The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

aspiring proliferators through a mixture of carrots and sticks — that is, through an overarching emphasis upon enforcing compliance coupled with efforts to promote peaceful uses of nuclear power. It is in this interplay of incentives that one can see the underlying rationale of our approach to the seminal nuclear nonproliferation issues of today: diplomatic initiatives vis-a-vis Iran, the pursuit of North Korean nuclear dismantling, strengthened IAEA safeguards, assured nuclear fuel supply mechanisms, and a stop to the spread of enrichment and reprocessing tech- nology. Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Technology The so-called “P-5 plus one” countries — the United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and Germany — have made a generous offer to Iran that involves both support for additional light-water reactors and the provision of assured nuclear fuel supplies for peaceful power generation. In return for all this, Tehran needs to end its provocative and destabilizing pursuit of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, and cooperate fully with the IAEA in order to restore the international community’s shattered confidence in its peaceful inten- tions. This diplomatic offer, which remains on the table, underlines the point that Iran is not merely a lawbreaker violating Articles II and III of the NPT, contravening its IAEA safeguards obligations, and ignoring the require- ments imposed by the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. It is also rejecting its best opportunity actually to achieve — through peaceful international nuclear cooperation—pre- cisely the objective it claims to have: the development of a significant civilian nuclear power generation program. Iran is a very special and very problematic case, but this intertwining of elements in the diplomatic negotia- tions encapsulates some broader themes. For those that abandon — and in the future avoid — proliferation-risky behavior, there is the opportunity to share in the enor- mous benefits that atomic power and international nuclear cooperation can bring to mankind. Pres. Bush has F O C U S J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27