Iran’s nuclear programme
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Can diplomacy succeed?
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
announcing on Monday 9 April that Iran had
achieved a ‘commercial-scale’ enrichment
capacity at Natanz.   Photo © AP
What are the prospects for a diplomatic
resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue?
The answer is shaping up as a contest of
wills. On the one hand, the five permanent
members of the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC – China, France, Russia,
the United Kingdom and the United
States) have agreed gradually to increase
mandatory economic and political
Editor: Alexander Nicoll; Assistant Editor: Jessica Delaney
sanctions against Iran until it agrees
to suspend its uranium-enrichment
programme. Suspension is a condition
for beginning multilateral talks with the
P-5 plus Germany (so-called ‘Seven Party
Talks’), aimed at negotiating a permanent
diplomatic solution. On the other hand,
Iran appears determined to press ahead
with the enrichment programme, while
expressing its willingness to begin
nuclear negotiations without conditions,
which the P-5 have rejected. Efforts to
engineer a compromise to get to the
bargaining table have failed and neither
side is showing signs of backing down.
Further escalation of the dispute seems
certain. Recognising that military
options have serious drawbacks and
risks, Washington is prepared to follow
the diplomatic route for now, hoping
that Iran will eventually succumb to
international pressure. Ultimately,
however, if diplomacy fails – and Iran
overcomes the technical problems
hampering its enrichment programme –
the US will consider the military options
more seriously.
A key condition of talks
IISS Strategic Comments
The dispute between the UNSC and
Iran over the suspension of uranium-
enrichment activities as a condition for
negotiation is based on the precedent set
during the negotiations between the EU-
3 (the UK, France and Germany) and Iran
in 2003–05. As a condition for holding
negotiations, the Europeans insisted that
Iran suspend its enrichment programme
during talks to achieve a diplomatic
solution. Tehran eventually accepted this
condition despite its initial resistance.
In return, the Europeans agreed not to
refer Iran to the UNSC for numerous
safeguards violations uncovered by the
International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in connection with Iran’s secret
enrichment programme dating back
nearly 20 years. The EU-3 talks with Iran
made little progress, however, towards
ISSN: 1356-7888
resolving the central issue of whether
Iran would be allowed to develop a
full-blown enrichment programme.
The Europeans demanded that Iran
accept a permanent suspension of its
enrichment programme (or at least a
ten-year moratorium), but Iran insisted
on its right to develop an industrial
enrichment capability, while offering to
accept various technical constraints and
provide political assurances intended
to build confidence that the enrichment
plant would not be used for military
purposes. The Europeans rejected these
proposals as insufficient. As the talks
dragged on, Tehran complained that the
Europeans were stalling simply to keep
its enrichment activities frozen.
By the summer of 2005, as President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office, Iran
decided to end the suspension and its
negotiations with the EU-3. With the US
bogged down in Iraq and the big powers
divided over the threat of sanctions,
Tehran calculated that it could resume
its enrichment activities with a low
risk of serious international retaliation.
Indeed, international pressure was slow
to mount. After months of procedural
delays and negotiations, the IAEA Board
of Governors finally referred Iran to the
UNSC in February 2006, after Tehran
rejected a Russian proposal for Iran to
participate in a multilateral enrichment
programme located in Russia. The UNSC
issued a toothless presidential statement
in March 2006 calling on Iran to suspend
enrichment within 30 days. When
Iran ignored this request, the UNSC
unanimously approved Resolution 1696
on 31 July 2006, demanding that Iran
‘suspend all enrichment-related and
reprocessing activities’ by 31 August
2006 and threatening economic sanctions
under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the
UN Charter if Iran did not comply. The
key to P-5 consensus on this resolution
was Washington’s willingness to omit
reference to Article 42, which authorises
military action, and its offer to join
multilateral negotiations with Iran
if it agreed to suspend enrichment. In
addition, Washington hoped that the
Volume 13 Issue 03 April 2007 Iran's nuclear programme
Israeli offensive against Hizbullah in
south Lebanon, launched in mid-July
2006, would weaken Iran’s resolve by
damaging one of its most important
allies in the region.
