by Gareth Porter
When Iran offered last month to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the Marivan region near the border with Iraq, the IAEA might have been expected to respond with alacrity to the opportunity.
The IAEA had been complaining for months that Iran had not provided the information and access required to “clarify” allegations of nuclear weapons-related experiments. But the immediate IAEA response to the Iranian offer, as well as the previous history of the Marivan issue, suggest that the nuclear agency is less than eager to take advantage of it. That reason appears to be because the Agency’s source for the alleged experiments failed to identify the site where the alleged experiments were supposed to have been conducted.
The Agency’s November 2011 report asserted that “information” provided by a “Member State” indicated that Iran had carried out “large scale high explosive experiments” in “the region of Marivan” using a technique for initiating an explosive charge found in “some known nuclear explosive devices.”
In a significant development in the IAEA-Iran process for resolving the “possible military dimensions” (PMD) issue however, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, told the Board of Governors during its quarterly conference November 21 that Iran was ready to give the IAEA “one managed access” to the western Marivan region to “prove” that the allegations of nuclear weapons experiments were “wrong and baseless.” He said such alleged experiments “could easily be traced if the exact site would be visited.”
The Iranian diplomat said the unnamed Member State that had made the charge—which he said was either the United States or Israel—“should specify the site’s exact location. Otherwise it should confess that it has misled the IAEA with false information.” Najafi added, “In fact, there is no such location at all.”
The response from Gill Tudor, the spokesperson for IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano, was non-committal. “The situation regarding a visit to the Marivan region is not as simple as that conveyed by Iran. The Agency will discuss the offer with Iran,” she said.
Two weeks after the Iranian offer, the IAEA was still silent on whether it has contacted Iran to discuss the offer. “The topic is still under consideration,” said Serge Gas, the IAEA Director of Communications, in response to this writer’s query December 3 about any follow-up with the statement.
A source close to the Agency told me, however, that the issue of a visit to Marivan “has gone to sleep for the moment.”
The Iranian mission to the IAEA, meanwhile, said it had nothing to add to Ambassador Najafi’s initial offer.
The IAEA’s apparent hesitancy about an inspection visit to Marivan is remarkable in light of Amano’s criticism of Iran for allegedly failing to provide information on suspect sites. Amano declared in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington Oct. 31 that Iran still had not provided information on the issues that Iran had agreed to address last summer, one of which was the alleged high explosives experiments.
But instead of pursuing a possible inspection of the site of the alleged Marivan experiment, Amano has focused solely on gaining access to the site at Iran’s Parchin military base where, according to the 2011 IAEA report, Iran had constructed a large explosives containment vessel in 2000 for hydrodynamic testing of nuclear weapons designs.
That report did not claim that the alleged cylinder at Parchin had actually been used for any nuclear weapons-related experiment, however. It asserted only that it was “suitable” for carrying out the same kind of experiment on a multipoint initiation system for a bomb that it said had been already performed in Marivan.
Former IAEA nuclear weapons expert Robert Kelley, who had twice headed the Agency’s Iraq Action Team, has argued that an inspection of the alleged Marivan high explosives experiments should thus take the priority. In February 2012, Kelley, a former director of the US Department of Energy Remote Sensing Laboratory in Nevada, told Jonathan Tirone of Bloomberg News, “The Agency needs to put Marivan first, because it is the sleeping dog in the last report.”
The day after Kelley was quoted on Marivan, Iran’s permanent representative to the IAEA, Ambassador Ali Asgar Soltanieh, told a visiting IAEA delegation, which had requested the day before to visit Parchin during its two-day stay, that it could carry out an inspection visit to Marivan instead. But the IAEA delegation rejected the offer, claiming that it had not been given enough lead-time to prepare for such a trip, according to Soltanieh.
The IAEA had never brought up Marivan publicly again until Najafi’s offer at the Board of Governors meeting. The only plausible reason for its present apparent reluctance to pursue such a visit is that the Member State that provided the intelligence on the alleged experiments failed to identify a specific site in the Marivan region.
Marivan is one of the “counties” of Iran’s Kurdistan province. It includes three districts with three cities and 151 populated villages with a total population of about 170,000 people.
