Alternatively, once Bushehr is up and running, Iran could try to
divert spent fuel and extract plutonium illegally. But the agreement
Iran has with Russia includes a clause that Russia will provide the
nuclear fuel for Bushehr and will subsequently retrieve it for
reprocessing or disposal in Russia. The Bushehr reactor will be
inspected by the IAEA because of Iran's NPT commitments. Hence,
diverting fuel would be a very risky option.

That leaves the option of pursuing a completely self-contained fuel
cycle. This is the most secure way of obtaining a steady supply of
nuclear weapons material, but it is also by far the most expensive
route. To be truly independent Iran must develop all the components
that make up the fuel cycle, including so called "front end" and
"back end" activities.

But this is, indeed, what Iran seems to be up to. Such suspicions
were confirmed on February 9 when President Muhammad Khatami, in a
remarkable public announcement, stated that Iran is developing
facilities that will enable it to produce its own nuclear fuel.
Khatami stated that Iran has mined uranium ore near the city of Yazd
and was constructing a uranium conversion facility as well as fuel
fabrication plants. Meanwhile, the IAEA concluded that Iran is also
building a uranium enrichment plant at a site at Natanz. Another site
at Arak is believed to be a heavy water plant. The uranium enrichment
plant will be based on gaseous centrifuges and will provide Iran with
the ability to produce both low-enriched uranium for use in light
water nuclear power reactors and highly enriched weapons-grade
uranium. According to IAEA inspectors, the gaseous centrifuges at
Natanz are at least second generation. Iran has the skills and
facilities to eventually make thousands of them. If Iran has used its
pilot centrifuges to conduct uranium enrichment tests, it could
already be in violation of the NPT. The heavy water plant has direct
applications for plutonium production from natural uranium.

Iran does not admit, however, to having weapons ambitions. To the
contrary; it has long claimed that it needs an independent fuel cycle
to assure that it will always have access to low-enriched uranium and
plutonium for nuclear power reactors. Its government never ceases to
point out that it is a state's party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty
and is in good standing as far as the IAEA is concerned--although it
has so far refused to sign the more intrusive additionalprotocol
promulgated in 1993 to make inspections more rigorous.

Suspicion of Iran's weapons intentions, however, focuses on several
points. First, Iran argues that the sole purpose of this massive
investment is to insulate it from cutoffs in access to nuclear fuel
for civilian nuclear power reactors. But Iran has access to nuclear
fuel from Russia, and since this fuel will be safeguarded, stored and
recycled by Russia, it will be much cheaper to purchase than any
homegrown product. Moreover, since Iran has the world's second
largest natural gas reserves and fifth largest oil reserves, it does
not really need nuclear power projects for electricity generation.
The Iranians reply that they are not the first country well endowed
with oil and gas reserves to consider nuclear power as a source of
energy; Russia, the United States and China come to mind. Iran's
fossil fuels are key foreign exchange earners and should be kept for
export. Most troubling, they claim, is that Iran's domestic
consumption of oil and gas is growing at about 8 percent per year,
and Iran faces horrendous pollution problems caused by fossil fuels
in its big cities.

What this all adds up to is that, even under the most benign
interpretation, Iran is embarked on a large-scale, long-term and very
sophisticated project to become independent in the nuclear business.
Even if their capabilities are all declared and inspected by the
IAEA, and even if Iran signs the 1993 protocol, its scientific and
engineering skills will be such that it would be able, fairly
rapidly, to adapt its technology to produce nuclear weapons. If
Pakistan, India, Israel and South Africa could undertake such
projects, so can Iran. It has the money and the skills.

Iran cannot achieve these goals overnight, however, which gives the
United States and like-minded countries a window to delay Iran's
ambitions. This has become a matter of high priority not only because
of the rapid progress Iran appears to be making toward a nuclear
weapons infrastructure, but also because the regime continues to
support terrorist groups hostile to the United States and its allies,
including, some U.S. officials now claim, Al-Qaeda.

