Having pressured Tehran in October into agreeing to allow surprise inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IAEA members discussed how to extract further concessions. The wrangling over the wording of the resolution registered the ongoing imperialist rivalry between Washington, which pressed for sharper language, and Paris and Berlin.

A number of imperialist powers in the European Union (EU) argue that pushing too fast and too far against Tehran could prompt it to cut off cooperation with the IAEA. For Paris and Berlin, in particular, this is the justification for holding back U.S. designs on Iran. The EU, led by France and Germany, has an annual trade of $8 billion with Iran, unlike Washington.

An IAEA report released in mid-November stated that Iran had manufactured small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium as part of a nuclear program that operated in secret over 18 years. It said the agency would continue investigating the charge by the U.S. government that Tehran has attempted to develop nuclear weapons, an accusation the Iranian government denies.

The Bush administration demanded that the IAEA refer the matter of Iran’s nuclear program to the UN Security Council, an action that could have paved the way for imposing sanctions against Tehran.

Since the release of the report, diplomats from London, Paris, and Berlin had been negotiating to find language for a resolution on Iran’s nuclear program that would be acceptable to Washington. U.S. government officials rejected two drafts presented by the three European governments as being too weak.

After several days of debate, the IAEA meeting recessed over the November 22-23 weekend without reaching agreement. A day after it reconvened, Washington and its European allies, who are also competitors, announced they had reached agreement on language for a resolution that “strongly deplores Iran’s past failure and breaches” of provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). UN officials said they expected the resolution would be approved by consensus.

The NPT allows Washington and other major imperialist powers to have nuclear weapons but bars other nations from acquiring them.

The agreement also includes a “trigger” clause demanded by Washington. It would send any future violations by Tehran to the UN Security Council without further investigations or reports.

According to the Washington Post, an example of disclosure of a future violation would include any “credible” report by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a pro-imperialist group aiming to overthrow the regime in Tehran.

During the debate on the draft, U.S. representatives conceded not having enough backing to have Iran’s nuclear program referred to the UN Security Council. But they insisted that the resolution include a phrase declaring Iran in “noncompliance” with the NPT.

Just before the IAEA meeting, during a trip to meet with EU foreign ministers, U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell described the draft resolution on Iran as “not adequate.”

Washington was joined by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei in calling for stronger language, saying Iran was guilty of violating the treaty. “Iran’s breaches and failures are, of themselves, a matter of deep concern,” ElBaradei said in a speech to the agency’s board.

At the same time, Kenneth Brill, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, sharply criticized ElBaradei for declaring in his report on Iran that there was “no evidence” that Iran was seeking a nuclear bomb.

On October 21, under intense pressure from the governments of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, Iran agreed to allow the UN agency to conduct unannounced inspections of nuclear facilities. By pressing Tehran to accept that agreement, known as Additional Protocols, the four governments hoped to hold Washington at bay.

ElBaradei reported that although Tehran has not yet signed the agreement, the IAEA had begun conducting its inspections as if it had been signed and ratified. “We are acting as if the protocol is in force and we have been getting all the access we need, both to locations and to information,” he said.

Opposition to the October 21 agreement allowing the snap inspections has been reflected both within and outside the Iranian government. About 100 people demonstrated against the British, German, and French foreign ministers who visited Tehran to negotiate the agreement. One banner read, “Shame on your hypocrisy, imperialist ambassadors!” Another 1,000 protested the agreement during Friday prayers. At the University of Tehran students shouted “Death to America.”

Demonstrations against the agreement reportedly subsided after Iran’s “supreme religious leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, publicly endorsed it. The newspaper Jomhouri Eslami advised in a November 8 editorial that the current silence “is an obedient silence,” not one of agreement. Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons even if religious doctrine prevents their use, the editorial argued. “With the least indication” from Khamenei, “all these suppressed sentiments would be reflected in the form of a great explosion,” it said.

The Iranian government reiterated its promise not to build a medium-range missile, the Shahab-4, which imperialist powers have warned would be capable of carrying a conventional weapon as far as Europe or a nuclear warhead to Israel. Tehran also voluntarily suspended its enrichment of uranium. Hassan Rohani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned that any language in the resolution “that turns our voluntary suspension into a legal commitment will be unacceptable for us.”

Bourgeois forces in Iran that expressed opposition to the October 21 agreement have insisted that a clause in the declaration stating that the inspections will not undermine Iran’s sovereignty must be strictly adhered to. The sentence was intended to reassure Tehran that the inspections would be less aggressive than those imposed on Iraq.

Iranian officials have also pressed London, Paris, and Berlin to keep promises to provide aid to ease Tehran’s access to technology for nuclear power. According to diplomats, “that’s not in the agreement, but it’s understood.” The Washington Post, reported that one official involved in the negotiations said such assistance would come “only after years of confidence building” by Iran.

In its campaign against Iran, Washington has seized on a trace amount of weapons-grade nuclear material reportedly found in two Iranian facilities. U.S. and IAEA officials have demanded that Iran reveal the source of the material. Tehran says the material is most likely the result of contamination from parts its purchased through a third party, the identity of which its does not know.

During the November 20 meeting, IAEA officials stated that China, Russia and Pakistan were the probable suppliers of the technology that Iran is accused of using to enrich uranium and produce small amounts of weapons grade plutonium. The Russian and Pakistani governments have denied the accusations.

For years Washington has worked to prevent Iran from developing, with Moscow’s help, a 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor in the port city of Bushire. In mid-October Moscow announced that plans to start up the power plant would be delayed.

Just before the release of the IAEA report, however, Rohani announced that Tehran would send a letter to the IAEA confirming its agreement to unannounced inspections of its nuclear facilities. Russian president Vladimir Putin then stated that as a result he saw “no obstacles to nuclear cooperation with Iran.”

Washington has also charged that the Iranian as well as Syrian governments are allowing armed groups opposed to the U.S. occupation regime in Baghdad to use their borders to enter Iraq. On November 17 U.S. military officers told the Associated Press that an Iraqi scientist who had headed the development of a long-range missile program for the government of Saddam Hussein had fled to Iran. They asserted that other scientists who worked for the Hussein regime are currently in Syria and Jordan. A foreign ministry spokesman for Iran denied the charge as “completely baseless.”  
 
 
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