Tehran teeters on the path to
war By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The United Nations Security Council's new
resolution on Iran gives Tehran until the end of
August to suspend all uranium-enrichment-related
activities or face the prospect of international
sanctions, an ultimatum instantly denounced by
Iran as illegal and unjustified. This means that
Iran now faces a double crisis, given Israel's
military onslaught against its strategic ally in
Lebanon, Hezbollah.
Thus, contrary to what
has become an article of faith in the Western
media, about Iran somehow gaining influence due to
the war in Lebanon, the exact opposite may be in
the works, particularly if Israel's latest claim
of destroying most of Hezbollah's rockets turns
out to be true.
For the moment, the fog of
war disallows anything more than a
provisional conclusion with
respect to how this war impacts Iran, its external
relations and nets of alliances in the region and
beyond.
The uncertainties of war, ie,
whether or not it will culminate in a quagmire or
decisive Israeli victory subsequently bolstered by
an international buffer force that would prevent
Hezbollah's future role as a deterrent shield for
Iran in the event of a foreign attack on Iran's
nuclear facilities, give rise to different
scenarios, each of which contains a certain plus
and minus for Iran.
One scenario, hoped
for by Iran, is that a ceasefire will be put in
place whereby Hezbollah can claim victory, after
having withstood the ferocious bombardments and
the ground attacks (which it has defended against
rather admirably so far).
But given
Israel's unwillingness to halt the war even for 48
hours, after the massacre of civilians in Qana
giving rise to the United States' premature
statement that Israel had consented to the
temporary halt, clearly shows Israel's
determination to prevent even a tiny yet tangible
step toward this scenario. It is pushing instead
for a clear and unambiguous victory aimed at
Hezbollah's military disintegration.
While
most likely Israel will not get its ultimate wish
granted, and will ultimately have to settle with a
much-diminished Hezbollah at the end of the
military campaign, nonetheless its current efforts
are dealing a huge blow to an important edifice of
Iran's deterrent strategy.
Only by
resorting to an inverse logic can we possibly
consider as a gain what is clearly a net loss for
Iran, seeing how Iran will be prevented in the
future from counting on Hezbollah to strike back
at Israel in the aftermath of a showdown with
either Israel or the United States.
It is,
therefore, hardly surprising that there are strong
voices of concern within Iran's ruling
establishment, some claiming the war in Lebanon as
a victory for Israel, with serious negative
ramifications for Iran's "national security and
even her territorial sovereignty", to quote Ali
Montaseri, an Iranian penning in Baztab.com, a
website closely linked to President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad.
Another commentator, Seyed
Salaman Safavi, has similarly written, "If Israel
triumphs in this battle, not only the nuclear
dossier, but also the territorial integrity of
Iran will be jeopardized." Increasingly, the
military leaders of Iran, particularly in the
Revolutionary Guard, can be heard warning of
Iran's direct entanglement in the conflict. Led by
the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, they have denounced the United States'
call for Hezbollah's disarmament and any North
Atlantic Treaty Organization role in Lebanon,
calling instead for an immediate ceasefire, return
of refugees and exchange of prisoners.
At
the same time, Iran is not blind to the strategic
setback caused by the asymmetrical war in Lebanon,
vesting its hopes on Hezbollah's ability to deter
the invading Israeli army or, at a minimum, to
drag the enemy into a protracted guerrilla warfare
reminiscent of the 1982-2000 campaign that
culminated in Israel's departure - the "day of
infamy" in Israel's history, per an editorial in
the Jerusalem Post back then.
Meanwhile,
the question of Syria, and the current US efforts
to wrest Damascus away from Tehran, is also
disquieting Tehran, dampened at the same time both
by the United States' and Israel's inability to
offer anything seriously tangible on the table to
Syria; as well as by Syria's own security concerns
reinforcing its alliance with Tehran.
Thus
so many of Iran's moves and counter-moves are
linked to developments in the Lebanese theater of
conflict, and here fears and opportunities go
hand-in-hand.
Whereas a stalemate or even
quagmire may benefit Iran's position with respect
to the nuclear crisis, the obverse possibility of
Hezbollah's substantial weakening, not to mention
the squeeze on Damascus, will translate into a
more vulnerable Iran confronted with the distinct
possibility that Phase 1 of a multi-stage conflict
with the US and Israel has already started in
Lebanon and Gaza.
On a related note,
historian Immanuel Wallerstein has predicted that
Israel's military gambit in Lebanon will prove to
be a "catastrophic blunder" paralleling the United
States' predicament in Iraq. This is a distinct
possibility, if the net of Israel's ground
invasion expands, as it has almost on a daily
basis, one that Iran is banking on to happen. But
the chances are reasonably high that Israel,
learning from the past, will ultimately frustrate
Tehran's hopes by making it a limited war followed
by an international buffer that would tie the
hands of whatever fighting was left in Hezbollah.
What is to be done? On Sunday,
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made a
last-ditch attempt to forestall the Security
Council resolution on Iran's nuclear program by
threatening that the international package of
incentives currently under consideration would no
longer be considered if the said resolution were
adopted.
Faced with the grim prospect of
UN sanctions in the months ahead, Iran is now
grappling with one of the most important decisions
of its post-revolutionary government.
The
package contains several "positive aspects", per
the admission of Iran's chief negotiator, Ali
Larijani, and Iran may blame itself in the future
if things turn for the worse and the opportunity
to seize on the package of incentives, such as the
offer of nuclear assistance, entry to the World
Trade Organization, and the like, is lost.
Certainly, Iran's economy would benefit enormously
if the incentives were fully implemented.
But where will the road lead if Iran
rejects the proposal and the UN's ultimatum? Most
likely to a new round of Iran's global isolation,
something dreaded by nearly all of its top
politicians. Can it be avoided? Can Iran somehow
come up with a middle answer that would reflect a
new flexible response? In terms of this it would
agree to a "voluntary and non-legally binding"
suspension of its sensitive nuclear activities
short of appeasing the other side entirely.
And if so, what would this middle path
look like and, more important, would it be enough?
As the debate rages on inside Iran, which
had until now leaned more and more in favor of
rejecting the US-led demand to give up its budding
nuclear fuel cycle, the discussions have now
focused on national-security interests and
concerns, in light of the conflict in Lebanon.
In fact, privately some Iranian
politicians consider a near-future attack on Iran
all but a foregone conclusion, and are trying to
determine what the appropriate (preemptive)
response should be.
Their growing security
anxiety is partly fed by the realization that the
Western governments and media have succeeded to
some extent in pinning the conflict in Lebanon on
Iran, by accusing it of masterminding Hezbollah's
"reckless adventure" of July 11, when its fighters
crossed the blue line and attacked an Israeli
patrol.
Yet given the lethal weight of
Israel's massive and disproportionate response,
Iran cannot afford to risk its national interests
by following a hardline policy that would pave the
way to the nightmare military-confrontation
scenario.
The voices of moderation are
currently heard in tandem with the hawkish voices,
calling for Iran's exit from the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and direct military
involvement against Israel in the region, and it
is too soon to tell which voices will prevail.
What is certain, however, is that there is
no magic solution to the double crisis, and every
scenario has pros and cons, which are hard to
pre-calculate in the midst of a regional conflict
clearly not yet even half over.
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 also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review. He is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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