PERSPECTIVE ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS : Iran’s Wish List Isn’t Peaceful : It doesn’t need reactors and related technology for civilian use, and the U.S.-North Korean deal isn’t comparable.

More than 175 nations are meeting in New York to consider whether to make the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty permanent or allow it to lapse. The United States wants to see the treaty become permanent, a goal that appears to be in sight. If the negotiations hit a snag, Iran will be at fault.

In 1970, the world’s non-nuclear states foreclosed their options to build nuclear weapons in exchange for a pledge that the peaceful benefits of nuclear energy would always remain accessible under United Nations safeguards. This part of the deal is made explicit in Article IV of the treaty.

Iran now insists that its membership in the NPT entitles it to obtain nuclear-power reactors and the infrastructure for a nuclear-fueled economy, much of which would come from Russia and China. The United States objects because, in addition to power reactors, those two nations also have offered to sell Iran plants for uranium enrichment and even reprocessing facilities to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel. This indicates that Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons, in violation of the treaty.

Although inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have yet to find a smoking gun, there is every reason to believe that the successors to Ayatollah Khomeini are pursuing the ultimate Western technology.

Russia and China argue that sales to Iran are no different than what the United States proposes to supply to North Korea, which agreed to surrender its nearly complete illegal nuclear weapons program in exchange for two reactors roughly comparable to the plant Iran wants. But, in fact, the cases are not parallel.

The North Koreans have promised to forgo two important steps to nuclear weapons that any nation may take under the non-proliferation treaty: They will not enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel. Iran plans to do both.

The framework agreement between the United States and North Korea cuts off the Korean nuclear program at both ends. Not only will the North be incapable of building additional nuclear weapons; since the Koreans will also dismantle their natural uranium reactors, which are nothing but plutonium factories, they will depend on outside suppliers to fuel their power reactors.

North Korea’s reprocessing plant is under seal and cannot be used. To get the reactors, it must allow IAEA inspectors full access throughout the country. And if the Kim Jong Il government breaks the accord, the country, which is energy-poor, will lose the electricity it expects to gain, as well as whatever goodwill it may have left in the world.

Iran, by contrast, has already ordered a uranium enrichment plant from Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy. If the sale goes through, it means more than $1 billion for the cash-strapped Russians.

But, unlike North Korea, Iran is not energy-poor. It has major deposits of oil and natural gas that could fuel any electric power plants it needs for its economy in the foreseeable future. Iran also has considerable deposits of uranium to feed an enrichment plant. In fact, Iran’s present electrical generating capacity remains well in excess of consumption. It has no need, civilian or economic, even to complete the reactors damaged in its long war with Iraq. Even less does it require a plant in which uranium can be enriched, a process that yields the material most easily made into atomic weapons. But even under the shah, before the Islamic Revolution, Iran had plans for an atomic weapons program.

Despite IAEA reports that it has not--yet--turned up any evidence that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, the suspicions of much of the rest of the world must not be discounted. The United States must oppose sales of nuclear facilities to Iran. If we do not succeed in preventing those sales, it is likely that we will be faced with a second North Korean situation, in which a rogue state assembles the material for a bomb and can then negotiate with the West or its adversaries from a position of enormous strength.