Iran, terrorism and fundamentalism and the global crisis

Today in Vienna, the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, senior nuclear scientists from Iran are talking to the IAEA chief Mohammed Al Baradei, in an effort to head off a vote on Thursday or Friday to refer the case of Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council.

I acknowledge the elders and ancestors of the Gadigal clan of the Eora nation as the traditional owners of the land on which we meet.

It was in September [2005] that the IAEA decided that this grave issue should go to the UN Security Council, and the time until this week enabled Iran to take serious action to avoid this step. Unfortunately, during these weeks, the new government of President Ahmadinajad made unusually inflammatory verbal attacks on Israel and defiantly told the United Nations General Assembly that Iran had every right to create nuclear weapons. Moreover, the process of uranium gasification and subsequent centrifuge enrichment, a key technical process in producing weapons-grade uranium, has continued at Isfahan.

Already in September, the IAEA had heard the statement of Hosein Musavian, chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, made on Iranian television on August 4, that "Thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year in which we completed the (gasification0 program in Isfahan.... We needed six to twelve months to complete the work on the centrifuges".

If that isn't bad enough, President Ahmadinajad has been busy purging his cabinet and diplomatic service, and senior advisors, creating internal uproar within his ultra-conservative regime.

When we spoke here last, on July 14, there were voices saying that nothing would happen about the nuclear danger in Iran or about the shocking human rights situation, and I responded by pointing to the real choices that powerful forces would be required to make in the coming months. I said that we had to be steadfast in speaking out for peace and democracy in this rapidly unfolding situation.

So when the IAEA rather dramatically see-sawed in September and then by a majority vote stated that the Tehran regime had deceived them and had not fulfilled its obligations to pursue a verifiable peaceful nuclear program, the stakes were raised all round.

Now in response to the invitation to today's forum, there are several voices raised saying that the nuclear weapons allegations against Tehran are only a continuation of the WMD lies from Washington, London and Canberra in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. My response to these voices is to urge them to look at the evidence, and not to fall into the error of knee-jerk rejection of anything said by the Bush Administration.

First let me point out that the Bush Administration is coming late to the issue. The first people to blow the whistle on the Mullah's drive to get the bomb were the National Council of Resistance of Iran, way back in 1991. Then they exposed uranium enrichment work at Qazvin, west of Tehran. The NCRI radically escalated the issue in March 2002 with the exposure of a secret nuclear site at Shian - Lavizan in northeast Tehran, and in August 2002 at Natanz and Arak. This was followed in February 2003 with the exposure of the watchmaking company at Ab-e Ali in northern Tehran as a producer of centrifuges for enriching uranium.

Nuclear weapons can be made using two fuels - enriched uranium and plutonium. Uranium has to be enriched to about 95% in a very expensive process, to achieve weapons-grade. Plutonium is a by-product of a nuclear reactor using uranium fuel enriched to about 35%.

The evidence is there that the Tehran regime has been working hard on both tracks, as well as work on how to magnify the yield of a uranium bomb, how to trigger a nuclear chain reaction in a bomb, how to build a bomb casing.

Here is a summary of the case as so far known to the IAEA:

• The Natanz site was a large facility for using centrifuges to enrich uranium.
• Arak was the construction site for a heavy water reactor to produce plutonium
• Shian-Lavizanwas the site for extensive testing of components of a nuclear bomb. After its exposure in March 2002, this site was demolished and cleared and the equipment moved to a new site, Lavizan II. The IAEA was able to inspect the Shian-Lavizan site in June 2004, and found evidence of 11 different nuclear programs at that site, but the regime would not give any information about them.
• At the Ab-e Ali site of the false Kalay-e Electric Watch Factory, the IAEA was able to make a short visit in March 2003, but could get no environmental samples until August 2003, but then found traces of highly enriched uranium.
• The IAEA was able to inspect the Lashgar Abad site in Karaj, and found that laser enrichment of uranium was carried out there.
• The IAEA was able to visit the Qazvin site, west of Tehran, only in 2003 - it had been first exposed by NCRI in 1991. They found that uranium enrichment as also carried out there,and in October 2003 the regime admitted that it had enriched uranium there between 1998 and 2002.
• In June 2004, the IAEA announced that Tehran had been found to be testing plutonium, but in 1999 the regime had denied that it was working with plutonium.
• In January 2005, the IAEA was allowed to inspect the Parchin site, with very limited environmental sampling,and no further visits have been allowed.
• The IAEA has been denied access to inspect the Lavizan II site.
• In January 2005, the regime had to admit that it was working on advanced centrifuges, after claiming that it had revealed all its centrifuge program in October 2003. The IAEA had found the blueprints to the advanced centrifuges at Shian-Lavizan after the October claim.
• The Tehran regime had a meeting with the Pakistani nuclear expert Abdul Qader Khan in Dubai in 1987 but only admitted so when the IAEA confronted them with documentary evidence.
• In October 2003, the regime admitted to pursuing two techniques for laser enrichment of uranium, and to experimenting on reprocessing of nuclear fuel to extract plutonium.
• The Tehran regime has refused to allow its top nuclear experts to be interviewed by the IAEA.
• When confronted with data about its enrichment program, the Tehran regime first tells one story, then another, leaving the IAEA with grave doubts about its statements. For example, it first claimed that the centrifuges at Natanz were manufactured in Iran. When the weapons-grade uranium traces were found on these centrifuges, the regime said that they were imported and that the traces were imported with them.

For a peace movement working to end the US-led occupation of Iraq, this evidence stands out as qualitatively different from that advanced against Saddam Hussein in 2002-03. In that case, the fraudulent claims about both the uranium from Niger and the centrifuge tubes from China - via Australia - had been exposed in 2002; and the IAEA was unable to verify any claim advanced by the Bush Administration; and the internal Iraqi sources of the WMD claims were dubious paid CIA informants of long standing whereas the NCRI has suffered hostility from Washington through its entire history.

So what should a peace movement conclude about this data? The conclusion must be that Tehran has been working to make nuclear weapons for a long time, that it must be very close to having nuclear weapons. Combine this with an assessment that the Bush Administration and Israel will not tolerate a regime so belligerent having nuclear weapons.

What is the best way to respond to this extremely dangerous situation? It is to demand a peaceful process to defuse the crisis, based on the removal of nuclear weapons and programs to produce them from both Iran and Israel. This process can only be delivered by the United Nations process, with strong consensus from the Permanent Members of the Security Council. This will involve economic sanctions against the regime in Tehran, and probably sanctions against the regime in Tel Aviv. So the IAEA must delay no more and refer the Iran file to the UN Security Council this week.

A vital part of this peaceful process has to be the empowerment of a democratic coalition in Iran to change the regime, which is now extremely isolated and can only survive by a combination of heavy internal repression and the threat of external attack. In other words, the US, the EU and Australia must drop the ludicrous terrorist listing of the democratic opposition, the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran and the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Other speakers will take up this theme more forcefully. Thank you very much.

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