On March 7, 2006, Mohsen Aminzadeh, a former Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran and a member of the reformist party Jebhe-e Mosharekat (The Cooperation Front), published an expose on the Emruz (Today) online news website that revealed Iran has only a limited capacity for mining uranium. This deficiency, together with limitations on Iran’s technical capabilities, Aminzadeh wrote, will make Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear power program highly dependent on nuclear cooperation from foreign states.

The article implicitly challenged the confrontational policies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly asserted that Iran will pursue all aspects of nuclear energy, including those that could provide materials usable for nuclear weapons, a stance that could lead to the suspension of foreign nuclear cooperation with Tehran. Indeed, Aminzadeh’s article appeared less than a week after the UN Security Council took up the issue of the Iranian nuclear program, following the remand of the dossier to the Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The remand was triggered by Ahmadinejad’s decision to resume the conversion of uranium oxide powder into uranium hexafluoride gas, the material used in the enrichment process, and to restart small-scale uranium enrichment activities, both of which Iran had suspended since November 2004. (Uranium enrichment can be used to upgrade uranium to the levels needed for nuclear reactor fuel, but can also improve uranium to the levels needed for nuclear arms.)

Aminzadeh’s article has since been removed from the Emruz website, most likely due to political pressure from his party, which may have feared the article would trigger retaliation by Ahmadinejad for challenging his policies.

In his analysis, Aminzadeh states that Iran’s nuclear industry, despite “all the innovations of Iranian experts,” needs the cooperation of foreign nations in order to progress. He expresses the fear that a Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against Iran for continuing its development of sensitive uranium enrichment and plutonium separation facilities would end all foreign nuclear cooperation with the country, and, in particular, would result in Russia’s suspending construction of the Bushehr nuclear power reactor, which he estimates should be completed in September 2007.

In addition, he stresses, “Iran needs to import uranium for its [Bushehr] reactor, even if one day it can enrich uranium, because Iran’s discovered uranium resources are limited. There is only enough for about four or five years of the [Bushehr] reactor’s consumption. If this crisis [at the UN Security Council] leads to a suspension of nuclear cooperation with Iran and the consequence is to abandon Iran’s nuclear activities to an unknown future, who will be responsible for Iran’s missed nuclear opportunity?”

Similarly, Aminzadeh points out, construction of Iran’s uranium conversion facility at Isfahan was possible only through the use of foreign supplied equipment and technology. Acquiring such assistance through “informal international markets,” he stresses, was “only possible under the conditions of global trust. In situations of crisis, it will not be possible anymore to have access to the informal market.” Aminzadeh does not elaborate further on the nature of those informal markets, but uses this point to criticize Iran’s “current confrontational stance,” which, he argues, will alienate Iranian allies from cooperating in the future on its nuclear program.

Mr. Aminzadeh’s critique of Iran’s nuclear policy is significant given his respected status among Iran’s foreign policy elite. Reformist politicians in Iran had hoped that Aminzadeh would be nominated as foreign minister during the second term of former Iranian President Khatami, but Khatami did not take this step, possibly fearing that there were already too many reformists in his cabinet. Nevertheless, Aminzadeh’s testimony offers a rare insider view of the state of Iran’s nuclear program – and of dissension within the Iranian elite regarding the country’s current nuclear policy.

Ibrahim al-Marashi - Sabanci University, Istanbul