The IAEA certainly had access to satellite images for the entire Marivan region, and would have searched through those images for any site that looked like it could be the location of the purported high explosives experiment. Apparently, it did not find a specific location that seemed plausible.
The allegation about the Marivan experiment isn’t the only one that lacked a specific location. The intelligence on the alleged explosives cylinder “suitable” for conducting the same type of experiment was also not connected to a specific site at the sprawling Parchin facility at the time that its alleged existence was first reported to the IAEA.
The IAEA revealed in its August 2012 report that the location of the Parchin site “was only identified in March 2011.” IAEA reports are carefully worded, and any intelligence information is always attributed to one or more unidentified Member States. The use of passive voice—which allowed the Agency to avoid the question of who did finally identify the location—strongly implies that the identification of the site at Parchin was not the result of new intelligence information provided by the original or some other, but rather resulted from the IAEA’s own searching through satellite images for a site with physical characteristics considered consistent with the intelligence the Agency had obtained. So the Parchin site is likely merely the IAEA’s best guess as to the location of the alleged object, the very existence of which is very much in question, as Kelley has argued on this website.
The fact that the unnamed Member State or States that provided the intelligence claims apparently failed to specify locations for either of the two major alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related activities adds yet another reason to question the reliability of the intelligence used by the IAEA to construct what Amano calls the “case” that Iran carried out covert nuclear weapons research. But there are other compelling reasons to question those and other such intelligence claims. Kelley has discussed some of those reasons in multiple articles. Others are discussed in my own book-length study on the misinformation and disinformation surrounding the Iran nuclear issue.
Despite the problematic nature of the intelligence currently at the center of the PMD issue, the treatment of the issue in American news media continues to focus overwhelmingly on Iran’s refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect the site that has now been identified at Parchin. The implication has been that Iran is hiding something. At the same time, one would be hard-pressed to find US coverage of Iran’s latest offer.
There are other explanations for Iran’s reluctance to permit the IAEA to inspect Parchin, however. On one hand, Iran would not want to set a precedent for allowing inspections of its military sites on the basis of intelligence that it argues is not supported by credible evidence when hostile powers could exploit that opening to gather military intelligence. On the other hand, it can’t be expected to give away its ultimate negotiating chip to the IAEA without a concession of comparable value in return.
Photo: Resident Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran Reza Najaf photographed with IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano in Vienna, Austria, 26 September 2013. Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA
]]>President Obama’s re-election last month raised hopes that the US government would at last be in a position, politically, to work with Iran towards a negotiated settlement centred on confidence-building and the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This was the basis of the understanding reached this April in Istanbul. It was therefore [...]]]>
President Obama’s re-election last month raised hopes that the US government would at last be in a position, politically, to work with Iran towards a negotiated settlement centred on confidence-building and the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This was the basis of the understanding reached this April in Istanbul. It was therefore a little puzzling that during the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) Board of Governors meeting on 29 November, the US representative was once more engaging in a diplomacy of threats and ultimata.
The issue under discussion was the absence of progress in relation to clarifying concerns about past, but also possibly ongoing, Iranian activities of a non-peaceful nuclear nature, often referred to as a “possible military dimension” (PMD). The US representative asserted that Iran could not be allowed indefinitely to ignore “its obligations” and implied that in the event of a continuing absence of progress when the Board meets in March, the US will argue for Iran to be found in non-compliance with those obligations.
This raises two questions. To what extent is Iran in non-compliance with its IAEA obligations in failing to cooperate to resolve these concerns? And, is Iran likely to become more cooperative as a result of this threat?
It is widely accepted that Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA entitles the agency secretariat to verify not only that all nuclear material declared by Iran remains in peaceful use, but also that such declarations are correct and (most importantly) complete.
Notably, paragraph 73 of the standard NPT safeguards agreement (to which Iran is subject) states that the IAEA may request a special inspection if it deems information made available by a state inadequate for the Agency to fulfil its official responsibilities.
So, insofar as Iran is failing to cooperate to resolve concerns which may reasonably imply the existence of undeclared nuclear material, there is a case for saying that Iran is in breach of its obligation to cooperate.
However, in this instance it’s questionable whether all the activities for which Iranian cooperation has been sought imply with adequate credibility the possibility of undeclared nuclear material. These activities were described in the annex to GOV/2011/65 of 8 November 2011 (the IAEA report used to build support for further sanctions at the turn of the year). A careful reading of that annex suggests that several of these activities, maybe even the majority of them, would not have involved nuclear material.
