Can Iran's Nuclear Activities be Thwarted?

From USA Today Magazine

"Preventing nuclear war arguably is the most important arena in which universal compliance is needed. This standard must apply not only to Iran, but to the U.S. and other nations." May 2006 By David Cortright

Iran's nuclear activities are worrisome and pose a potential threat to regional and international security. The Tehran government has failed to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It recently ended its previous suspension of nuclear activities and is proceeding with the development of uranium enrichment technology. Convincing the Tehran government to refrain from developing nuclear weapons is an important security objective. The crisis should be resolved through diplomacy, however, not through punitive sanctions or the use of military force. An overly confrontational approach will be counter-productive. The United States and its partners should combine the threat of sanctions with the offer of substantial incentives through an engagement strategy that reinforces popular Iranian strivings for reform, economic development, and cooperation with the West.

There is no doubt that the danger from a nuclear-armed Iran would be grave, but it is important to distinguish between rhetoric and actual capabilities. There is still ample time to develop an effective strategy for preventing the nuclearization of Iran. The U.S. government’s National Intelligence Estimate last year concluded that it will take ten years for Iran to acquire the capability to build atomic weapons.¹ Israeli officials recently told the New York Times that Iran might be able to produce a bomb in four or five years.² Whatever the exact timeframe, it is clear that Tehran does not now pose a nuclear threat. There is no need to panic.

Iran faces many technical hurdles in attempting to produce enough fissile material for a bomb. It will take years to learn the technology and construct the facilities required for the enrichment of sufficient weapons-grade uranium. Iran is nowhere near having the kind of large-scale enrichment effort involving tens of thousands of centrifuges that would be needed to produce enough fissile material for a bomb.³

As long as Iran remains a part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), international inspectors will have access to Iranian nuclear facilities and can report on nonproliferation violations. Under these conditions any Iranian effort to begin producing weapons grade uranium or developing actual weapons capabilities would be known well in advance, giving international officials plenty of advance warning and opportunity for response. The goal of U.S. and international strategy should be to keep Iran within the NPT system, while developing a successful strategy for persuading Iran to refrain from nuclear weapons development.

Because Iran falsified earlier nuclear declarations and reneged on previous nonproliferation pledges, the United States and its partners are developing a strategy to increase pressure on the regime. The United States is on the right track so far in seeking to cooperate with European states, Russia, China, and other major players and in working through the IAEA and the UN Security Council.

The United States is urging the Security Council to consider the imposition of economic sanctions, but it is important to recognize the lessons from earlier UN sanctions cases. Past experience suggests that coercive measures sometimes produce a rally-around-the-flag effect. Overly forceful sanctions toward Iran might strengthen the hand of hard-line groups and the extremist leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, while undermining the position of Iranians who favor nuclear compromise with the West. Iran has threatened to expel international inspectors and withdraw from the NPT if UN sanctions are imposed. This may be a bluff, intended to prevent or delay IAEA and UN action, but it is a risk that diplomats must take seriously as they weigh their options.

The threat of sanctions is often useful as a way of prompting a bargaining process, but it is important for the United States and its partners to recognize the limitations of sanctions. There is no support in the international community right now for an oil embargo or general trade sanctions. The only measures the Security Council will even consider are “smart sanctions”: targeted measures aimed exclusively at Iranian leaders. These would include the freezing of the financial assets of designated Iranian elites and entities, a selective ban on travel, and an embargo on arms and weapons-related technology.

A Security Council decision to undertake such measures would signal international opposition to Iran's development of nuclear weapons. It would reinforce the political norm against proliferation. It could be a step toward more vigorous measures in the future if the regime refuses to cooperate. While selective sanctions would have diplomatic merit, there should be no illusion that such measures alone will be sufficient to prompt compliance with international norms. News reports suggest that Iran is moving financial assets out of Western banks in anticipation of potential sanctions. The Iranian leadership does not hold substantial assets abroad, nor have a passion for travel. The United States has had comprehensive economic and technological sanctions in place against Iran for more than twenty-five years and these have not prevented the regime from acquiring nuclear capabilities.