Instead, the Lebanon war backfired.
Iran emerged as the champion of
Arab resistance to Israeli occupation,
embarrassing and alarming the Sunni
Arab powers. In the aftermath of the war,
Iran felt even more confident that it could
resist UNSC demands for the suspension
of its enrichment programme. Efforts by
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and
Iranian National Security Adviser Ali
Larijani to craft a compromise that would
allow suspension and negotiations to
begin simultaneously were essentially
subverted by Ahmadinejad. In New York,
there was a six-month period of painful
negotiations among the ­P­-­5, with Russia
(quietly supported by China) opposing
most of the proposals put forward by
the US and Europeans to place sanctions
on Iran. Gradually, in the interests of
maintaining P-5 consensus, the resolution
was whittled down to a bare minimum.
Finally, on 23 December 2006, Resolution
1737 was unanimously adopted, setting
a 60-day deadline for Iran to suspend all
enrichment and reprocessing activities as
a basis for beginning negotiations with the
P-5 plus Germany, and imposing largely
symbolic financial sanctions against a
small number of Iranian individuals and
entities directly involved in ‘sensitive
nuclear activities’.
Hopes of a breakthrough
By early 2007, however, officials
in Washington and Europe began to
grow confident that their diplomatic
strategy was beginning to wear
down Iran’s resistance. Weakened by
Iranian municipal elections in mid-
December, Ahmadinejad was criticised
by his ‘pragmatic conservative’ rivals
for mishandling the nuclear portfolio
and allowing a UNSC consensus to
emerge against Tehran. Although the
official sanctions were puny, there was
a significant indirect economic impact
as private firms began to reduce their
Iran's nuclear programme page 2
exposure in Iran in anticipation of
additional UN-mandated sanctions.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali
Khamenei reportedly empowered Larijani
to resume his desultory talks with Solana
in February and April 2007. The latest
compromise under discussion would
involve a two-step process, the first being
a 30-day moratorium in which Iran would
not install additional centrifuge machines
and the UNSC would not impose
additional sanctions. During this period
the two sides would negotiate terms for a
'double suspension', in which, as a basis
for beginning multilateral negotiations,
Iran would suspend enrichment
activities and the UNSC would suspend
sanctions. A key issue is whether Iran
would agree to halt all enrichment
activities or insist on continuing some
research and development activities
during multilateral negotiations. On
the ground, Saudi Arabia embarked on
diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s influence
in the region and maintained high oil
production, which reduced Iranian
oil revenues, while the US pursued a
more aggressive strategy against Iranian
agents in Iraq and sent additional naval
assets into the Persian Gulf.
Despite this increased economic,
political and military pressure, Iran
once again defied the UNSC deadline
in late February. This time the P-
5 responded very quickly with a new
resolution, in part because Moscow
and Washington reached agreement
bilaterally on its main elements before
presenting it to the other permanent
members. Adopted unanimously on 24
March 2007, Resolution 1747 set a new
60-day deadline for Iran to suspend
its enrichment programme, expanded
the existing financial sanctions by
targeting the state-owned Bank Sepah
and additional Revolutionary Guard
commanders, and hinted at additional
mandatory sanctions such as an arms
embargo and a ban on export credits.
It also endorsed the previous proposal
to begin Seven Party negotiations with
Iran and implicitly offered to suspend
sanctions during the talks if Iran agreed
to halt its enrichment programme during
the same period.
With Russia’s apparent shift in
position, Resolution 1747 represented a
much more cohesive P-5 stand aimed at
further increasing international pressure
on Iran. In addition to immediately
rejecting the resolution, however, Iran
responded by demonstrating that
it could also up the ante, seizing 15
British military personnel operating in
the Persian Gulf. The outcome of the
Volume 13 Issue 03 April 2007 Iran's nuclear programme
episode also seemed to mark a comeback
for Ahmadinejad, who announced the
return of the prisoners after 13 days as
an ‘Easter gift’ to the British people. A
few days later, he declared that Iran had
achieved a ‘commercial-scale’ enrichment
capacity at Natanz. In reality, Iran is still
experiencing technical difficulties with
its centrifuge machines and is at least
several years away from achieving a truly
commercial-scale enrichment capability.
