Translated material
Iranian ten
Tehran announced expansion of its nuclear program
The tense situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear program is escalating day by day. The Iranian government has ordered the construction of ten more uranium enrichment plants in the country. Iran's Atomic Energy Organization has been tasked with starting construction of five new plants immediately and another five to begin construction over the next two months. Currently, only one plant is operating in Iran in Natanz; the construction of a similar facility in Qom is planned to be completed by 2011.Tehran's intention to repeatedly increase the volume of uranium enrichment provokes the West to tighten its policy towards Iran. This will present Russia, which cooperates with Iran, with a difficult choice. In addition, Tehran is increasingly demonstrating that it is ready to go against the position of the world community. Yesterday, members of the Iranian parliament called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cabinet to “lower the level of cooperation” between the country and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They even hinted at the possibility of Tehran withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
Yesterday's statements by the Iranian authorities were a response to the unprecedentedly tough resolution on Iran adopted by the IAEA Board of Governors on Friday, November 27 in Vienna. The document, submitted by Germany and supported by all permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia, USA, China, UK and France), requires the Iranian authorities to “fully and without delay fulfill their obligations”, according to resolutions of the UN Security Council and the IAEA Board of Governors, “including the immediate suspension construction work in Qom", where the construction of a uranium enrichment plant is underway. This construction became officially known only in September of this year, although, according to the IAEA, it began back in 2002. This has heightened experts' suspicions about the true goals of Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA also called on the Iranians to confirm the absence of “any other nuclear facility not previously declared to the agency.”
25 member countries of the IAEA Board of Governors out of 35 voted for the document, including Russia, the USA, China, Great Britain and France. Cuba, Venezuela and Malaysia spoke out against it. Afghanistan, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa and Türkiye abstained. Azerbaijan did not participate in the voting.
“We hope that Tehran will take the signal contained in the resolution of the Board of Governors very seriously and will ensure full cooperation with the agency in the interests of achieving an early negotiated settlement of the situation around the Iranian nuclear program,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. In the West they spoke out more categorically. “Our patience and the patience of the international community is not unlimited,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “If Iran refuses to meet its obligations, it will bear responsibility for its own growing isolation and other consequences.” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in his words, “believes that the next stage will be sanctions if Iran does not respond to the current very clear vote.”
The IAEA's conclusions were based on the report of its Director General Muhammad ElBaradei. The outgoing Egyptian - just today the Japanese Yukiya Amano takes over his powers - for the first time admitted the inability of his organization to clarify the essence of Iranian nuclear developments. In Vienna, he said the agency was "at an impasse" and there was "no movement to clarify outstanding issues" so that the IAEA could "have confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program."
AlBaradei also expressed “disappointment” at the lack of a positive response from Tehran to the world community’s proposal to enrich Iranian uranium outside the country. Let us recall that in October the international “six” on Iran - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany - proposed that Iranian low-enriched uranium be further enriched in Russia and then delivered to France for the manufacture of fuel elements for the Tehran research reactor. However, the meeting of the Six, held on November 20 in Brussels, stated that Iran “did not give a positive response to the IAEA draft agreement on the research reactor in Tehran.”
“The toughening of Iran’s position naturally caused bewilderment in the world community,” Nina Mamedova, head of the Iran sector at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted to Vremya Novostei. According to her, the IAEA’s proposal to re-enrich uranium “could relieve tension from the entire situation around the Iranian nuclear program, especially since Iranian representatives themselves had previously expressed interest in such a scheme.”
The session of the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a separate resolution supporting Russia's initiative to create a reserve of low-enriched uranium on its territory for the agency's member states. As the Russian representative on the council, Grigory Berdennikov, emphasized, “the resolution especially emphasizes the inalienable right of all states party to the NPT to develop, research, and produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” Türkiye has expressed interest in participating in the additional enrichment of uranium for the Tehran reactor.
However, Iranian deputies did not even begin to discuss the proposed schemes yesterday. They attacked the resolution of the IAEA Board of Governors on Iran, calling it the product of “anti-Iranian activities” of the United States, Great Britain and a number of other “states hostile to the Islamic Republic.” The statement adopted by parliamentarians said that “due to the rash behavior of world powers, the government must present its plan to reduce the level of Iran’s cooperation with the agency.” Fatemeh Alia, a member of the commission on national security and foreign policy, called the resolution a “disgusting political action.” According to her colleague Mohammad Karamirad, parliament could even “consider withdrawing from the NPT” and “block IAEA inspectors from entering the country.”
The surge in tension around Tehran's nuclear program has not yet affected Russian-Iranian cooperation. Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko arrived in Tehran yesterday to participate in a meeting of the intergovernmental commission; he also intends to assess the progress of work on the construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr. Yesterday, Mr. Shmatko confirmed that construction “will be completed in the very near future,” because “this is a matter of honor for both Russian and Iranian nuclear scientists.” And the Iranian Ambassador to Russia, Sayed Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi, recently expressed hope that the issue of supplying Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to his country, which the United States is actively opposed to, will be resolved “within one or two months.”
Nevertheless, if the issue of sanctions is raised in the UN Security Council, Russia will most likely support them. “The question is how to make sanctions more effective in terms of influencing the Iranian leadership, and not the Iranian people,” Nina Mamedova noted to Vremya Novostey.