Past experience confirms that sanctions work best when they are linked to an engagement strategy and offers of incentives. Bringing Iran back from the nuclear brink will require carrots in addition to sticks. No Iranian leader wants to be seen as caving in to pressure from the West. Inducements will be needed to provide encouragement for cooperation, and to show the Iranian people that real benefits accrue from nonproliferation compliance. No American leader can or should seek to appease an extremist regime that has called for the destruction of Israel. If incentives are to be offered, they must be targeted to benefit the Iranian people, not the present government. Smart incentives must complement smart sanctions.

The most important incentive and by far the biggest carrot Washington could offer would be a formal pledge to refrain from military action against Iran as part of a binding nonproliferation agreement. Security assurances are the key to persuading potential proliferators to refrain from building atomic bombs. Security pledges have been effective in the past, particularly in the case of Ukraine, in convincing governments to forego a nuclear weapons option.

A firm nonaggression pledge from the United States would dramatically alter Iran’s security calculus and ease fears of potential military attack. This would remove the perceived need that some in Iran may feel for a nuclear deterrent. Taking the military option off the table would also undermine Ahmedinejad’s rally-around-the-flag strategy. It would weaken the position of those in Iran and in the region who portray the United States as the enemy of Islam.

The United States could also offer to begin the release of the estimated $17 billion in Iranian assets that has remained frozen in U.S. banks since 1979.⁴ A phased release of frozen assets could channel funds first to private financial interests in Iran rather than to the government’s central bank. Washington could begin to ease the vast array of economic, technological, scientific, and cultural sanctions that are now in place. This could be done in ways that benefit the sectors of Iranian society that are most likely to encourage cooperation with the West. The United States could offer to drop its opposition to the Iranian pipeline project in central Asia. There are a wide range of such actions that the U.S. government could take to signal a desire for normalizing relations, in exchange for guarantees of Iranian compliance with nonproliferation norms.

Some argue that coercive pressures are necessary because the previous European-led policy of negotiation and engagement failed. Carrots were tried and did not work, so sticks are necessary. While the European effort did not completely deter Iran, the dialogue produced some limited gains. In November 2003 Iran signed an Additional Protocols agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency allowing more intrusive forms of monitoring. Tehran agreed to a temporary suspension of its nuclear enrichment activities. It permitted the IAEA to place seals on its centrifuge research facilities, although these have now been removed.⁵ If the earlier negotiation process had not occurred, the regime might be further along than it is toward nuclear capability. This suggests that the dialogue process was at least partially successful. It also suggests that further negotiations might yield additional, more lasting results.

Russia and Iran have engaged in substantial negotiations over Moscow’s proposal to operate an Iranian-owned nuclear enrichment program on Russian soil. The proposed plan would enable Iran to produce its own uranium fuel but would provide international guarantees against enrichment to bomb-grade quality. Iran has not accepted the offer, but it has not rejected it either. In recent weeks Iranian officials have expressed renewed interest in the Russian proposal. Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow recently called the Russian plan “constructive” and a “good initiative” and expressed the hope that Iran and Russia could find a solution to the crisis. Negotiations are continuing, and could yet produce results that the European countries and the United States have said they would support.

A major danger in an overly coercive, sanctions-only policy is that it could hasten a U.S. and/or Israeli decision to use military force. In a number of major sanctions cases, including Yugoslavia, Haiti, and Iraq, the imposition of Security Council sanctions was followed by the use of force. Some political leaders view sanctions as a step toward the use of force, a prelude rather than an alternative to military action.

Newspaper accounts have speculated on possible Israeli and/or American plans for a bombing campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Military strikes against Iran could have disastrous consequences. Iran has hardened and widely dispersed its facilities, which means that at least some of its capabilities would survive. Iran has promised to retaliate in the event of military attack, which could cause major difficulties for American forces in Iraq, possible disruption of oil shipments in the region, and further setbacks in global efforts to stem the jihadist terror threat. Iran’s determination to build nuclear weapons might intensify.

The nuclear standoff with Iran exposes the weaknesses and contradictions in the NPT system and U.S. nonproliferation policy. Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees nations such as Iran the right to develop a civilian nuclear industry, including a nuclear fuel cycle. The Treaty prohibits the use of such facilities for weapons purposes, but as the experience of Israel, Iraq, India, Pakistan, and other countries has demonstrated, the technologies, scientific know-how, and materials employed in nuclear reactors can also be used for building bombs. The promotion of one system confers the capability of developing the other.