Iranian support for Hizballah, in particular, and its reported
attempt to bolster fundamentalist forces in post-Ba'athi Iraq, puts
Iran in four-square opposition to vital U.S. interests. The U.S.
government considers Hizballah to be on the A-list of dangerous
terrorist organizations, and there is no question that while
Hizballah has so far concentrated its military activities against
Israel, it does have a global reach, as illustrated by the July 1994
attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed over
80 people--the worst act of anti-Semitic violence outside the Middle
East since World War II. Hizballah is clearly capable of attacking
U.S. targets both abroad and inside the United States. Some U.S.
officials are particularly concerned about the activities of Imad
Mughaniya, the mastermind of the October 1983 bombing of the U.S.
Marine compound in Lebanon and other deadly assaults, in making
common cause between Sunni and Shi'a terrorist organizations from his
redoubt in Lebanon's Beka Valley.

Hizballah is now considered one of the key groups the United States
will likely take action against at some point in the future. As
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage put it on September 5,
2002:

"Hizballah's . . . on the list and their time will come. There is no
question about it. They have a blood debt to us . . . and we're not
going to forget it and it's all in good time. We're going to go after
these problems just like a high school wrestler goes after a match:
we're going to take them down one at a time."

The U.S. government is well aware that Iran provides by far the
largest financial and military support to Hizballah, estimated at
more than $100 million annually. Iran conducts paramilitary training
for Hizballah at camps in Lebanon and Iran; it hosts conferences on
"resistance" and has members of its own intelligence services and the
ring operating out of camps in Lebanon. It provides large quantities
of arms to Hizballah, including Katyusha rockets and longer range
rockets that can reach Haifa from south Lebanon. It has allowed its
embassies to facilitate Hizballah operations and has provided them
with explosives for terrorist attacks. Hizballah has in turn provided
assistance to both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Many Iranians regard their support for Hizballah to be one of the
great successes of their foreign policy, at least with regard to
their relations with the Muslim world. They are proud of their
Islamic credentials and regard resistance to Israel as one of their
prime calling cards in the Arab world, where they have considerable
support among radicals. But if Iran does not end its support of
terror directed against Israel and the United States, it will, sooner
or later, be subject to further American action, including the use of
force. This will become a matter of priority the closer Iran gets to
having nuclear weapons.

Can the Regime Change Its Policies?

The ability of the Iranian regime to change its policy on terrorism
and nuclear weapons is a function of its own intense internal
conflicts and the evolving regional environment. Iran's leaders
understand the price they pay for their anti-Israel and anti-American
actions. Sophisticated Iranians, especially those involved with the
economy and energy development, are aware that Israel is a "third
rail" issue in terms of U.S. politics and that Iran's anti-Israeli
behavior will continue to poison the relationship. They know they
have to come to grips with this problem, but the domestic political
turmoil now roiling the country makes it impossible for them to do so.

Since Muhammad Khatami was elected president in May 1997, day to day
conditions for most Iranians have improved. The society is more open
and pluralistic than at any time since the revolution. However, in
parallel, frustration levels may well be at an all-time high
precisely because rising expectations have been largely frustrated.
The vast majority of Iran's educated youth are disillusioned with the
government and their future opportunities in Iran; if they could
afford to come to the West, most probably would.

Government leaders, conservatives and moderates alike, know this. But
they do not know how to resolve the structural problems facing the
country without touching off a severe and possibly lethal backlash.
What is clear is that everybody involved with Iran--be they insiders,
outsiders, monarchists, anarchists, communists, fundamentalists or
pragmatists--all agree that the current system is headed for a
crisis. The regime has become more repressive in the past year. The
closure of newspapers has continued, right-wing thugs have been
enforcing with greater vigor dress and social codes (no hand holding
between the unmarried sexes), and the endless battle against
satellite television continues. But absent some new catalytic event,
conservatives can continue their reign of repression because they
control the guns and the courts. The smarter ones know that in the
long run their tactics will lead to the regime's demise. So they will
likely compromise on a sufficient range of issues to assure their
personal survival and keep their considerable wealth.

Essay Types: Essay