Home >> Middle East >> Iran

     Email   Print 

Iranians To Stick To Their Guns In Future Nuclear Negotiations

Angelique van Engelen - 8/23/2005

One of the major worries the international community has expressed about Iran's audacious continuation of its nuclear program has been just how the new regime might position itself in any negotiations or confrontations ahead. The role of the newly appointed chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, has been subject to a lot of speculation. Some doubts were removed when Larijani earlier this week made his first move, which pretty much amounted to a continuation of the line of his predecessor Hassan Rowhani, when he insisted on Iran's rights to develop a full fuel cycle. Larijani has close ties with the Supreme Leader Ayatoloh Ali Khamenei and fears that he's bound to be tougher than his predecessor might still be well founded; Iran's new regime has reportedly started to arrest top oil executives who it believes have links with US interests, most notably with the Halliburton company that was once presided over by the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

The main problem with Iran is not so much its nuclear program itself, but the very rationale that surrounds it. Iran is causing more troubles by having rapidly gone through the reasons many people maintain in order to believe the country is not going to develop into a second North Korea - the country which developed a nuclear device illegally and then opted out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that all major nations of the world have signed that do not intend to develop nuclear arsenal and that believe the world should become nuclear weapon free.

But perhaps the country's audacious move to simply re-open its nuclear fuel program despite the international worries will stand it in good stead after all. If anything, this move does come across as the country's speaking the truth when it claims it is not developing weapons of mass destruction.

Even though the public opinion is played on by many parties, the reports back from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agents are of incremental significance. So far the agents have come back with one majorly positive item, concluding that samples they earlier on said contained traces of enriched uranium were definitely originating from Pakistan's program. Now the agency only has to clear up one last major hurdle with Iran before it will report back to the world that it is totally convinced that Iran does not operate a nuclear program that is aimed at producing the lethal atomic weapon that the US claims it is manufacturing. Meanwhile, the US public relations machine has also continued to churn out its messages into the public sphere. At regular intervals anti Iran rhetoric has been fired off by top Washington officials. Not only is Iran believed to be working on a nuclear program that is bent on producing an A-bomb, it is now also making itself guilty of inciting violence inside Iraq. To some this is an accusation that's only a tad too obvious to be true.

Despite the despondent attitude by Washington, most of Iran's recent official contacts with the outside world have been more than hopeful. Iran has certainly complied with a hoist of demands from the EU over the past 20 or so months. It even imposed a ceiling to its low grade enrichment activities in an attempt to remove the doubts the international world may have about its reprocessing and production of plutonium. What's more, immediate conversion of all enriched uranium to fuel rods has also been subjected to limits. By ascertaining that it will phase the enrichment cycle and allowing inspectors to be continuously present at the nuclear facilities, the Iranians believe they have extended their good will gestures more than any country ever has. The IAEA has confirmed they work in conditions that are of unprecedented quality.

So far, Iran's official cooperation with the international community has mainly been manifest in the framework of the European Union's tripartite negotiations which are underpinned by the increased demands of the Additional Protocol that countries have to comply with that are suspected by the other signatories of the NPT of developing uranium of atomic bomb quality. Even though Iran refused at first to sign this protocol, it has done so and IAEA agents reported back it has fully implemented its demands. During the recent botched negotiations with the EU-3, the country has provided almost all the details of its nuclear program the agents said they needed to verify nothing untoward was happening. The length of time that has elapsed since the country voluntarily halted all activities has been considerable. For some 20 months, no work has been carried out. Yet, Iranians complain that their good will and confidence-building has hardly paid off, because the conviction that the country is building a nuclear weapon have only increased.

Repeated Iranian accusations that it has been rather insulted are inspired by this notion. The negotiations that the EU-3 and Iran held did not only cover Iran's nuclear program, but also a wide variety of issues that will weigh heavily in the international community's perception of the country and will likely have resultant impact on the way international relations are likely to develop. Besides the nuclear issue, the EU negotiators discussed terrorism, drug traffic, energy transport, technology transfer and trade.


The international world is increasingly in favor of a non interventionalist style of approach toward Iran. Apart from Germany, which is party to the EU-3, the three countries that have held intensive negotiations with Iran concerning its program over the last 9 months, more leading countries believe that an intervention or an air strike against Iran would be inappropriate. Even though US officials are keeping open all options, including a military strike, their rhetoric likely would be fiercer were they really intending to prepare the public opinion for another war against a Middle Eastern country. President Bush has been heard saying his favorite catch phrase with regard to the country repeatedly. His 'all options are on the table' are beginning to take on proverbial quality as is his pledge that he will employ force "as a last resort''. His words however are countered by the fact that the US has so far not gone all the diplomatic lengths it would go to before such a threat would materialize. In the case of Iraq, the US made sure it exercised all open diplomacy options. Some analysts believe that the path that's going to be chosen for dealing with Iran is still rife with diplomatic opportunities rather than anything more drastic. However, everybody is somewhat more on tenterhooks likely by the time the UN Security Council will call Iran to justify its actions. By then the possible actions the US can dream up in terms of diplomacy will have been near exhausted.

