On February 2, the International Atomic Energy Agency will meet in Vienna, and – if diplomatic sources are to be believed – will vote to refer the case of Iran’s continued attempts to enrich its own uranium to the UN Security Council.

The Council itself is set to meet the next week, to discuss the situation. The US and EU want it quickly to issue a legally-binding resolution prohibiting Iran’s actions, though Russia and possibly China would like it to issue a less binding ‘declaration’.

The IAEA’s likely referral of the case to the UN Security Council is an admittance of failure on the part of the EU and Russia to reach a negotiated solution to the Iranian situation.

Russia and the EU had been at odds with the US, who wanted to refer the matter to the UN Security Council back in 2003, when Iran first announced its intention to create its own enriched uranium, rather than buying it from Russia.

While the US saw Iran as a fanatical theocracy dedicated to supporting international terrorism against the West, the EU and Russia took a more moderate approach, asserting that Iran was a mature, responsible country and an important commercial partner. The US saw the grim fundamentalism of the country’s West, while Russia and the EU saw the burgeoning cosmopolitanism of Tehran.

Both Russia and the EU tried to seduce Iran away from its desire for its own enrichment facilities with the offer of material incentives. They signed an agreement with Iran in October 2003, under which Iran would refrain from its enrichment programme until the parties reached an agreement.

The EU was preparing a generous package of incentives, including aid money and the promise of favoured trade partner status, when the Iranian government abruptly reneged on its agreement in August 2005.

The Western press has been quick to blame this renege on the new Iranian president, hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, Ahmadinejad was actually elected a few days after Iran broke the IAEA seals on its enrichment facilities. Sources suggest it was actually Ayatollah Khameini who ordered the nuclear enrichment programme to be restarted, and who timed the move to come days before the EU put out its alternative proposal.

One diplomatic source says: “Ahmadenijad is a bit of a distraction. Khameini has much more power.’

The Russian government then came forward, in the autumn of 2005, with what it called a “face-saving device”, offering the Iranian government a stake in Russia’s own enrichment facilities, to allay Iran’s apparent fears that, if it didn’t have its own enrichment facilities it couldn’t rely on stable supplies of enriched uranium. The EU very much appreciated this move by Russia. However, it too was rejected by the Iranian government.

When Iran broke the seals on further enrichment centres in late December, the EU lost its patience and gave up on the negotiation process. Russia looked like agreeing with them that the issue should be referred to the UN Security Council.

According to diplomatic sources, Russia has been a helpful partner of the EU and shares its belief that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing to Russia’s under-belly, the Middle-East. It would also encourage other nations to seek nuclear weapons in defiance of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would not only be bad news for global security, it would also undermine one of Russia’s few remaining claims to real global influence – the possession of a large arsenal nuclear weapons and a seat at the high table of non-proliferation talks.

However, Russia is still dithering about whether to refer the matter to the UN Security Council for a resolution. It balks at the idea of economic sanctions against Iran, with whom it does a lot of arms and nuclear business. And Russia doesn’t like the idea of more military adventurism by the US in the Middle-East, and its having either to support such adventurism or oppose it – each equally unpalatable.

The EU is trying to persuade Russia to support a UN resolution by its old argument that Iran is a reasonable, mature player, with some international credibility that it will not want to lose by being in disregard of a UN resolution. “Iran is not a pariah state”, says one diplomat. “It’s got too much to lose.” The argument is, if the UN lays down a resolution, Iran will get back in line.

The risk, of course, is that Iran isn’t a reasonable player, and that the Ayatollah will prefer heroic martyrdom to any pragmatic compromise with the ‘Great Satan’ of the US.

Iran could simply ignore the UN resolution, pointing out that many countries, including Israel, are in chronic infringement of UN resolutions. In this case, the credibility of the UN would take yet another knock.

It seems unlikely that the UN would introduce the only sanctions that would really hurt Iran – energy sanctions – because that would hurt the US and Europe as much as Iran.

And there seems little appetite in the US for another military campaign to enforce a UN Security Council measure, as perhaps the Iranian government reasons.

There is thus a real danger here that Western governments, weakened by their need for cheap oil and the politically costly hunt for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is going to have to stand-by impotently as another country, this time with proven links to international terrorism, continues on its path to acquire nuclear weapons. Both the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the UN Security Council are in danger of losing their teeth in the next months.

Julian Evans, a British freelance journalist based in Moscow

January 20, 2006