Tight spot

Rolf Ekeus was the chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1997, heading the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq. He also served as Sweden's Ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2000 and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities from 2001 to 2007. Currently he is chairman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Deutsche Welle: What is your assessment of the talks between the international community and Iran about Tehran's nuclear program that were restarted last week?

Rolf Ekeus: I think it's good that they started and one should welcome this opening. Then we have to be a bit patient to see if it will yield any results.

Just before the talks news came of a previously undeclared Iranian enrichment site. How credible is Iran?

In my general point of view it is not a good thing that they don't keep the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) posted on such a development. I am well aware however about their legal reasoning. They said that according to standard reporting requirements they were not required until six months before starting up the operation of the facility to notify the IAEA. So that has been their defense.

Is that assessment correct?

Well, it is questionable. It is correct that this was the arrangement existing before the old rules. But ... there was an agreement between the agency in Vienna and the Iranian government changing that to include much stricter requirements about earlier reporting. That was the agreement in my judgement. But what the Iranians are indicating is that they had withdrawn from that agreement and therefore came back to the old rules. So that is how they argue. I am not endorsing that of course, but you see how they try to stay within a sort of figleaf of legality.

How likely is it that Iran has even more undisclosed plants and facilities than the officially known plants?

I don't know. What I think is probable is that they are trying to diversify further geographically and may have started some activities although not as advanced as yet. I think one has to be ready for further developments in that direction, hopefully to be announced and declared in time to the IAEA.

According to an article in the New York Times, Iran is bascially already capable of building a sophisticated bomb. The article cited an IAEA report that hasn't been made public, but was already widely circulated in security circles. Is that claim true?

That is a very tricky issue, because to my understanding the director general of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has not considered this report mature for publication and so it has been a leak from a draft report. This is highly sensitive and I think that ElBaradei wants to get more data and confirmation until he makes that available. So I think one should be fair with him and be cautious.

Assuming that there is some truth to that report, doesn't it mean that the West has to accept that Iran is going get nuclear weapons if it so desires and that the West should instead focus on day-after policies?

Of course we have a very complex and difficult political situation, because if Iran really goes on, it is very difficult to see how they can be stopped without some military action or with very tough sanctions. However, my personal thinking is, that I am not sure that Iran has taken the decision to become a nuclear weapons state. My guess is that they are rather positioning themselves for that possibility if political developments would force them into that. We don't know much. But my guess is that they are preparing to get the capability, but I doubt the have made the decision to become a nuclear weapons state.

How long from your experience could it take Iran to get to the point where they have the capability to do that?

They appear to be successful in their enrichment activites and they are clearly focusing on the uranium bomb. That means highly enriched uranium, not ordinary reactor uranium. For the time being they have only lower enriched uranium. But there is no reason to believe that they cannot relatively easily with their capabilities and continous work get the amount of highly enriched uranium necessary for a bomb and that is of course problem number one for every bomb maker to get enough uranium. But still there are other complexities to design a weapon, especially to build a more delicate design of an explosive device which is reliable and it has also to be fitted into a carrier, probably a missile or a bomb, but I doubt that because I don't think they have airplanes that are good enough, so they are focusing on missiles.

So would you say Iran is perhaps a couple of years away from completing that task?

There was a report from US intelligence that came out last year, saying that they had information that the Iranians had stopped the design work around 2003. I know that Germany, France, Israel and others have said that they don't believe this intelligence is correct. So we have to make a judgement what the intelligence of Germany is for example compared to the intelligence from the Americans. That's not easy. The American intelligence community at least appears to play it down a little, to calm us down ... and that also means that the US is gaining time in that respect.

You have said that you think if Iran wants to acquire a nuclear capability it will be able to so. What then can the West and the international community do in these talks, but also outside of these talks to prevent that from happening?

I think the talks are useful because the sides exchange views, but my view is that talks are not enough, at least talks focused on weapons only. One has to look at Iran's overall ambitions and the political situation, especially in the regional context. The problems they see with their own ambitions - and they only have to blame themselves - to get the dominating, even controlling role in the Gulf which is the biggest game in town. Will the Arabs, Saudi-Arabia accept that for example? These are such highly sensitive issues, I think only one country, the United States, has the capability in stabilizing and giving security assurances to all parties, to the Iranians, to the Arabs, to Saudi Arabia and to the smaller Gulf states in the region. So I think high quality regional diplomacy is what is called for now.

What would you advise Mohamed ElBaradei and his successor to do as well as President Obama who as you said is in a key position on this issue?

Mohamed ElBaradei is leaving his job in a few months time, so I think he's trying to cool down things a little. We have to recognize that IAEA doesn't have the full access. They don't have a situation where they have a full detailed analysis and that, I guess, makes ElBaradei nervous about the draft report which has been floating around. I can see his concerns and I respect that especially after the situation before the war broke out with Iraq. It's much more difficult for President Obama. He has an extremely challenging situation as I see it, because the stability in the region is of utmost importance. A major conflict with Iran claiming dominance in the Gulf would be a tremendous challenge and extremely dangerous for the world economy.

If we look ahead five years from now, will Iran be part of the nuclear powers' club?

We know what happened to India which became a nuclear weapons state and then was adopted in the pool by the United States to the shock of many members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So Iran may look upon the, I think, very unfortunate decision by the US to sort of certify India. They may say, 'wait a couple of years and the US will certify us also'. But I don't know, five years is not a long time. I hope that Iran is interested in dialogue on the broader security issues in which the nuclear weapons issue, which is extremely difficult to handle, may be an element in settling these complex issues.

Author: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge