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Nuclear Iran: A Headache or a Heal?
Part- I
By Soail Parwaz
The foundation of Iran’s nuclear programme was laid in 1960 during the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi’s era under the patronage of the US within the framework of a bilateral accord between the two countries. The late Shah had a plan to build a couple of nuclear power reactors. The most interesting thing is that the Tehran Nuclear Research Centre (TNRC) was equipped with a US-supplied 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor in 1967 and was run by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI). Iran signed and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. Since Iran’s atomic agency was established and the NPT was signed, the Shah of Iran planned to construct 23 nuclear power stations across the country with the help of the US by the year 2000. (The poor fellow did not know that he would not survive by then and his name would not be taken as the mentor of nuclear Iran.)
The Iranian nuclear programme faced setbacks twice and was brought to a standstill. When the Shah of Iran was deposed after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and during the Iran-Iraq war, two unfinished power reactors were bombed and ruined by the Iraqis in Bushehr on the coast of the Persian Gulf.
Though all the nuclear activities were suspended after the 1979 revolution, the work was resumed on a modest scale subsequently. Though Iran always claimed that it was trying to establish a complete nuclear fuel cycle to support a civilian energy programme, the US and the European countries feared that the same fuel cycle would be applicable to a nuclear weapons’ programme. Iran appears to have spread its nuclear activities around a number of sites to reduce the risk of detection and attack. It is generally believed that Iran’s efforts were focused on uranium enrichment.
Interestingly, the issues on which the US, France, and the UK are making a hue and cry were once hatched and sponsored by them. How could one forget that it was the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who had signed the National Security Decision Memorandum 292 titled, ‘US-Iran Nuclear Cooperation’ in 1975, which very generously laid out the niceties of the sale of nuclear energy equipment to Iran to bring home more than $ 6 billion as revenue? This cooperation did not stop in the following year (1976) when US President Gerald Ford signed a directive offering Tehran a chance to buy and operate a US-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel.
The deal was for a complete nuclear fuel cycle. Besides this, numerous other contracts were signed with various Western firms, including a German firm that began the construction of the Bushehr power plant. Work was halted after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the German firm withdrew from the project. Shortly afterwards, Iraq invaded Iran and the nuclear programme was stopped until the end of the war. In 1990, Iran began to look towards partners for its nuclear programme. Due to a radically different political climate and punitive US economic sanctions, few candidates existed at that time. In 1995, Iran signed a contract with Russia to resume work on the incomplete Bushehr plant. It was not until 2002 that the US began to question Iran’s nuclear intentions after Masud Rajavi’s Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisation of Iran revealed the existence of the Natanz and Arak facilities.
The Iranian nuclear programme has become the talk of the town these days. It appears that the Western world has come together to oppose Iran’s right to enrich uranium for vested interests best known to Europe and the US. It is an open secret now that Iran’s nuclear programme was founded during the Shah of Iran’s rule. After seeing the lows and highs of the time, it has reached a stage where it is not acceptable to the Western world.
Things were sailing smoothly when on one fine morning of February 9, 2003 the then Iranian President Mohammad Khatami disclosed publicly the existence of Natanz and some more nuclear facilities on Iranian television and invited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit them. He revealed the details about the Iranian programme for enriching uranium at Natanz and other locations. On the Iranian president’s invitation, Dr Muhammad El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, accompanied by a team of inspectors visited Iran somewhere in late February 2003. Since then the IAEA’s experts and inspectors have visited Iran many times.
On the basis of the observations made during these visits, the IAEA released a prelude in July the same year with a follow-up report on August 26, 2003. These reports were sufficient for the IAEA authorities to be convinced on Iran’s nuclear activities. Thus on September 12, 2003, a formal ultimatum was handed over to Iran by the IAEA to reveal all details on the proceedings in the field with a deadline of October 31, 2003. The Bush administration objected to Iran’s nuclear programme asking why a country that has vast oil and natural gas reserves is striving for nuclear energy.
The most interesting thing is that the logic given now did not strike the brilliant American minds back in the 60s when the TNRC was equipped with a first ever US-supplied 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor in 1967. It was before 9/11. The history of the Iranian nuclear programme has to be understood besides finding reasons about what has actually started bothering the West, especially the US. I am afraid the issue is not possible to conclude in one or two columns, so please keep your fingers crossed until next week.
