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SPEAKING
FREELY
Cooling the rhetoric on Tehran
By John F Robertson
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
Each passing month
brings more accusations and superheated rhetoric
from US and Israeli officials about the alleged
threat posed by Iran's drive to develop nuclear
capability. The Iranian regime continues to insist
that the project to enrich uranium aims only to
provide fuel for nuclear reactors that will be
used in the peaceful (and, according to
international agreements, entirely legitimate)
pursuit of enhancing energy production for a
nation struggling to provide electrical power and
more jobs for its economically depressed
population.
To date, international
anti-proliferation agencies have yet to find
conclusive evidence of nuclear weapons-related
development. When confronted by demands that they
desist, Iran declares that as a sovereign nation
it has every right to develop a capability to
enrich uranium.
Expectedly, the US and
Israel scoff at the notion that a charter member
of George W Bush's "axis of evil" might harbor
peaceful intentions. State and Defense Department
officials - as well as their hawkish,
protect-Israel-at-all-costs allies in the media -
rail against the sinister intentions, even
existential threat from Iran, as well as against
more diplomacy-minded members of the European
Union, and would like nothing more than to force
the issue to the UN Security Council and the
possible imposition of sanctions against Iran.
Israel, meanwhile, has made it abundantly
clear that it cannot accept a nuclear-weapons
capability on the part of a regime that it alleges
to be its most dangerous and implacable enemy. The
currently back-burnered scandal involving Pentagon
officials possibly passing along to Israel, via
the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington,
secret information concerning US policy regarding
Iran surely highlights the sense of urgency on the
Israeli side. The possibility of a pre-emptive
Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear
facilities, a la the strike against the Iraqi
Osirak reactor in 1981, remains very much in the
cards, as reflected in the inauguration-day
remarks of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Remembering that the Bush administration
catastrophically blew it in their "slam-dunk"
intelligence that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed a
serious nuclear threat, we should bear in mind
that the evidence of Iranian progress toward
nuclear weapons, when examined more
dispassionately, is nebulous at best, and is
likely being overhyped - among other reasons, to
keep an easily manipulated American public focused
on another "bad guy" in the "war on terror".
Whether the US cares for its system of government
or not, can it legitimately fault Iran's leaders
for applying their nation's resources and
scientific abilities to develop nuclear energy to
promote economic development, especially when
efforts are being made to monitor that program
according to accepted standards?
And what
if Iran does indeed hope eventually to develop
nuclear-weapons capability? The US was, after all,
the first country to develop nuclear weaponry;
remains the only country ever to have used it in
war; and even now is committed to developing a new
generation of "bunker-buster" "tactical" nuclear
weapons. (As noted by the eminent historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr, in the New York Review of Books,
the director of the International Atomic Energy
Agency recently compared the US to "some who have
continued to dangle a cigarette from their mouth
and tell everyone else not to smoke".) Israel is
widely known to possess an extremely potent
nuclear capability (which it steadfastly refuses
to make public) and can legitimately be counted as
a major nuclear power. Yet the US and Israel feel
entitled to thwart Iran's nuclear program, even at
the risk of all-out war.
Understandably,
Iran feels threatened by what bodes to become a
long-term US military presence in Iraq and
Afghanistan (as well as by a Bush administration
that has spoken often and loudly of its desire for
regime change there and elsewhere throughout the
Middle East), as well as by a hostile,
US-supported Sunni fundamentalist monarchy in
Saudi Arabia. The Iranian people remain acutely
aware of the history of disastrous US meddling in
their affairs, beginning with the Central
Intelligence Agency-wrought coup that brought down
the popular nationalist government of Muhammad
Mossadegh in 1953 and installed the repressive
Shah Pahlavi as the US's Cold War proxy - memories
of which surely played a major role in the Shah's
overthrow by the Islamic revolution of 1979. Iran
today is a nation reasserting its pride in its
millennia-long history as a fount of impressive
civilizations and dynamic monotheistic religious
movements.
It also sees itself as one of
the few Islamic Middle Eastern nations strong
enough to stand up to the US and Israel at a time
when many Arab nations are in disarray and largely
dictated to by US and Israeli strategic interests.
That Iran might regard acquiring its own nuclear
deterrent as both necessary and prudent should
hardly be surprising. It is also, given Iran's
geostrategic position, eminently justifiable.
In a recent issue of The American
Conservative, the long-time Middle East reporter
Claude Salhani outlined the grim scenario of a
"Four Day War" that begins with an Israeli strike
against the Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr;
spirals into Iranian retaliation against US forces
in Iraq, Hezbollah attacks against Israel from
Lebanon, and a coup in Pakistan; and culminates in
the horrific specter of Pakistani pilots with
nuclear weapons flying suicide missions against
Israel's cities.
Meanwhile, a recent Pew
survey revealed (or, perhaps more accurately,
confirmed; a revelation entails an element of
surprise) that the US has never been more hated
across the globe, and especially in the Arab
world.
It's time for US and Israeli
officials to try some deep breathing and slow
exhaling, drop the rhetoric about Iranian evil
intentions, soberly reconsider some policies and
presumptions, and try to build some bridges.
Iran's leadership has on several occasions
expressed willingness to engage in more dialogue
with the US. (Indeed, not long ago the head of
Iran's National Security Council suggested that
the US stop threatening Iran and instead try more
reasoned and reasonable dialogue.) Iran poses no
serious threat to the US, nor are its intentions
toward the US demonstrably dangerous. (Indeed, US
oil corporations would like nothing better than
the chance to build such a bridge toward Iran's
abundant petroleum resources.)
On the
other hand, a poll conducted as recently as 2003
indicated that most Iranians wanted closer ties
with the US, and it is well known that,
notwithstanding all the public imprecations
against the "Great Satan", Iranians have long
admired and envied many aspects of American
democracy and culture.
Israel, meanwhile,
just might find Iran willing to tone down the
shrillness of its rhetoric against it if Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, for once, were to take more
action to actually warrant Bush's characterization
of him as a "man of peace". Completing with all
possible speed the planned evacuation of Jewish
settlements from the Gaza Strip would be a good
first step. For Sharon or some future Israeli
leader to follow that by removing settlements from
the West Bank, demolishing the "security wall" and
embracing an Israeli responsibility in helping to
create a viable state of Palestine would promote a
dynamic that might indeed create the long-awaited
"new Middle East".
Iran's steps in
enriching uranium and generating nuclear power
place it on the path to energy and economic
security. That path need not lead, as Sharon would
now have us believe, to nuclear Armageddon for the
state of Israel and the Jewish people.
John Robertson teaches ancient
and modern Middle Eastern history at Central
Michigan University.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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