Showing the flag at home and abroad on Nuclear Technology Day
Tehran (AsiaNews) – It will take four to six years for Iran to have the capacity to build its own nuclear bomb, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, Melissa Fleming, told German radio. Thus, despite recent statements coming from Tehran about Iran’s possible pullout from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its announcement that it can now produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, international diplomatic efforts are not over yet. Many view recent Iranian statements on its nuclear programme as simple propaganda.
One example is Nuclear Technology Day, which celebrates the day last year when Iran successfully enriched uranium for the first time. Schools around the country held celebrations and at the Natanz nuclear facility, the government invited journalists and diplomats to join in the festivities. But whilst the press was present in good numbers many countries preferred not to send their ambassadors, including the members of the UN Security Council.
Everyone saw the show on TV, including President Ahmadinejad’s lonely tear as a song to the glory of the Islamic Republic could be heard. In his speech for the occasion the Iranian leader announced that Iran was finally able to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.
All this might be propaganda, but it remains worrisome. To make sense of it we must closely read the statements by Ahmadinejad himself, Iran’s main negotiator on the nuclear issue, Ali Larijani, and the head of Iran’s national atomic agency, Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh.
None of them has said that Iran has started to enrich uranium on an industrial scale but only that it has the capacity to do so, a capacity that might be more theoretical than actual. The same is true for its centrifuges. Iran would like to have 50,000 to 60,000 of them but in Natanz there might be only a thousand at best.
It therefore appears that the flurry of announcements and activities are part of a propaganda offensive directed at a domestic target but also the international community. Celebrations, including Tehran’s nighttime fireworks, stoke Iranians’ nationalist fire, whilst statements send signals to regional friends and foes and the Islamic world that Iran now has the technological means of its ambitions. They also launch a challenge to the United Nations, one from which it will be hard to back off.
In this sense Larijani’s statement that Iran might leave the Nonproliferation Treaty is particularly disturbing. Is it a bluff? Some think so. Iran has so far insisted on its «inalienable rights» in the area of nuclear technology. But they are inalienable so long as Iran is bound by an international treaty that guarantees them. Otherwise the issue is no longer one of international law but rather of pure politics and confrontations of another kind.
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