Shift towards more sanctions on Iran


By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times
Nov 24, 2009


The week got off to a bang in Iran, with the country staging its biggest-ever military exercises, which will include tests of its air defense system during the five-day drill across more than a third of Iranian territory.

On the diplomatic front, too, much maneuvering lies ahead following the latest meeting on Friday of the "Iran Six" countries, at which they expressed disappointment with Tehran's response to an offer of a deal on its nuclear program.

After talks in Brussels, the six - the United Nations Security Council's permanent members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - plus Germany, said Iran had not responded positively to a suggestion that its low-enriched uranium be processed out of the country before being returned for use in a medical reactor in Tehran.

A decision on the next step in dealing with Iran's nuclear program, which some countries suspect is being used to develop nuclear weapons, is expected within a few weeks, and the indications are that there will be an increased shift from dialogue towards sanctions.

Last Thursday, US President Barack Obama said while in South Korea that the US would consult its allies regarding new sanctions against Iran, accusing it of dragging its feet on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) "fuel-for-fuel" agreement.

Iran has already been slapped with three rounds of UN sanctions aimed mainly at restricting its nuclear program. Both houses of the US Congress are currently considering legislation that would give Obama the authority to target Iran's energy sector by penalizing foreign companies that sold or shipped refined oil products to Iran.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is on record as hinting at his government's willingness to go along with new sanctions if the current nuclear talks fail. The chances are that China will follow suit, despite Beijing's strong reservations. In this event, the nuclear standoff will qualitatively worsen and perhaps escalate toward a full-blown crisis.

This would mark a dramatic turnaround since the October 1 Geneva talks at which a confident Obama announced that Iran had agreed to the deal whereby most of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) would be shipped out for further enrichment in Russia and France.

The problem stems from Tehran's inability to reach internal consensus, although the chief of staff of Iran's Joint Armed Forces, Hassan Firouzabadi, recently gave strong support in favor of the IAEA proposal, stating that Iran saw no problem with shipping its LEU to another country.

But then Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who had earlier echoed Firouzabadi's line, backtracked by voicing his opposition to the proposal and calling for fuel exchanges "inside Iran".

"For sure, there are several proposals floating around and it is at this stage unclear which will have the upper hand," said a Tehran University political science professor on the condition of anonymity. "I personally find this disconcerting because I believe the Iranian leadership should make up its mind one way or another and give a final answer to the P5 plus one [Iran Six]."

Meanwhile, a new IAEA report on Iran [1] was released on November 16, giving ammunition to both sides. On the one hand, it confirming the absence of any evidence of military diversion, confirming the consistency of Iran's declarations. On the other hand, the agency expressed its "reduced confidence" about still-unanswered questions, or what the IAEA calls "alleged studies".

The IAEA report also cites a letter from Iran, dated October 28, 2009, justifying its construction of "new contingency centers", such as the enrichment facility known as Fardow near the city of Qom, due to the perception of external military threats.

Also, Iran, while assuring the agency that it had no other undeclared nuclear sites under construction, nonetheless added that it would declare any such new ones in accordance with its obligations, that is, six months prior to the introduction of nuclear material.

Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard, has come up with the novel idea that Iran must place its nuclear fuel cycle under 24/7 international inspection and "international ownership", an idea that has no legal justification as Iran is entitled under the articles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which it is a signatory, to possess a peaceful nuclear fuel cycle as long as it is under robust IAEA inspections.

In the absence of any smoking gun, and as long as the US government abides by its own intelligence conclusion that Iran's nuclear program today is peaceful, mere anxiety about a future Iranian misuse of its nuclear know-how does not suffice to deprive the country of its nuclear technology. That is, to supplant NPT and IAEA standards with new standards that are applied on a selective case-by-case basis instead of universally. In turn, this raises the question of international law.

The targeting of Iranian assets
The interconnection between international law and US sanctions against Iran dates to the 1979 seizure of hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution. President Jimmy Carter retaliated by freezing Iranian assets in the US.

This was followed by a more robust, and institutionalized, sanctions regime during the Bill Clinton administration and, more recently, the three rounds of UN sanctions that have been imposed in response to Iran's continuation of its nuclear fuel program.

The notion of compatibility between US (and European) national laws, directives and court rulings on the one hand and the corpus of law known as international law on the other is often taken for granted. This is reflected in a new complaint against a non-profit organization, the Alavi Foundation, in New York.

The Iranian government and its envoys at the UN are accused of running the foundation from behind the scenes and funneling funds to a European branch of Bank Melli, which is accused of funding Iran's nuclear program. US citizens are banned from dealing with the bank. US prosecutors have begun legal action to seize four mosques and a New York city skyscraper that are owned by the foundation.

The UN Security Council's resolutions on Iran call for close scrutiny, particularly resolution 1803. This urges member states to exercise "vigilance over the activities of financial institutions in their transactions with all banks domiciled in Iran, in particular Bank Melli".

In essence, the resolution allows transactions with the bank as long as they are carefully watched (that is, with due "vigilance") to make sure that they do not involve proliferation-related purposes. There is no UN ban per se on trade or investment with this bank; the US's and Britain's recent freezing of its assets may as a result be illegal under international law.

Yet, the Alavi Foundation is now being pursued for its alleged dealings with Bank Melli. The foundation's 30 years of charitable history, including grants to Ivy League universities such as Harvard, are now imperiled.

Note
1. To view the IAEA report, click here:

http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-rep ... 9pdf_1.pdf


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KK24Ak05.html