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This is a grave mistake. It's the triumph of hawkish sabre-rattling over diplomacy. It's the beginning of a slide toward war.
*Update Friday, February 3, 2006- An impasse on the draft resolution on Iran proposed by France,
Germany and Britain shows that there remain divisions within the IAEA Board
on whether or not the best way to deal with Iran is to report them to
the UN Security Council.
“IAEA head Mr
ElBaradei said earlier today that he believed the Iran issue was not
yet a crisis but reporting it to the UN Security Council would
in fact create one," said Greenpeace nuclear analyst William Peden from
IAEA headquarters in Vienna. “It will greatly hamper Agency inspectors
in their quest to resolve outstanding issues concerning Iran's nuclear
programme. Iran could easily take the
wind out of the sails...by announcing a re-suspension of enrichment and reprocessing
activities to allow negotiations to proceed”
We hope that with overnight contemplation
cooler heads will prevail and that more time will be given for the
diplomatic route to be pursued.
Greenpeace is opposed to any nation acquiring nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, including Iran. But we believe the best way to ensure that doesn't happen is for the IAEA to have continued access to Iranian facilities. Iran has already made clear that if the matter goes to the Security Council it will restrict inspections and no longer comply with requests to reveal information above and beyond what is legally required under existing treaty obligations.
As past situations have shown, in particular in Iraq, any action that restricts inspections and that closes opportunities to rebuild confidence can only lead to a confidence vacuum. And where hard evidence is not available, warmongers on all sides exploit the currency of fear and speculation.
The UN Security Council is simply not the right body to resolve a conflict over whether a country has a right to a nuclear programme or not. The Security Council has failed to live up to its Charter obligations to minimize human and economic resources spent on armaments, or to advance the goal of a Middle East nuclear free zone. Instead the permanent members (who are permanent members precisely because they have nuclear weapons) have participated in arms races and weapons profiteering, stubbornly refusing to comply with treaty commitments to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Given this record, how can the Security Council resolve the Iran crisis?
Given the failure to treat the nuclear weapons programmes of other countries with the same vigilance as Iran's, how can the accusation of hypocrisy not have a ring of truth?
The only solution to this crisis is a Nuclear Free Zone in the Middle East. It's a vital first step towards removing all nuclear proliferation risks in the region, as well as providing the essential security guarantees from nuclear weapons states outside the region.
That means an end not only to existing and nascent nuclear weapons programmes, but an end to nuclear power as well.
Iran insists that it is simply exercising its rights under the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to develop "peaceful nuclear technology." There is no such thing as peaceful nuclear technology. Once a country has a nuclear power programme it is possible for it to develop a weapons programme. That's as true for Germany, Japan and Brazil as it is for Iran.
Our position on Iran is the same as that for all countries with nuclear power or nuclear weapons - the ONLY basis for peace, security and sustainable development is to abandon nuclear programmes; and to phase out nuclear power in favour of sustainable renewable technologies - in other words, a nuclear-free world.
Iran has an opportunity to stop this slide toward war by calling for a regional nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. The international community has an opportunity to stop this slide toward war by pursuing exactly the same thing.
The current path is lose-lose for everyone except the makers of nuclear weapons and the peddlers of nuclear power.
