UN-Truth

On the 7th of November, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has achieved a landmark with 3,000 centrifuges fully working, at its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

The Iranian President made his remarks a day after widespread news coverage of a new American National Intelligence Estimate which states that Iran gave up its ambitions to have a nuclear weapons program in 2003, under unspecified pressure.

The AP reported that “Wednesday’s claim was his first official statement that the plant is now fully operating the 3,000 centrifuges. ‘We have now reached 3,000 machines’, Ahmadinejad told thousands of Iranians in Birjand in eastern Iran, in a show of defiance of international demands to halt the program believed to be masking the country’s nuclear arms efforts. Centrifuges are used in enriching uranium, a process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a warhead”. The AP report is available here.

The very informative and useful pro-disarmament NGO, Reaching Critical Will, has provided a wrap-up in its final report for 2007 on the UN General Assembly’s First (Disarmament ) Committee, reporting that “During the 62nd session of the First Committee, the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme was largely limited to the General and Thematic Debates, where the discussion revealed a high degree of divergence, contrary to exhortations of unity of the international community on the issue. This was readily apparent in the approach of the P5 on the issue, despite the 28 September P5+2 statement, in which the major powers agreed to seek a third sanctions resolution in the UN Security Council unless reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the EU High Representative show progress in November. The United States again adopted the hardest line against Iran and called outright for the Security Council to adopt a third sanctions resolution. Although the EU called upon Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, it expressed hope that the 21 August work plan [available online here ] would resolve outstanding issues, and made no reference to an additional Security Council resolution. The Russian and Chinese delegations both emphasized diplomatic and political solutions to addressing the Iran nuclear situation, without reference to the imposition of additional sanctions or even the 28 September P5+2 statement, indicating their lukewarm support for continued escalation of the situation … First Committee also heard both the Iranian and Israeli viewpoints on this issue in their general remarks. Reiterating familiar rhetorical points, Iranian Ambassador Khazaee defended Iran’s nuclear programme as peaceful, touted the 21 August work plan, and denounced Security Council resolutions adopted on the nuclear issue. Israeli Ambassador Ziv, delivering general remarks from the viewpoint of her country’s unique perspective on matters of global security, urged states to regard Iran ‘as a threat well beyond the geographical limits of the Middle East’ and also as ‘a threat not just to the regional stability but also to the global strategic situation’. Ambassador Ziv’s statements were in part based on the argument that weapons of mass destruction are dangerous only ‘in the hands of reckless and irresponsible actors’, a position that was flatly rejected by the Hans Blix-led Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission … However, in the Thematic Debate on nuclear weapons, Ambassador Khan of Pakistan observed that further coercion could be counter-productive and place the whole region in jeopardy, noting also that “[a]symmetry, imbalance and discrimination” would ultimately propel proliferation rather than facilitating the goal of a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East”.

This summary of the debate in the UNGA’s First Committee was written by Michael Spies of Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, and can be found online here.

Filed under: Iran, Nuclear technology and weapons