A dangerous stalemate
Nonetheless, with the new UNSC deadline
looming in late May, neither side appears
willing to relent. While some outside
experts have advocated unconditional
nuclear talks with Iran, the P-5 see little
value in negotiating the nuclear issue while
Iran continues to develop its enrichment
capacity. Under these circumstances, Iran
would have every incentive to drag out
the talks while working to achieve its
nuclear objectives. For its part, Iran fears
that if it does agree to halt its activities, the
P-5 would have their own reason to drag
out the talks, keeping Iran’s enrichment
programme on ice indefinitely while
threatening to re-impose sanctions if Iran
were to re-start it. Various attempts to
break this stalemate have failed. Iranian
diplomats have suggested that if the P-5
would accept in principle that Iran could
develop an industrial-scale enrichment
plant, then Iran could accept a temporary
suspension to work out details, such as
inspection arrangements and possible
joint ownership and operation. This idea
has been rejected by the P-5 because it
would concede the main issue before
the negotiations had begun. Similarly,
Iran has rejected various face-saving
proposals put forward by the Europeans
to hold a series of preliminary multilateral
meetings, culminating in a ministerial-
level Seven Party meeting at which
suspension of enrichment and sanctions
would be simultaneously announced.
Larijani apparently expressed interest in
this formula, only to be overruled by
Ahmadinejad.
With no diplomatic end in sight, the
pressure on both sides is likely to mount.
Assuming that Tehran ignores Resolution
1747, the P-5 will have to consider more
serious sanctions in future resolutions,
including a suspension of civil nuclear
cooperation with Iran, imposition of an
arms embargo, suspension of export
credits for companies trading with Iran,
and limits on foreign investment in
Iran’s oil and gas sector. A key issue is
whether the P-5 will be able to maintain
consensus on tougher sanctions. On
the one hand, the P-5 share an interest
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in preventing Iran from acquiring a
nuclear-weapons capability and hope
that muscular multilateral diplomacy
will avert the risk of war. On the other
hand, there are differences among the P-5
over the perceived utility of sanctions, the
extent to which sanctions would damage
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bilateral relations with Iran, the extent
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to which they would heighten tensions,
and the prospects of managing threats
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from a nuclear-armed Iran.
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On the Iranian side, the key issue
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is whether escalating sanctions
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will empower the opponents of
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Ahmadinejad, the so-called ‘pragmatic
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conservatives’, to convince the
Supreme Leader to support a temporary
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suspension, if only for tactical reasons
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to relieve international pressure and
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to create new opportunities to divide
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the opposition. But, as the episode
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of the British captives demonstrates,
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Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary
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Guard are also able to turn up the heat
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in response to UNSC sanctions in ways
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that mobilise nationalist sentiment and
make it more difficult for Tehran to
compromise over its self-proclaimed
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nuclear rights.
As long as the P-5 believe that their
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diplomatic strategy of incremental
sanctions has a good chance of working,
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unity is likely to hold, but if it becomes
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clear that Iran is determined to proceed
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with enrichment no matter what
sanctions are imposed, then underlying
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P-5 differences are likely to emerge.
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In particular, only the US is prepared
to consider the use of force against
Iranian nuclear facilities if that becomes
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the only way to prevent (or delay)
Iran from achieving a nuclear-weapons
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capability. At the same time, Washington
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recognises that military options are very
unattractive. It is unclear how much
damage air strikes could inflict on Iran’s
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nuclear capabilities, and such attacks
would run the risk of developing into a
general conflict and are likely to disrupt
seriously US efforts in the region to
form an Arab alliance to contain Iran.
For now, Washington is prepared to
let diplomacy ‘play out’ because Iran
is not making rapid technical progress
towards acquiring a nuclear-weapons
capability and because Washington
believes that its diplomatic strategy
is having some effect. Ultimately,
however, if Iran begins to reach critical
technical thresholds, and diplomatic
means fail to persuade Iran to suspend
its uranium-enrichment programme,
then consideration of military options
will come into play, despite all the risks
and drawbacks. IISS