The international community should accept Iran's growing uranium enrichment capabilities and concentrate on preventing the Middle Eastern state from tapping the program to develop a nuclear weapon, a nonproliferation analyst wrote in a report published yesterday by the Institute for International Strategic Studies (see GSN, Dec. 9).
Iran defends its uranium enrichment program as an effort strictly aimed at producing nuclear plant fuel, but the United States and other Western powers worry that it could generate a key nuclear bomb ingredient. International sanctions and incentives offers have focused on persuading Iran to halt the program completely.
"During 2009, Iran will probably reach the point at which it has produced the amount of low-enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear bomb. ... But being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having a nuclear weapon," Mark Fitzpatrick wrote in the report, titled The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding Worst-Case Outcomes.
The report marks a wider trend among proliferation analysts toward advocating the acceptance of Iran's uranium enrichment program, which includes roughly 5,000 centrifuges actively generating low-enriched uranium, the Los Angeles Times reported. To produce fuel for a nuclear weapon, Iran would have to "break out" of international safeguards and run the material through its centrifuges again for at least several months.
"It seems very doubtful that we're going to get rollback to zero centrifuges," Ftizpatrick told the Times."A more realistic question is, 'How are we going to build up reasonable barriers to breakout?'"
Fitzpatrick expressed certainty that Iran's nuclear program is intended to produce weapons, but he contended that accepting Iranian enrichment would discourage Tehran from rejecting international audits aimed at preventing it from routing nuclear material to a military program.
A military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would give Tehran a pretext to break out of the nonproliferation system, he warned.
"In the aftermath of an unprovoked attack," the report says, "Iran could be expected to withdraw from the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and engage the full resources of a unified nation in a determined nuclear weapons development program" (Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 9).
Meanwhile, a high-level Russian diplomatic official said Iran still lacks the ability to build a nuclear bomb, Agence France-Presse reported today.
"One cannot say today that Iran can create nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them," Interfax and ITAR-Tass quoted Russian Foreign Ministry official Vladimir Voronkov as saying. "This information is confirmed by all the services responsible for the collection and analysis of information," he said.
Addressing Russia's approach to Iran's nuclear program, he said: "the difference is that our [Western] partners want to use instruments of pressure. We do not consider such instruments to be always effective" (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Dec. 9).
Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani today cautioned U.S. President-elect Barack Obama against adopting his predecessor's policies on Iran. Obama has called for "tough but direct diplomacy" with Iran, offering incentives for halting disputed nuclear work while ratcheting up pressure to comply with U.N. demands.
"I don't expect someone who considers himself to be originally from Africa and a member of the oppressed black race in America to repeat what (George W.) Bush has to say," Rafsanjani said in a state radio broadcast. "I advise (Obama)... we don't want your incentives and your punishments will not stop us either. ... "It's better for you to be reasonable and not to deprive Iran of its rights" (Agence France Presse II/Spacewar.com, Dec. 9).