French Companies, IAEA Co-Operation Threatened as Iran Strikes Back over New Nuclear Allegations

Upping the Ante

Iran's ambassador to France, Ali Ahani, yesterday warned that French companies in Iran could face economic consequences from the Iranian government, unless France backed away from its active support for tougher United Nations (UN) sanctions against Iran over the ongoing nuclear dispute. According to Dow Jones, Ahani said that Iranian leaders would be hard pressed trying to convince its citizens that French firms should be allowed to operate in Iran if new sanctions were implemented. Meanwhile, Iran's UN Ambassador, Mohammad Khazaee, said that UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s credibility would be damaged if the pending sanctions-tightening resolution was passed by the UN Security Council, implying that Iran might reduce—or break off—co-operation with the monitoring agency should sanctions be tightened.

Further Incrimination

An IAEA briefing yesterday to its board of governors unearthed further allegations against Iran—for having studied nuclear weaponisation solutions even later than 2003. The board of ambassadors was presented with material "from multiple sources", suggesting "detailed work put into the designing of the warhead, studying how that warhead would perform, how it would be detonated and how it would be fitted to a Shahab-3 missile", British IAEA Ambassador Simon Smith told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The briefing, given by IAEA's Head of Safeguards, Olli Heinonen, was characterised by Smith as deepening the international community's deficit in confidence with Iran over the purpose of its nuclear programme. Dow Jones corroborated Smith's interpretations of the briefing to IAEA's board, consisting of 35 member countries, through another diplomat who wanted to remain anonymous given the closed character of the meeting. He told the news agency that some of the information given pertained to Iranian research reports dated to 2004, although they might have referred back to experiments made earlier. Heinonen was also reported by anonymous diplomats to have shown a video of Iranian mock-ups of missile re-entry vehicles, according to him configured in a way strongly suggesting they would carry nuclear warheads.

Iran's envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, dismissed the allegations as baseless fabrications, saying that Iran had been given access to the allegations too late to be able to answer them before IAEA's recent clarification report. He also added that much of the information came from the laptop the U.S. claimed to have secured from Iranian sources in Iraq in 2004, which Iran is claiming is fabricated, saying that the documents listed people that "have not been involved in the nuclear program" or "people who do not exist", AFP reported. However, Smith said that some of Heinonen's information had provided the backdrop for questions raised with Iran for a very long time, to which Iranian replies had been "incomplete, inadequate and evasive".
Outlook and Implications

The material seems to be a combination of external sources and data gathered by the IAEA, although its significance is hard to assess given that it has only very vaguely been outlined to media and filtered through a representative of one of the countries pushing for tighter Iran sanctions. Nevertheless, being a product of the IAEA body lends it a generally high credibility in implicating Iran further. Interestingly, the new information goes further than the U.S. combined intelligence assessment of Iran in December 2007, which said that Iran most likely had halted its weaponisation development in 2003.

Nevertheless, it is intriguing that Heinonen's briefing does seem to strike a very different chord from El Baradei's report to the UN Security Council last Friday (22 February), enforcing the notions of discord within the UN body which Global Insight has discussed previously (see "Related Articles"). If El Baradei is increasingly seen to be downplaying threats identified by his more technical monitoring staff, in order to facilitate diplomatic solutions and dialogue, his position will be increasingly undermined and his message seen as politicised. This will hurt IAEA credibility and raise international confusion over the issue, but is unlikely to favour either side in the dispute in the medium to long term, as it might be portrayed as if Iran has already benefited from longer and more lenient deadlines then it should have received. On the other hand, the technical monitoring staff might not have considered the paramount importance of IAEA continuing to have a working relationship with Iran, in order to monitor as much as possible of its nuclear programme and therefore be able to counter eventual exaggerations in the accusations levelled against the Islamic Republic. The balance is hard to strike and the discord seems to indicate that one of the sides in the agency is acting somewhat outside of their mandate.

The information delivered does seem to strengthen the hand of the pro-sanctions front as reactions from the more sceptical nations have been notably quiet in the aftermath of the briefing. Iran might find itself needing to finally make serious its threats, though this would remove the few energy companies able to bring in LNG technology to the country, as well as damage other crucial industrial projects in its increasingly investment-starved economy.

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Iran: 22 February 2008: Tightened Iran Sanctions Introduced to UN Security Council in Anticipation of IAEA Report

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