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   From: pedro1940@progression.net   
      
   U.S. Is Needed to Defuse Iran   
      
   Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2004   
      
   Kenneth M. Pollack, Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy   
      
      
      
   Kenneth M. Pollack    
   The new agreement worked out between Iran and Germany, France and Britain   
   could be the first step toward solving the problem of Iran's efforts to   
   develop a nuclear weapons capability, but there is still a very long road   
   ahead before the United States can    
   declare the issue resolved.   
      
   Iran has shown itself quite adept in the past at concealing illicit nuclear   
   activities and evading its agreements, and the Europeans have shown a   
   distressing unwillingness to hold Iran's feet to the fire whenever it has done   
   so. That's why it is    
   imperative that the U.S. take a bigger leadership role.   
      
   The problem with the new agreement lies in three bundles of uncertainties. The   
   first is that Iran has agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment activities   
   only until the Europeans provide a formalized package of economic incentives.   
   The Iranians have    
   reiterated that this is not a permanent suspension. Yet we do not know when   
   these negotiations will be complete, nor do we have any guarantee that Iran   
   will accept the new incentives.   
      
   Second, even if Tehran does accept the new incentives, we do not know how long   
   it would continue to suspend its nuclear activities. In the past, the   
   Europeans repeatedly tried to give Iran ever bigger carrots in the misguided   
   hope that this would    
   dissuade it from continuing to pursue nefarious activities. It never worked.   
   What guarantee will we have that once Iran has reaped the benefits from this   
   deal it will not break its promise (overtly or covertly), given the   
   well-demonstrated reluctance of    
   the Europeans to hold Tehran accountable for doing so?   
      
   Finally, it is unclear how Iran's continued suspension of its nuclear   
   activities would be monitored and verified. The Iranians have shown that they   
   can hide very substantial nuclear activities from the International Atomic   
   Energy Agency. Until an Iranian    
   resistance group revealed their presence in 2002, the world was unaware of   
   Tehran's massive uranium enrichment plant at Natanz or its plutonium   
   separation plant at Arak. Similarly, during the 1980s, Iraq concealed at least   
   four vast nuclear weapons    
   plants from the IAEA and Western intelligence until a far-more intrusive   
   inspection program uncovered them after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.   
      
   Because of the poor track record of Europeans and Iranians on these issues, it   
   is vital that the U.S. take a more active role. Washington should not simply   
   try to usurp or wreck the negotiations, as the Bush administration has had a   
   bad habit of doing.    
   Washington's presence is desperately needed.   
      
   The U.S. should be amenable to the notion of providing Iran with economic   
   incentives if Tehran is willing to accept the kind of agreement that would   
   have a reasonable prospect of guaranteeing Iranian disarmament. However,   
   positive inducements cannot be    
   the entirety of the policy.   
      
   Because Iran has typically pocketed all of the benefits offered by Europe for   
   good behavior without actually changing course, it is crucial that there be a   
   clear threat of negative incentives—economic and political san   
   tions—should Iran refuse or    
   renege on such a deal. On something as important to Iran as its desire for a   
   nuclear deterrent, it is not enough to assume that economic benefits will be   
   enough to hold Tehran to any agreement.   
      
   Of equal importance, the U.S. must push for a far more comprehensive and   
   intrusive inspections regime. Iran has agreed to sign the additional protocol   
   of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows the IAEA to conduct   
   "challenge inspections" of    
   sites Iran has not declared to be part of its nuclear energy program. This is   
   important but hardly adequate. It merely allows the IAEA to inspect a facility   
   it considers suspicious, but before 2002, no one considered Arak and Natanz   
   suspicious.   
      
   What we need in Iran is something closer to what we had in Iraq: a much larger   
   inspection regime that has a considerable presence on a regular basis. None of   
   this is going to be easy. The Europeans have steadfastly refused to   
   countenance even the threat    
   of sanctions against Iran, despite the fact that their nothing-but-carrots   
   approach has so consistently failed, while the mere whiff of multilateral   
   sanctions has often caused Iran to reverse course immediately. Similarly, we   
   should expect that the    
   Iranians will fight any expansion of the IAEA inspection program. But none of   
   this is impossible either. It ought to be the first challenge taken up by   
   Condoleezza Rice's State Department.   
      
   The U.S. cannot afford to continue to ignore the problem of Iran's pursuit of   
   nuclear weapons, nor can it continue to outsource dealing with it to the   
   Europeans. It has to be a player.   
      
      
   © Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
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