On May
17, a development of huge significance was announced on the issue of Iran’s
nuclear program. Iran, Turkey and Brazil reached an agreement on a plan to ship
approximately half of Iran’s low enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for
nuclear fuel rods to be returned nearly a year later for use in medical
research facilities. On May
25, delegates from the three countries delivered a formal letter to the
International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna announcing the agreement.
 Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (L) and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan AFP photo |
The
agreement was, in essence, the deal that was offered to Iran by the United
States and its imperialist allies, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, only
months earlier.
In fall
2009, Washington’s plan was presented as an ultimatum. The plan was based on
the unfounded allegation that Iran planned to convert its LEU to highly
enriched uranium that could be used for building a nuclear weapon. It required
Iran to ship out much of its LEU to prevent the possibility of enriching it
further, to nuclear weapons grade.
This is
how an Obama administration official explained the rationale for the deal: “This is a real confidence-building
measure. … If they say they need it for medical purposes, we are offering it to
them. If they accept it, it is LEU coming out. If they reject it, it is another
data point that says, `Look, these guys are not serious.’”
Tehran
initially showed an inclination to accept the deal, but it ended up making
counter-proposals. The main problem for Iran was that it would lose control of
most of its enriched uranium only to hope to receive the nuclear fuel rods in a
year’s time. In the meantime, Iran had no guarantee that it would get anything
back, as any subsequent provocations and accusations from Washington could
easily postpone the shipping of the fuel rods indefinitely.
The new
agreement with Brazil and Turkey includes a clause that gives Iran the right to
recall its enriched uranium from Turkey, an option that Iran could use if the
fuel rods are not being delivered. In essence, Turkey serves as a third party
intermediary between Iran and the nuclear weapons states.
Imperialist media paints false picture
Imperialist media outlets have for years
portrayed Iran’s leaders as hardliners who are inflexible and unwilling to
negotiate in good faith. However, the May 17 agreement proves, once again, that
Iran has been quite flexible and made significant concessions. In response to Washington’s plan, Iran
had proposed a simultaneous swap between LEU and the nuclear fuel rods, or an
exchange in stages, and required that the exchange should take
place on Iran’s soil. In the current agreement, Iran has backed away from all
of these demands.
The
agreement briefly raised hopes of an end to the long standoff. U.N. General
Secretary Ban Ki-moon said of the plan: “If accepted and implemented, it could
serve as an important confidence-building measure and open the door for a
negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.”
One might
have expected the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom to show
at least a cursory interest in the new agreement, even if just to study its
details. But exactly one day later, on May 18, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton announced that the United States was introducing a new round of
sanctions against Iran to the U.N. Security Council.
Dismissing the new agreement, Clinton stated: “I think this announcement is as
convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days
as any we could provide.”
Washington’s rush to ram through another
set of sanctions is evidence that, far from being interested in a diplomatic
solution, it is actually worried that the agreement might take hold.
Washington’s depiction of this agreement as a publicity gimmick by Iran lacks
any credibility when considering the fact that the brokers of the agreement are
not U.S. adversaries but its allies Brazil and Turkey, the latter a member of
NATO.
But this has been Washington’s game from
the start: to present Iran with ultimatums to accept conditions that it would
likely not accept, and then raise the bar if it did. The offhand dismissal of
the deal may only seem puzzling if we believe the hype about Washington’s
concern over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
But, in reality, U.S. hostility towards
Iran has as much to do with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program as the
invasion of Iraq had to do with Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Washington is not really concerned about Iran posing a threat to the world with
its relatively nascent nuclear program. It knows full well that no one is
building nuclear bombs in Iran. Washington is not surprised that hundreds of
IAEA inspections have shown no evidence of a weapons program or conversion of
uranium to weapons grade, 90 percent or higher. Its own
intelligence sources have confirmed this.
United States intolerant of independent states
Whether it is the sanctions and then
invasion of Iraq or the hostility towards Iran, the real source of the conflict
is imperialist intolerance of independent states, particularly in the oil-rich
Middle East. Today, Iran stands in the way of U.S. designs on “redrawing the
map of the Middle East” and control of its vast energy resources. Iran’s
support for liberation movements in the region, particularly the Palestinian
struggle and the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, are more reasons why regime
change continues to be the real U.S. policy towards Iran.
In its new push for sanctions, the Obama
administration has claimed that it has the support of Russia and China, the two
permanent U.N. Security Council members that have not been enthusiastic about
hostile actions towards Iran. But statements made by officials from those two
countries shed doubts on these claims. Even if a new round of sanctions is
imposed, on top of the three that have been in place for years, it is clear
that sanctions will not be the kind that Washington seeks. The United States
has been pushing for “crippling” sanctions that would, among other things,
prevent Iran from importing refined petroleum, the source of 40 percent of its
domestic use. Here again, diplomacy and sanctions are but tools used to bring
about Washington’s ultimate goal: regime change.
The agreement with Turkey and Brazil is a
diplomatic victory for Iran. Turkey and Brazil are both current rotating
members of the U.N. Security Council, making it almost certain that new
sanctions will not pass unanimously, if they pass at all. Negative votes by
those countries would make it more likely for other non-permanent members to
vote against the sanctions. But even if the United States does manage to get
them approved, the sanctions will have less legitimacy than the previous
rounds.
The utter hypocrisy of the entire case is
the fact that all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are
nuclear-armed states. The United States, the real force for sanctions against
Iran, has by far the most nuclear weapons of any country in the world; and its
regional watchdog, Israel, is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East.
With Iran making significant concessions, Washington’s contention that Iran
should be sanctioned for its alleged nuclear weapons program, for which there
has not been a shred of evidence despite intrusive inspections, is even less
convincing now than ever before.
