Russia, Iran, and the Chemical Weapons Ban Issue

"The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons" (OPCW) was established in April 1997 with the implementation of the "Chemical Weapons Convention." This organization, headquartered in The Hague, is an intergovernmental body and is not considered a UN agency, although it has close cooperation with the UN based on a separate agreement. To date, 193 countries, including Iran, have accepted the Chemical Weapons Convention. Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan have refrained from joining this convention and are therefore not members of the OPCW. Israel has accepted this convention, but its parliament has yet to ratify it. The main tasks of this organization, which has over 500 personnel and an annual budget of around 67 million euros, include the inspection, monitoring, verification, and destruction of chemical weapons in member countries. According to the OPCW's website, its inspectors and specialists have destroyed 96% of the total chemical weapon stockpiles and their precursors worldwide, amounting to 72,304 tons. Over 90% of these weapons were held by the United States and Russia. Chemical weapon stockpiles in Russia have been completely eliminated, and the remaining 9% in the United States are expected to be neutralized by 2023. This organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for its significant efforts to eliminate chemical weapons. The Western initiative: "Attribution Mechanism" The incomplete destruction of chemical weapons by the United States has been a point of contention between Russia and the U.S., and the efforts by the U.S., Britain, and some other Western countries to expand the OPCW's responsibilities and powers have exacerbated the situation. Following a nerve agent attack in March of this year in Salisbury, England, against a former Russian spy and his daughter, Britain was unable to seriously pursue the matter due to "obstruction" by Russia through the UN and the Security Council. Previously, Russia had prevented the Security Council from blaming the Assad government for carrying out chemical attacks. Therefore, in June of this year, at the initiative of Britain and with the support of 11 other countries, including the U.S., a special two-day meeting of OPCW members in The Hague attempted to assign a new mission to this body. This means that the OPCW, by creating the "Attribution Mechanism," would have the authority to identify the perpetrators of attacks after determining the type and nature of the chemical weapons or agents used in those attacks, a task it was not previously allowed to perform. Britain and its allied countries believe that based on Articles 8, 9, and 10 of the Chemical Weapons Convention and its verification annexes, OPCW inspectors and specialists can include the origin of attacks and their perpetrators in their reports after sampling, laboratory tests, and other investigations. This was confirmed by the then Secretary-General of the OPCW, Ahmet Üzümcü. In an interview with The Guardian in May, he stated, "I do not believe that the international community will accept the lack of an attribution mechanism to identify the criminals using chemical weapons. If we ignore accountability, preventing the use of chemical weapons as a tool of war will be impossible." Ultimately, the efforts of Britain and other countries were successful, and at the members' meeting, with 82 votes in favor and 24 against, and considering the organization's regulations that required more than two-thirds of the total voters to approve, the attribution mechanism was adopted. Thus, OPCW inspectors and specialists can present their findings by naming the perpetrator(s) of chemical attacks to the Executive Council of this organization and the UN Security Council. Objections and Reasons In the latest meeting of this organization (the 23rd Conference of States Parties and the 4th Review Conference), which began on November 19 in The Hague, Russia and Iran criticized the attribution mechanism and the proposed frameworks for its implementation. The opposition of these two countries to the allocation of a special budget for this mechanism, which is set to be implemented from February 2019, did not lead to any results. Iran and Russia insisted on the approved budget of this organization, which is 67.2 million euros for 2019, while Western countries proposed an additional budget of 2.4 million euros for the attribution mechanism. Ultimately, this additional budget was approved with 99 votes in favor against 27 votes against. Alexander Shulgin, Russia's representative to the OPCW, explained Russia's unsuccessful efforts to the RT news network, stating: "... This is the result of a large disinformation campaign led by the U.S. This country tried to convince other representatives that Russia's obstruction of the allocation of necessary funding to the OPCW is aimed at destroying it." According to this representative, now that the U.S. and Western countries have succeeded in this regard, Russia will exert its utmost effort to ensure that the implementers of the attribution mechanism are only accountable to the "Executive Council of the OPCW." "This council, unlike the conference of members of this organization, is not dominated by the U.S., and close oversight of the council over the implementers of the attribution mechanism will prevent biased conclusions." Russian representatives have repeatedly stated that the creation of this mechanism is an "illegal" act that not only negates some of the powers of the Security Council but also contradicts the charter of the OPCW. The U.S., Britain, and other Western countries know that referring issues related to the use of chemical weapons to the Security Council can be vetoed by Russia, as has been the case with Syria. In fact, the frustration of Western countries is one of the main reasons for adding the attribution mechanism to the OPCW. Chemical attacks in Syria, the "Attribution Mechanism," the right to veto in recent years, chemical