ATT Commentary

I ran across this today. It appears to be a thorough commentary on the ATT published by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. I just thought I’d pass it along for reference.

Mark Fitzpatrick on the Influence of Western Sanctions on the Iranian Election

As the news of the Iranian election’s results came in on Saturday, Mark Fitzpatrick of IISS sent out a Tweet saying:

My conclusion: Iranians are fed up with Sanctions and with the leaders who couldn’t stop them.

This was my first exposure to an argument that has since been making the rounds on the web, championed by nonproliferation types with close ties to Washington DC, like Fitzpatrick. The basic idea of this argument is that the election of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, in Iran is confirmation of the effectiveness of Western economic sanctions in influencing Iran’s nuclear policy.

I find this argument particularly analytically odious for several reasons. First, it attempts to simplify what I think is a very complex and nuanced dynamic between the Western sanctions and both the Iranian public and Iranian officials’ reactions to them.  Second, I think at an essential level it is incorrect.  I would cite as evidence for this conclusion a Gallup poll that was conducted only four months ago in Iran.  This poll found that, while the Western-imposed sanctions have indeed had a very serious effect upon the living conditions and overall financial well being of ordinary Iranians, they overwhelmingly blame the U.S., and not their own leaders, for the sanctions.  Furthermore, according to the poll, the Iranian public still overall supports their country’s nuclear program and aspirations.  Here’s an excerpt from the summary of results:

Despite Effects of Sanctions, Many Iranians Support Nuclear Program

The majority of Iranians are so far seemingly willing to pay the high price of sanctions. Sixty-three percent say that Iran should continue to develop its nuclear program, even given the scale of sanctions imposed on their country because of it. In December, one in two Iranians supported their country developing its own nuclear power capabilities for nonmilitary uses.

Iranians Hold U.S. Most Responsible for Sanctions

Iranians are most likely to hold the U.S. (47%) responsible for the sanctions against Iran. One in 10 Iranians says their own government is most to blame for sanctions.

Implications

Iranians report feeling the effect of sanctions, but still support their country’s efforts to increase its nuclear capabilities. This may indicate that sanctions alone are not having the intended effect of persuading Iranian residents and country leaders to change their stance on the level of international oversight of their nuclear program. Iran, as one of the most populous nations in a region undergoing monumental shifts, will remain a key country in the balance of power for the Middle East. Thus, the United States’, Russia’s, and Europe’s relationship with the Iranian people remains a matter of strategic interest. The effect of sanctions on Iranians’ livelihoods and the blame they place on the U.S. will continue to be a major challenge for the U.S. in Iran and in neighboring countries such as Iraq. Recent reports that Tehran and Washington might enter into direct talks were short-lived when Iran’s supreme leader made a statement strongly rejecting them. With Iran preparing for elections later this year, a turning point is needed to get leaders on both sides out of the current stalemate on the country’s nuclear program.

The results of this poll would seem to directly contradict Fitzpatrick’s conclusions regarding both the nature of the influence of Western sanctions on the Iranian election, and the locus of blame which ordinary Iranians perceive for their suffering under the sanctions.

I would instead recommend Seyed Hossain Mousavian’s analysis of the effect of Western sanctions on Iran and its nuclear policy here.

And with regard to the implications of the election, I would recommend Barbara Slavin’s analysis here, and Paul Pillar’s analysis and excellent policy recommendations here.

Putin on Iran’s Nuclear Program

One doesn’t always think of Russian President Vladimir Putin as being the epitome of good judgment, but I have to say I think he hits just about exactly the right chord in his comments here on Iran’s nuclear program and the surrounding law and diplomacy:

Mark Hibbs on the Leaked IAEA Safeguards Report

So the nuclear nonproliferation blogosphere is lit up with the news of the leak of the 2012 IAEA Safeguards Implementation Report to Bloomberg and to Reuters last week. This also set the Twitterverse on fire, as Mark Hibbs reports in his piece over at Arms Control Wonk, which tries to dampen the hysteria and provide a pro-IAEA spin to the report’s revelations about how much of the IAEA’s budget and time have been spent on the Iran case.

I think in Mark’s apparent haste to explain some of the comments he made that were quoted in the report, he provides some rather superficial and ultimately erroneous analysis of the new report, blaming others in their analysis for “conflat[ing] the difference between compliance and performance evaluation.”

