| Acronym Institute Home Page | Calendar | UN/CD | NPT/IAEA | UK | NATO | US |
| Space/BMD | CTBT | BWC | CWC | WMD Possessors | About Acronym | Links | Glossary |
Back to Disarmament Documentation
Setting the Standard for Iran's Cooperation: Full Disclosure of Past and Present Nuclear Activities, Remarks by Ambassador Gregory L. Schulte, U.S. Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Stockholm, Sweden, October 30, 2007.
In May 2006, the United States offered the Iranian government a historic opportunity to improve its relations with the international community and our own country. We said that our nation deeply respects the Iranian people and that we are eager to build a better future together.
We offered Iran new incentives to cooperate and negotiate with Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States.
We offered to support a civil nuclear program in Iran under international supervision if Iran's leaders agreed to suspend their pursuit of proliferation sensitive nuclear activities.
But we also said that, if the government of Iran continued to violate its international obligations and continued its unwise campaign for the technologies needed to build nuclear weapons, they would face serious circumstances and sanctions.
We and our partners, including Sweden and the broader European Union, remain fully committed to a diplomatic solution with Iran. On our behalf, Javier Solana reaffirmed that offer last week. Unfortunately, the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities.
Working with the European Union and concerned countries around the world, the United States is pursuing a comprehensive, diplomatic strategy to confront Iran's dangerous nuclear ambitions. We have worked with fellow members of the UN Security Council to impose two sets of Chapter VII sanctions on Iran and are now discussing a third.
Last week, as part of that strategy, Secretary Rice and Secretary Paulson announced new steps to increase the costs to Iran of its irresponsible behavior. Many of the regime's most destabilizing policies are carried out by two of its agencies: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, and the Qods Force, an arm of the IRGC. Because of the Revolutionary Guard's support for proliferation and because of the Qods Force's support for terrorism, the United States designated both for financial sanctions.
We similarly designated three Iranian state-owned banks: Banks Melli and Mellat, for their involvement in proliferation activities, and Bank Saderat, for its support for terrorism. We also designated several additional Iranian individuals and organizations.
These sanctions are not a substitute for diplomacy. They are a strengthening of diplomacy. As Secretary Rice repeated last week, the United States and our partners are fully committed to a diplomatic solution. If the Iranian government fulfills its international obligation to fully and verifiably suspend all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, Secretary Rice remains ready to join her British, French, German, Russian, and Chinese colleagues and to meet with her Iranian counterpart anytime, anywhere. But if Iran's rulers choose to continue down a path of confrontation, the United States will act with the international community to resist the global threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Last week's financial sanctions, together with the third UNSC sanctions resolution now under discussion, should focus Iran's leaders on the choice before them. Iran's leaders can continue to ignore international concerns and violate their international obligations. Iran's leaders can continue their pursuit of dangerous technologies that create a real risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Iran's leaders can continue to strive for their purported, but unattainable goal of nuclear independence, passing opportunities to gain access to state-of-the-art civil nuclear cooperation and other assistance. Iran's leaders can continue to withhold cooperation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, trying to buy time, while denying access and explanations that are long overdue.
Or Iran's leaders can choose a different, more hopeful path. They can choose to open Iran's nuclear activities to full international scrutiny and to gain world confidence in their peaceful intent. They can choose to suspend those activities that are not necessary for peaceful purposes but that are the cause of grave international concern. They can choose negotiations that will ultimately afford Iran more security, prosperity, and respect than the pursuit of technologies that threaten the region and risk provoking instability or worse.
The choice is Iran's.
But the challenge is ours in pursuing collective, concerted, and reinforced diplomacy to encourage Iran's leaders to make the right choice.
The Need for Full Disclosure to the IAEA
The IAEA Secretariat and the government of Iran in August agreed on a work plan to resolve outstanding issues about Iran's nuclear activities. President Ahmadinejad soon thereafter proclaimed to the UN General Assembly that Iran's nuclear file in the UNSC was closed. We in Vienna were astonished and dismayed.
Both the work plan and the subsequent report by Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA's Director General, showed the falsehood behind President Ahmadinejad's claim. They made clear that Iran's file remains wide open and full of troubling questions.
The work plan is a potentially important and positive development. I say "potentially" with caution and purpose, for the success of the work plan depends on the seriousness of Iran.
After more than 20 years of deceiving the IAEA and restricting its cooperation with Agency inspectors, Iran badly needs to build international confidence that its nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes. Iran needs to convince the world that its activities have no military dimension.
To do this, Iran has many questions to answer:
As an example, I am sure that the IAEA Board would be interested to learn, after years of incomplete and undocumented answers, why Iran started its pursuit of sensitive nuclear capabilities in 1985, which organization was put in charge of launching and financing that project, and what assistance it sought and received from the A.Q. Khan network. The time has come, not for further obfuscation, but, to quote Dr. ElBaradei, for "confession."
In September, Mohammed ElBaradei, called the work plan a "litmus test" for Iran and made his expectations clear. He expects to see, by November, "Iran fully cooperating, fully transparent, responding positively to all our requests for access to individuals, to documents, to locations." He clearly stated his further expectation that Iran would "go beyond the Safeguards Agreement, go even beyond the Additional Protocol." Dr. ElBaradei also made clear that resolving historical questions is not enough. The IAEA also needs full understanding of Iran's current nuclear activities.
