Two days later, on May 25, Schulte returned with the French and British ambassadors to make a formal demarche. They managed to drag with them a reluctant-looking Japanese deputy ambassador, Shigeki Sumi.[10] He sat quietly during the entire meeting and later told some colleagues that he was embarrassed but under orders to attend. I suspect the Japanese were recruited as stand-ins for the Germans, who had declined to join in.
The ambassadors repeated the same rhetoric about my public statements: I was dividing the international community and undermining the Security Council and the IAEA Board. The French and the Americans said they also were unhappy about my statements on disarmament, which, according to Schulte, were not part of my mandate. It was my duty, I responded, to advise them from a nonproliferation perspective, and I could see a crisis developing. Additionally, the IAEA Statute charges the Agency with furthering “the establishment of safeguarded worldwide disarmament.” When I spoke at outside forums, I noted, it was not as the IAEA Director General, representing the views of the Board, but as an international public servant. “For ten years,” I said, “I have been drawing attention to the linkage between nuclear proliferation and the sluggish pace of disarmament, and I will continue to do so.”
I reminded Schulte that, when it suited the Americans, as in the case of the U.S.-India nuclear agreement, they referred to me freely as “the custodian of the NPT,” but when I spoke against their arms control policies, my role suddenly narrowed. When the French ambassador, François-Xavier Deniau, insisted that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, I reminded him that, at the time of the inspections in Iraq, he had personally informed me that Iraq had retained “little amounts” of chemical and biological weapons, a claim that turned out to be bogus. He did not respond.
Western alarmism notwithstanding, Iran’s rapid expansion of its enrichment operations, after an extended period of relative restraint, was indeed cause for concern. It signaled a shift: resignation to the fact that the West would not show flexibility or compromise and determination to pursue the nuclear technology that many Iranians viewed as a national achievement. From the Iranian perspective, the acceleration was also probably intended to put pressure on the West to agree on a compromise that would stop short of Iran fully suspending its enrichment program.
My perception was confirmed by Swiss state secretary Michael Ambühl on his return from yet another visit to Tehran. The Iranian position was hardening. Only two months earlier they had been willing to consider freezing enrichment activities at the R&D level for the duration of negotiations. This time Larijani had not been able to commit to any freeze or time-out during negotiations. He seemed willing only to commit not to enrich uranium beyond 5 percent. For the first time, he had mentioned the possibility that Iran might enrich uranium up to 20 percent to meet the fuel needs of its research reactors.
Given this news, I pressed Iran publicly to consider a self-imposed moratorium on expanding its enrichment. I gave a pointed interview as part of a BBC Radio 4 documentary, underscoring the high stakes at play.[11] “I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy killing each other,” I said. “You do not want to give additional argument to the new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’” A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, I declared, would be “an act of madness.” Everyone wanted to know whom I meant by the “new crazies.” I let them draw their own conclusions.
Diplomacy was losing ground. We needed a fresh direction. This time it originated with Larijani. More conservative than moderate, Larijani was nonetheless a persistent pragmatist, with a sharp, clear, logical mind—and a PhD in Western philosophy. As with Rowhani before him, some of Larijani’s toughest struggles were at home in Tehran, working within the labyrinthine political establishment. Authority in Iran was diffuse, shared between the army, the Revolutionary Guard, the president, the clergy, the Majis, the Supreme Leader, and other less visible groups. This explained the slowness of Iran’s deliberation process and its pendulum swings. Unlike in most of the Arab world, where a single strong-arm leader controlled by diktat, in Iran decisions were made by consensus. I sometimes referred to the regime as “a democracy within a theocracy.” Whatever its merits or flaws, the system was proving terribly frustrating for Larijani: he simply did not have the necessary support to move forward on the diplomatic track.
Yet some in Tehran listened to his calls for restraint. I was heartened that after the recent Security Council resolution, Iran had not followed through fully with its threat to block IAEA inspections at Natanz. They had applied a few token restrictions and left it at that. Clearly, some inside Iran still saw the value of playing by the rules.
Now, with no progress in sight on the P-5+1 negotiation front, Larijani decided to focus his efforts elsewhere. In our discussions, I had been pressing him on the need to clear up the remaining inspection issues and had outlined the multiple benefits to Iran of doing so. These issues included, for example: unresolved concerns related to centrifuge procurement; questions about the source of enriched uranium particles found in certain locations; apparent discrepancies in the AEOI’s control of activities at the Gchine uranium mine; questionable procurement activities by a former head of Iran’s Physics Research Center; and allegations that Iran had performed weaponization studies. On June 26, Larijani came to see me in Bad Tatzmannsdorf, south of Vienna, where the Agency’s senior management were having a leadership retreat. Larijani was accompanied by one of his close deputies, Ali Monfared. With his inability to find a way past the suspension hurdle, Larijani seemed more despondent than at any time in the past. Now there were rumors of a fallout with Ahmadinejad. This meeting felt to me like one final effort on Larijani’s part to find a way forward.
Iran, he announced, was ready to hammer out the details of a work plan with the Agency to address some of the IAEA’s outstanding concerns. We could start with issues that would be relatively easy to resolve, such as discrepancies on the dates, quantities, and types of material involved in Iran’s plutonium experiments. Larijani proposed that the Agency ask for specific inspection measures, without referring to the Additional Protocol, which the Majlis had earlier decided not to implement.
I was pleased to see Iran taking this step to cooperate with the Agency. I promised to send a group to Tehran to begin working out the details. I also urged Larijani to do what he could to halt the expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacity. They did not need further development for R&D purposes, and it only served to provoke the West.
Particularly in conjunction with the work plan, a freeze in further expansion of capacity would send a positive signal. In fact, the Iranians made a few immediate goodwill gestures, such as allowing Agency inspectors to visit its heavy water reactor currently under construction at Arak. The inspectors also reported a marked slowdown in the installation of new centrifuge cascades at Natanz. A series of meetings on the work plan ensued in Tehran and Vienna. On certain sticking points, however, we had difficulty in getting a clear commitment from the Iranians. I decided to send a team of “heavyweights” to Tehran for a final push to wrap up the details: Olli Heinonen, who was now the deputy director general for safeguards, accompanied by Vilmos Cserveny, the Agency’s head of external relations, and Johan Rautenbach, the legal adviser. To pressure Iran, I arranged for Olli to call me from his Tehran hotel with progress reports; knowing that our conversation would be recorded, I was tough on the telephone vis-à-vis the Iranians.
11
“Inside the IAEA: A Year with the Nuclear Detectives,” two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary, broadcast on May 31 and June 7, 2007.