Western
experts have made an art of frightening and wrong
predictions about some major issues involving the Muslim
and Arab world. The uninitiated should spend some time
reading reckless analyses related to the Arab
"petro-power" of the 1970s. According to some of those
analyses, Arabs should have owned major chunks of the US
and European productive sectors merely through
purchases, or by investing the billions of dollars they
made in that decade though the exercise of oil power.
One wonders why Arabs don't own those assets.
Yet the same types of wrong-headed scenarios are
being offered about a "nuclear" Iran, if it develops
nuclear weapons. Let's be clear about one issue. Neither
Iran nor North Korea should develop nuclear weapons. We
already have too many nuclear powers on this small
planet of ours, armed with enough nuclear weapons to
blow it up many times over. But what if Iran does
develop nuclear weapons? A number of facts and fictions
about this issue should be well understood.
The
first fact is that Iran does not yet have nuclear
weapons. Second, it aspires to develop such weapons, if
not now, then certainly in the foreseeable future - say,
within 10 years. Third, Iran is genuinely afraid of a
militaristic United States whose military forces are
lurking beyond Iran's eastern border in Afghanistan and
its western borders in Iraq, and, like North Korea,
considers its own nuclear weapons as a source of
deterrence to potential US military action against the
regime.
The US under President George W Bush and
his neo-conservative policymakers has every intention of
unsheathing the regime-change strategy if he is
re-elected in November. The neo-cons' aspirations of
global hegemony have encountered a rude awakening in
Iraq. However, those ambitions are neither abandoned,
nor are they dead. They are undergoing a process of
regrouping and rethinking about the future modalities of
America's global dominance, but especially in the Middle
East, in the event that Bush gets a second term.
Under a re-elected Bush, Iran has most to fear
about America's potential exercise of regime change, for
a variety of reasons. First, there continues to be bad
blood between Iran and the US related to the hostage
crisis of the late 1970s. Second, after the
dismantlement of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iran has
emerged as a major country that is confronting US
hegemony in its immediate neighborhood, and is willing
to take on the lone superpower rhetorically. Third, Iran
continues to exercise considerable influence in Iraq. As
such, it challenges America's dream of establishing its
permanent presence in a subservient Iraq by ensuring the
creation of a diffident regime.
Implanting
Western-style democracy in Iraq and in the Middle East
is the 21st-century version of the white man's burden of
the lone superpower. But Iran remains a force - more
symbolically than militarily - against America's desire
to impose democratic liberalism on the Muslim Middle
East, for Iran's rulers have their own vision for their
country and for post-Saddam Iraq: that of continuing
with the Islamic republic and preparing ground to ensure
that some form of Islamic government is established in
Iraq through elections. Because of these intricate
reasons for conflict with the United States, there is no
wonder fears related to regime survival drive Iran to
seek a nuclear-weapons option. And that very same reason
serves as just another wrinkle in the continuing - or
even escalating - wrangling between Iran and the US.
The chief fiction related to Iran's potential
development of nuclear weapons is the frequent
suggestion that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would also
consider developing nuclear weapons. The fact of the
matter is that Egypt has no security-related reasons to
develop nuclear weapons - even though Israel is a
nuclear power, it is at peace with Egypt. It is true
that Egypt is not at all happy that Israel not only has
nuclear weapons but is also busy developing its
naval-based nuclear power, while the US is creating such
a fuss about the potential nuclear weapons development
by Iran and North Korea. Ideally, Egypt would like to
develop nuclear weapons if for no other reasons than
just to gain strategic parity with Israel. However, if
Egypt were seriously to consider developing nuclear
weapons, the US$1.5 billion per year in US assistance to
that country would be discontinued instantly. Given its
acute economic-development-related problems, Egypt can
least afford a potential loss of such substantial
assistance.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia has no
security-related reasons to develop nuclear weapons,
even if Iran acquires them. Iran poses no threat to
Saudi Arabia, especially considering the significance of
the oil kingdom for the economies of Europe and Japan.
No Iranian leader in his right mind would consider a
harebrained scheme of even fomenting trouble inside
Saudi Arabia, much less threatening the regime. Iran has
little reason to contemplate the alternative to the
current Saudi monarchy: Wahhabi extremists who don't
even regard Shi'ites as Muslims. So, regardless of their
mutual differences, Saudi Arabia and Iran are likely to
get along even if Iran develops nuclear weapons.
Besides, developing nuclear weapons is not a
realistic option for Saudi Arabia, even if no stringent
global nuclear-proliferation regimes were in place.
Development of nuclear weapons requires an enormous
amount of indigenous technical knowledge, and elaborate
supporting infrastructure, which Saudi Arabia is not
only sorely lacking, but which would take decades to
develop under the best circumstances. No country has,
nor can any country hire, expatriate technocrats who can
be counted on to make it a nuclear power.
Another suggestion floating in the US press is
that Saudi Arabia has financed Pakistani nuclear weapons
with some sort of secret understanding that it would be
transferred, or at least shared, between the two
countries. Needless to say, authors of this speculation
are persons of the same background who invented the
story that Saddam not only had nuclear weapons, but he
was capable of launching them toward Britain within the
span of 45 minutes. Considering the United States'
earnest endeavors to forestall all global attempts
related to nuclear proliferation, Pakistan would be
wishing death for its own nuclear program by even
contemplating a crazy scheme like transferring or
sharing its nuclear weapons with Saudi Arabia.
As the US waits for the International Atomic
Energy Agency and the European Union Three (France,
Germany and the United Kingdom) to persuade Iran to
abandon all aspirations of developing nuclear weapons,
it is also becoming fairly certain that Iran has already
made a decision to materialize that option. We are
currently given two predictions about the date by which
Iran would develop nuclear weapons. The Central
Intelligence Agency estimates it to be by 2010, while
Israel says 2007. Bush is likely to give the
international actors time to persuade Iran to come clean
regarding its nuclear program until November of this
year. If he is re-elected, look for a possible
preemptive US unilateral attack or a combined US-Israeli
attack on Iran's nuclear facilities by late this year,
or early next year.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD,
is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
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Iran: The babble and the
bomb