Nuclear Iran: A Headache or a Heal? – II
By Sohail Parwaz
As last week we were reviewing the history of Iranian nuclear programme, now we would go into a little more detail of it before looking into reasons of Western and American antagonism. Aside from the political confrontation that the revelations about Iran’s nuclear programme have created between Iran on the one hand and the US and her cronies on the other, we must keep two major facts in mind. First, that history complains about the US and her allies’ creative hand and the driving force behind the birth of Iran’s nuclear programme at the juncture of the 1960s and 1970s. And second, that it is also particularly important to recognise that ever since Iran’s starting its nuclear programme back in the late 80s, the US and her allies were given every opportunity to play a role in the expansion, construction and maturity of Iranian nuclear reactors, which would have provided them with significant control on reactors. However, astonishingly they would always refuse to do so.
In the 80s, Iran created an extensive procurement system to acquire necessary items for its centrifuge programme from around the world. It used front companies to order the equipment and deceptively declared non-nuclear uses, and its established secret transportation routes. These efforts were not always successful. Vigilant government or company officials stopped many orders. Some of Iran’s purchases involved defective centrifuge components. Nonetheless, over many years Iran succeeded in acquiring thousands of sensitive centrifuge components and all the equipment it needed to be self-sufficient in the manufacturing of centrifuges. In this quest, foreigners played a key role in organising the purchase and shipment of items. In late 2003 Iran provided the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with a long list of equipment suppliers, including precise dates when the purchases were made. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of the items Iran wanted were loosely controlled by national or international export controls. Many were acquired legally, at least in the sense that the suppliers did not knowingly break the export control laws and government bureaucracies did not scrutinise the exports for their actual purpose. Iran acquired a long list of items, including high-strength aluminium, maraging steel, electron beam welders, balancing machines, vacuum pumps, computer-numerically controlled machine tools, and flow forming machines for both aluminium and maraging steel. Many of these items were obtained in Europe, especially from Germany and Switzerland. The suppliers trained the Iranians in the use of critical equipment and taught them associated technologies needed in a centrifuge programme.
According to Iranian declarations in October and November 2003, until 1997 the centrifuge programme was based at Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation facilities in Tehran, with the laboratory work conducted at the Plasma Physics Laboratory of the Tehran Nuclear Research Centre. The first chief of the gas centrifuge programme was a former head of Iran’s plasma physics programme. In 1997, as Iran confessed to the IAEA, the majority of the programme was relocated to Kalaye Electric in Tehran. This move, which was motivated partially by the need for additional security, was difficult and caused further delay in the programme. Nonetheless, from 1997 to 2002, Iran operated single machines and small cascades of 10-20 machines, achieved the ability to make all components itself, and gained some success in testing centrifuges both with and without uranium hexafluoride. It also decided to construct enrichment facilities at Natanz.
In 2002, research, development and assembly operations were moved to Natanz. This facility is strongly believed to be the primary site of the Iranian gas centrifuge programme. It consists of centrifuge assembly areas and a pilot fuel-enrichment plant slated to hold 1,000 centrifuges. Before it voluntarily suspended the activity back in 2003, Iran was operating both single machine tests and small cascades with uranium hexafluoride at the pilot plant. In December 2002, satellite photographs broadcast by US television stations revealed nuclear sites at Arak, southwest of Tehran, and Natanz in the centre of the country. The US media claimed that the facilities could have a military use. However, Iran refuted the charges and agreed to an IAEA inspection.
In February 2003, the then Iranian President Mohammed Khatami made a public statement about the discovery of the uranium deposits at home and vowed to build at least two plants to convert the ore into nuclear fuel for power stations. In August the same year, a confidential UN report revealed that Iran had developed two kinds of enriched uranium not needed for peaceful energy production. Iran never admitted that. Rather in October it declared to accept tightened inspections of its nuclear facilities and would not begin uranium enrichment.
An internal IAEA report confirmed the Iranian stand in November 2003 and stated that, “At the moment, there is no proof that Iran is creating nuclear weapons.” However, the IAEA’s point of view was not suiting the US, hence it disputed the conclusion drawn by the international agency. To satisfy international apprehensions, on December 18, 2003 Iran signed an additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) that sanctioned the IAEA the right to inspect the Iranian nuclear facilities unannounced and at any time. Things seemed to settle for some time until June 2004, when the IAEA claimed to find new traces of enriched uranium that exceeded the level necessary for civilian energy production.
Iran did not waste any time and in July admitted to resume production of parts for centrifuges used for enriching uranium, but insisted that it had not actually resumed enrichment. The West could not sustain the idea of seeing yet another Muslim state attaining nuclear capability, hence a so-called EU-3 comprising Britain, France and Germany began parleys with Iran in December 2004. The European trio hoped to offer financial and technical assistance in exchange for the pledge that Iran would not stray from the proscribed course and begin nuclear enrichment. In February 2005, Iran and Russia signed a nuclear fuel accord that paved the way for the start-up of the Bushehr nuclear plant. The Russians showed willingness to fuel the reactor on the condition that Iran would send back-spent fuel. The issue started sizzling in August the same year when hardly two days after taking the oath, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad rejected a broad compromise package with incentives put forth by the European Union (EU) in the hope of ending the escalating nuclear standoff.