US anti Iran measures have come up for review recently, when representative for Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen announced a new, updated Act for the existing Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA). The act has been codified "to make it harder to further Iran's nuclear ambitions", says Ros-Lehtinen, who believes that over recent months it has emerged that Iran really is on the road to make a nuclear weapon. Since the bill, which foresees in secondary boycotts of companies doing business in Iran never really was fully implemented, the lawmakers at Ros-Lehtinen's assistance created a crystal clear version of the bill, which closes some remaining loopholes that corporations can use to sneak into the country and enter into lucrative oil deals by means of non-US registered subsidiaries. If passed, the bill would tighten regulations that have been in place since the overthrow of the Shah in Iran in 1979. But observers say it is unlikely this will happen, simply because the White House for starters has a pet hate for Congress initiatives that might have a steering effect on the foreign policy it is plotting.

US Iranian relations ever since the revolution in 1979 have been subject to initiatives of a less strenuous but nevertheless similar kind. The string of sanctions that the US adopted soon after the Shah was overthrown and an anti US regime had taken over were tightened more every once in a while in subsequent years from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton. The latest proposals to tighten up on the ILSA sanctions are a further continuation from the 1996 Clinton regulations, which were drawn up after it found Iran to be guilty once more of sponsoring international terrorism directly due to new evidence found by IAEA officers that indicated in the possible direction of a plan by Iran to acquire weapons of mass destruction. President Clinton ruled that U.S. companies' involvement with petroleum development in Iran was prohibited on a way more absolute basis than had been the case thus far. He imposed sanctions against foreign companies that invest $40 million during any one-year period for development of Iranian or Libyan petroleum resources. This was a major tightening of all previous sanctions on Iran prohibiting not only all U.S. companies but also their foreign subsidiaries from conducting commercial and financial transactions with Iran.

Under pressure from the oil companies in the US that saw European companies snatch up bargain deals, one year later, the maximum allowable investment was dropped to $20 million. However, in 1997, the US president drew up more stringent rules, stipulating that practically all trade and investment activities with Iran by U.S. persons, wherever located, were to be prohibited. The sanctions were extended in pretty much unaltered format in 2001, when President Bush signs a 5 year extension on the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act. Since that time, Libya has been exempted, because it voluntarily gave up its nuclear ambitions under some impressive guidance of a UK sponsored diplomatic initiative.

When looking for tension between the official US stance and US corporate ambitions in Iran, you don't have to spend much time or be a very perceptive reader to find out what the trouble spots are. There is a strong business lobby out there that wants Washington to drop sanctions and this lobby has got considerable clout. The lobby includes all the usual suspects like the Coalition for Employment through Exports, the Emergency Coalition for American Trade, the National Foreign Trade Council, USA Engage, the US Council on International Business and the US Chamber of Commerce are actively lobbying policymakers proposing further strengthening of the sanctions against companies doing business in Iran.

Leading the way into the heart of the controversy is that wretched company that US vice president Dick Cheney presided over prior to starting his political career; Halliburton. The Houston, Texas headquartered company, which has a bad reputation even only because of its capacity to always be in just the sort of situations you'd least expect a venture so closely allied with US top officials to be involved in, has officially halted its operations in Iran only as recently as the first quarter of this year. As if this wasn't late enough, US press reports indicate that within weeks of its withdrawal from Iran, Halliburton apparently quietly signed a major new business deal to help develop Tehran’s natural gas fields. With no one other than Kish Oriental Oil Company, which has close ties to leading political figures in Tehran. The two companies are apparently planning to develop two sectors of the South Pars oil and gas field. One of the main Iranian nuclear negotiators, Cyrus Naseri, even happens to also be the secretary of its board. The company is part owned by the family of Hashemi Rafsanjani who was president of Iran from 1989-1997.

More recently, Dow Jones cited sources close to Halliburton claiming that the company had sold an undisclosed Iranian oil development company key components for a nuclear reactor. The sources, which were described as having 'intimate knowledge into both companies business dealings', revealed that Halliburton had been secretly working with one of Iran's top nuclear program officials and sold the components in April to the official's oil development company. Dow Jones, as well as the local Iranian press furthermore reports that after the elections the new regime in Iran has been less than friendly to the family and relatives of Rafsanjani, alleging that they are involved in widespread corruption of the oil industry. Several high ranking company officials have been rounded up and jailed. Apparently that's nothing new in Iran even if you are among the powerful who have been in top jobs. People's dealings with Halliburton have come under increased scrutiny by the Iranian authorities and there might not even be an immediate explanation at hand. Since the end of July, many oil sector executives have been branded 'mafia mobsters' by the Iranian authorities, indicating that some winds of change are blowing.

The- rather outrageous- news that Halliburton executives have provided Iran with nuclear weaponry material is not confirmed by any other reports. But this does not mean that it is necessarily unsubstantiated. Sources close to the company might have preferred to only talk to one particular reporter. Meanwhile, Iranian media have reported a number of times that even Nasseri was not exempt from the authorities' interrogations for allegedly spilling the beans on the country's nuclear secrets to the officials at the company. It is believed that Halliburton has paid up to $1 million in bribes for the information. Some describe the recent clamp down by the authorities on oil executives as merely a tangible by-product of a much wider internal crisis between moderate and more conservative Mullah camps in Iran and this might well be the case. For all the uncertainty that the changes entail, it is unlikely that any softening on the part of the Iranians will materialize any time soon.