Once again,
US President George W Bush has warned that the
development of a nuclear weapon in Iran would be
"intolerable".
Bush told US newspaper executives
in Washington this week that any effort by Tehran to
produce a nuclear weapon would be dealt with, first by
the United Nations.
"One of my jobs is to make
sure they [the International Atomic Energy Agency - IAEA
- and European leaders] speak as plainly as possible to
the Iranians and make it absolutely clear that the
development of a nuclear weapon in Iran is intolerable
and a program is intolerable; otherwise, they will be
dealt with, starting through the United Nations," he
said.
The president said Iran's stated
objective is the destruction of the state of Israel.
Iran has denied charges that it is trying to develop
nuclear weapons, saying its atomic program is for
peaceful purposes.
Bush's latest salvo follows
a report issued by European intelligence sources
recently that accuses Iran of "concealing key elements
of country's nuclear program" from IAEA inspectors.
Since the report states that a committee of "senior
Iranian officials" is involved in that alleged concealment
campaign, the game of nuclear hide and seek has begun.
As viewed from Washington, Iran has made a decision
to become a nuclear power within the near future -
between three and five years - if all goes
well. That conclusion is shared by both Democrats
and Republicans. During the tenure of Democratic
president Bill Clinton, US officials spent numerous diplomatic
sessions unsuccessfully attempting to persuade their
Russian counterparts that Iran intended to develop
nuclear weapons. Russian officials, on the contrary,
invested ample energy trying to persuade their US
counterparts of Iran's desire to use its nuclear program
for peaceful purposes only.
The
best guess on the US side was that even
Russia did not believe Iran had no ambition to
develop nuclear weapons. The optimistic US spin was that Russians
were in the nuclear deal with Iran for direly needed
hard currency and were willing to go along with
whatever harebrained rationale Iran forwarded about its
nuclear program. The cynical US view is that Russia
remains unfazed about the potential emergence of a
nuclear Iran. After all, according to that thinking, Russia
is already living with three nuclear actors in its
neighborhood - China, India and Pakistan - and would not
much mind the addition of a fourth one.
In the pre-September 11, 2001 era, US concern about
nuclear non-proliferation was not as alarmist as it has
become in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks within
its borders. Since then, the prospects of a radical
Islamist state possessing nuclear weapons has indeed
become nightmarish for George W Bush and his
neo-conservative cohorts, who also hold many important national-security
positions in his administration.
More to
the point, the neo-conservatives of the Bush
administration entered office sworn to the proposition of making
the Middle East safe for Israel's strategic
preponderance over Arabs. In fact, an argument can be
made that the US decision to invade Iraq was
substantially aimed at achieving that objective in a
significant way. Israel had viewed Saddam Hussein with
considerable trepidation, especially as a result of its
experience during the Gulf War of 1991, when he fired a
number of Scud missies into the Jewish state, hoping to
draw it into the fight and weaken the international
coalition assiduously put together by president George H
W Bush. In the post-Saddam era, the Bush
neo-conservatives view Iran with similar concern,
especially when they consider the prospects of its
emergence as a nuclear power.
It is not an entirely
untenable proposition that Iran indeed wants to become
a nuclear power. It knows that the United States and the
Soviet Union avoided all potential of direct
confrontation during the Cold War years because they
were fully constrained by the doctrine of nuclear
deterrence. They knew only too well how difficult it was
to keep a force-on-force conventional conflict between
them from escalating into a nuclear war of mutual
annihilation. Iran is fully mindful of the fact that
nuclear deterrence remains quite relevant even today.
In the contemporary era, Iran
has watched with rapt attention the
difference between America's treatment of a nuclear (or at
least potentially nuclear) North Korea and its handling of a
non-nuclear Iraq. Kim Jong-il continues to dictate the terms
and modalities of negotiations to Washington by offering
the prospects, in return, of only freezing - but not
unraveling - his nuclear-weapons program. By contrast, Saddam is
in America's dungeon in Iraq awaiting a trial that will lead
to his virtually guaranteed execution. Leaders in
Iran are cognizant that the presence and absence
of nuclear weapons have made much difference in the case of
North Korea and Iraq, respectively. That might be just
one very significant reason the ayatollahs refuse to
foreswear the option of developing nuclear weapons.
The best thing that is going for Iran is that
the Bush administration suffers from a lack of
credibility regarding any claims that Iran intends to
become a nuclear power. Consequently, it is relying on
other sources to make the case - if not prove - that
Iran plans to develop nuclear weapons. That is precisely
why the intelligence report is so crucial, since it is
coming from European sources. One most damaging portion
of that report for Iran states: "The [Iranian] committee
is making a thorough and systematic examination of all
uranium conversion facilities, centrifuge component
manufacturing plants and other secret installations to
locate poor concealments. It will then order improved
concealment measures with a view to making them hermetic
before inspections resume."
Given the refusal of
Germany, France, and even England to go along with the
US proposal last November to persuade the IAEA to refer
to Iranian nuclear activities to the UN Security Council
for possible condemnation, the Bush administration views
the March 27 report regarding the alleged concealment
activities of Iran with considerable satisfaction.
Undoubtedly
a very deft move on the part of Washington is
to let its European allies take the lead of persuading
Iran for increasing transparency regarding its nuclear
activities. Considering the fact that Iran cannot afford
to have Europeans siding with the US and go to
the extent of recommending economic sanctions against Iran
if it refuses to along with cooperating with the
IAEA, the Islamic republic is not left with other enviable
choices. But, in all likelihood, Iran will not
abandon the game of hide and seek. Its own
vision of security related to the possession of nuclear
weapons is no different from any current possessor of
those horrible weapons.
Ehsan Ahrari,
PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
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Bush told US newspaper executives
in Washington this week that any effort by Tehran to
produce a nuclear weapon would be dealt with, first by
the United Nations. 