(to be concluded)
Tags: Iran Nejad Nuclear-Sites Bushehr mantas IAEA
Nuclear Iran: A Headache or a Heal?
Part - III
By Sohail Parwaz
When the newly elected Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad rejected a broad compromise package with incentives put forth by the European Union (EU), Iran commenced uranium conversion at its nuclear facility in Esfahan for the first time since November 2004. As a result the EU called off its negotiations with Tehran. The ‘ever vigilant’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board adopted a resolution three days later on August 11, 2005, demanding Iran halt nuclear fuel work, however the non-aligned nations expressed their reservations.
Now a cold war started between the IAEA and Iran. Almost a month later Tehran threatened to resume uranium enrichment, block UN inspection and abandon the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if it was referred to the UN Security Council (UNSC). On September 24, 2005, the IAEA passed a disputed resolution reserving the right to send Iran’s case to the UNSC with the Russians and Chinese abstaining. In November the same year, to tone down the severity of the issue, the Russians made an offer to allow Iran to enrich uranium on their soil. The proposal was promptly backed by the US and the EU. However, Iran responded to the offer in January 2006 and besides breaking off negotiations with the Russians, Tehran insisted on enriching uranium on its own territory. The same month the tensions mounted a lot.
On one side, the Iranians removed the IAEA seals on equipment related to uranium enrichment at its nuclear facility in Natanz, while Britain, France and Germany said that the time had come for the UNSC to become involved and call for an emergency IAEA meeting. Iran did not miss a moment and threatened to halt cooperation with the IAEA if it had gone to the Security Council. The five permanent Security Council members and Germany agreed to a draft resolution asking the IAEA board of governors to inform the UNSC about Iran’s nuclear programme. Recommendations for the punitive measures were removed from the draft at Russia’s request. Seeing Iran’s stance and attitude, Russia and China dropped their earlier opposition, and agreed to support Western powers by voting for a resolution to refer Iran to the UNSC over its disputed nuclear activities, during an emergency session of the IAEA board of governors held on February 2, 2006.
Presently Iran has more than a dozen identified nuclear facilities. However, details about their reallocation (if any) and operation could not be confirmed. Presently, there are two light water nuclear power plant reactors at Bushehr. A heavy water moderated reactor is being constructed at Arak, which is likely to be commissioned in 2014. Iran’s first uranium ore mines are expected to have a deposit of about 3,000 to 5,000 tonnes of uranium oxide at a density of about 500 ppm over an area of 100 to 150 square kilometres at Saghand. The most prominent and much talked about nuclear facility is at Natanz. This uranium enrichment facility is for converting uranium ore into a form usable by power plants besides having the capability of creating highly enriched uranium. The nuclear research centre located at Tehran is named after the city and known as Tehran Nuclear Research Centre (TNRC). It is being run by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI). It is equipped with a US-supplied five megawatt nuclear research reactor capable of producing 600g of plutonium annually in spent fuel.
Ispahan has at least two nuclear facilities. A nuclear technology centre meant for nuclear research, currently operates four small nuclear research reactors supplied by China. It is also run by the AEOI. The other one is a uranium conversion facility that converts yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride. The Atomic Energy Research Centre of Bonaab investigates the applications of nuclear technology in agriculture and again being run by the AEOI. The Karaj Centre of Agricultural Research and Nuclear Medicine is located at Hashtgerd, established in 1991. There is a nuclear fuel site located at Ardekan, which has recently been completed according to some reports. Laskarabad has an isotope separation pilot plant. It used to carry out laser enrichment experiments, however it was shut down when Iran declared that it had no intentions of enriching uranium using the laser isotopes separation technique. There is a radiation processing centre located at Yazd, while a wastage storage site is located in nearby vicinity at Anarak. There are a few other suspected facilities, but those are not confirmed even by the IAEA and those are at Parchin, Lavizan and Chalous.
Iran claims that nuclear power is necessary for a booming population and rapidly industrialising nation. Honestly speaking, it has as much right to achieve the nuclear capability as the Americans, the French or any other free nation. The Iranian claim points to the fact that Iran’s population has more than doubled in 20 years. Iran questions why it should not be allowed to diversify its sources of energy, especially when there are fears of its oil fields eventually being depleted.
(to be concluded)
Tags: Iran nuclear-sites USA, Germany France Russia
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