France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy,
probably deserves the credit for the first serious
setback to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
and his drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Hashemi
Rafsanjani, Adhmadinejad's opponent in the 2006
presidential elections, was chosen last Tuesday to
head the country's Assembly of Experts, the
clerical body that supervises Iran's "supreme
leader", currently Ayatollah Ali Khameini.
This event does not interrupt Tehran's
supposed efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, but
it places a more accommodative figure at
the
center of Iranian politics. European foreign
ministries believe that Rafsanjani offers the last
hope to avoid the use of force to stop Iran's
nuclear program.
Only a week earlier,
Sarkozy brought French policy into alignment with
the United States, warning, "Iran with a nuclear
weapon is not acceptable to me. I want to
underline France's total determination on the
current plan linked to increasing sanctions, but
also being open to talks if Iran chooses to
respect its obligations. This initiative is the
only one that can allow us to escape an
alternative that I can only call catastrophic: an
Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."
America's miserable performance in Iraq
should not obscure the success of Washington's
efforts to align the West against Tehran. Sarkozy
has shifted French policy in a way that leaves
Iran no wiggle room. Although Berlin has been very
quiet in recent months, Rafsanjani's main ties to
the West run through Germany, and it can be
assumed that US President George W Bush is working
closely with Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as
with Sarkozy.
It seems quite probable that
the prospect of a West united in its resolve to
prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, and
resigned to enforcing this by military means,
shifted the balance within Iran's clerical
assembly to the former president. To be sure,
Rafsanjani's return to a position of influence, if
not yet power, embarrasses Ahmadinejad but does
not yet restrain him.
On the contrary, the
volatile Iranian leader warned on Saturday that
countries that oppose his nuclear program are
"racing to hell". But the possibility of a
negotiated solution cannot be excluded. Even
messianic megalomaniacs take notice when they run
head-first into a brick wall. Historians believe
that the German General Staff would have removed
Adolf Hitler from power in 1938 had Britain and
France refused to give him the Sudetenland.
I have long predicted that nothing short
of violence would dissuade Iran from obtaining a
nuclear arsenal, and that the West eventually will
use force. This remains the most likely outcome.
Apart from Sarkozy's shift toward the US stance,
several events during the past week suggest that
matters are coming to a head.
1. Israeli
warplanes appear to have tested Syrian air
defenses in a brief incursion into Syrian airspace
last week. The Turkish press has published photos
of fuel tanks supposedly jettisoned by Israeli
planes, and asked Jerusalem for an explanation.
News accounts suggest that the incursion might
have involved a dry run for an overflight of Syria
en route to Iran.
2. Russian air-defense
technology employed by Syria failed to stop the
Israeli intruders, according to the
Israeli-intelligence-linked site Debka.com,
indicating the vulnerability of Syria and Iran to
an Israeli air attack. The Russians have sold
sophisticated systems to Tehran, to be sure, but
the Iranians are in no position to verify
independently their functionality.
3.
Israeli leaders are warning of a military strike
against Iran, eg, former Mossad head Shabtai
Shavit, who warned on Thursday that nothing but
military force would stop Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons.
4. Washington has
withdrawn its confidence from Mohamed ElBaradei,
head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
after ElBaradei said it was too late to ask Iran
to stop uranium enrichment (which is precisely
what the US demands that it do).
Iran is
dying a slow demographic death, I have shown in
earlier essays, and the rapid exhaustion of its
oil-exporting capacity threatens to plunge the
country into profound crisis during the next five
years. That is why I believe that Iran will roll
the dice on nuclear-arms acquisition, choosing
flight forward rather than surrender to Western
demands. If a united West (with at least the tacit
support of Russia) puts a knife to Tehran's
throat, however, it is still possible that someone
like Rafsanjani might emerge as Iran's Mikhail
Gorbachev, and give up the country's nuclear
ambitions.
As I wrote on May 30:
Broadly speaking, the choices are
two. In the most benign scenario, Iran's
clerical establishment will emulate the Soviet
Union of 1987, when then-prime minister Mikhail
Gorbachev acknowledged that communism had led
Russia to the brink of ruin in the face of
vibrant economic growth among the United States
and its allies. Russia no longer had the
resources to sustain an arms race with the US,
and broke down under the pressure of America's
military buildup. The second choice is an
imperial adventure. In fact, Iran is engaged in
such an adventure, funding and arming Shi'ite
allies from Basra to Beirut, and creating
clients selectively among such Sunnis as Hamas
in Palestine. [1]
Very few analysts
predict war because they like the idea of war (the
prophet Jonah, who was sent to prophesy the
destruction of Nineveh, was one of the
exceptions). The chances of avoiding war with Iran
are slim. It is evident from the past week's
developments, though, that a West united around US
leadership has a far greater chance of enforcing a
peaceful solution than a gang of European
spoilers. Working in close cooperation with China,
the Bush administration has defused the North
Korean nuclear problem; a similar success in Iran
might be unlikely, but cannot be excluded.
Note 1. Why Iran will fight, not
compromise, Asia Times Online.
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