Action over Iran

Daily Telegraph – Leaders: The public is rightly worried about the fate of British troops in southern Iraq, but we must not forget equally ominous developments across the border, in Iran. The election of the hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the rise of oil prices and, not least, the sapping of the American military in Iraq, have emboldened Teheran in its nuclear ambitions. Daily Telegraph

Leaders

The public is rightly worried about the fate of British troops in southern Iraq, but we must not forget equally ominous developments across the border, in Iran. The election of the hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the rise of oil prices and, not least, the sapping of the American military in Iraq, have emboldened Teheran in its nuclear ambitions.

Despite the fiasco over Downing Street’s WMD dossier, nobody should be fooled: Iran is seeking an atomic bomb, or at least the option of building one at short notice, under the guise of a “peaceful” nuclear programme.

Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have seen hundreds of uranium enrichment centrifuges, and Iran has started work on a heavy water reactor that will make enough plutonium for one or two bombs a year.

France and Germany, implacable opponents of war in Iraq, are alarmed. At the headquarters of the IAEA in Vienna this week, they have joined forces with Britain to report Iran to the UN Security Council after nearly two decades of deception.

The IAEA’s latest report says that “Iran’s full transparency is indispensable and overdue”. In fact, referral to the Security Council is long overdue.

Only a deal with the EU-3 in 2003, under which Iran promised to freeze the most sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, spared it a summons from the Council. Now that it has reneged on this agreement by starting up a factory to make uranium hexafluoride, a key step in uranium enrichment, it is time for the IAEA to act.

Russia is the obstacle, saying this is a minor matter that does not justify confrontation. This is misguided as well as disingenuous. It is certainly true that Teheran could make life difficult for the West, either by selectively withholding oil exports, leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or otherwise destabilising Iraq and the Middle East. But a nuclear-armed Iran, on the borders of Russia and within missile range of Europe, is even more frightening.