Iran's nuclear stand-off (1)

Anthony Manduca's column (The Sunday Times, January 22) lacked balance and even-handedness. Besides, it was myopic and prejudiced.

So far Iran has not violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 to which it is a party. Its misbehaviour, Mr Manduca wrote, is due to "its decision to reopen its uranium enrichment facility".

But then he goes on: "Enriched uranium can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons or it can be used for civil nuclear power", i.e. for peaceful purposes.

To be sure, the treaty does not stop signatory states from using enriched uranium to produce civil nuclear energy as opposed to the manufacture of nuclear weapons, which the treaty intends to prohibit.

It is important to note that neither the production of nuclear weapons nor the use of nuclear energy for civil purposes can be safely carried out without expertise in nuclear technology.

So if the "stand-off" and the diplomatic manoeuvering are solely intended to prevent Iran from mastering nuclear technology then that explains everything.

It is well worth recalling that in 1975 the Shah's minister of economy and finance signed an agreement with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger worth US$15 billion to be spent on American goods and services which included the construction of eight large nuclear power plants in five years to provide 80,000 megawatts of electricity.

At that time no one said a word, as we heard recently, that Iran did not need nuclear power stations when it had more than enough oil.

Incidentally, in the same year, the Shah explained the Iranian nuclear programme to Tony Benn, then the UK's Secretary of State for Energy during a visit to Iran, pointing out that the technology came from the French and the Germans.

Mr Manduca quoted the American Ambassador to the IAEA as saying: "Today Iran has taken another step towards uranium enrichment - the process for creating nuclear bomb material". The ambassador deliberately avoided mentioning civil nuclear power, so that what he said could only mean that Iran was starting to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Immediately before that quotation: "... the international community, the IAEA, the United Nations, the European Union and the United States, not to mention Israel, are running out of patience with Iran". As if Iran were a banana republic!

Why include Israel when it had strongly refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? Later on, Mr Manduca mentioned "the military option" and wrote: "The obvious country to carry out such a course of action is Israel. An attack of this sort... will have Washington's approval and that is all Israel needs". But he should have added: "to hell with the international community".

One needs to recall here, however, that Israel had had such approval in the past before it attacked and destroyed the Iraqi Tamuz project in 1981. That project was designed to give Saddam Hussein's Iraq a nuclear option. Mr Manduca added that Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "shortly before his massive stroke", had declared: "Israel will not accept a nuclear weapon-equipped Iran".

Curiously, Israel had not yet acted, seeing that a nuclear-armed Iran would certainly mean the loss of Israel's military superiority in the entire Middle East. The reason might be that present-day Iran, unlike Iraq in 1979 and thereafter, cannot be pushed around.

When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed, ratified and, finally brought into effect, some states had nuclear weapons. The then nuclear states - the US, the Soviet Union, Britain and France - were obliged by Article VI to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear weapons. This obligation was later expressed in even stronger terms by the International Court of Justice in 1996.

Anthony Manduca writes: Mr Cachia is entitled to his views but Iran's latest actions go against the 2004 Paris agreement reached between Iran and the EU3 which involved the suspension by Iran of all sensitive nuclear work while negotiations on the future of the country's nuclear programme continued with the European powers. Furthermore, I was quoting the International Atomic Energy Agency when stating that Iran's latest moves were in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory.