Once again, Iran has been caught cheating the international community over its uranium enrichment programme. This time, however, it has hastily tried to forestall criticism by voluntarily revealing to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the construction of a second uranium enrichment plant near the city of Qom. In 2002 an armed opposition movement disclosed that Tehran was pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme. After much hesitation, the Iranian authorities acknowledged this to the international community. This time, at the end of September, Iran took the lead in proclaiming its innocence. 

There is little doubt however that Tehran has once again tried to conceal some of its nuclear activities. Western intelligence services have been investigating Qom’s facilities for years and the information they have gathered will eventually be used in negotiations between Iran and the five Permanent Members of the Security Council of the United Nations (plus Germany) which began on October 1. When this came to Iran’s ears it quietly decided to inform the IAEA in advance of its additional facilities in order to avoid answering embarrassing questions on its contradictory reports. This explains Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy’s statement on the issue five days after Iran had admitted to the IAEA the existence of uranium enrichment facilities at Qom.

If the Qom plant is being used strictly for civilian purposes, as Iran claims, why did it seek to hide it from the international community? In its defence, Tehran puts forward unpersuasive legal arguments. It says the comprehensive agreement it reached with the IAEA, according to which Iran allows the inspection of its facilities, requires Tehran to declare the existence of a new site only 180 days before it starts enriching uranium there. However, this provision refers to an obsolete version of the subsidiary agreements which specify the conditions of application of the agreements. In 2003 Iran endorsed a newer version of these agreements that obliges it to inform the IAEA as soon as the construction of a new installation is underway, despite Tehran’s unilateral suspension of the new agreements in 2007.

The existence of the Qom site tends to confirm that Iran is pursuing a nuclear programme for military rather than civilian purposes. Nuclear experts agree that the site’s 3,000 centrifuges are not enough for pursuing purely civilian nuclear activities, but there is a great deal of military use Iran could put these centrifuges to, such as enriching uranium to later fabricate a nuclear bomb. 

Pursuing a nuclear programme for military purposes does not automatically mean that Iran is already busy making a bomb. The Iranian authorities might simply want to reach the stage where they are in possession of all the materials and technology to build a nuclear bomb if they feel they need one for their security. On the other hand, should Iran possess sufficient highly enriched uranium to make a bomb, it would not have yet reached the promised land as it still has to develop a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a ballistic missile. Of course, Iranians protect very carefully the secrecy surrounding their future research in that area. What they cannot cover up, however, is their ballistic missile programme itself, which they actively work on, as evidenced by the Shahab 3 long range and surface-to-surface missile test conducted in an unknown location in central Iran on September 28. The range of an “optimized” Shahab-3 missile is between 1,300 and 2,000 kilometres. It would therefore be capable of reaching Israel. 

After having passed somewhat mild political and economic sanctions against Iran in 2006, 2007 and 2008, what may now be the response of the Security Council (SC)? The revelations by Iran have prompted the United States, Britain and France to threaten a new wave of tougher sanctions if negotiations fail. But it is doubtful that they will be able to convince the other two Permanent Members of the SC. While Russia does not ipso facto rule out imposing some more sanctions, China has so far proved far more circumspect.

In its September 22 edition the Financial Times issued a report which shed new light on the close relations between Tehran and Beijing. If China has for several years been one of the main importers of Iranian oil, it is now, according to the FT, supplying a third of Iran’s need for refined petroleum. Although Iran is one of the world’s leading exporters of crude oil, it cannot refine enough “black gold” to meet its own needs. The country is therefore forced to import about 40% of its domestic consumption of refined oil, and China looks set to replace Indian and Western firms in the role of primary supplier. However, the import of refined oil has apparently been cited as one of Iran’s economic sectors that could be subject to sanctions. 

Imposing sanctions against this sensitive sector would be, though, a double-edged sword for the West. In June 2007, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his plan of increasing the price of gasoline at the pump (highly subsidised and burdening heavily Iran’s State Budget), large protests, which escalated into riots, broke out in many Iranian cities. But if within a few weeks or months the SC decides punish Iran by cutting the supply of refined oil from China or elsewhere, against whom would the Iranian people’s anger be directed? Ahmadinejad, whose power is being challenged after his fraudulent June 12 re-election, can expect that brutal action taken by the Western powers would unify the population around his regime. Such an action would also harm Ahmadinejad’s opponents, the reformers, who are frequently accused of complicity with the enemies of the country. 

Members of the Security Council are aware of these risks, hence their preference for targeted financial sanctions designed only to hit Iran’s inner circles of influence and power. However, the Iranian regime has not so far bent to such pressures in the nuclear dossier, and at any rate, sanctions can only be contemplated with the support, at least tacitly, of Russia and China. One can expect then that Western leaders will try in the next few days and weeks to persuade these two countries that there is no time to procrastinate, given the revelations about the Qom nuclear site. If they succeed, what will follow is a mix of muscular and targeted financial and trade sanctions against the mullahs’ Islamic regime.

The existence of the Qom site, even if it is still under construction, likewise strengthens the position of those, in Israel in particular, who believe that it is futile to negotiate with Tehran and that a military response in the form of air strikes would at least delay the Iranian nuclear programme for several years and eventually lead to the fall of the Tehran regime. Ali Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s successors would then give up military nuclear projects, it is expected. There is no guarantee that such a scenario would evolve and curtail Tehran’s policy, however. The political outcomes of such a strategy are simply incalculable, although it is obvious that it might set aflame the “Greater” Middle East. This huge potential risk explains why Euro-Atlantic countries desperately continue to seek milder options in the hope these would change Tehran’s nuclear course, not excluding at the same time the military option.

Richard Rousseau is Assistant Professor and Director of the Masters Programme in International Relations (richardr@kimep.kz) at the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics & Strategic Research (KIMEP)