Their Intentions Are Clear

ON SEPTEMBER 24, the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its most harshly worded resolution to date on the Iranian nuclear program. The resolution says that "some important outstanding issues" remain unclear despite "two and a half years of intensive inspections." Insisting that "Iran's full transparency is indispensable and overdue," the resolution states that the agency questions Iran's motives for failing to provide all the required documentation and "pursuing a policy of concealment." Although the resolution does not itself refer the case to the U.N. Security Council, it notes suggestively that some of the outstanding questions are "within the competence of the Security Council."

This resolution sends a message to Tehran, but there is no guarantee that Iran's hardline leadership will understand it. Furthermore, the resolution postpones the possibility of referring Iran to the Security Council until November, when IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei is scheduled to deliver his next report. Thus, the agency has given Iran a few more months to work on its nuclear program unimpeded. Referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council--the obvious next step in dealing with the Iranian nuclear program--would have caught the theocrats' attention.

Some commentators will argue that the international community should offer Iran more concessions in order to secure its cooperation, with time the only cost of continued negotiations. Yet time is exactly what Tehran has been playing for since its covert nuclear activities were brought to light three years ago. Tehran has used that interval to pursue its stated objective--the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. In particular, Iran seeks to master the fuel cycle. Already it mines and mills uranium at Saqand, converts it at Isfahan, and enriches it at the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant. One reactor is being built at Bushehr with Russian help, and a heavy-water reactor is being built in Arak.

Iranian officials have been rather open about how they operate--specifically, they've explained in published interviews how they take advantage of drawn-out negotiations with the European Union and the IAEA.

Mohammad Saidi, for example, a top official in Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, acknowledged in an interview published in the daily Kayhan on April 12, 2005, that work on the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility continued for five months after Iran signed an agreement with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to "suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities as defined by the IAEA." Operations at the facility had begun in March 2004, he added, and conversion of yellow cake uranium into uranium tetrafluoride happened the following month. A few months later, Saidi said, raw uranium was processed into uranium hexafluoride.

Then on July 23, 2005, the same paper carried an interview with Hojatoleslam Hassan Rohani, who was secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for 16 years until his replacement in mid-August, and had responsibility for Iran's nuclear account and related interaction with the E.U. and IAEA. Rohani explained how Tehran plays for time and benefits from the continuing negotiations with Europe.

Rohani said Iran did not suspend work at the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility until the project was complete and tested "on an industrial level," by which time it had already produced "a few tons" of uranium hexafluoride. In general terms, he said, "when it comes to suspension, we should comply to the minimum extent, in order to interrupt as little of our activity as possible." Rohani continued, "The day when Natanz [the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant] was suspended, we put all our effort into Isfahan. Now that Isfahan is in suspension, we are fixing other existing flaws."

Then in an August 4 interview with Iranian state television, Rohani provided specific examples of how Tehran makes the most of the time it gains through drawn-out negotiations. He said Iran had not made much progress in nuclear technology as of a year and a half ago--"We had a few centrifuges in Natanz. . . . We didn't have the raw material for enrichment, i.e., the feed, the uranium hexafluoride. Isfahan was being equipped." But since then the Isfahan facility has been completed, and it can now produce uranium hexafluoride. He added, "We have made a great many centrifuges. We prepared them in this period."

Another figure who serves on Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Hussein Musavian, pointed out an additional benefit of the prolonged negotiations: They had prevented an international crisis involving the IAEA Board of Governors, he said on July 17, according to a report by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Had there been such a crisis, said Musavian, "the great contracts that Iran signed with the Europeans in the fields of oil and gas would be impossible."

The belief that Tehran can be negotiated into forsaking its nuclear pursuits seems far-fetched, when the country's leaders so consistently affirm that Iran will never relinquish them. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sets the country's general policies and supervises the other branches of government, as well as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, all have insisted on Iran's right to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Given Iranian officials' statements on their negotiating tactics and on their ultimate objectives, it is not clear why some commentators believe Tehran should be given more time, or even a Grand Bargain. Perhaps they believe that wishful thinking will resolve the issue, or maybe they are projecting their own values and strategic objectives onto Iranian policymakers. Either the commentators are not aware of Tehran's oft-stated policy, regional ambitions, and strategic concerns, or they simply choose to ignore these realities.

Not everybody is so generously inclined towards Tehran. Washington has made clear that it does not want Iran to master the complete fuel cycle. Paris, after two years of futile negotiations in coordination with Berlin and London, seems fed up. It cancelled a late-August meeting with the Iranians, and anonymous French diplomats say a resumption of talks is not on the table because this would vindicate Iran. Indeed, 22 out of 35 members of the IAEA governing board voted in favor of the recent tough resolution, with only Venezuela voting against it and the rest abstaining.

Referring Iran to the Security Council is not the end of the negotiating process--but it is the logical and necessary next step. A range of options are open to the Security Council, from a mild statement that it has noted the IAEA's concerns and report of noncompliance, to a call for sanctions, to endorsement of military action. Adoption of even the mildest measure would strengthen the IAEA by sending a message to Tehran that its actions are unacceptable, and it would show other potential proliferators that they cannot violate their international undertakings with impunity.

A. William Samii is the Iran analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The views expressed here are his own and not those of his employer.