What I think Mark doesn’t see is the much more fundamental and underlying problem, which is that the concept of “compliance” with IAEA safeguards has been mangled and misused by the IAEA in its evaluations and reports for years.

The INFCIRC/153 CSA is very clear about how the system is supposed to work, and what standards the IAEA is supposed to use in their investigations and assessments. As readers of this blog will know, I have discussed the issue of the IAEA’s mandate extensively both here and in a Roundtable over at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In brief, it is the IAEA’s now unfortunately institutionalized practice of exceeding its investigation and assessment mandate, that produces all of the problems of inconsistency, politicization, and error in the application of safeguards by the IAEA, including what Hibbs describes as “conflat[ing] the difference between compliance and performance evaluation.”

In the case of Iran in particular, the IAEA has gone beyond its mandate in deciding that it will not determine Iran is in “compliance” with its safeguards obligations, unless the IAEA can assess not only that no declared fissile materials have been diverted from peaceful to civilian use (which is the sole, correct CSA standard), but also that there are no undeclared fissile materials or related facilities in Iran and never have been, and that Iran has never performed any experiments of any kind the knowledge from which could conceivably be employed someday in the development of a nuclear weapon.

This standard is, of course, wildly incorrect, as I have taken pains to demonstrate.

Included in the mix of condemnable acts by Iran that has clearly factored into the IAEA’s unwillingness to declare Iran in compliance with its safeguards agreement according to this erroneous standard, are Iran’s failure to provide design information on the Qom facility, and the Arak facility, in what the IAEA considers a timely manner.

But wait, isn’t this a perfect example of what Hibbs means by conflating the difference between compliance and performance evaluation? As he explains:

In general it can be said with authority (and fully backed up by my historical files) that quite a number of states – and,  importantly, mostly states with significant nuclear programs – have at critical times resisted efforts of the IAEA to require that they provide more information and access . . . . Does this record show that states as a matter of course have resisted taking on additional obligations to the IAEA? Yes. But does this resistance imply that these same states were cheating on their current safeguards obligations? No.

But isn’t that exactly what the IAEA itself is doing, when it takes Iran’s alleged failure to meet a subsidiary arrangement standard on design disclosure into account in making its determination of Iran’s “compliance” with its safeguards obligations?

Instead of looking to the IAEA’s critics as the conflators, Hibbs should look to his good friends at the IAEA itself (the ones who leaked the new report to him), which has been the primary author of the mess that has been made of the concept of “compliance” with IAEA safeguards.

This is why when the people who sent the Tweets Mark refers to, read the excerpts from the new safeguards report and see, for example, its observation that a number of other states failed to make reports of design information of nuclear facilities in accordance with the modified Code 3.1 standard, they think: “Wait a minute, that’s exactly what the IAEA has been criticizing Iran for, and why they say Iran is still noncompliant.  Why aren’t there noncompliance reports on these other states, then?”

Again, it’s the IAEA that has conflated all sorts of erroneous things into their erroneous definition of “compliance,” and that’s what is producing this inconsistency.

And here is the problem of principle involved.  To the extent that the IAEA has gone beyond its clearly delineated and limited textual mandate for investigations and assessment, found in the CSA, and into broader and more subjective standards for investigation and assessment (e.g. like the standard of “no undeclared fissile materials,” and the concept of “cooperation with the Agency”) the Agency has become increasingly susceptible to being co-opted and used for political purposes by powerful states.

This is why, when those same people read in the new safeguards report about how much of the IAEA’s safeguards budget is being spent on Iran, and what proportion of man-hours are being spent on Iran, they naturally think: “Ya know, the IAEA has found no evidence that Iran is doing anything illegal, and yet it keeps chasing ghosts and endless speculations, provided by Western national intelligence agencies, and is never satisfied, even after all this time and all this money being spent.  And now it seems that there are a lot of other countries who are doing the same things the IAEA say are so condemnable about Iran. Something doesn’t add up here.”

And so they start to pay closer attention to reports about how much of the IAEA’s budget is provided by the US and its allies; how closely aligned with the US DG Amano was revealed to be in the WikiLeaks cables; and how much technical assistance the IAEA gets from the US in running its safeguards program. And they think: “Maybe this doesn’t add up because it’s not really about holding Iran to the same legal standards as other countries at all. Maybe this is really just one more way for the US to pursue its political agenda against Iran – whom it considers to be a grave threat to its chief Middle East ally Israel, and to itself – by using its influence over the IAEA to get the Agency to act as its proxy in criticizing Iran’s nuclear program. And maybe the IAEA is never going to be satisfied that Iran is in fact in compliance with its safeguards obligations, because the US doesn’t want it to ever be satisfied, and thereby recognize Iran’s legal justification for its peaceful nuclear program.”

