The Gordian Knot of the
nuclear crisis By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
With less than two weeks to go
before the 30-day deadline set by the United
Nations Security Council for the International
Atomic Energy Agency chief to report on Iran's
compliance or non-compliance with the IAEA's
demands, above all a halt to its
uranium-enrichment program, the internal debate in
Iran on the correct response to the escalating
international pressure is intensifying.
One faction associated with former
president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
and led by Hassan Rowhani, the former chief
nuclear negotiator, has lashed out at the hardline
nuclear stance
adopted by President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad and called for a "more balanced
approach".
Rowhani, considered a pragmatic
realist, has expressed concern about the
debilitating consequences for Iran's national
interests should the festering nuclear crisis
further isolate Iran from the rest of the world
and, worse, possibly invite a military
confrontation with the United States, which is
even now threatening to use tactical nuclear
weapons against his country.
The Moscow
meeting of the 5+1 (the UN Security Council's
Permanent Five plus Germany) clearly showed that
there is still no consensus on the next course of
action. But it also revealed a narrowing of
differences in terms of the "urgency of
constructive demands from Iran", to paraphrase
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. For the
moment, Russia has rejected Washington's call for
a complete halt in its nuclear cooperation with
Iran, yet one wonders how Moscow can maintain this
stance if, on the eve of the Group of Eight summit
in St Petersburg a few weeks from now, the
Security Council invokes Chapter VII and calls
Iran's defiance a "threat to international peace
and security".
Doubtless, it would be a
hard sell for President Vladimir Putin and company
with respect to both the Russian people and the
international community. Hence the chances of a
gradual intensification of Russian pressure on
Iran to comply or face the inevitable suspension
of Russia's nuclear cooperation are quite likely.
Iran's national interests and the
nuclear crisis Iran's policy analysts
engaged in threat analysis by and large agree that
the nuclear standoff has dangerous potential and
can inflict serious damage on the country's
national-security interests. One of Iran's main
weaknesses is that it is vulnerable to the
criticism that it cares more for its Islamist
ideological values than for its own purely
national interests. Otherwise, it would not commit
itself so much to the issue of Israel and
Palestinians.
The fact is that
Ahmadinejad's incendiary comments about "wiping
Israel off the map" have given Iran's opponents a
new excuse to attack that country's legal quest to
master the nuclear-fuel cycle independently.
Consequently, should this crisis lead to a
military confrontation, the US and its "coalition
of the willing" would be justified in taking
unilateral action with little worry about a
backlash by the world community.
On the
other hand, the various Iranian opposition groups,
some helped by Uncle Sam, are busy propagating the
notion that the Islamic Republic has sacrificed
its national interests for the sake of its
pan-Islamic dogma and, as the crisis drags on,
this is bound to resonate with more and more
Iranians.
Thus, no matter how seriously
Ahmadinejad tries to sell the nuclear program as a
matter of nationalist pride and global status, the
addition of the confrontational anti-Israel
rhetoric is undermining Iran's national interests
and, as a corollary, the world's willingness to
accede to Iran's legal right to full nuclear
technology.
At the same time, as an
Islamic state, Iran has every right to be
concerned about the continuing nuclear blackmail
of the Muslim Middle East by Israel. For once US
policymakers, who are nowadays branded by certain
voices as hostages to the whims and wishes of
Israel, should factor in Iran's legitimate
concerns and the concerns of other Muslim states
and push vigorously for Israel's denuclearization.
A point typically missed by the Iran
analysts is that it makes sense for an Iran
threatened by a military strike by Israel and/or
the US on its nuclear facilities to focus on
Israel and express solidarity with the Palestinian
people. That gives greater depth to Iran's sphere
of influence, stretching from Western Afghanistan
to southern and central Iraq, to the Shi'ite
communities throughout the Persian Gulf region, to
Lebanon and, since Hamas' victory, the occupied
territories of Palestine.
Yet what makes
sense at one geopolitical level does not make so
much sense from the perspective of Iran's overall
national interests, currently imperiled by the
United States' planned attacks should diplomacy
fail. In other words, a more sober analysis of
Iran's national interests is called for, which may
lead to a policy revision by Ahmadinejad and his
circle of policymakers.
Indeed,
Ahmadinejad and the factions behind him have much
to lose in their current game of "nuclear poker"
if the crisis eventually leads to Iran's
international isolation and once again turns the
country into the international pariah it was
during the 1980s, a hole the government has tried
to climb out of for some 15 years.
While
basking in the crisis windfall of higher oil
prices, Iran is today still suffering economically
from the lack of foreign investment, capital
flight and a war-preparation economy siphoning off
precious resources. Even Iran's burgeoning
oil-and-gas industry is hurt by the decline of
foreign investment in light of the industry's dire
need for billions of dollars of investment to
upgrade equipment.
In addition to the
economic interests, Iran's national security and
its territorial integrity are also threatened by
the various reports, including investigative
reporter Seymour Hersh's controversial piece in
The New Yorker, that the US has already dispatched
teams to sow sedition among Iran's minorities.
