IRAN: Iranians have strategic motives for building the bomb, Angus McDowall reports from Tehran
International pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme stretches back to December 2002, when US satellite photographs prompted Tehran to reveal an advanced uranium enrichment programme that had previously been undeclared. The discovery crystallised US suspicions that Iran's atomic energy programme was hiding an attempt to build the bomb.
Iran has been trying to develop nuclear power plants like the one planned at Bushehr since before the 1979 revolution, when Stanford University scientists advised Reza Shah to switch to the technology and free up crude oil for export.
Iran has electricity consumption growth of nearly 10 per cent a year while oil sales underwrite massive state subsidies and public employment.
But as Washington has more recently pointed out, the economic arguments for nuclear power are weak.
With the world's second-largest reserves of both oil and natural gas, the US says Iran can more cheaply produce electricity with hydrocarbons. It charges that the 20,000 megawatts Iran wants to generate in nuclear plants could be powered by gas that is now burnt off. For Iranian nationalists, the issue is more straightforward: membership of the nuclear club is an old ambition whose realisation they believe will put Iran at the forefront of modernity.
Iran insists its programme is purely civilian and it opposes weapons of mass destruction. Both Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic republic, and his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have spoken against developing a nuclear bomb.
During the 1980-88 war with Iraq, Iran forswore the use of chemical weapons despite suffering years of Iraqi poison gas attacks.
"We give our guarantee that we will not produce nuclear weapons because we are against them and do not believe they are a source of power," Iranian president Mohammed Khatami told European diplomats in February. "But we will not give up peaceful nuclear technology."
Its protestations of peaceful intent have fallen on deaf ears. While the US and Israel have publicly accused Iran of seeking the bomb, European countries have expressed the same fears in private.
Iran has strong strategic motives for atomic armament, which would act as a deterrent against attack from nuclear neighbours Israel and Pakistan and would enhance its reputation as a regional superpower.
The facilities it is developing also go beyond the strict needs of its declared programme.
Once complete, the enrichment and equipment facilities at Natanz and Isfahan will be able to produce uranium enriched further than required for a power plant but very suitable for a bomb. The Arak heavy-water facility is also of questionable use for generating electricity and the technology was that used by North Korea in its military programme.
Western suspicions have been further aroused by Iranian obfuscation when dealing with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The fact that its enrichment facilities were concealed - albeit legally - for so many years was compounded by Iran's admission it had illegally imported traces of enriched uranium from China in 1991 for experimentation. More recent minor infractions have contributed to mistrust, although the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq showed secretiveness is no sure sign of bad faith.
For the Europeans, enrichment is the key. They say Iran can only prove its nuclear probity by giving up its legal rights to an enrichment programme. Iran wants to use its extensive uranium yellow-cake reserves to become self-sufficient in nuclear fuel. But the process of enriching this fuel involves technology that can be used for military purposes.
Iran insists it will never give up its legal right to a fuel cycle, but the Europeans have threatened to push the IAEA to refer it to the UN Security Council if it continues the enrichment process. In December, Iran agreed to freeze all enrichment and related activities while it continued negotiations with the UK, France and Germany. Although neither side has said it will surrender its core demands, both have indicated a willingness to find a solution.
"Enrichment suspension is the only way we can think of to ensure Iran is not making a bomb," says a European diplomat in Tehran. "If they can find some other way to guarantee their honesty then enrichment will not be such a problem."
More recently, attention has turned to the Parchin and Lavisan sites, where the armed militant group Mojahedin-e Khalq has accused Iran of carrying out enrichment activities. Satellite photographs subsequently showed large movements of soil at Lavisan, suggesting a clean-up operation. The refusal to open Parchin up to IAEA inspectors has caused the latest expressions of US outrage.