As the US presidential election
campaign is coming to a close and Iraq continues to
burn, another dangerous diplomatic tussle is taking
place: the United States and Israel are acting as a
tag-team against the potential emergence of Iran as a
nuclear power. The stakes are high in this tussle. At a
minimum, that tag-team will make sure that Iran never
emerges as a regional power, challenging the hegemonies
of the US and Israel. At worst, the intention of this
tag-team is to prepare grounds for a regime change of a
different type - not necessarily through military
invasion, but by taking concerted actions to weaken the
Islamic government of Iran so much that it is ousted
from within.
The
use of United Nations sanctions or even a US naval blockade of Iran
may not be ruled out as tactics to put pressure
on Iran. After the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran is
viewed by both Washington and Jerusalem as a target of a larger plan
to ensure the long-term, if not permanent, subservience
of Muslim countries. In the final analysis, it is purely
a balance-of-power game that an earlier hegemon - the United
Kingdom - played in previous centuries. Now the lone
superpower is playing the same game using the euphemisms
of democracy, liberation and secularism.
Viewing Iran through the US exercise of
balance of power A wisecrack explaining
the emergence of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization during the Cold War years was that it was aimed
at keeping the US in and Russia out of Europe, and
keeping Germany down. In the era post-September 11, 2001,
a wisecrack explaining the US occupation of Iraq
and Afghanistan ought to be: to keep the United States in the
Muslim world, to let Israel dominate the neighboring
states, and to ensure that no Muslim/Arab state ever
challenges the US or Israel. At least from the US point of view,
this would be a benign development in the sense that it
is being done in the name of promoting Western-style
democracy and the institutionalization of secularism in
that region. Couched in such a framework, the US should
not - at least in the perception of US decision-makers
and its strategic community - be seen as a threat to
Arab or Muslim states. Of course, these developments
would intensify in the coming years only if President
George W Bush were re-elected.
When one gets away
from all the overused hyperboles and highfalutin
rhetoric of how menacing Saddam Hussein really was and
how he threatened the security of the US (the lone
superpower) and Israel (the unquestioned second hegemon
of the Middle East), the bare fact is that the Iraqi
dictator had the gall consistently to challenge the
dominant presence of the US in his neighborhood and
Israel's monopoly over the ownership of a nuclear
arsenal and its superiority in conventional military
power. Saddam knew that, under the present power-related
realities, his country did not have any chance of
emerging as a regional power. However, he always
envisaged the potential emergence of "nuclear" Iraq as
something that would materialize if he were to remain in
power.
Saddam also had a powerful
sense of Iraq's historical role as a major Arab state.
He wanted his country to reacquire it. He failed, inter
alia, for two major reasons. First, he confused the quest
of the glory for Iraq with his personal glory. In
fact, he often looked at those two variables as
mere extensions of his personality. Throughout his rule,
but especially in the 1990s, he envisaged himself greater
and more important than the nation of Iraq. Second, in
the final analysis, Saddam's tyranny became the chief
reason his toppling even by a unilateral US action - which
was largely considered illegal by the international
community - did not create any sympathy for him.
Now Iran has become the focus of
the US-Israeli campaign to keep it down. That
country has a visible ballistic-missile production program. It
says it has no intention of producing nuclear weapons.
However, what is working against Iran is the fact
that no country would master the technique of enriching
uranium and not be tempted to produce nuclear weapons.
No matter how much it insists to the contrary, Washington
and Jerusalem are kicking up enough of a duststorm that
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had to
be extra hard in its insistence that Iran not only
should remain cooperative, but should also maintain a high
degree of transparency regarding all the details of its
nuclear program.
Narrow perspectives of the
EU-3 and the IAEA On this issue, Iran is also encountering
impatient treatment from the EU-3 states (France,
Germany and the United Kingdom) for two very important
reasons. First, in the aftermath of the misinformation
related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
coming from the US and the UK, the EU-3 are treating
the Iranian nuclear issue as a test case of their
own performance of ensuring that misinformation or disinformation
does not become a problem. Second, they are
equally resolute about giving diplomacy a chance, something
that did not happen in the case of Iraq, to the
chagrin of France and Germany. Ironically, even though
it was part of the misinformation campaign related
to Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program, Prime Minister
Tony Blair's government is using these negotiations
to get back in the good graces of the European Union.
By the same token, the IAEA, after becoming so intensely
involved in the unfinished inspection of the regime
before the toppling of Saddam, is very much interested
in reinstating itself as a credible enforcer of nuclear
non-proliferation worldwide.
All of this
perfectly dovetails the strategic purpose of the US and
Israel. However, neither side is likely to rule out a
military option. After Bush's "reinventing the wheel" in
the use of preemption, Israel is champing at the bit at
the prospects of an encore performance in carrying out
preemptive attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities. In
fact, it made a point of publicizing the purchase of
bunker-bursting bombs from the US. The only obstacle for
now is whether Bush himself becomes a victim of regime
change on November 2.
It is rather preposterous
to assume that Iran is not interested in having a
diplomatic resolution of this conflict. The most
troubling aspect of this issue is the increasingly
vibrant polity of Iran, where a number of groups are
pushing their respective agendas about Iran's nuclear
future. Because the US does not regard Iran as a
democracy, it might not be too sympathetic to the entire
dynamics of those pulsating debates that are currently
taking place inside Iran on this matter.
Closing observations Still, looking
at the entire subject from Iran's perspectives, it has
to keep in mind that it has already acquired the nuclear
know-how. It will prove or disprove nothing by going
ahead with the option of developing nuclear weapons in
the near future. The biggest impediment in the way of
Iran's emergence as a nuclear power is the US. So it
might be a wise move to let the whole controversy die
down and implement the EU-3 agreement for now. In the
long run, some sort of a rapprochement must be reached
between the US and Iran through direct contacts. After
all, the chief worry of Iran related to its security is
a potential preemptive attack on its nuclear facilities
or even an invasion from the lone superpower. But a
dialogue between the two is likely to bring them close
to achieving their respective purposes: a non-nuclear
Iran (that US prefers) and no fear of attack from the US
(that Iran wants). Democratic presidential challenger
Senator John Kerry is all in favor of such a dialogue.
Even if Bush is re-elected, considering that he will get
wise as a result of his adventurism in Iraq, and
assuming that he will be looking at the kind of legacy
he has to leave behind - as all US presidents do in
their second term - the US and Iran might still start
a long-awaited process of direct talks regarding,
inter alia, the nuclear future of Iran. Just one more
thing: Israel would only dare to attack Iranian
nuclear facilities if it were given a green light from the Bush
administration. The post-September 11 environment does
not leave even Israel completely free of the outermost
bounds of what is acceptable in Washington.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
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