I am just responding to an “insightful comment”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/?parentid=285 by Chris Paine at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

I agree that my uses of the phrase “give up” was probably a bit off. What I should have said was “agree to not use” or “dismantle” or something like that. I didn’t say that Iran will give up its “right” to the fuel cycle — I agree that they probably won’t.

However, I am a little more optimistic than Chris. Iran’s public statements suggest Tehran *may* accept some agreement that allows the Iranian government to say “we stopped enriching because we wanted to, not because we had to.” Tehran seems to be fixated on not being *required* by the IAEA to do something that it is not legally required to do. Iran wants its “rights” recognized, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll exercise them.

I think Chris’ ideas are good (especially the establishment of some universal rule that would deal with the fuel cycle problem), but unlikely in the short term. We may have to settle for some arrangement that leaves some ambiguity about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Given the alternatives — and the likely inability of this administration to get its act together on this issue — I could well support such an arrangement (not that anyone’s asking me.)

I’ve sent Chris a recent ACT “article”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Iran_EU.asp I wrote; I thought I’d also post it here.

Michael Ledeen’s November 29 “screed”:http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200411290913.asp in the National Review Online about the recent EU3 deal with Iran proves that it’s easy to make arguments when you can just invent facts.

Some background: Iran agreed in October 2003 to stop its uranium enrichment activities, but there has been an ongoing dispute about the scope of that agreement and Iran has continued work on portions of its gas centrifuge enrichment program. The new agreement is more specific and explicitly requires Iran not to do things like build centrifuges or convert yellow cake into uranium hexafluoride, which is the gas used as feedstock for centrifuges.

Anyway, here are some facts Ledeen gets wrong.

First, Ledeen says:

bq. The latest Iranian shenanigan may have set a record for speed. On Monday they announced they had stopped the centrifuges that were enriching uranium. On Tuesday they asked for permission to run the centrifuges again. The Europeans sternly said no.

Not exactly. Iran hasn’t used any nuclear material in its centrifuges since it agreed to stop doing so in October 2003. This is the part of its original deal with the EU that it has abided by. What Iran wanted this time was to exempt 20 sets of centrifuge components from its suspension deal. The EU3 said they couldn’t do that and reached a compromise where the centrifuges are under IAEA surveillance, but not IAEA seal (which is where the rest of the centrifuge components are.)

Ledeen also argues:

bq. No serious person can believe that the negotiations are going to block, or even seriously delay, the Iranian race to acquire atomic bombs.

Actually, they can and do. IAEA inspectors have pretty extensive powers to access Iranian facilities suspected of being involved in a nuclear program. While they’re not foolproof (Iran might possess concealed facilities that the agency doesn’t know about), these inspection powers have produced a wealth of information about Iran’s nuclear programs in the 2+ years that this investigation has been going on.

Even the CIA agrees in its most recent “report”:http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/721_reports/july_dec2003.htm#iran that Iran can’t do much with the facilities under IAEA safeguards:

bq. International scrutiny and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and safeguards will most likely prevent Tehran from using facilities declared to the IAEA directly for its weapons program as long as Tehran remains a party to the NPT.

Ledeen then accuses the Europeans of “appeasement” and acting in bad faith, claiming (without evidence) that they “surely know” that their agreement is “a ritual dance designed to put a flimsy veil over the nakedness of the real activities.”

Apart from the obvious weakness of this ad-hom attack, Ledeen also ignores the fact that, since the original October 2003 agreement, Iran:

* has not enriched uranium
* has increased its cooperation with the IAEA’s investigation
* is doing several things that it’s not legally required to do, like act as if the additional protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement is in force (even though it isn’t). In fact, there’s not really a legal requirement for Iran to suspend its enrichment program.

Now it is true that Iran has, among other things, also gone back on a February 2004 agreement to refrain from building centrifuges and manufacturing components for them. And they previously lied to the IAEA and still need to resolve several other outstanding issues. And all of their claims should be scrutinized very, very, closely. But it’s tough to argue that there’s not at least some basis for believing that Iran may want to deal with the EU3 and eventually give up its fuel cycle facilities.

After asserting (again, without evidence) that the EU3 want a nuclear-armed Iran and want to keep the US from acting to stop Iranian nukes (No, I’m not going to waste keystrokes answering this nonsense), Ledeen claims that

bq. There is certainly no risk that the United Nations will do anything serious, which is why the Europeans keep insisting that it is the only “legitimate” forum for any discussion of the Iranian nuclear menace.

This is really where up becomes down for Ledeen and (apparently) NRO editors. In point of fact, the US has been insisting on going to the UN Security Council. The EU3 have threatened to support this US effort as a way to get Iran to cooperate. The reason they’re skeptical of the US idea is because they don’t think the US knows what to do if the issue does go to the Security Council. It’s worth noting that the IAEA referred North Korea to the Security Council more than 18 months ago and nothing has happened.

Anyway, the rest of the article is about why we should push for regime change in Iran. There’s no evidence to support any of his claims here either, and most knowledgeable people seem to agree that regime change is a) unlikely to work, especially in the short term and b) no guarantee of a regime that won’t want nuclear weapons. (see, for example, “this”:http://www.cfr.org/pub7194/zbigniew_brzezinski_robert_m_gates_suzanne_maloney/iran_time_for_a_new_approach.php CFR task force report.)

Whatever.

After a bit of reading, I have a couple of things to add to “Jeffrey’s post”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=272 on Doug Jehl’s Nov.24 NYT “article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/24/politics/24weapons.html.

The first two items are previous public statements from some pretty high-ranking US officials on Pakistan’s assistance to Iran.

First, in a speech to a G-Town audience last February, then-DCI George Tenet “implied”:http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2004/tenet_georgetownspeech_02052004.html that the Khan network had supplied Iran with centrifuge technology:

bq. [W]e discovered the extent of Khan’s hidden network. We tagged the proliferators. We detected the network, stretching across four continents, offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran…

bq. ***

bq. Through this unrelenting effort we confirm the network was delivering such things as illicit uranium-enrichment centrifuges.

Second, President Bush “said”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040211-4.html later that month:

bq. Khan and his associates provided Iran and Libya and North Korea with designs for Pakistan’s older centrifuges, as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models. The network also provided these countries with components, and in some cases, with complete centrifuges.

Third, Jehl is a bit misleading when he writes that the CIA report says that the Khan network supplied Iran with nuclear “weapons components.”

The report, however, is actually referring to gas centrifuge components, not weapons components. Needless to say, centrifuges are not weapons.

To be fair, Jehl does say that the report “does not say explicitly whether Mr. Khan’s network sold Iran complete plans for building a warhead.” But I think that sentence implies that the report says Iran acquired parts for a nuclear weapon. He should have been more careful.