Friction ahead

Tehran?s claim that it has successfully enriched uranium to a level used in power stations adds another twist to the already knotty Iranian tale.

Tehran’s claim that it has successfully enriched uranium to a level used in power stations adds another twist to the already knotty Iranian tale. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Tuesday announcement that Iran had successfully enriched nuclear fuel has evoked predictable reactions from the international community, but little unanimity on how to deal with the situation. Washington has warned Iran of ‘consequences’ if it continued to defy the UNSC demand for freezing all nuclear activity by April 28. All this must be deeply distressing to IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei who has just landed in Tehran to try and resolve the issue amicably.

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Tehran seems to have accelerated its enrichment process much faster than expected. The Iranians have reportedly developed a cascade of 164 centrifuges just weeks after removing seals from enrichment equipment at their Natanz reactor last January. In any case, it is not the number of centrifuges, but the mastery of the process that signals that the genie is out of the bottle. With Tehran raising its confrontational posture, the UNSC faces some difficult choices when it meets on April 28. It could dust off the threat of sanctions, although this would require some Security Council members to overlook their commercial interests (and in the case of Russia, strategic interests) and vote for a resolution authorising multilateral sanctions. And since such a move would be largely predicated on Washington’s initiative, it’s doubtful if Council members would feel confident about the US not abusing the Security Council process to give itself the fig leaf for military intervention.