Iran: The Bushehr atomic plant, built with Russian help, is commissioned, making it the first nuclear reactor in West Asia.
AFTER striving hard for more than four decades, Iran finally got the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which was constructed with Russia's help, officially commissioned on August 13. It will take another two months for the country's first nuclear power plant to start generating electricity.
Work on the Bushehr plant started way back in 1974 with the help of the Federal Republic of Germany. But following the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran's relations with the West became unsteady. The United States imposed economic sanctions on Iran after 63 Americans were taken hostage in Teheran during the revolution. Germany withdrew from the Bushehr project.
Iran approached many countries, including India, for help in completing the project, which had fully complied with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It was only in 1995 that Russia agreed to step in, despite tremendous pressure from the West. Iran has become the 33rd member of the world's civilian nuclear club and the first country in West Asia to possess a nuclear reactor.
The neoconservatives in the U.S. and the government of Israel have been crying hoarse that with the commissioning of the Bushehr reactor, Iran is well on its way to becoming a nuclear power. John Bolton, who was a senior official in the George W. Bush administration, recently called on Israel to bomb the Bushehr plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified that the Bushehr reactor is entirely for peaceful purposes. It said no nuclear fuel was being diverted to Iran's nuclear programme. In any case, Teheran has been insisting that its nuclear facility is designed to provide civilian nuclear power.
The Bushehr plant has a light-water reactor. It is difficult to extract weapons-quality plutonium from the spent fuel of a light-water reactor. Russia, which started loading nuclear fuel in the Bushehr plant on August 21, is committed to taking back the spent fuel. This was agreed upon to allay the West's fear that Teheran may misuse the plutonium.
Even after the Russian company stepped in to start work at Bushehr in 1998, there were considerable delays, triggered mainly by political pressure emanating from the West. On several occasions, Moscow backtracked on deadlines and the delivery of nuclear fuel. Eventually, the Kremlin seems to have made a calculated decision that Russia's national interests would be better served by completing the Bushehr plant. Russia stuck to its commitments despite the fact that its relations with the U.S. were reset after Barack Obama became the President.
In recent months, there were a few angry exchanges between Moscow and Teheran after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approved new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. The Iranian leadership made it abundantly clear that it was upset with both Russia and China for supporting the draconian sanctions.
Iran is one of Russia's key trading partners. The volume of trade between the two countries is projected to exceed $5 billion by the end of the year. The two countries are currently involved in negotiations involving more than 130 joint ventures that could raise the volume of bilateral trade to $200 billion. Many of the projects are connected with oil and gas. In a 2008 agreement with Iran, the Russian company Gazprom was given the rights to develop gas fields, build refineries and participate in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
Iran is the third biggest client of Russian weaponry after China and India. In the last couple of years, Russia has sold weapons worth around $10 billion to Iran.
In 2005, Moscow agreed to sell the long-range S-300 air defence missile system to Iran. In 2007, another agreement was signed to sell SA-15 surface-to-air battery systems along with 30 air defence missile systems to safeguard the Bushehr plant. Moscow has, however, suspended the sale of some categories of surface-to-air missile defence systems to Iran in the wake of the latest U.N. sanctions. But Teheran has not been complaining too much ever since Moscow overcame its last-minute hesitation, under pressure from the West, and delivered the nuclear fuel for the Bushehr reactor.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony at Bushehr, Sergei Kirienko, the head of Russia's Nuclear Corporation, said countries that abided by the IAEA rules had the right to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, described the commissioning of the nuclear plant as a political victory for his country. He said that despite political pressures and sanctions, Iran's peaceful nuclear programme had received a boost. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the country had the right, under the NPT, to enrich its own uranium to pursue its peaceful nuclear programme.
Early this year, the Iranian government had announced that it planned to produce 20 per cent highly enriched uranium on a regular basis. As Iranians were celebrating the inauguration of the Bushehr plant, the Obama administration was working overtime to convince Iran's major trading partners and traditional friends to start implementing the sanctions envisaged in the UNSC resolution, which were later on enhanced by Washington. Senior U.S. officials were sent to key Latin American and Asian countries to push for the implementation of the U.N. resolutions. They warned that banks in countries such as Brazil, India, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and Japan risked losing access to the U.S. financial system if they continued to do business with their Iranian counterparts.
A new U.S. government report has listed 22 countries that continue to maintain strong economic links with Iran despite the sanctions. The U.S. and the European Union (E.U.) have imposed more stringent sanctions than the ones already present in the fourth round of sanctions imposed by the U.N. in June. The report singles out India as the state that allows companies to do business with Iran to the largest extent. The other important countries that have been singled out for criticism are Russia and China. Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said the kind of sanctions the Obama administration wanted the government to implement would have a direct and adverse impact on Indian companies and more importantly on our energy security. Under American pressure, Indian companies such as Reliance have already ceased operations in Iran.
The U.N. sanctions or American laws are not meant to be automatically obeyed by states. The Indian government's decision to continue negotiations with Iran on the gas pipeline deal seems to have irritated the Obama administration. There have been suggestions from Washington that India can give up its hopes of occupying a permanent seat in the Security Council if it continues to do business with Iran.
The new U.S. sanctions regime gives the American President the authority to open an investigation on the basis of credible evidence that a company is investing in Iran's energy sector. Stuart Levey, the U.S. Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and the Treasury's pointman on Iranian sanctions, said recently that it is incumbent upon governments to put into place appropriate mechanisms to implement the U.N. as well as the even more tougher U.S./E.U. sanctions, which prohibited investment in Iran's oil and gas sectors.
TURKEY DEFIANTIt is unlikely that such arm-twisting methods will have a significant impact on the policies of important countries. Turkey, which along with Brazil has made a concerted attempt to block the ill-conceived UNSC resolution, has already conveyed to the U.S. that it will not adhere to the new sanctions regime unilaterally proclaimed by the Obama administration. Turkey stepped in to sell 1.2 million barrels of gasoline to Iran in June. This was at a time when most other countries refused to sell refined petrol to Iran, fearful of repercussions from the U.S. Owing to sanctions imposed by the West, Iran lacks the capacity to refine its crude oil and hence needs to import refined petrol.
Meanwhile, Iran, buoyed by the commissioning of the Bushehr reactor, has once again renewed its offer for talks on the basis of the nuclear swap deal it signed with Brazil and Turkey. Teheran has called on the Vienna Group to start talks expeditiously. The Vienna Group, which consists of the U.S., Russia, France and the IAEA, has now approved the Turkey-Brazil-Iran declaration as a basis for negotiations. In the declaration, Iran offered to dispatch 2,500 kg of its 3.5 per cent enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for the 20 per cent enriched uranium it will receive from the West for use as fuel for a scientific reactor situated near Teheran.
The U.S. State Department spokesman said in the last week of August that Washington was hopeful that talks between the five permanent Security Council members along with Germany and Iran would start in the next few weeks.
But the carrot and stick policy adopted by the West against Iran continues. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, beating the war drums, warned Iran that a failure to reach a credible agreement on its nuclear programme would force world powers to mobilise again to defend the security of Iran's neighbours. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a television network that allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons is unacceptable and that the U.S. had contingency plans to attack the country at short notice.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated in the third week of August that any talks with the U.S. would take place after it gave up the sanctions and threats against Teheran.