And then they think: “Yeah. Now it does all add up. That really sucks. People should know about this.”

Soltanieh’s Speech to the IAEA Board of Governors

Here is a reported account of the text of Iran’s IAEA delegate Ali-Asghar Soltanieh’s speech to the IAEA Board of Governors on June 5.  I think it makes a great read. He doesn’t pull many punches in laying out what Iran thinks is wrong with the IAEA.  I’ll insert the full text here. Whether you agree with his comments or not, I think you should read them because they are serious allegations, and contain substantive legal critiques of the Agency’s activities:

______________________________________________________________________

At the beginning I express my country’s sincere, sustainable, and definite support of the family of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) specifically for the statement delivered by H.E. Ambassador Shamaa of Egypt on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement. at this session. Beyond doubt, resistance in achieving our absolute right for taking advantage of the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and resistance in confrontation with the pressures, the sanctions, the assassination of our dear nuclear scientists, and threats of military invasion, would serve as obstacles against employing such scenarios in other developing countries, particularly the NAM member countries. We do not permit the unjust policies and approaches of a number of western countries to be dictated to the agency. The Islamic Republic of Iran has paid a high price for not compromising and remaining committed to the articles of its Constitution. We have not given concession in order to be benefitted from our natural right of taking advantage of the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment, which is a clear example of it.’

Mr. Chairman!

Being informed about the decision of your Government about promotion and assumption of an important post in Italy thus leaving Vienna, I have to put on record the satisfaction of my delegation at the professionalism and impartiality chairing the General Conference as well the Board of Governors. I wish you all the best.

Mr. Chairman!

Permit me to commemorate the anniversary of the founder of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Imam Khomeini (P). I wish to present his viewpoints and ideas about the nuclear weapons here. This short and to the point quotation, uttered about three decades ago shows his clear condemnation against a dangerous weapon which can annihilate the human race:

‘…If they would continue production of huge atomic weapons, etcetera, the world would move towards annihilation and the nations would suffer very gravely.

‘Anyone, and wherever they are, the writers, the intellectuals, the religious thinkers, and the scientists around the globe must make aware the people of this threat so that the masses of people would stand against these two world powers and prevent the proliferation of these weapons…’

Mr. Chairman distinguished Colleagues!

In this meeting I intend to review the status quo of the IAEA and compare with the expectations as envisaged in the Statute. It is essential to remind ourselves, once in a while, the provisions of the Statute in order to prevent diversion from the principles on the basis of which the IAEA was established. In this process of critical review we got to make distinction between the Agency as a whole and the Secretariat. I decided to focus on the major problems of the Agency rather than dealing with the report of Director General on Iran since it is a side effect of fundamental problems in the Agency and its decision making process. However an explanatory note containing comments on the report will be distributed as INFCIRC document.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hagel Says U.S. Won’t Remain Idle as North Korea Seeks Nuclear ICBM

I was glad to see this GSN article today. Here’s an excerpt:

“The United States will not stand by while North Korea seeks to develop a nuclear-armed missile that can target the United States,” Hagel said in remarks at the annual Shangri-la regional security forum in Singapore.

Officially, the U.S. government does not believe Pyongyang has yet acquired the ability to make nuclear warheads small enough to be fixed to a ballistic missile. However, at least one U.S. intelligence branch suspects the North has that capacity.

“The United States has been clear that we will take all necessary steps to protect our homeland and our allies from dangerous provocations, including significantly bolstering our missile defense throughout the Pacific,” Hagel said.

In response to the North’s growing nuclear and missile capabilities, the Pentagon announced it would strengthen the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system by fielding an additional 14 long-range ballistic missile interceptors in Alaska. Following Pyongyang’s threats earlier this spring that it could carry out nuclear missile strikes on South Korea and the United States, the U.S. military repositioned its Sea-Based X-band radar in order to better detected any possible missile launches, fielded to Guam a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, and moved U.S. warships armed with Aegis antimissile systems closer to the Korean Peninsula.

Its good to see this kind of language being used about the growing North Korean nuclear threat, that I’ve written about a number of times here. And I’m glad to see these missile defense measures being strengthened. I think this is a prudent response to the threat, and a first step in the right direction.