IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei remarked, “The more we look to the future, the more we can expect countries to be considering the potential benefits that expanding nuclear power has to offer for the global environment and for economic growth....” If one is to obtain a true estimate of the cost of using oil (and even natural gas) as a source of energy, one must not only take into account the export income that Iran can earn by exporting the oil that it currently burns to generate 18 percent of its electricity (see Figure “Nuclear Inclination”), but also the huge toll of oil consumption on the environment and the medical care for people suffering from diseases caused by oil pollution. Iran is beset by severe environmental problems caused by oil consumption that are reaching catastrophic scales. According to Iran’s Ministry of Health and various environmental groups, long-term effects of the polluted air and soil are responsible for causing 17,000 deaths and severe problems for people with asthma, heart, and skin conditions every year in Tehran alone. The cost of medical care for such illnesses is extremely high. Polluted air also severely damages soil and groundwater resources by contaminating the rain water. At the same time, Iran’s industrial base, which uses oil and gas for energy, generates wastes that contaminate a large number of rivers and coastal waters and threaten drinking water supplies. Iran is close to experiencing a chronic shortage of clean water, a situation seen by many as a precondition for future wars in the Middle East. Supplying energy to the world releases six billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. Since 1980, carbon emission in Iran has risen by 240 percent, from 33.1 million metric tons emitted in 1980 to more than 85 million metric tons today. A recent study by John Deutch and Ernest Moniz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also argued that, even in the United States, subject to some reasonable technological advancements and a modest tax on carbon emission, the cost of generating electricity by NPPs will become competitive with that of gas power plants. For Iran, this is already the case.

We must also recognize that NPPs have high initial capital costs (which are, however, justified based on their externalities) and must maintain a very high level of safety to minimize the chances of nuclear accidents such as those at Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. The fact is that the safety of NPPs is a recurring problem. Even Japan has had many nuclear accidents. The problem of safely storing the nuclear wastes produced by NPPs is also very important. If Iran keeps its full nuclear fuel cycle, then its vast central desert can be a suitable place for burying the waste deep underground, similar to the planned Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. If Iran is forced to import fuel for NPPs, then the supplier country will also presumably take back the waste.

International Obligations

Iran signed the Statute of IAEA in 1958, committing itself to peaceful use of nuclear energy and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1967, the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA in 1973, the Subsidiary Arrangements in 1974 to facilitate the inspection of nuclear activities by IAEA safeguards, and the Additional Protocol of NPT in December 2003. Most, if not all, of these treaties have not been signed by India, Israel, and Pakistan—three countries with nuclear weapons. Despite Iran’s commitments, the United States has transformed Iran’s nuclear energy program into one of the most complex international issues. Iran’s program has important implications for the Middle East and the world. We must first recognize that, so far, the IAEA has not found Iran in violation of any provisions of its international commitments. The NPT allows Iran to legally build any nuclear facility, including one for uranium enrichment, so long as it is intended for peaceful purposes and Iran notifies the IAEA 180 days before nuclear materials are introduced into such facilities. Building the enrichment facility in Natanz without declaring it in advance to the IAEA is not in violation of any provisions of Iran’s nuclear commitments. Iran’s most serious alleged NPT violation was the traces of the highly-enriched uranium (HEU) that were found in some of the facilities. However, the IAEA now believes that the source of the HEU is the contaminated equipment that Iran had imported.

Therefore, as El Baradei acknowledged on September 14, 2004, the reason for the US furor over Iran’s uranium enrichment program is purely political, since Israel fears an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. Even if Iran does make a nuclear bomb, it would be for defensive purposes, but there is some merit to the fears. The reasons are the dynamics of Iran’s domestic politics and its many decision-making bodies, the distribution of power between the unelected and elected power centers, and the lack of complete transparency. One must also keep in mind that extreme elements in Iran’s military would like nothing more than a limited military confrontation with the United States and Israel to use it as an excuse to suppress Iran’s democratic movement and its leaders. After the 1995 agreement between Iran and Russia for completing the Bushehr NPP, the administration of US President Bill Clinton claimed that the plutonium from Bushehr reactor’s nuclear waste could be used by Iran to make nuclear weapons. Iran and Russia negotiated an agreement to return the nuclear wastes to Russia. Then, the United States began claiming that the reactor will train Iranian scientists for making nuclear weapons. There is not much merit to this charge. Recall that Israel bombed and destroyed Iraq’s only nuclear reactor under construction at Osirak in 1981, yet Iraq was well on its way to making a nuclear bomb when its nuclear weapon program was discovered after the 1991 Gulf War, and that in the 1980s South Africa produced 16 nuclear bombs without having a single reactor. The recent experience with Iraq showed that the IAEA did an excellent job of monitoring Iraq’s nuclear program before the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, and that they were wrong about Iraq.