"A controlled and limited crisis with the IAEA and the West over the nuclear program will be to our advantage and will enable us to compel them to significantly raise the concessions" – Appraisal
A week after the second round of presidential elections in Iran, the Supreme National Security Council of Iran submitted a report to the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, entitled "An appraisal of two years of nuclear talks with the European powers".
The principal points in the conclusions of the report, a copy of which was obtained by the NCRI, were as follows:
"A controlled and limited crisis with the IAEA and the West over the nuclear program will be to our advantage and will enable us to compel them to significantly raise the concessions" – Appraisal
A week after the second round of presidential elections in Iran, the Supreme National Security Council of Iran submitted a report to the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, entitled "An appraisal of two years of nuclear talks with the European powers". The principal points in the conclusions of the report, a copy of which was obtained by the NCRI, were as follows:
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1. There is no question that the two-year process has been, overall, a success for the Islamic Republic of Iran. In autumn 2003, the international situation was overwhelmingly negative for our nuclear activities. The IAEA had a long list of alleged breaches and failures by Iran. The international atmosphere was poisoned by the activities of the Monafeqin (Iranian regime’s derogatory term for the opposition People’s Mojahedin of Iran) and the IAEA’s confirmation that Iran had failed to declare significant parts of its nuclear program for years.
The September 2003 resolution of the IAEA Board of Governors was the harshest text the IAEA has adopted against us. The U.S., fresh out of the quick victory in Iraq, was training its sights on the Islamic Republic. The situation was so negative that even ElBaradei told us there was no way we could avoid being referred to the Security Council.
2. In the face of this dangerous climate, Islamic Iran was able to engage in talks with the three European governments and prevent an immediate referral of its file to the Security Council. More importantly, in autumn 2003 the country was not ready, from the point of view of military, security, political and economic situation, to confront all the possible consequences of referral to the UNSC. Through the talks, we gained the opportunity to take significant steps to prepare ourselves for all eventualities. We also thwarted the Americans’ efforts to accuse Iran of non-compliance in November 2003 IAEA Board of Governors meeting and its resolution.
3. The talks process ended the suffocating economic pressures that our country was being subjected to in the months preceding the October 2003 agreement. We were able to sign large contracts in oil and gas that would have been impossible without engaging in nuclear talks.
4. On the basis of the decision of the leadership of the system (regime) in September 2003, we engaged in nuclear talks without stopping our activities. The uranium conversion facility in Isfahan was developed between October 2003 and November 2004 to the level where we were able to convert tons of yellow cake into UF4 and UF6 gas. Our heavy water reactor in Arak made significant progress in the mean time. Our procurement activities through companies set up for this purpose or through bilateral deals continued. We were able to assemble thousands of centrifuge machines that could be made operational in different sites across the country.
5. At present, the U.S. and the Europeans are not in a position to take the situation to before October 2003. With the Americans deeply stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, the Europeans know that they will have to ultimately accommodate our just demands. We were now at a stage where, unlike autumn 2003, a controlled and limited crisis with the IAEA and the West over the nuclear program will be to our advantage and will enable us to compel them to significantly raise the concessions they will be making in their final proposals. We saw in May that their reaction to our demands for resumption of uranium conversion activities was weak. Clearly, they need the continuing talks as much as, if not more than, we do. Significantly, we saw that in June there was no written report by Elbaradei on Iran, and Iran was only mentioned in oral reports by Elbaradei’s deputy for safeguards. The outcome of the NPT conference in New York also confirms this analysis.
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Impact of presidential elections
The presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), signals a major change within Iran’s theocratic regime. Khamenei and the hard-line faction in the clerical regime’s leadership are placing the IRGC in control of all the main levers of power in Iran. The IRGC is no longer an elite military force loyal to the ayatollahs, but a powerful party in a totalitarian state. The IRGC active commanders and their allies, who are mostly former IRGC generals, are now in control of the country’s security and military apparatus, the police force, the Majlis (where 70 of the deputies are IRGC commanders), the presidency, and much of the state-dominated economy.
