Iran's New Leader Rejects Nuclear Pact

Ramita Navai, Tehran, and Tom Walker, The Sunday Times:

Iran signalled a confrontation with the West yesterday by rejecting a European Union offer to help it to build a nuclear energy programme in return for scrapping operations that could lead to the production of nuclear weapons. In a terse address to parliament Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s conservative new president, said that such constraints would constitute a breach of his country’s rights. “We respect international norms but we will not agree to outside diktats that are illegal and violate the rights of Iran,” he said.

“Some governments have been trying to deprive our nation of its inalienable rights and that produces resistance in our people . . . I don’t know why some countries cannot understand that the Iranian people will not succumb to force.”

Britain, France and Germany, which have been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear ambitions for two years, have called an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for Tuesday.

Backed by the United States, they are expected to warn Iran against resuming work at the nuclear plant of Isfahan. The restarting of operations there could prompt the IAEA to refer Iran to the United Nations security council for sanctions.

These could range from embargoes on certain exports to more complicated restrictions on transfers of technology and even ultimately to curbs on Iranian oil shipments.

The three EU countries had hoped that a proposal entitled Framework for a Long-Term Agreement could convince Tehran to end a nuclear enrichment programme that could be used for civilian purposes or to make weapons-grade uranium.

The proposal, presented on Friday, included an offer to help Iran to build light water reactors for a civilian energy programme and supply them with fuel. In return, Iran would have to abandon plans to enrich its own uranium.

Co-operation would have resulted in security and trade guarantees. But the proposal was dismissed yesterday by Hamid Reza Asefi, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry.

“The European proposals are unacceptable,” he said. “The proposals do not meet Iran’s minimum expectations.”

Iran insists it has a legal right under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to continue enriching uranium.

EU and American officials have said a breakdown in negotiations would leave little or no room for doubt that Iran intends to make nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad, 48, who replaced Mohammad Khatami, the reformist cleric, is not expected to make any early compromises in the stand-off and will be guided by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, who ultimately decides the country’s nuclear policy.

“The Iranian government is making contingency plans just in case it is referred to the UN security council but it doesn’t expect that sort of referral and it doesn’t want it to happen,” said one diplomat. READ MORE

He said that Ahmadinejad would be anxious to gauge the extent to which China and Russia are likely to back Iran’s stance against the United States and the EU.

“They have this hope that even if the case is referred to the UN security council, China and Russia will try and minimise (the) impact,” said the diplomat. “But at the same time they don’t think China and Russia will fight against the US and Europe for Iran’s sake.”

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said Russia could be persuaded to back a call for sanctions and to halt the assistance that it gives Iran at the Bushehr nuclear plant. However, sources at the IAEA thought this “extremely unlikely”. Russia has a £425m contract to supply nuclear fuel to Bushehr and reprocess it later.

A Tehran-based diplomat said China’s growing economic ties with Iran could also stall the sanctions process. “They need Iran’s oil and gas, they’ve got a couple of big gas export deals and it won’t be easy for China to find an alternative — energy is very important to them,” he said.

At the very least, Iran wants to see its plants at Isfahan and Natanz working. At Isfahan raw uranium “yellowcake” is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas. At Natanz the gas can be enriched by centrifuges into reactor fuel or, at more concentrated levels, into weapons-grade uranium.

Iran has warned that it will break IAEA seals at Isfahan and restart processing within days. Ahmadinejad’s defiance yesterday will have satisfied his important power bases — the military and security establishment from the Revolutionary Guards to the “Basij” religious militia. All insist that Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear programme.

“The type of people who voted for him will now look on him as a hero, someone who won’t give in to the West and is standing firm,” said one diplomat.

Ahmadinejad devoted part of his inaugural speech as president to the need to tackle unemployment and poverty — the central plank of his surprise election victory in June.

The son of a blacksmith, Ahmadinejad is promising to stay loyal to his humble roots. It is reported that he does not want to swap his modest suburban home for the presidential palace in affluent north Tehran. “I will live in a palace only when every Iranian lives in a palace,” he told journalists.

His ascendency heralds a resurgence of ideological conservatism. The conservatives now control every elected and unelected government institution in the country.