Of course it could be argued that PMD activities not involving nuclear material, such as missile warhead design work, can imply that at some future stage a state intends to acquire nuclear material which it does not intend to declare. That, however, seems a very tenuous basis on which to base an IAEA non-compliance finding. Moreover, it would also imply that all states that have engaged, even as a precautionary measure, in research into any aspect of the design or construction of nuclear devices should be found non-compliant.
So, my first conclusion is that if the US decides in March to accuse Iran of fresh non-compliance, it should take care to focus the accusation on activities that can reasonably be suspected of involving the use of nuclear material and are manifestly not the figment of some other state’s imagination.
However, to come to my second question, is proceeding in that way likely to be productive? The experience of the last seven years suggests not. Each time the West has resorted to punitive or coercive measures to influence Iranian behaviour, the results have been either unproductive or, worse, counterproductive. Iran was far more cooperative when, between October 2003 and April 2005, a less aggressive diplomacy was used to influence Iran’s leaders.
Furthermore, for some time there have been hints that Iran’s failure to cooperate in resolving PMD concerns is not its last word. On the contrary, cooperation can be expected in return for Western flexibility on sanctions and certain assurances in the context of an overall settlement based on the provisions of a treaty to which Iran insists it’s committed to, the NPT.
Moreover, if Iranian suspicion of Western good faith is one of the greatest obstacles to achieving an agreement, then the priority in the coming months should be to overcome that suspicion. This will not be achieved by seeking yet again to unite the IAEA Board in a humiliating condemnation of Iran, least of all if the legal grounds for that condemnation are not watertight. On the contrary, securing a further IAEA non-compliance finding would be a rum way to go about convincing Iran’s Supreme Leader that the US should no longer be seen as the Great Satan.
If, nonetheless, the US persists on the non-compliance course and succeeds, what then? Will Russia and China allow Iran to be penalized in the absence of evidence that it has decided to make nuclear weapons and therefore constitutes a genuine threat to international peace and security? If they do, will Iran pay any more heed to such a resolution than it has to the five previous Chapter VII resolutions of dubious legitimacy?
It’s certainly desirable that light be shed on suspected research into nuclear warhead construction and delivery, especially if it involved or involves undeclared nuclear material. But at last US voters have created political space for the West to revert to less aggressive, less confrontational tactics. At last the West can afford to experiment with a more exploratory, empathetic approach. It would be a pity to squander that opportunity.
]]>The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is hosting an online discussion on Iran and International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) compliance standard. Authors include Arms Control Law blogger Daniel Joyner, the Hudson Institute’s Christopher Ford, and Vertic’s executive director, Andreas Persbo. Last week, Joyner, a law professor at the University of [...]]]>
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is hosting an online discussion on Iran and International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) compliance standard. Authors include Arms Control Law blogger Daniel Joyner, the Hudson Institute’s Christopher Ford, and Vertic’s executive director, Andreas Persbo. Last week, Joyner, a law professor at the University of Alabama, wrote that the IAEA is overstepping its bounds with the two additional and separate legal standards included in the Director General’s Board of Governor’s report:
I think that the two additional legal standards are ultra vires, or beyond the authority, of the IAEA to apply to Iran and to be the basis for investigations and assessments by the IAEA. The only lawful standard for the IAEA to apply is the clear standard from Article II of Iran’s CSA, i.e. that all declared, safeguarded nuclear material in Iran has not been diverted to non-peaceful use.
It must be remembered that the IAEA is not a general policeman of international nuclear energy law. It is not the “UN’s nuclear watchdog,” as the media is so fond of calling it. The agency is an independent international organization, which was created through a treaty — an instrument of international law. As such, it has only the international legal personality and the limited mandate of legal authority, which are provided both in the agency’s statute and in its bilateral Safeguards Agreements with member states.
Now for the kicker:
So what does this mean in application? It means that the current director general and his predecessor have consistently assessed in their reports to the Board of Governors that, according to this one lawful standard, Iran is in full compliance with its IAEA safeguards obligations.