Iran has admitted to work on advanced centrifuges. But where is this work taking place? What is its status and scope? Why hasn't it been shown to IAEA inspectors? And why is Iran now refusing to provide early information on new nuclear facilities, despite a binding commitment to do so under Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangement to its Safeguards Agreement? And, as Dr. ElBaradei has reminded Iran in report after report, implementation of the IAEA's Additional Protocol is essential for the IAEA to conclude that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively peaceful in nature.
The Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council together with Germany have also made their expectations clear. On September 28, the Foreign Ministers of those six countries, the same countries that made the historic offer the previous summer, called on Iran "to produce tangible results rapidly and effectively by clarifying all outstanding issues and concerns on Iran's nuclear program, including topics which could have a military nuclear dimension."
The six Ministers further called on Iran to provide "all access required by its Safeguards Agreement and Subsidiary Arrangement and by implementing the Additional Protocol."
The Ministers requested Dr. ElBaradei to report on "the level, scope, and extent of Iran's cooperation and transparency."
The Ministers stated their intention to bring a third sanctions resolution to a vote in the Security Council unless the Director General's report, as well as a report by Dr. Solana, "shows a positive outcome of their efforts."
The Director General plans to issue his report in mid-November, in preparation for the IAEA Board meeting starting November 22. In Vienna, New York, and all of our capitals, the report will be scrutinized carefully. We will be looking for clear indications of Iranian cooperation, indications shown by concrete actions and meaningful disclosures, and not by more conditional promises and further evasions.
We will be looking for full disclosure: Full disclosure of past activities and full disclosure of present activities as requested by the IAEA.
We will be looking to see if by November Iran has completely answered all of the IAEA's questions about Iran's past and current centrifuge programs, including links to the military and the A.Q. Khan network. We will be looking to see if Iran has afforded full access to the individuals, facilities, equipment, materials, and information necessary to verify those answers. And we will recall Mohammed ElBaradei's statement that resolving historic questions is not enough.
We further expect Iran to begin implementing all measures under the Additional Protocol as well as all aspects of its Safeguards Agreement, including its continuing obligation to provide early declaration of nuclear facilities under Code 3.1.
In short, we expect Iran to move from its well-known model of minimum disclosure, in which it answers questions only in part and only when confronted. We expect Iran to move to a model of willing transparency, with a new standard of full disclosure that illuminates the full scope of its nuclear activities. To satisfy the world's concerns about the nature of its program, Iran needs to change the nature of its responses and of its relationship with the IAEA.
The Continued Need for Suspension
A positive outcome from the Director General's efforts to implement the Secretariat's work plan with Iran could represent a major step in building international confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities. But to address international concerns, full disclosure still needs to be complemented by full suspension - the verified suspension of all enrichment-related activities.
The IAEA Board first called on Iran to suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities as a confidence-building measure. The UN Security Council has since made suspension a legally-binding requirement.
The adamant refusal of Iran's leaders to suspend these activities, not necessary for Iran to have access to nuclear energy, but critical to produce fissile material for a bomb, has further eroded international confidence in the nature of Iran's program and the intentions of its leadership.
Verification without suspension is not enough to meet international concerns. Suspension is an international legal requirement, set by the Security Council considering the threat that Iran's nuclear activities pose to international peace and security.
Suspension is necessary for Iran to gain the world's confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its activities, particularly in light of Iran's flagrant disregard of its international commitments.
Suspension is necessary to deny Iran a cover for pursuing a covert enrichment capability, a particular concern given Iran's long history of hiding nuclear activities.
And finally, suspension is necessary to assure the world that Iran is not repeating its past ploy of using negotiations to buy time for continued nuclear pursuits, but is as ready as we are to engage in serious negotiations.
In other words, like full disclosure, full suspension is necessary for Iran's leaders to demonstrate that they have made the choice that we all want them to make: a choice of genuine cooperation and negotiation over further confrontation and noncompliance.
The Case for Concerted Diplomacy
The six Foreign Ministers of the United States, Europe, Russia and China, supported by all Foreign Ministers of the European Union, have reaffirmed a dual-track approach to addressing the challenge posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions. This dual-track approach entails the continued offer of negotiations, contingent on Iran suspending enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, backed by the prospect of additional sanctions. If Iran fails to meet an international standard of full disclosure, if Iran fails to abide by its international obligations to suspend its proliferation sensitive nuclear activities, the world must act to show Iran the consequences of its leaders' decisions.
The Security Council must take further action to reinforce diplomacy with a third set of sanctions, enhanced but still targeted to support a negotiated solution. And we are encouraged that other international partners, including the European Union as a whole, are looking at what additional measures they might take, including sanctions, to support our collective diplomacy.
Iran's nuclear pursuits are a clear threat to peace and security, both for Europe and globally. This is clearly a case, and now is clearly the time, for concerted action, by both the US and EU, in support of our collective diplomacy and common security.
###
Source: US Mission in Vienna, http://vienna.usmission.gov.
© 2007 The Acronym Institute.