Iran's pursuit of nuclear power raises alarms

Does access to fuel ease nations toward nuclear weapons? Rising demand has nonproliferation experts unsettled.

from the February 27, 2007 edition

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"What we're talking about here is a loose interpretation of a right to something that brings you to within days of having a bomb, but when people say there is a right to that they are wrong," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington and a former Pentagon nonproliferation official.

It is "sloppy reading" of rules that include safeguards, Mr. Sokolski says, that has allowed Iran to move forward while citing "rights" but not responsibilities. Some countries and some US officials are pressing for a stricter interpretation, he says, that there is "no per se right to technology" without an equal willingness to prove that its use is solely for peaceful purposes.

A problem, though, stems from past practice of the US and other nuclear powers who have looked away as friendly nations with nuclear-energy programs developed their own programs for producing nuclear fuel. That response has allowed a list of nonnuclear-weapons countries like Japan and Germany to nevertheless possess all the material they need to have a bomb in no time (an alternative Japan has occasionally mulled over as North Korea has gone nuclear).

"We have winked at a list of friendly countries like Japan, Germany, Brazil, and others on the question of whether or not they should be able to make their own nuclear fuel, and the result is the idea that if it was true before it must be true for everybody," Sokolski says. The NPT says no such thing about nuclear fuel, he adds, because the international nuclear-fuel regime was never taken up by the treaty.

A problem for the international community is that many developing countries, no matter what they may think of the Iranian regime, perceive that Iran has a point when it speaks of developed-world favoritism, says the Arms Control Association's Mr. Kimball. Other analysts agree.

"Whether we like it or not, Iran is tapping into this issue of fairness and equality," says Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for America Progress and author of a new book, "Bomb Scare," on the future of nuclear weapons.

Regional fears about Iran's intentions are also a factor. As Iran has asserted a right to nuclear technology, other countries in the oil-rich Middle East have announced plans to develop nuclear energy – something many experts doubt is a coincidence.

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