THE
ROVING EYE The old lovers' nuclear
tango Commentary by Pepe
Escobar
The already frail nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty was bombed to oblivion
last week by US President George W Bush -
immolated On the altar of a strategic relationship
with India to counteract the emergence of China.
Meanwhile, the US threatens to punish Iran because
the Islamic Republic is a full member of the NPT.
This is the (surrealist) way geopolitics works.
Bush in India imperiously buried all
international norms - enshrined by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
NPT
and the United Nations. He proclaimed himself as
the nuclear emperor - the only one who decides who
has the right to nuclear power and who doesn't.
Defending the Indian deal, Bush said that
nuclear power was a renewable energy source (which
it's not) and that the deal would help to
alleviate global demand for crude oil. The Iranian
leadership also argues it needs nuclear power to
alleviate its own dependence on crude oil. This is
the way geopolitical enemies coincide.
It
takes a world-weary aristocrat to put things in
perspective. In the remarkable Blood & Oil
(Random House), exiled Prince Manucher
Farmanfarmaian of the Qajar royal family (which
ruled Persia for 140 years before the Pahlavi
dynasty) writes that the long, lurid drama between
the United States and Iran "is a tango between two
old lovers who now only know how to face each
other with knives in their teeth". The knives are
out and may soon reach the UN Security Council.
Farmanfarmaian knows the tango by heart.
Just after World War I, his second cousin - the
last of the Qajar line - was the first shah to
fall under the faded British Empire (the British
wanted a dictator). The British then chose Reza
Shah - whom our aristocrat wickedly describes as
"a soldier who had worked for my father". Then the
American empire via the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) toppled nationalist prime minister
Mohammad Mossadegh (a cousin of Farmanfarmaian's
father), which led to great friend of America Shah
Reza Pahlavi's reign and his toppling by ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, who dubbed the former American
friend "the Great Satan". No wonder that since
1979 the former lovers have been at each other's
throats.
The Natanz unfinished
melody The nuclear tango is worthy of a
soundtrack by Astor Piazzolla. IAEA chief Mohamed
ElBaradei, the lead singer, is now certain that
the imbroglio cannot be solved until next week.
Not so fast, said spurned lover Condoleezza Rice,
the US secretary of state. Washington's strategy
is more military marching band than tango. It
regards the IAEA board meeting convened this
Monday in Vienna as a mere formality; the only
thing that matters is immediately to turn the
matter to the UN Security Council.
Not so
fast, say the Russians, experienced former players
in the Great Game in Central Asia alongside the
British Empire, now interfering with the tango
with a loud Russian techno beat. Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov is on Mission Impossible in
Washington, meeting with Rice and Bush and trying
to convince them that a last-minute Russian
proposal is the only peaceful way out.
A
Belgian diplomat close to the EU-3 (France,
Germany and Britain) negotiations in Brussels has
confirmed to Asia Times Online that the Europeans
knew about the Russian proposal since last Friday.
The proposal was discussed by the Russians and
Iranians in Tehran.
"The Russians offered
something we [in Europe] were not able to agree
on. What the Russians describe as 'limited
research activities' by Iran means that the
Iranians don't do industrial research and don't
produce enriched uranium at their plant in Natanz
for at least seven years, maybe nine or 10."
Instead, Russia and Iran, in a joint
venture, would produce enriched uranium in Russia,
monitored by the IAEA, to generate electricity.
The Iranian press is reporting that Iran would
agree to negotiate the suspension of
industrial-scale enrichment for two years, not
nine or 10, and as long as it can go on with its
own nuclear research. ElBaradei himself recognized
that the uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz is
"the sticking point". But for the Bush
administration, the Russian proposal is still
anathema.
Washington wants by all means a
"presidential statement" (a degree lower than a
resolution) exclusively focused on the negative
(my former lover has been cheating, now it must
behave). But the whole point is that the IAEA
inspectors have not found any proof that Iran is
violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So
Washington's obsession on Iran being officially
reprimanded on the world stage does reek of tango
betrayal. European diplomats know there's no
support for a UN resolution. Russia and China have
already made it clear. The Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) has released a statement saying the
involvement of other UN organizations (that would
mean the Security Council) is not welcomed. NAM is
in favor of diplomacy within the confines of the
IAEA.
Iranians see the most important
points of the IAEA report as Paragraph 53 ("All
the declared nuclear material has been accounted
for") and Paragraph 44 ("The enrichment process at
Natanz is covered by agency safeguards containment
and surveillance measures"). Thus the Iranian view
that ElBaradei's concerns are political, not
technical; there is no legal or technical basis
for the dossier to be referred to the Security
Council. The Iranians also point out that the IAEA
spent 27 years clearing up the nuclear
"ambiguities" of Japan. Compared with that, three
years investigating Iran is not much.
The
"presidential statement" sought by Washington
would mean in practice that Iran has to give up -
with nothing in return - all of its rights under
the terms of the NPT. Once again, the IAEA report
- after three years of investigation - told the
agency's 35 board members it has not found "any
diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons
or other nuclear explosive devices".
The
overall perception in Iran is that the nation will
never accept being humiliated as a pariah -
especially when there is no evidence that it is
deceiving the IAEA. Americans and some Europeans
would do well to study some history. This is a
proud nation, according to Farmanfarmaian, "that
rebuffed the Romans in the 3rd century and took
the Emperor Valerian prisoner, a country that
redefined the Arabs' Islam and made it its own".
Killer instincts The US$250
billion question (the cost of the occupation of
Iraq so far, and counting) is how Iran's possible
humiliation on the world stage can be engineered
by the Bush administration as the first step
toward another "shock and awe" attack.
Bush himself has warned on the record that
a military strike "is not off the table". Both the
CIA and the State Department are in favor of
applying a lot of pressure all of the time - but
no air strikes or Special Forces on the ground, at
least not in the immediate future. The Pentagon
wants a military-enforced embargo.
Significantly, the most hawkish of hawks
had to be the US ambassador to the UN, John
Bolton. In a speech, not by accident, at the
annual convention of the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel US
lobby, he said Iran's nuclear program could be
"taken out".
So a classic
old-lovers-with-knifes-in-their-teeth tango keeps
rambling on. Now it has expanded to a tango for
two couples: the US plus the EU-3 on one side of
the dance floor, and Russia and ElBaradei on the
other.
There's some possibility of
intermingling as Germany, part of the EU-3, has
show signs of agreeing with experimental
enrichment in Iran. Nobody - the IAEA, the UN,
NAM, the EU-3, the Muslim world, the world at
large - wants to see blood on the dance floor. If
only the former lovers would get rid of those
knives.
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