Europe and Iran. Testing times

Time for Europeans to toughen their anti-nuclear message

THE hope in Europe that “soft power”, offering engagement in place of confrontation, would encourage Iran to give up its dangerous nuclear ambitions seems set to collide with hard reality. Buried in the details of a report next week to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), one of a damning series since Iran's 18-year deception over its nuclear programmes was uncovered last year, are several time-bombs.

The inspectors cannot know whether Iran has a secret nuclear-weapons programme; only secretive Iran knows that. But they do demonstrate that not all traces found of highly enriched uranium (the higher the better for military use) could have come in on imported machinery, as Iran still claims. Its interest in particularly sophisticated centrifuge machines for enrichment, they suspect, goes beyond the small “research” effort it now owns up to. And they are certain Iran bought its enrichment designs and parts from the same supply network as Libya, which now admits (while Iran does not) that with its uranium starter-kit came detailed bomb-building plans.

Iran still insists its nuclear programme is just for making electricity. But few believe that. Last October, Britain, France and Germany thought they had a deal that gave Iran a face-saving exit from the bomb-making business: they would hold off reporting Iran's nuclear transgressions to the UN Security Council, as the IAEA's board is legally obliged to do, if all uranium enrichment activity stopped, and Iran came clean about its nuclear past and co-operated fully with inspectors. And they offered technology trade, with Iran keeping the peaceful benefits of nuclear power, if it abandoned the uranium and plutonium processes that bring it close to nuclear break-out.

But Iran, it seems, was just playing for time. Its work with inspectors has increased, but so have the holes in its nuclear story. It is about to start building a heavy-water reactor that is too small for power generation but ideal for plutonium-making. It is preparing uranium feedstock for its centrifuges and still producing parts for them, despite a promise to stop. And western intelligence agencies suspect Iran is still hiding sites where other nuclear work has been done.

As the going gets tougher

Iran threatens “consequences” if the IAEA's board will not drop the issue: it hints it may restart its uranium enrichment machines, or it could quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as North Korea has done. And what would the Europeans do then? Little but belly-ache, Iran may calculate. If it is to be persuaded differently, and the NPT is to be saved from the shredder, Europe's soft power needs to be given a harder edge.

With 60% of its people under 30, many of them without jobs, Iran needs all the trade (some 40% of its imports come from the European Union) and investment in its oil and gas industries (much of it now coming from European and Japanese companies) that it can get. Sanctions, beyond those imposed for years by the United States, could therefore hurt Iran badly. As a first signal of their intent to get tougher, if Iran won't keep its side of the October bargain, Britain, France and Germany should join America in insisting that Iran's nuclear rule-breaking go directly to the Security Council, where international sanctions could be contemplated.

Iran would be livid if Europe flexed its trade muscle even in this limited way. But it also needs to be told clearly that any nuclear miscalculation it makes will carry a heavy price.

Editorial feature says that it is time for the Europeans to toughen their anti-nuclear message.

• Primary Source

http://www.iaea.or.at/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml http://www.iaea.or.at/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml

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