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US considers its case on
Iran
By David Isenberg
While
the United States continues to fight in Iraq, it has not
forgotten about another member of the "axis of evil",
namely Iran. On October 28, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee held a hearing, not too subtly titled "Iran -
Security Threats and US Policy".
For those who
have not been following the saga, Iran's periodic
transparency and changing stories have fueled
international suspicions over its nuclear program,
heightened by findings of enriched-uranium in
environmental samples taken at Natanz and the Kalaye
Electric Company. The Iranians have insisted that this
is a result of contaminated imported components. While
this is plausible, it only created further doubt over
the program because it marked a departure from Iran's
earlier assertion that its nuclear program was
indigenous.
To read the statement of the
committee chairman, Senator Richard Lugar, one would
never know that Iran has actually reached agreement with
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in regard
to its nuclear program, which the Bush administration
has said is a clandestine nuclear weapons program. On
October 21, Iran announced - at the initiative of
France, Germany and the United Kingdom - that it would
temporarily suspend its uranium-enrichment program and
sign the Additional Protocol to the the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) requiring more robust
inspections.
But according to Lugar, "Although
Americans are hopeful that this agreement does represent
progress, we should not lose sight of the fact that Iran
was caught red-handed trying to build nuclear weapons
through several methods over a sustained period in
violation of its treaty obligations. After years of
Iranian delay, deception and denial, this agreement
should not lead us to a false sense of security about
the Iranian proliferation threat."
Lugar went on
to say that "when confronted with a case as blatant as
Iran, the United States and like-minded allies must use
the Security Council to demand that the violator cease
all illegal weapons activities, dismantle
weapons-related facilities, and submit to 'super
inspections', even tougher than those imposed on Iraq
... Iran may object that such intrusive inspections
impinge on its sovereignty, but this is the price Tehran
should be paying to convince outsiders that, for once,
it is keeping its word under the NPT."
This was
a position from which even some of the hearing's
witnesses dissented. Anthony Cordesman, a well-known
analyst who works at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), a prominent conservative
think tank in Washington, said. "Now, Mr Chairman, you
talked about super inspections. I'm not sure what those
really are. I'm not sure that it is easy to do more than
UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] and UNMOVIC
[United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission] did, and they obviously failed. They could
not characterize the effort. I think we are learning
that there are deep problems in the US intelligence
effort and in our coverage of proliferation. Iraq is
only a case example, and I would hope at some point
either the Senate Intelligence Committee or this
committee fully examines our capability to characterize
proliferation."
Lugar's view is also, to say the
least, a curious position for the world's first nuclear
weapons state. As was pointed out this past April at the
review conference for the NPT, there is no "indefinite
right" to possess nuclear weapons, even under the
discriminatory provisions of the NPT. The signatories to
the treaty accepted this discrimination on the basis
that the gap between the nuclear "haves" and the nuclear
"have nots" would be narrowed and eventually eliminated.
It hasn't happened. Some of the "have nots" are
understandably impatient and some have perhaps decided
to attempt to join the unofficial nuclear club of the
three nations who refused to sign up to the NPT from the
start.
One non-government organization statement
at that conference stated, "Substantive progress on
nuclear disarmament has been blocked by the refusal of
the nuclear weapons states to consider that their
possession of nuclear weapons is anything other than
their ultimate guarantee of national security. Yet they
also manage to maintain that nuclear weapons in the
hands of anybody else are dangerous and destabilizing.
This is what unquestioned belief systems can lead its
adherents to do - inhibit their own rational thinking."
The hearing, however, as most of them are, was a
carefully scripted exercise in rhetoric. Early on, the
committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden,
noted, "This Bush policy of containment, which is not
fundamentally different than previous administration -
containment requires cooperation. Containment requires
cooperation with our allies for it to have any prospect
of bearing fruit."
The hearing, however, was
notable in that even some hardliners acknowledged that
the controversy over Iran's nuclear program was
solvable. Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at CSIS said,
"It would also be a mistake to assume that an Iranian
nuclear weapons capability is inevitable and that there
is nothing we can do to influence Tehran's choices."
Indeed, if the hardline Iranian mullahs were
listening they had to be encouraged by the exchange
between Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard
Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State:
Hagel:
Regime change in Iran - is that our policy?
Armitage: No, sir.
Hagel:
What is our policy?
Armitage: Our
policy is to try to eliminate the ability of Iran to
carry forward with disruptive policies, such as the
development of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], such
as the abandonment of human rights, such as repression
against minorities, such as religious oppression against
the Bahais, and to try to get them to eschew their state
sponsorship of terrorism.
Armitage also
criticized the Pentagon for agreeing to a wartime
ceasefire with an Iranian rebel group based in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. "We shouldn't have been signing a
ceasefire with a foreign terrorist organization,'' he
said. The military signed an April 16 ceasefire with the
Mujahideen Khalq after warplanes from the US-led
coalition invading Iraq bombed Mujahideen Khalq sites.
The group agreed to disarm and was not attacked again.
And even Cordesman, who supports a policy of
continued military containment against Iran, said, "I
would also say that, frankly, labeling Iran as the
leading nation supporting terrorism, or part of an 'axis
of evil', is the worst possible way to influence the
Iranian people ... I think our rhetoric on Iran
illustrates a broad problem in American policy. We speak
in terms of domestic politics to American audiences in
ways which undermine our credibility in Iran, in the
Middle East, in Europe and in the rest of the world."
According to a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
report, Shireen Hunter, head of the Islam Program at
Washington's Center for Strategic and International
Studies, said that Armitage's comments seem to suggest
that Washington may feel its best bet for effecting
change in Iran and in Iranian policies is through
engagement. "Maybe we can achieve some of our goals,
including the gradual change of regime in Iran, more
through engagement [rather] than through complete
isolation or, even worse probably, military action," she
said.
But Hunter added that other forces in the
US government are likely to oppose even limited openings
to Iran. Armitage said the ultimate decision must be
made by President George W Bush and Secretary of State
Colin Powell. Armitage also told the Senate panel that
while Iranian reformers are cooperating with the US in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the hardline religious
establishment still appears bent on sabotaging American
efforts.
Armitage said that he suspected that on
the keys issues of nuclear weapons and Israel, Iranian
reformers may not be that different from their religious
counterparts. "Would [the reformers]," he asked, "even
if democratically elected, eschew forever weapons of
mass destruction? I don't know the answer to that,
because there is a sense of destiny in what used to be
Persia."
Yet even as the hearing ended, debate
in the Congress continued its often surreal ways as
Congress considers S 1082, introduced by Senator Sam
Brownback earlier in the year, which is notable for its
blunt language. It requires Radio Farda [US-sponsored
Farsi radio broadcasts to Iran] to ensure that a
significant percentage of its programming is devoted to
"discussing democratic change in Iran, including an
internationally-monitored democratic referendum in
Iran".
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
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