Iran and the bomb
What will it take to thwart Tehran's nuclear aims?
The intelligence on Iraq's nuclear activities proved to be dead wrong after U.S.-led forces invaded last year, but in next-door Iran, there's no question that a vast and varied nuclear infrastructure is rising (or, in some cases, burrowing underground). The Iranians say they intend only to generate electricity and conduct peaceful research. But the same technology that can produce reactor fuel to light Iran's cities can be kept running to make the fissile material for atomic weapons--a goal that is widely suspected.
Even as public attention remains fixed on the deadly insurgency in Iraq, a standoff with neighboring Iran could mushroom into the first international crisis in George Bush's second term. The United States estimates that Iran could field its first nuclear weapon in three to seven years, a prospect Bush has branded "intolerable." Hoping to avert another Mideast war, the three leading European Union powers--Britain, France, and Germany--have been trying to pull off a deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear ambitions. They are facing a deadline of November 25, which is when the board of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency meets in Vienna to review Iran's defiance of earlier demands for full disclosure of its nuclear activities. The IAEA will decide whether to send the issue to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
"No policy " The EU-3 are proposing that Iran forswear work to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium--the key processes in making atomic weapons--and cooperate fully with the IAEA, which has been probing Iran's secretive nuclear work with mixed success. In return, Iran would receive a light-water nuclear reactor (a type that reduces the risk of diversion to weapons use), as well as atomic fuel and future trade benefits. Spent reactor fuel would be removed from the country. Iran has been resisting the main EU demand to suspend all of its work on nuclear fuel for the duration of negotiations. The wrangling late last week jeopardized a potential deal.
A skeptical Bush administration has stayed away from the European effort, neither endorsing nor trying to block it. Administration hawks have quarreled with those favoring dialogue with Tehran: As a result, the administration has been unable even to issue a formal strategy on Iran. "They have no policy toward Iran," says Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. "They have subcontracted it to the Europeans, and the Europeans have subcontracted it to the IAEA." Yet across the administration's spectrum of views, there is apprehension. "Even the most dovish Middle East watcher in this government is pretty realistic about Iran's intentions," says one U.S. official. "Iran is not going to fulfill any agreement with the EU."
The Pentagon, U.S. News has learned from two officials, is revising contingency plans that originated with the Clinton administration for attacking Iran's nuclear plants. Officials describe the planning as routine for a global trouble spot and say that Bush continues to look for a diplomatic solution. Since late summer, they have also studied options in case Israel, as it has hinted, decides to hit Iran's nuclear sites in raids reminiscent of its 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. The Bush administration recently agreed to sell Israel 500 bunker-busting smart bombs of a sort that could be used in such an operation. Secretary of State Colin Powell has urged Israel to give diplomacy time to work, and few officials doubt that strikes would be costly, inflaming anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli passions, spawning terrorist reprisals, and giving extremists a boost across the Islamic world.
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