However, Iran does need to double her electricity production in the next 15 years - if we assume an annual growth in consumption of the order of 6%. The current regime plans to meet this, in 2021, with 10% coming from nuclear plants. This is its justification for the development of an industry which is still embryonic. For the moment, Iran has no reactor - except for the one at Busher where construction has barely begun. The Iranians therefore have no problem of “phasing out nuclear technology”. Aren’t they lucky! Their "problem" is not phasing it in.
The solution to the present crisis is simple and obvious: Iran just has to renounce nuclear technology, both non-military and military, and invest in energy savings and especially in the development of renewable forms of energy (these cost very little once in place, and cause no pollution or virtually): hydroelectricity (a doubling of output is planned), but also solar, wind, geothermal, and energy from waves or currents (in the Caspian or the Persian Gulf).
Thus Iran could:
1°) prove without possible debate that she is not seeking to obtain nuclear technology and nuclear materials for military purposes;
2°) satisfy her energy needs while preparing for the distant phasing-out of gas and oil;
3°) avoid adding the risk of a nuclear catastrophe to the seismic risks which she already faces;
4°) magically annihilate the insoluble problem of nuclear waste, which the nations providing nuclear technology are struggling with in vain;
5°) avoid all kinds of sanctions and benefit instead from international aid and unrestricted commercial exchanges;
6°) be in the global vanguard of
the renunciation of nuclearism the development of renewable energies the struggle against the greenhouse effect the struggle against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and for nuclear disarmament.
With the strength of this exemplary chosen renunciation, Iran could then:
insist on the implementation of the UN resolutions for a nuclear-free Middle East, including a denuclearized Israel (on the proviso that the Iranian leaders renounce the wish for the Hebrew state to disappear and commit themselves with Israel and the other regional states, including the Palestinian state which must be created and recognized, to reciprocal security guarantees);
insist that the nuclear powers, who today claim they can impose their unilateral rules on Iran, should begin by honouring their own obligations and should renounce their nuclear weapons (article VI of the NPT) ;
play a major role internationally, as a champion of a denuclearized world, for example by proposing a reform of the NPT (article IV) replacing the right to nuclear energy with the right to renewable energy and sustainable development, a right to be supported by the creation of a UN agency for the renewable energy and sustainable development which Iran would be one of the first to benefit from.
But what to the Iranian people want? What do the ayatollahs want? What does Allah want? ...What do the leaders of the nuclear powers want? And what is the wish of the citizens of these “democratic” nations who are never consulted on these matters?
Is it peace and shared prosperity, or domination and war?
The world is at a crossroad. The “Iran Nuclear Crisis” can be the opportunity to choose the path leading to a nuclear-free world - free from nuclear power and nuclear arms. A world reconciled with the Planet and with future generations.
Allah is great and merciful, it seems. This is moment for Him to show these qualities by inspiring his servants with the choice of wisdom. God and Jehovah could do the same - we would not blame them if they did.
But whatever inspires the parties in this crisis, will there be on either side some wise heads sufficiently influential to make simple good sense prevail over the sordid interests of the power-merchants? Such wise heads and the support they receive from public opinion can make the “Iran Nuclear Crisis” result in a radiant future (well, not radiant, but not irradiated either), or else it could trigger a slide into confrontations and wars which will not end - unless humanity itself ends.
For ACDN,
Jean-Marie Matagne, 18 February 2006
More on this issue: Letter to H.E. the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Paris