weapons have been used in the battlefields of Syria and Iraq (by ISIS), and on British soil and also in Malaysia (against the half-brother of the North Korean leader). Syria is at the forefront in this regard, and the use of this weapon in Syria continued intermittently for three years until following a deadly chemical attack in Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus on August 30, 2013, and to prevent a U.S. airstrike, the Damascus government joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in mid-September of the same year, and the destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile began based on Security Council Resolution 2118 and under the supervision of OPCW inspectors. With this, about 600 tons of chemical weapons and precursor materials were neutralized, and inspectors announced the completion of their work on June 24, 2014. Nevertheless, reports indicate that Syria has intermittently used chemical gases to advance its military objectives. In August 2015, based on Resolution 2235, a joint inspection team (composed of experts from the UN and the OPCW) was formed by the Security Council to investigate chemical attacks in Syria. However, the mission of this team, which had to be renewed annually, ended in November 2017 due to Russia's opposition. Since then, chemical attacks in Syria have continued intermittently. A particularly deadly instance of these attacks occurred on April 7 of this year in Douma, northeast of Damascus, which led to airstrikes by the U.S., Britain, and France against Syria. Following this attack, neither Russia's attempts to condemn these airstrikes through the UN succeeded, nor did the OPCW's fact-finding committee, supported by the UN, manage to achieve tangible results. Now, with the attribution mechanism and the expansion of the OPCW's responsibilities and powers, as Alan Duncan, the UK Deputy Foreign Secretary, stated in his speech at the recent conference of this organization, it is hoped that the fact-finding team's investigation will lead to a final conclusion, and the perpetrator of this attack will also be identified. Therefore, the expansion of the OPCW's mission and the attribution mechanism to identify the perpetrators of attacks without referring to the Security Council, especially concerning Syria and thwarting Russia's veto right in this specific case through the initiative of Britain, the U.S., and other Western countries, has led to concerns and negative reactions from Russian officials. The Islamic Republic and Syria have supported this position of Russia. Accusations against Iran, more sanctions? In parallel with this issue, the U.S. also targeted Iran at the OPCW conference, although prior to this conference, it had announced its intention to accuse the Islamic Republic publicly. Kenneth Ward, the U.S. representative at the OPCW conference, claimed on Thursday, November 22, 2018, that the Islamic Republic is pursuing its program to produce nerve gas in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and has not reported its "chemical weapons capabilities" in the following instances: transferring chemical shells to Libya in the 1980s; producing shells and bombs containing chemicals that were obtained in Libya and Iraq; using chemicals in riot control weapons despite showcasing them at military exhibitions. The U.S. representative made these accusations based on "recently obtained documents" without providing further details or evidence. The Islamic Republic has strongly rejected the U.S. representative's claims. Reza Najafi, the director-general of "Peace and International Security" at Iran's Foreign Ministry, described the U.S. as the "biggest violator" of the Chemical Weapons Convention, stating: "The U.S. is the only country with weapons that is a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention that has not yet completed the destruction of its chemical weapons stockpiles... and as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it turned a blind eye to the widespread and brutal use of chemical weapons by the Saddam regime against Iran during the war... while the raw materials for these chemical weapons were supplied by the U.S. and its allies, and the responsibility for the suffering and martyrdom of tens of thousands of Iranians lies with the U.S." The Islamic Republic has always portrayed itself as a victim of chemical attacks. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein's chemical attacks against Iranian forces claimed the lives of thousands of military and civilian individuals and left 100,000 chemical victims with varying degrees of injury, most of whom continue to suffer from the effects of those attacks and require medical and pharmaceutical services. The accusations made by the U.S. representative against Iran at the aforementioned conference come at a time when the Trump administration, having exited the JCPOA and imposed sanctions and maximum pressure along with severe criticism of the Islamic Republic's domestic and foreign policy, seeks to change Tehran's behavior in the region. In light of these accusations and the demands of the U.S. from the Islamic Republic, the presentation of these accusations without evidence and investigation will be perceived as politically motivated, and it is unlikely that prominent members of the OPCW will align with the U.S. In any case, the U.S. can pursue its accusations with the implementation of the attribution mechanism, although this will not be an easy task given the transformation of the OPCW conference into a battleground due to the accusations against Russia regarding the hacking of this organization's computer system by four Russian citizens and Russia's overall opposition to the attribution mechanism. The current Secretary-General of this organization, Fernando Arias, recently confirmed in an interview that the body he oversees is "going through a difficult period." Nevertheless, the U.S. could impose new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic based on these accusations.