WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — The World Bank, newly caught up in the Bush administration’s campaign against Iran, has had to suspend payments for earthquake relief, sanitation and other projects there in response to new American sanctions on leading Iranian banks, World Bank officials say.
Only $5.4 million in payments has been suspended for four projects, involving earthquake relief, water and sanitation, environment management and urban housing, the officials said, and they do not expect the suspensions to be permanent.
But the bank has no plan to resume payments because it is having trouble finding banks in Iran to handle them now that the United States has barred dealing with four of Iran’s largest banks, accusing them of involvement in terrorism, or nuclear or missile programs.
“At this point, the World Bank is looking for alternate ways to support these projects,” said a bank official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It is unknown how difficult that might be. It is not that easy to find alternatives. We have no answer on how or when at this point.”
American officials said they hoped that the decision by the World Bank would increase pressure on Iran, not necessarily by stopping humanitarian projects but by dramatizing the country’s economic isolation in light of its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and negotiate with the West over its nuclear program.
The World Bank step, while small, illustrates the extraordinary reach of American sanctions, even though they were imposed unilaterally after the United States was stymied in its recent efforts to get the United Nations Security Council to approve wider penalties.
The payments for the World Bank projects have all gone through Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest banks, but Bank Melli was accused last month by the United States of being involved in nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Also listed were two other institutions, Bank Mellat and Bank Saderat. Bank Saderat had already been listed by United States as being involved in financing terrorism.
Some Congressional critics of the administration’s Iran policies have called on the United States to block World Bank aid programs for Iran altogether. The World Bank has nine active projects in Iran and, by last year, had financed 48 operations worth about $3.4 billion, according to the bank’s Web site.
The effect of the United States’ listing four major Iranian banks is that no American bank is allowed to facilitate any dollar-based transaction between them and any other bank in the world.
The Security Council has adopted two resolutions, one last year and another this year, calling on a freeze of assets in Iran deemed to be linked to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The aim of the resolutions is to get Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, which Western experts say are part of a secret program to make a nuclear bomb.
Only one Iranian bank, Bank Sepah, has been identified by the Security Council as involved in nuclear and ballistic missile programs. According to information circulating among members of the Security Council, the bank has all but ceased to function.
Bank Saderat, Bank Melli and Bank Mellat have been listed only by the United States. But Western diplomats, citing official information circulating in Europe and the United States, say that most major banks in Europe have ceased working or are winding down their business with them.
In addition, the diplomats said the Dutch, French, Italian and German governments had begun reducing their state credits promoting trade with Iran. The Bush administration, however, is pressing them to do more.
Administration officials say they have pressed more than 40 banks worldwide to stop doing business with Iran, and most have taken at least some steps. But banks in the Persian Gulf, China and other parts of Asia have continued, and in some cases have filled the gap left by the absence of Western banks.
World Bank officials could not say whether the bank would turn to these institutions to help ease payments for the projects in Iran.
New York Times
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Experts say there is no conclusive evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear-weapons program.
WASHINGTON --
Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger ''World War III,'' experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has a nuclear-weapons program.
Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat.
While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush's point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.
''Iran is seeking a nuclear capability . . . that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability,'' Burns said in an interview Oct. 25 on PBS.
''I don't think that anyone right today thinks they're working on a bomb,'' said another U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
Outside experts say the operative words are ``right today.''
They say Iran may have been actively seeking to create a nuclear-weapons capacity in the past and still could break out of its current uranium-enrichment program and start a weapons program.
They, too, lack definitive proof, butcite a great deal of circumstantial evidence.
OVERSTATEMENTS?
Bush's rhetoric seems hyperbolic compared with the statements by his senior aides and outside experts.
''I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,'' he said Oct. 17 at a news conference.
''Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions,'' Cheney warned on Oct 23. ``We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.''
Bush and Cheney's allegations are under close scrutiny because their similar allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program proved to be wrong.
Nevertheless, there are many reasons to be skeptical of Iran's claims that its nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes, including its dealings with a Pakistani dealer in black-market nuclear technology and the fact that it concealed its uranium-enrichment program from a U.N. watchdog agency for 18 years.
''Many aspects of Iran's past nuclear program and behavior make more sense if this program was set up for military rather than civilian purposes,'' Pierre Goldschmidt, a former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director general, said in a speech Oct. 30.
NO HARD EVIDENCE
If conclusive proof exists, however, Bush hasn't revealed it. Nor have four years of IAEA inspections.
''I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear-weapons program going on right now,'' IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei asserted in an interview Oct. 31 with CNN.
''There is no smoking-gun proof of work on a nuclear weapon, but there is enough evidence that points in that direction,'' said Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation controls.
New light may be shed when the IAEA reports this month on whether Iran is fulfilling an August accord to answer all outstanding questions about the enrichment program it concealed from the U.N. watchdog agency.
Its report is expected to focus on Iran's work with devices that spin uranium hexafluoride gas to produce low-enriched uranium for power plants or highly enriched uranium for weapons.
Iran asserts that it's working only with the P1, an older centrifuge that it admitted buying in 1987 from an international black-market network headed by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
But IAEA inspectors determined that Iran failed to reveal that it had obtained blueprints for the P2, a centrifuge twice as efficient as the P1, from the Khan network in 1995.
Iranian officials say they did nothing with the blueprints until 2002, when they were given to a private firm that produced and tested seven modified P2 parts, then abandoned the effort.
IAEA inspectors, however, discovered that Iran sought to buy thousands of specialized magnets for P2s from European suppliers, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last year that research on the centrifuges continued.
The IAEA has been stymied in trying to discover the project's scope, fueling suspicions that the Iranian military may be secretly running a P2 development program parallel to the civilian-run P1 program at Natanz.
NOTE: For several months, the Bush administration has been ratcheting up its rhetoric toward Iran, accusing its government of trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
The administration has imposed new economic sanctions on Iranian businesses and suggested that military action may be needed if the Iranians don't shut down their nuclear program. But global opinion differs on what threat -- if any -- Iran's nuclear program poses.
Over the next several weeks, McClatchy will examine key questions surrounding the Bush administration's confrontation with Iran.
Miami Herald