The U.S.–Iran Standoff

This week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its much ballyhooed report on Iran’s nuclear program. The release of the report has been accompanied by a great deal of hype and alarmist rhetoric by western governments and media. Upon close inspection, however, the document appears to be “much ado about nothing”. Almost all of the information on Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the report is historical, dating to 2002, and has been known by most observers for some time. In its summary, the IAEA concludes that it “continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities and LOFs declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement”. The report complains that Iran has failed to live up to its obligations under the Additional Protocol, neglecting to mention that Iran signed, but never ratified this protocol.

The new material on weaponization efforts sites as its source undisclosed intelligence information from Member States, presumably U.S, Israel and other western intelligence agencies. This information primarily alleges that Iran is conducting research on weapons systems that could lead to the development of a nuclear weapon. The report gives no hard evidence supporting this allegation. Even if all of the allegations are true, the report neglects to point out that, as a signatory to the NPT, Iran has obligated itself not to “manufacture or acquire” nuclear weapons {there is no mention of weapons research) and, therefore, is not in violation of the NPT.

There are, however, some useful understandings in this report. First, the IAEA has become much more political under its current head, Yukiya Amano, than it was under his predecessor, Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei. Most of the intelligence information included in this report was available to ElBaradei, but he did not deem it credible enough to include in previous reports. Amano, who owes his position to strong U.S. lobbying, has taken the agency in a new direction and, as described in a State Dept. cable released by Wikileaks, is “solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision”.

The second understanding is that U.S. policies toward the Islamic Republic are a complete failure. Iran continues to develop its nuclear program, albeit more slowly than it might have hoped. The so called crippling sanctions have done nothing to affect Iranian policy. Iran has been able to maintain its oil production at about 4 mm bpd and with a budget based on an oil price of $65 and current prices hovering around $100 they are not in financial straits. They have been able to get around many financial restrictions by taking payments from India and China in local currency and leaving the currency in place to pay for imports. They have also been forced to put their currency reserves in gold. (Not a bad investment.)

The U.S. has finally been forced to back down and to acknowledge that stricter sanctions or military conflict would have very serious negative consequences for the struggling western economies. Now might be a good time to reconsider the policies. Unfortunately, this is not a likely occurrence.

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