Questions Urgent, Answers Absent
"Despite ten years of concerted effort by this Board and the Agency to engage Iran in good faith, Iran continues to obfuscate and refuses to answer questions about its nuclear program -- questions for which the international community demands answers.This is a 1,300-word interventionist document that Shawn Caza, Canada's counsellor and deputy permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency tabled with the IAEA's 35-member board of governors on Tuesday in Vienna. Canada's relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a controversially testy one for many years.
"This abhorrent behaviour is now utterly predictable, a shell game of posturing and platitudes with no discernible pattern towards a safer region and a safer world.
"The crisis over Iran's nuclear program has persisted for ten years and the international community simply cannot allow this impasse to continue.
"Should Iran continue to refuse to cooperate with the IAEA, against the wishes of the Board of Governors, the Board must consider additional robust action."
Canadian submission to the International Atomic Energy Agency
Canadian government criticism of Iran's human rights record has been on the agenda at the UN for a number of years, and a yearly resolution condemning that record has been successful in highlighting that country's violations of human rights against its own citizens. This focus on Iran's nuclear technology drive to attain what the rest of the world is convinced is a nuclear arsenal is a new direction for the Government of Canada.
The document presented in Geneva coincided with a Canadian invitation to the ambassadors of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United States and Britain to discuss how to handle what amounts to a breakdown in negotiations between Iran and, effectively the world, relating to that country's nuclear ambitions and the IAEA's non-proliferation safeguards. The latest meeting between the 5+1 and Iran had not been quite as productive as hoped.
Chief of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, demanded access this week to Iran's Parchin military site "without further delay". That demand was rejected, despite, and of course precisely because the base is being used for the development of nuclear weapons. It is most certainly in Iran's interest to ensure that no inspections by the IAEA take place there. Furthermore, the IAEA has reason to suspect that there are additional secret nuclear sites in the country.
"Iran will never go one step back from its obvious nuclear rights. The percentage of our enrichment is nobody's business" Fars news reported Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi stating in the delivery of a sermon. "The talks between Mr. Jalili and 5+1 have shown that the positions of Iran are consistent and unwavering", and this time the "5+1 positions were more realistic than in the past."
"...Some news agencies have told nonsense that Iran had agreed to stop the 20% enrichment. This talk is without any basis. The Iranian nation is nuclear. Iran is not waiting for the permission of the American president", stated Ayatollah Sedighi, to the approving shouts of "Death to Israel, Death to America!".
While the Ayatollah's fervent followers curse Israel and the U.S., it should be noted that President Obama has agreed to allow the Fordo uranium enrichment plant to continue operating rather than insist it be shut down, even though it functions to turn out 20% (near weapons grade) uranium, and that Washington has dropped insisting that Iran send its stocks of 3.5 - 5% enriched uranium out of the country.
Forewarned by Iranian dissidents that the Iran they were escaping was operating a secret nuclear program to build nuclear bombs, IAEA inspectors discovered traces of highly-enriched uranium at Iran's Natanz nuclear plant in early 2004. In October that year Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, and allow unannounced IAEA inspections. Iran has never looked back on its violations of that initial agreement.
And when in 2009 a new underground uranium enrichment facility was discovered in a former compound of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at Fordow, near ancient Qom, Iranian President Ahmadinejad finally declared Iran a "nuclear state"; that Iranian scientists had succeeded in refining uranium to 20% enrichment. Placing the country on the thresh hold of atomic-bomb capability.
IAEA director-general Amano confirmed that Iran has surpassed the stock of enriched uranium it requires to operate the Tehran Research Reactor for the next decade; its enrichment facilities in fact are capable of producing a like amount every year. Iran has acquired stockpiles far surpassing the world's annual medical isotope requirement, so much for insisting its uranium enrichment is meant strictly and solely for medical purposes.
One of the questions that Canada's document poses is: "What, then, is the purpose of not only continuing to produce excessive quantities of 20% enriched uranium, but also expanding its ability to do so?" At the current rate of enriched uranium production, Tehran stands on the cusp of reaching Israel's stockpile-threshold red line.
This year's chair of the IAEA board of governors is Canadian diplomat John Barrett.
At the meeting on Wednesday which Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird addressed, he spoke first of the document that Canada's counsellor on the IAEA tabled with the board of governors. Calling for "robust action" on the part of the IAEA to address the failure of sanctions and the need to address the chilling and very real potential of Iran's nuclear weapons production, leaves a question: what robust action?
International pressure on Iran has resulted in nothing discernibly positive. Sanctions have produced few results to give encouragement to the belief that they have been productive in turning Iran away from its determined purpose. The Republic's oft-repeated threats to annihilate the State of Israel, coupled with its intractable drive toward nuclear weapons delivers a clear message of imminent danger.
If not soon, when? If not response, then why? If not a proactive action to prevent disaster, why not?
Labels: Canada, Conflict, Iran, Islamism, Israel, Nuclear Technology, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 11, 2013
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