This news alone translates into closer scrutiny of
the minority groups by the government, in turn
causing their political alienation from the
government.
Signs of Iranian
accommodation In his recent one-day trip to
Iran, IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei was
unable to persuade Iran to stop the enrichment
program, yet his trip was not altogether a failure
either, as Iran showed greater willingness to
cooperate to resolve remaining "outstanding
questions". Moreover, on the eve of the meeting of
deputy foreign ministers of the 5+1 in Moscow,
Iran dispatched a high-level group that met with
the representatives of EU-3 (Germany, France and
Britain), reportedly offering a new proposal.
A key element in the proposal, as stated
by the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, is
to establish an international consortium for
nuclear-fuel production inside Iran. That is why
Iran has asked the European Union to participate
in the planned expansion of its hitherto limited
enrichment program.
This proposal, modeled
after the Dutch-led consortium Urenko, which keeps
key aspects of its advanced T-21 centrifuge
technology in a "black box", was recently put
forth by Geof Forden and John Thomson in their
articles in Jane's Defense Weekly and the
Financial Times. Unfortunately, the US and EU have
so far completely ignored this proposal, which has
been declared "workable" by certain IAEA
officials. This is yet another serious indication
of the lack of interest on Washington's part to
see a mutually satisfactory resolution of the
crisis, despite the pretensions otherwise.
Again, Washington feels justified in
rejecting any proposal that would enable, even as
a slight chance, the Iranians to continue their
march toward mastery of the nuclear-fuel cycle, at
least as long as Iran continues to be a threat to
Israel.
At this point a crucial question
arises: Can Iran possibly stand back from its
official position of seeking the elimination of
Israel? One obvious answer is that Iran cannot
possibly continue with its nuclear program
unhindered by possible US aerial bombardment so
long as Tehran's threat to Israel remains intact.
Another answer is that, as seen strictly from the
perspective of Iran's national interests, the
over-commitment to the Palestinian cause is
introducing rather exorbitant side-effects that
may eventually deprive the government of its
domestic legitimacy if Iran's national interests
are seen as being sacrificed for the sake of
religious dogmas.
Henceforth, no matter
how assiduously the government negotiators work to
assure the outside world that their nuclear
actions are legal, transparent and within the
parameters of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, and "objectively" guaranteed as peaceful,
the Western perception of Tehran's government as
almost entirely committed to radical Islamist
norms and dead set on destroying Israel will
continue to neutralize those efforts. This is the
real Gordian Knot of Iran's nuclear crisis.
Breaking the Gordian
knot Strictly speaking, Iran is not
endangered by Israel's nuclear might, given
Israel's distance and its confrontation with the
nearer Arab world. Thus, unlike Iraq's old program
of weapons of mass destruction, which was partly
rationalized as a deterrence against Iran and
partly against the "Zionist threat", Iran is not
in a position where it would feel a compulsion to
go nuclear in response to Israel's arsenal.
Nor does Iran feel the same pressure from
any of the other nuclear-armed states in its
vicinity, such as Pakistan, whose warheads are
almost certainly aimed at its arch-enemy, India.
With Iraq's theoretical nuclear threat neutralized
since 2003, Iran's only legitimate worry is the
overwhelming might of the US. In theory that can
be addressed by persuading Washington to step back
from its messianic, self-imposed goal of regime
change in Iran and instead reach a modus
vivendi with the Islamic Republic.
Such a possibility is now on the horizon
in light of the impending US-Iran dialogue over
Iraq, which, according to Rafsanjani, can be
connected to the "bigger talks".
Meanwhile, as the Iranian political
factions debate among themselves the pros and cons
of the various options to exit the nuclear crisis,
another red line may need to be crossed, one that
is ideologically rather painful, yet in the
national interest - that is, the official line on
the destruction of the State of Israel.
Considered a sellout or "betrayal", the
push for softening Iran's position against Israel
has a wealth of opponents, but as of now has not
yet been seriously debated as a viable option.
What is needed for that to happen, however, is to
engage in sober threat analysis and the
calculation of long-term risks to Iran's national
interests, including its peaceful quest to acquire
nuclear technology, caused by the continuation of
the present approach toward Israel.
Already, various Iranian top officials
have stated publicly that Iran has not "threatened
any member state of the United Nations", even
though this is contradicted almost every day by
the pronouncements, led by Ahmadinejad, that
Israel is on its way to being "eliminated". What
Tehran desperately needs is to clarify where its
real interests lie. Is it defined by abiding by
the UN Charter, which demands that Iranians
respect the existence of Israel, or is it an
unflinching commitment to wipe out Israel?
The current double voice simply
perpetuates the belief by the outside world that
Iran's real policy is to help the struggle for the
destruction of State of Israel, a widespread
perception that may not be quite accurate with
respect to Iran's security policies and priorities
but, nonetheless, is sufficiently entrenched in
the world's consciousness to provide validity to a
future Western assault on Iran's nuclear
facilities.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi,
PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He is also author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating
Facts Versus Fiction.
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