Maurizio Martellini and Riccardo Redaelli
COMO, Italy –By its very nature, the Islamic Republic of Iran is unpredictable. Its unwieldy political system and fractious political elite complicate any attempt at understanding Iranian political trends, aspirations, perceptions, and goals. Iranian political language is replete with tactical poses, rhetorical stances, and contradictory tones.
Still, it is possible to identify several strategic constants of Iranian foreign and security policy, connected with the nation’s international status, its more specific regional role, and the general aim to protect the Islamic Republic from any possible “existential threat.” And it is in this context that we must view the present nuclear standoff with the West.
Tehran’s nuclear program, aimed at attaining, at the very least, a “latent workable nuclear deterrent,” has emerged as one of the country’s basic strategic goals. According to a general consensus amomg British, German, and Israeli intelligence, this effort got under way in earnest in 2005, after a brief interruption in 2003.
However, a series of domestic and international events, as well as economic and security considerations, may have altered this strategic orientation, or even forced a tactical reconsideration of both the pace of the program and its “metric of success.” Supporters of this latter view draw upon the argument that Tehran’s new flexibility may derive from the fact that its nuclear program already has achieved its basic goals. In other words, “they are already where they wanted to be.”
At the same time, the nuclear standstill carries its own costs for the Iranian leadership. The Obama administation’s offer of direct negotiations, without the preconditions that Iran’s post-revolutionary elite always has seen as an affront to national honor, has stepped up pressure on Tehran to respond in kind. In this atmosphere, the nuclear issue now stands out as the central obstacle to any conclusion of the cold war between Washington and Tehran and to the establishment of a new security order in the Middle East region (which has to include and not exclude Iran).
Moreover, it also has increased the chances of a catastrophic conflict between Tel Aviv and Tehran, and it potentially could drive countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to take into consideration the possibility of a “weapons-grade outbreak” with regard to their own future plans for civil nuclear energy. In general terms, the absence of a solution to this nuclear question could wreak irreparable damage on the global nonproliferation regime and on any hopes of achieving a world free from nuclear weapons.
On top of this, the domestic electoral crisis has further weakened the hard-line position, and there are signs of growing tensions and discomfort among the Iranian productive economic classes (and, in particular, among the still powerful Bazaaris) for President Ahmadineajd’s policy of bold confrontation with the West. This entrepreneurial class is increasingly distressed by the financial and technological sanctions imposed on Iran, and it has overseen the huge export of resources and capital overseas, mainly to Dubai and other Gulf states.
Thus, this summer, the Iranian government (with the backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) may have begun to consider the idea of testing the real intentions of the Obama administration, accepting direct talks between Iran and the United States for the first time since 1979, although for now still within the context of the P5+1 negotiations.
From the very start of the nuclear crisis in the summer of 2003, Iran has presented its nuclear program, at home and abroad, in terms of the nation’s inalienable right to pursue uranium enrichment, which is expressly permitted under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran adheres as a non-nuclear weapons state. This despite the fact that experts in civil nuclear technology are all well aware that the sensitive aspects relating to the nuclear fuel cycle are supplementary and by no means economically rational for a country beginning a program for producing nuclear energy or which has an installation producing only a few gigawatts. Low enriched uranium (LEU), needed to feed light water reactors (Western or Russian) can be bought on the open market, and there will also one day be a nuclear fuel bank managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Given this continuous media message from the Iranian leaders, during 2007 and 2008, the Italian think tank Landau Network–Centro Volta (LNCV) circulated the idea—within Track-2 projects with the Iranians—that the only possible exit strategy was to create a mechanism that would permit the export of Iranian LEU produced at an extra-territorial site. This move could avoid the so-called outbreak scenario, that is to say, ulterior enrichment of the stock of LEU uranium to bomb grade levels (HEU – highly enriched uranium).
By sending/exporting the LEU whenever a critical quota was reached—for present purposes, let us say 1,000 kilograms—Iran could save face on the nuclear issue. It would be permitted to continue uranium enrichment which, we must recall, had become a sort of political mantra to assert both Iran’s international prestige and its rights to pursue civil nuclear power.
With the advent of the Obama administration, the absence of preconditions for direct negotiations between the United States and Iran—and the ostensible desire of the two presidents and their entourages to solve the nuclear question—led to the Geneva negotiations of October 1. The technical formula which, in principle, would satisfy both the American and the Iranian constituencies, as well as the international community, would have to be based on two central ideas.
First of all, most of the LEU produced by Iran which, up to the end of August, totaled approximately 1,500 kilograms, would have to be transported to a third country in order to prevent concerns over an HEU breakout scenario. An interesting aspect of the political agreement reached in Geneva, which has not been given much weight in the press, is that Tehran has not requested special legal treatment for the protection of its material transported abroad, like that provided by an extraterritorial mechanism. Such a shipment, should it take place, would be regulated by a standard supply agreement to be negotiated with the IAEA. In this context , the first technical meeting among the P5+1 countries and Iran under the auspices of the IAEA in Vienna on October 19 to 21, represents de facto a return of the Iranian nuclear file to the agency.
Second, the LEU would need to be transported abroad and converted into fuel bars, which are “less proliferating,” for use in the research reactor in Tehran (RRT). This would not affect the nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, which is already guaranteed the necessary fuel through a “leasing and taking back” agreement with Russia.
Here again, Tehran is sending important, if indirect, messages. The RRT requires enrichment to 19.75 percent, which Russia can carry out at its International Uranium Enrichment Center in Angarsk. Iran itself would be more than capable of doing this with a rapid reconfiguration of a few hundred of the IR-1 centrifuges already in operation (roughly 4,600 at the end of August) at the Natanz enrichment plant. It should be noted that under NPT Iran has every right to do so, but this would probably provoke an immediate military reaction on the part of Israel.
Moreover, the renewed focus on the RRT also enables the international community to justify a suspension of current UN sanctions: the RRT is to produce isotopes for medical purposes, and the sanctions do not bar the use of nuclear energy for medicine and select other pruposes.
These corollaries to the political agreements in Geneva and Vienna do not, however, prevent the possible risk of a collapse of the current technical negotiations, which will be long and complex, and the implementation of which “on the ground” will be extremely complicated.
In sum, for Iran today it is more about cooperating with the West than compromising. In this regard, the authors believe that a powerful boost to this process might come from a bold political move; that is, a direct meeting between President Obama and President Ahmadinejad, or at least at the level of their ministries of foreign affairs, possibly before the end of December 2009. After all, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize assigned to Obama enables him to meet Ahmadinejad in the spirit of the prize itself which, we should recall, was motivated by attempts “to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”
As a useful spin-off of such a meeting, the Italian side should consider the organization of an international conference in Washington at the Italian Embassy, with the participation of the Iranian Permanent Delegation at the UN, aimed at the promotion of a world free from nuclear weapons. This initiative could also contribute to the success of the next NPT Review Conference scheduled for May 2010.
Maurizio Martellini is the Secretary General of the Landau Network – Centro Volta (LNCV, Como – Italy) and Professor of Physics at the Insubria University (Como). Riccardo Redaelli is the Director of the Middle East Program at LNCV and Professor of Geopolitics at the Catholic University of Milano.