Volume 52, Number 3 · February 24, 2005 , 2005

Review
 

Bush, Iran & the Bomb

"The US and other nations, notably EU member states, Japan, Canada, and Australia, are alarmed by Iran's progress toward being able both to enrich uranium and to separate plutonium, processes that can produce fuel either for civilian power reactors or for nuclear bombs. Under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran ratified in 1970, the Iranians are entitled to develop these technologies for civilian purposes, but the covert way that they have done so has aroused the suspicion that they intend to produce bombs, as well as energy for peaceful use. As part of its adherence to the NPT, Iran signed a "safeguards agreement" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowing agency officials to monitor its activities regularly.

Beginning in the summer of 2002, however, in view of longstanding suspicions of nuclear activities that had remained hidden from inspectors, the agency brought the Iranian program under closer scrutiny. It has since established that Iran has egregiously breached the safeguards agreement which was designed to keep its nuclear activities transparent and limited to peaceful purposes. These breaches include Iran's failure to report the purchase and development of nuclear materials, and to declare the existence of several of its nuclear sites.

Using the Iranian government's past behavior as a guide, some of its critics expect more breaches of the agreements. They are convinced that the government is lying when it insists that its nuclear program is exclusively for civilian purposes, and they believe that it intends to develop the capacity to build a nuclear bomb on short notice. To deny Iran that capacity, they are trying to persuade it to forswear the right, provided for under the NPT, to develop a nuclear "fuel cycle, the series of industrial processes required to produce fuel from uranium or plutonium, which can be used to produce either electricity or nuclear bombs. "