It also means that, since Iran neither has an Additional Protocol in force with the IAEA, nor is under any legal obligation to conclude one, the fact that the agency is “unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities” — standards derivable from the protocol — is legally irrelevant.
Furthermore, it means that the IAEA does not have the legal authority PDF to either investigate possible military dimensions, or the weaponization, of Iran’s nuclear program, or to publish reports making assessments on this issue, as it did in November 2011.
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The always thorough Mark Hibbs has a smart piece regarding the meaning of the resolution passed last week by the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) Board of Governors regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The resolution was initiated by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council [...]]]>
The always thorough Mark Hibbs has a smart piece regarding the meaning of the resolution passed last week by the International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) Board of Governors regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The resolution was initiated by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) and modified with South African input, with only Cuba dissenting and Egypt, Tunisia, and Ecuador abstaining.
Rather than interpreting it as a message of unity among the P5+1 , Hibbs sees the resolution as “a lowest-common-denominator product” whose main intention was to “emphasize that the diplomatic process should continue and that the war of words should not intensify.”
So the resolution was not merely intended for Iran. Its emphatic, twice-mentioned support for a “comprehensive negotiated, long term solution, on the basis of reciprocity and a step-by-step approach, which restores international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program consistent with the NPT,” Hibbs points out, was also directed at Benjamin Netanyahu who despite being told in no uncertain terms to let go of the idea of resolving the nuclear issue militarily at least for now, seems unable to do so.
By avoiding inflammatory language, the board in effect delayed serious conversation about the intricacies of dealing with Iran’s nuclear program until after the United States November 6 presidential election. In Hibbs’ words:
[T]he IAEA resolution was informed by the perspective that as long as Iran doesn’t know who will be in the White House next January, it can’t be expected to negotiate seriously with the P5+1 on a long-term solution that would require that the U.S. make some firm commitments to Iran.
In other words, the change of subject to the broad support for diplomacy versus war has in effect lent the Obama Administration a hand in keeping the real Iran question – which has to do with how it plans to address Iran’s insistence on its nuclear rights through negotiation – out of the presidential contest.
But “kicking the can down the road” does not necessarily mean progress in figuring out how to resolve thorny issues. From the looks of it, neither does the idea of “we are going to keep sanctioning until Iran decides to negotiate seriously.” To be sure, one can continue to hope that this is not so. In the words of the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, the Iranian economy is “beginning to buckle” under a new round of tough sanctions. “So we think that there’s still considerable time for this pressure to work,” she said. But even Rice has to acknowledge that “this is not an infinite window.”
The reality is that sanctions may or may not prod Tehran to accept a bad deal but, after almost 9 years of negotiations, it is highly unlikely that the Iranian leadership will back down from its repeatedly declared position even in the face of a deteriorating economy. This is especially so since Tehran’s declared stance — that it will not sign onto something that will permanently treat Iran differently than other countries in terms of its permitted enrichment activities and the kind of inspection regime that is required to oversee its nuclear program — is not an especially outrageous position.
This is why Hibbs is correct to assert that a long-term solution to the stand-off will require some sort of firm commitments to Iran, including for instance “permitting Iran to continue enriching uranium after the IAEA, having implemented Additional Protocol-plus, delivers its imprimatur that Iran’s nuclear program is clearly dedicated to peaceful use.”
But the way Hibbs has laid out the end game already hints at how difficult negotiations are going to be even if – a very big if – a re-elected Obama Administration gives firm commitments to permit Iran to continue enriching eventually. Tehran will have all sorts of concerns and questions. How can it be assured that the IAEA’s imprimatur will not take forever? What does the “Additional Protocol-plus” entail? Iran knows it includes the inspection of the military site at Parchin, but is that it? Will the “plus” remain permanent or in a state of constant flux? And how does this schedule of the IAEA giving a clean bill of health to Iran coordinate with the potpourri of sanctions imposed by the UN, US, and EU?
The United States for its part will have all sorts of concerns, the most important of which is the fear that Iran will play games if sanctions are lessened in a step-by-step approach pushed by the Russians and now included in the IAEA resolution. The decision to ease up, even a little, on an instrument that has been quite successful in cornering Tehran for the sake of continued negotiations will not be easy. It could even prove impossible. But, assuming a re-election, the Obama Administration will no longer have electoral politics as an excuse for not deliberating on it.
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