement for the Iranian nuclear programme and help that country.

Let us mention that according to the information spread by official Tehran, the IAEA was informed about the building of the plant 8 months ago and all the chiefs of the agency and the appropriate structures of the member countries were notified. It is difficult to say how much the statement of Tehran corresponds to the facts but it is obvious that even if everything was the way Iranians told, Washington aspired to activate “Iranian issue”, trying to place it on the foreground of the international political agenda. Pittsburg summit afforded Washington that opportunity. Due to the wise diplomacy Americans have had more or less common international policy in regard to Iran and its nuclear programme and the cornerstone of that policy is “Iran disappointed everybody” principle.

As a result, during the “Iran -“the six” (Russia, the US, Germany, Great Britain, France, China) negotiations arranged in Geneva on October 1 Iranian party faced mostly unified opinion of the international community. But the negotiations and “good” or “bad” estimates given by Americans showed that in recent year (the last negotiations between Iran and ‘”the six” took place in summer of 2008) not so much the Iranian nuclear policy has changed as the stance of the international community has been affected in regard to Iran.

Thus, during the meeting in Geneva, for the first time, the right of Iran to enrich the uranium and its programme were not discussed. For the first time international community demanded for the Iranian party not to close Natanz uranium enrichment plant but to allow the IAEA experts to inspect newly built plants freely.

After the negotiations the information was spread in international media space that Iran agreed to enrich the uranium produced on its territory at the plants abroad but neither Iranian nor foreign official sources confirmed that information. Instead of that, on October 3, M. El-Baradey stated that official Tehran presented a new and “interesting” offer to “the six”, i.e. to enrich uranium at their plants up to 3-5% and then to take it to the foreign plants where it would be enriched to 20% (the level for the nuclear fuel and uranium used for medical purposes) and returned to Iran. This whole process will be under the monitoring of the IAEA. This is the first and the only concession of Iran at the nuclear negotiations.

Actually, the Geneva negotiations, which were highly appreciated by the experts, created the background for mutual concessions both for Iran and international community. If the action is finally compromised as a result of the negotiations, Iran would preserve its uranium enrichment programme and the West would be able to keep it under control.

However, there are many questions, which need to be discussed and analyzed. The most important one, in our opinion, is the following. Why do Iran and Washington soften their stance? There can be several possible answers here, two of which seem most probable.

1. On October 3 authoritative “New York Times” magazine issued the information that, according to the IAEA closed working paper, Iran already possessed technologies for production of the nuclear weapons. The authoritative Institute for Science and Informational Security (ISIS) is of the same opinion. Under such conditions it is possible that the softening of the stance of Iran is conditioned by the fact that Tehran has enough capability to create nuclear weapon and it does not need further sharp confrontation, and Washington, in its turn, started the policy of accepting of the nuclear Iran, taking into consideration the fact there is no military alternative to the solution of the “Iranian issue”.

2. By softening their stances the US and Iran lay a positive ground for full-fledged settlement of the relations. It is obvious that the crisis in the domestic policy of Iran which caused human victims, arrests and tortures gave the opportunity to the US to show the international community and first of all the EU how right and grounded is the pressure by the Americans against the third countries which is directed to the restriction of their collaboration with Iran. Today, Iran has realized that due to the unfavourable domestic political conditions the development of collaboration with the EU in the financial and economic and other spheres became almost impossible,

In its turn the whole philosophy of Washington’s regional policy compel the US administration to make concessions in the relations with Iran. Probably, the US needs the consent and maybe even help of Iran in carrying out their strategy and stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and even Pakistan. In the same Afghanistan, due to the shameful situation, for more than a month the name of the winner of the presidential elections has not been published in order to avoid the civil war and it is hard to achieve even partial normalization of the situation without Iran’s interference and support. As for Pakistan, in our opinion the day when the US will have to “disarm” Pakistani the nuclear arsenal is not far, because the possibility that it will pass into the hands of international terrorists is rising from day after day. It is impossible to carry out the important US regional issues without normalization of the relations and collaboration with Iran.

Today, the situation in the region lays rather good ground for the settlement of the nuclear issue of Iran. It is obvious that the US has such a desire, and it needs to “reload” the relations with Tehran. Probably, the Iranian authorities also have such an aspiration. The time will show how it would develop in the future.

And today, it is obvious that the only party which is dissatisfied with the developments around Iran is Israel. In one of the articles published in September 30 issue of “Haaretz” periodical the “Iranian policy” of B. Obama was compared to the “German policy” of British prime-minister Chamberlain which finally brought to the strengthening of Nazism. A day later that very periodical published the article by well-known Israeli analyst A. Ben where the latter stated that the international community seemed to accept the expected nuclear status of Iran, and Israel either had to strike Iran or wait until American administration would agree to do that. And the former chief of Israeli foreign intelligence D. Yatom in his interview to Israeli television, commenting on the Iran – “the six” negotiation said: “Let them talk, anyway it will be necessary to bomb”.

Indeed Israel today is in rather difficult situation from the regional point of view. The local analysts express the opinion that the regional policy of B. Obama is not taking into consideration Tel Aviv’s interests any more. In this regard the negotiations on Iranian nuclear programme will be the main touchstone which will check out the strategic firmness of the relations between Washington and Tel Aviv.


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