From Iran’s point of view, the current nonproliferation regime appears grossly unjust and discriminatory. Iran is denied the right to develop uranium enrichment capabilities that are available to other countries. It is threatened with coercive pressure when it is still several years away from developing the possibility of a bomb. Meanwhile other nations that have violated nonproliferation norms get a pass. Pakistan and India already have the bomb, and are acquiring ever more sophisticated delivery systems, yet instead of facing sanctions, they are being rewarded. Pakistan receives large amounts of U.S. military and economic assistance, while India enjoys improved political and economic relations with the United States. Far from pressuring New Delhi, Washington is proposing to supply nuclear fuel and technology to India in ways that could significantly weaken international nonproliferation standards. In Israel Iran sees a regime that has a well developed nuclear weapons capability and receives vast amounts of economic and military assistance from the United States.

Iran like many other developing countries condemns the hypocrisy of the United States and other nuclear weapons states preaching nuclear abstinence while clinging to these weapons for themselves. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei likens this to telling others not to smoke while a cigarette is dangling from your lip. The NPT system was built on a bargain in which non-nuclear nations agreed to forego the bomb, while the U.S. and other nuclear weapons powers pledged in Article VI to proceed toward disarmament. At the 1995 NPT review conference, which permanently extended the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States agreed to a declaration pledging "the determined pursuit by the nuclear-weapon States of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goals of eliminating those weapons." At the NPT review conference in 2000 the United States and the nuclear states re-iterated these pledges, agreeing to "practical steps" for the implementation of Article VI, including an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals."⁶

While the United States and Russia have greatly reduced their previously bloated nuclear arsenals, neither country has made a commitment or developed a plan for how to eliminate these weapons. On the contrary, both countries plan to retain nuclear weapons indefinitely. Russia is building new nuclear weapons delivery systems, while the United States is planning new production facilities to maintain and upgrade its arsenal. The United States and the other nuclear weapons states believe they can maintain the current system of nuclear apartheid in perpetuity. The actions of Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and now Iran suggest that this will not be possible.

The security concerns of individual countries like Iran cannot be treated in isolation. They are linked to regional and global security dynamics. The legitimacy of nonproliferation norms would be greatly enhanced by greater universality within regions and internationally. This could be advanced by linking nonproliferation objectives in Iran to a broader denuclearization process throughout South and Southwest Asia. Iran would be more likely to accept firm nonproliferation standards for itself if there were progress toward denuclearization across the region.

The goal of a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction has been affirmed many times in international declarations and Security Council resolutions. The Gulf War ceasefire resolution that mandated the disarmament of Iraq (Resolution 687, 1991) described the process of eliminating Iraq’s deadly weapons as the first step toward “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.” Subsequent Security Council resolutions on Iraq reaffirmed this goal. These resolutions recognize that the disarmament of any single country is inevitably tied to broader peace and security arrangements among other nations. Guaranteeing a nuclear-weapons-free Iran will require a peace process of negotiating political differences and reducing deadly weapons throughout the region and globally. A weapons-free-zone in the region will depend on negotiated peace settlements between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and its other Arab neighbors. Stability in the region would depend on a commitment by all parties to the monitored elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. officials argue that it is the political nature of a regime, not its technical capacity, which determines whether nuclear capabilities are threatening or not. Some nations are deemed responsible, while others are not. The nature of a regime is indeed crucial to shaping its policies, but regimes change. The Iran we are dealing with today has nuclear weapons-related resources that were afforded to Tehran when it was aligned with the United States. Pakistan is regarded a responsible ally of the United States, yet its chief of nuclear weapons development, A.Q. Khan, openly violated nonproliferation norms by distributing nuclear technologies to several countries, including Iran.

The principle of law is premised on universal not selective compliance. The rejection of legal standards leads to chaos and anarchy, which undermines rather than enhances security. International society is inherently more anarchic than domestic society, but the preservation of global security nonetheless depends on compliance with agreed rules and norms. Preventing nuclear war is arguably the most important arena in which universal compliance is needed. This standard must apply not only to Iran but to the United States and other nations. It is essential for preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.