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COMMENTARY
Iran's nuclear allies play with fire
By Stephen Blank
There is no doubt that not only America has intensified pressure on Iran due to
its nuclear program, but that the international community has also followed
suit. The recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
represents something of a turning point in this regard for it is the first time
that international organizations have publicly asked some hard questions about
Iran's programs and goals. None of this means that Tehran will cave in to the
pressure any time soon. Indeed, its initial response was defiant. But this does
mean that the motives behind Iran's program will now come under greater
scrutiny then before.
From the public record we can see mixed motives behind this program.
Undoubtedly a major driving force behind Iranian nuclearization was the fact
that the country experienced chemical warfare attacks from Iraq during the
1980-1988 war and nobody abroad did anything about it. Clearly this depressing
result galvanized many policymakers to demand that Iran never again be caught
without a deterrent. Likewise Israel's preemptive strike against Iraq's nuclear
reactor at Osirak in 1981 stimulated Iran to act stealthily and build dispersed
and underground facilities to prevent this from happening to it. Iran's
paranoia about Israel, habitual recourse to anti-Semitism at home and abroad,
and its sponsorship of terrorism against it and America for over 20 years
clearly has led its rulers to fear that they might be targeted as well by
America and/or Israel militarily, and not just have to endure diplomatic
pressure and sanctions. Therefore, they seek reliable deterrence against those
forces.
We may also attribute nationalism as a motive since that seemed to have been a
factor in the Shah's initial interest in nuclear energy. In this context
another factor driving nationalist impulses is the well-known and long-standing
Iranian belief that Iran stands at the center of world politics and constitutes
a target for everyone else's intrigues against it. Therefore Iran, too, must
have nuclear weapons to deter these intrigues and assume its rightful place in
the sun.
All these forces that drive Iran's programs are well known. Many are
long-standing and in some cases they are comparable to the motives that drove
other nuclear states to acquire nuclear weapons. But one needs to think
carefully about the threats that may emerge from Iran if it does indeed become
a nuclear player. As in all other cases of nuclearization, possession of
nuclear weapons will essentially codify Iran's immunity from foreign pressure
as related to its defense and foreign policies. The most dangerous aspect of
this is that the possession of nuclear weapons makes it much safer for Iran to
launch conventional wars or attacks against its enemies. Pakistan's sponsorship
of an unrelenting terrorist war against India dating back 15 years exemplifies
the danger. And Iran's terrorist war has as a clear objective, the derailment
of any peace process in Israel, the incitement of anti-Semitism in the Islamic
world, if not beyond, and the destabilization of the new American presence in
Iraq and beyond that in the Middle East and Central Asia.
But beyond that, in the past Iran has used its conventional weapons to threaten
Azerbaijan and Kazakstan with regard to energy holdings in the Caspian Sea and
has conducted terrorist operations against dissidents in Europe, often with the
help of similarly-minded regimes like Libya. It also, according to US
intelligence assessments given to Congress, has the capability to close down
the Straits of Hormuz and to interdict shipping there and into the Gulf for
several days. If it achieves a nuclear deterrent to back up the conventional
capabilities it is also acquiring, Iran can pose a formidable regional threat
to the global economy, and not just its neighbors or Israel. This is magnified
by the fact that it apparently can produce usable anti-ship missiles on its
own. Or at least, so it claims.
Apart from being a supporter of terrorism, Iran is also clearly a proliferator
of conventional weapons to terrorists, as the interception of the Karine-A ship
in 2002 by Israel showed. And the possibility of becoming a supplier to other
states who wish to obtain nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out. That ship, it
should be remembered, was carrying US$10 million of weapons, many of which
seemed to have originated in Russia or were made in Iran using Russian know-how
that had been exported to Iran. Those weapons would have provided the
Palestinian Authority with the means to dramatically upgrade its capabilities
for terrorist attacks against Israelis. Iran is also a customer for North
Korean, Chinese and Russian proliferation, and at the same time a very
interested player in the fate of Afghanistan. Thus, from the foregoing, we can
see that it has an ambitious and rather destabilizing foreign policy agenda.
But equally if not more dangerous is the fact that its government presides over
a deeply disenchanted society that is also clearly striving for reform. In the
past Iran has not hesitated to play the anti-Israel and anti-American cards to
quash domestic unrest, and if its regime has nuclear weapons and feels
sufficiently embattled at home and abroad, not least by repeated American
threats to destabilize it, there is no certainty as to how it might behave.
Based on the foregoing, it makes eminent sense for both Europe and the United
States to deploy intense pressure on Iran to cease and desist from its nuclear
program. In the past that has not been true of Russia, China and North Korea,
whose motives for supplying Iran are well known. Russia, however, is only
storing up a threat for its future given its own ambitions in the Caspian, by
abetting Iranian nuclearization. Yet one wonders if the lure of cash for the
Ministry of Atomic Energy and the defense industry, and the ever-present
temptation to put a spoke in American policy, will continue to get the better
of a rational consideration of Russia's vital national interests. Although
China and North Korea are further away from Iran and have their own motives for
proliferation, China's are not that dissimilar from Russia's, whereas North
Korea, itself now under severe pressure, is a special case. But given what we
have seen in world affairs since 2001, does it make sense for Beijing and
Moscow to abet the nuclearization of one of the world's leading state sponsors
of terrorism? Or can these states come to a more sober appreciation of where
their interests lie?
Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in
Harrisburg, PA.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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