LAST WEDNESDAY, in an act of hopeless naivety, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain reached an agreement with Iran to end an international dispute over the Islamic state's nuclear program. Under the terms of the agreement, Iran will temporarily stop enriching uranium and allow more aggressive inspections of its nuclear facilities in exchange for international recognition of its right to produce nuclear energy for civilian purposes.
By securing Iran's compliance with the demands of the International Atomic Energy Association, the agreement has prevented the dispute from being referred to the U.N. Security Council and averted a diplomatic showdown between Iran and the United States. But despite their apparent success, the European foreign ministers have merely executed a replay of the 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea, by which the Stalinist state abandoned its efforts to build nuclear weapons in exchange for Western assistance in the development of its civilian nuclear facilities. The Agreed Framework broke down last year, and the Europeans should expect the same from their agreement with Iran.
Although the agreement states that Iran has only peaceful intentions, it is increasingly clear that its nuclear program is designed to produce nuclear weapons. Last month, the IAEA concluded that Iran had attempted to produce highly enriched uranium without properly disclosing it, in violation of nuclear non-proliferation agreements. IAEA inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at two Iranian nuclear facilities, and the IAEA director, Mohammed ElBaradei, described Iran's cooperation with the agency as "slow, piecemeal and reactive." Covert production of bomb-grade uranium and halting cooperation with international inspectors are hardly the signs of a nuclear nation with peaceful designs.
Iran's geopolitical circumstances also suggest that its nuclear program is designed for military purposes. A country with Iran's abundant energy resources has little need of an extensive civilian nuclear program. But given Iran's security situation, it may well desire a military nuclear program. In the past two years, Iran has seen its neighbor Pakistan become an American ally in the war on terrorism, while Iraq and Afghanistan have been occupied by American troops and administered by pro-American regimes. Given its recent encirclement by American forces and American allies, Iran's leadership may regard nuclear deterrence as their sole defense against possible American aggression.
But despite ample motive and evidence for Iran's development of nuclear weapons, last week's agreement accepts that Iran's desire is simply to have some sort of national nuclear program. So, in the same fashion as the Agreed Framework, last week's agreement naively assumes that Iran will renounce the development of nuclear weapons if it is only permitted to develop its civilian nuclear capabilities.
But the construction of nuclear weapons and the peaceful generation of nuclear power are not interchangeable objectives. Although they share the same infrastructure, each project serves different national interests, and each is motivated by different considerations of security and economy. If a state regards nuclear deterrence as an integral part of its national defense, it will never regard the generation of nuclear energy as an acceptable substitute for the construction of nuclear weapons. Such was the downfall of the Agreed Framework, and such is the major failing of last week's agreement with Iran.
The best that the Europeans can hope for is a temporary halt to Iran's development of nuclear weapons. But such a delay will also prevent the implementation of punitive measures that may be more useful in stopping Iran's nuclear program. Iran's agreement to temporarily suspend its uranium enrichment efforts and its apparent submission to the IAEA inspections regime will prevent the dispute from being referred to the Security Council, where the United States might have called for international sanctions against Iran. At the very least, the Security Council's participation in the dispute would have convinced the world that Iran's illicit nuclear development is, in fact, a matter of importance to international security.
By concluding their toothless agreement with Iran, the European foreign ministers have short-circuited the resolution of a critical threat to the international security and Middle Eastern stability. Their agreement will do little to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons in the long term and will prevent the United States from attempting to resolve the conflict in the short term.
Perhaps this was the real goal of the European mission to Tehran. After the signing of the agreement, French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin described the occasion as "an important day for our countries and an important day for Europe, because we are here dealing with a major issue." But if Mr. de Villepin truly understood the issue his delegation was trying to address, he might have put aside his pretensions to world leadership and allowed the United States to take more forceful action against Iran.
(Alec Solotorovsky is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.)
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