#3
Fate of Bushehr Nuclear Reactor, future cooperation pondered
Vremya MN
30 July 2002
[translation for personal use only]
Article by Vladimir Skosyrev: "Bushehr Could Be Bombed"

Moscow has announced that it would like to help Iran build five new nuclear reactors. But before promulgating these plans, it wouldn't be a bad idea to ponder the fate of the NPP [nuclear power plant] already under construction in Bushehr. After all, it could be bombed by Israel or... the US.

According to the Washington Post, a newspaper that has access to the top echelons of the American administration, debates are underway in Washington and Tel Aviv on the subject of whether the Bushehr NPP can be allowed to start operating in the next two or three years, as envisaged by the agreements. American and Israeli spy satellites regularly transmit pictures to their owners that show Russian and Iranian construction workers laboring in Bushehr over the past seven years. This year the Americans received images of the reactor's round dome, the cooling-system pipes, pumps and possibly the air-defense missile systems around the NPP.

And now as the deadline for completion of the construction has drawn nearer, a number of Pentagon officials have argued that Bushehr must be destroyed even before the first shipment of nuclear fuel arrives there from Russia. This proposal has received a certain amount of support in Washington, albeit not from a majority of officials. The idea of a pre-emptive strike has not yet been discussed at the highest government level. In short, there has been no final response yet to the question of whether the Americans will allow Bushehr the right to live.

Israel, however, has taken a more decisive attitude. It believes that the reactor must not be allowed to start up. "Does Israel have a military option? Of course it does," said a US government official who is in contact with the Israelis. Another corroboration that Tel Aviv has such intentions was an article published in the newspaper Haaretz. It says that Israel's national security council conducted an urgent review of its Iran policy and concluded that any steps must be taken, including the use of military force, in order not to give Iran a chance to obtain nuclear weapons.

One doesn't fool around with Israel in such matters. In 1981 the Israeli air force bombed Osirak, a light-water reactor under construction in Iraq, near Baghdad. The strike was carried out against Osirak even though it was being built by the French. At the time the US criticized its ally, but now many American politicians believe that it is thanks to Israel that Saddam Hussein has never secured a nuclear club.

Of course, if one follows the standards of international law, neither the US nor Israel has any grounds to resort to force. Iran has signed the nonproliferation treaty, and the reactor in Bushehr and Iran's other nuclear facilities are being built under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Hence the charges against Tehran regarding its nuclear ambitions are, at the least, unconvincing. Just like the allegations by CIA director George Tenet that Russia is actively giving Iran technology, know-how and materials for a bomb.

But the problem is that Washington doesn't believe Tehran, the IAEA or Moscow. Stephen Sestanovich, a senior scholar at the US Council on Foreign Relations, told a Vremya MN correspondent that the administration has no doubts that Tenet is right.

Of course, Moscow angrily rejects the American charges. But the Americans, alas, does not take them [as published] seriously. At the same time Washington refuses to provide the Russian government with specific information on "Russia's complicity" in the nuclear arming of Iran. The reason is obvious: despite Putin's good personal relationship with Bush, the special services continue to distrust each other.

A natural question comes up: how well has Moscow thought through the ramifications of Russian-Iran cooperation in peaceful nuclear energy? This cooperation, of course, is extremely important to us. As the newspaper Vremya MN has already written (No. 122, 17 July 2002), about 20,000 jobs have been created thanks to Bushehr alone. Continued cooperation promises steady orders for hundreds of Russian factories. But we can't disregard, either, the potential threat from our current partners in the antiterrorist coalition. While by no means capitulating, Russia must find in the talks with the US convincing arguments that refute the theory of the spy agency's director and other bellicose-minded officials of the American government.

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