This militarization and radicalization of power in Iran has a significant impact on three major policy areas:
1. Domestic repression: Barely days after the elections, the ultra-conservative faction began to step up domestic repression, with harsher crackdown on student protesters, dissidents, political prisoners and antigovernment demonstrators.
2. Iraq: The hard-line rulers are actively engaged in the export of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism and their first target is Iraq, where the IRGC and its elite Qods (Jerusalem) Force are sponsoring terrorist activities and conducting a massive political, economic and social campaign to empower Islamic fundamentalists and force out the foreign forces.
3. Nuclear project: With a former IRGC commander as president, Khamenei wanted to ensure that the resources and facilities of the state and the government would be used to speed up the pace of the military nuclear program.
The ever-closer cooperation between the IRGC and the new government under Ahmadinejad in the nuclear field was one of the main reasons why Khamenei selected Ahmadinejad to become the new president. He will be working closely with one of top commanders of the IRGC, Brig. Gen. Jaafari Sahraroudi, to streamline the ties between the IRGC’s nuclear project and the country’s civilian infrastructure and industries.
Interestingly, Jaafari Sahraroudi was the man who was arrested by Vienna police in July 1989 for the murder of Kurdish dissidents in Austria, but he was sent back to Tehran under pressure and blackmail by the Iranian regime. Ahmadinejad, the new president, was a member of that assassination squad. There is a long-standing relationship between the two men.
A major IRGC nuclear research center
Since its creation in 1986, Malek Ashtar Industrial University has been under the control of the IRGC, and has grown into a major research centre for Iranï؟½s military-industrial establishment. The university is divided between two campuses in Tehran and in Shahin-Shahr near Isfahan. The address for the branch near Isfahan is: Malek Ashtar Industrial University, Shahin-Shahr Township , End of Ferdowsi avenue, Malek Ashtar Industrial University. One of the projects being pursued by the university at the moment is the production of maraging steel for use as rotor blades in centrifuge machines. This research is not merely academic, but is aimed at domestic mass production. The type of steel that is being produced in Malek ashtar University contains Cobalt and has grade of 300-350.
In November 2004, the NCRI revealed that sensitive equipment related to clandestine nuclear activities by the Ministry of Defense had been transferred from Shian facilities in Tehran to Malek Ashtar University in Shahin Shahr. Several IRGC nuclear scientists, including Ali Abadi and Mohammad-Hossein Ghezel-Ayagh, work in Malek Ashtar University.
Conclusions:
1- The clerical regime pursues two objectives in its cat-and-mouse game with the West over its nuclear activities: Buying more time to complete its project to obtain nuclear weapons, considered by the regime’s leaders as the sole strategic guarantee for the regime’s survival. The second is to gain greater economic, political and security concessions from Western countries.
2- On June 30, 2005, Pierre Goldschmidt spoke of "a sense of urgency" and "a race against time" with regard to Iran’s nuclear program. It is now clear that the best course of action in October 2003 would have been to refer Iran’s nuclear file to the UN Security Council. The mullahs have thwarted the IAEA’s efforts in significant areas such as immediate access to sensitive sites and access to nuclear scientists. The Europeans have been playing into mullahs’ hands by falling for their moderate-versus-hardliner game. The EU3 lost both time and initiative in protracted, fruitless talks with the mullahs’ regime.
3. The criminal bombings in London and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its associated terrorism pose this question more urgently than ever: what is the logic of continuing the current process with a regime that is committed to exporting terrorism and developing nuclear weapons? It is time for a serious policy change on Iran. It is time to send Iran’s nuclear file to the Security Council. It is also time to rectify the strategic mistake of giving concessions to the mullahs, which has only led to the strengthening of the most hard-line faction in the regime. Inclusion of the People’s Mojahedin in the terrorism list at the request of the mullahs was one key concession to Tehran that has only benefited the most extremist factions.
