A way to stave off Iran
sanctions By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Indonesian president Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono is in Tehran this week, enhancing
Iran-Indonesia bilateral relations, particularly
in the economic and energy fields. Yet in light of
Indonesia's historic vote of abstention on United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1803, which
imposed a third round of sanctions on Iran, his
trip has a symbolic importance that transcends
Tehran-Jakarta ties: it touches directly on the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
As the head of
the largest Muslim nation in the world which
traditionally has played an important role in the
formation and evolution of the NAM, Yudhoyono has
already jolted Western nations opposed to Iran's
nuclear program by ending the consensus on Iran at
the Security Council and thus putting South
Africa, Vietnam and Libya, who voted for the
sanctions resolutions
irrespective of this initial
objection, on the defensive.
Since the
adoption of Resolution 1803, South African leaders
and their press have agonized over how to justify
the country's vote at the Security Council, given
the fact that South Africa's representative at the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Abdul
Minty, has criticized the resolution for failing
to take into account progress made in resolving
questions about Iran's nuclear program. Minty is
worth quoting at length:
South Africa furthermore regrets
that the adoption of the new resolution could
apparently not be postponed until the [IAEA]
board had the opportunity to consider the matter
... This creates the impression that the
verification work of the agency and the
important progress that has been made is
virtually irrelevant to the co-sponsors of the
resolution.
At last week's meeting of
the board of governors of the IAEA in Vienna,
South Africa and other NAM members issued a strong
communique that reiterated NAM's principled
support for Iran's right to nuclear technology,
echoing the NAM's Havana declaration of September
2006 that called for the resolution of Iran's
nuclear issue "within the IAEA framework".
Without doubt, NAM's influence was
instrumental, together with Russia, in nipping in
the bud a European initiative for an Iran
sanctions resolution by the IAEA. Regarding the
latter, suffice to say that the Five plus One
countries (Russia, the US, Britain, France and
China plus Germany) had blessed the IAEA work plan
with Iran and the so-called "alleged weaponization
studies" were not among the "outstanding
questions", as pointed out by some NAM
representatives at the IAEA meeting.
Still, what is seriously lacking is a
similar NAM coordination at the UN Security
Council that would close the cognitive and policy
gap between behavior at the IAEA and the Security
Council that has put South Africa and Vietnam at
odds with themselves.
According to Graham
Allison, a leading US nuclear expert at Harvard
University, countries like India and South Africa
have voted against Iran "not because Mr Bush
persuaded them. The reason is that they are
watching Iran's actions and words and they may
think Iran is probably serious about a nuclear
weapons program. And they are trying to signal to
Iran that it is a bad idea." [1] That is not
exactly accurate.
There is absolutely no
"word" from Iran that even indirectly lends itself
to this interpretation and both the recent US
intelligence report on Iran, confirming that Iran
is not developing nuclear bombs, as well as Iran's
nuclear transparency verified by the IAEA's latest
report, discount the stated justifications for
South Africa and other NAM member states' votes
for further sanctions against Iran.
For
sure, these countries harm their own image and
lose face internationally by acting one way at the
UN Security Council and quite another at the IAEA,
reflecting a contradictory approach toward the one
and same issue, thus also weakening NAM's clout
and prestige as well.
Lest we forget,
Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who
founded the NAM in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955,
together with Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito
and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, referred
to NAM as a counter-hegemonic "movement of nations
which objects to the lining up for war purposes".
Since its inception, NAM has embraced a
number of international economic, social,
political and humanitarian issues, including
North-South issues, disarmament, apartheid,
Palestinian and other national liberation
movements, assuring its relevance and input on the
global stage.
Yet, in today's post-Cold
War context, unfortunately because of the schizoid
behavior of certain NAM countries with respect to
Iran's nuclear crisis, the entire NAM is
simultaneously both eclipsed and illuminated by
this crisis. Unless NAM leaders redress the
shortcomings of their actions discussed above,
their movement will suffer due to the
disharmonious diplomatic music played by its key
members - whose double-speak conveys the negative
impression of caving in to the coercive diplomacy
of certain Western governments.
But, with
the unmistakable entanglement of the Iran nuclear
issue with the larger issue of NAM's initial elan
with regard to Western hegemony, and the
contemporary issues of North-South competition and
Western intolerance of any "challenge" from the
South, neither NAM as a whole nor any of its
participant members can afford complacency on a
major international crisis riveting international
institutions today.
Rather, they must
redouble their present efforts to make sure that
the West plays by the rules, instead of
hypocritical double standards and current efforts
to act as gatekeepers on who gets the nuclear
technology and what aspects of it.
Insisting on the need for leveling the
nuclear playing field, pursuant to the articles of
the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), while
focusing on the pressing need for genuine steps
toward disarmament and nuclear-free zones around
the world, this is a top NAM priority today that
goes to the heart of NAM's purpose and vision -
for a less hierarchical, multipolar world order.
With their two-third majority at the UN,
the NAM states have an opportunity to dismantle
the present wall between non-proliferation and
disarmament, and to expose Western hypocrisy, for
example, on the part of the French and others,
which use the pretext of "rogue states" in the
South to shy away from disarmament and, instead,
to engage in more proliferation at home and even
abroad.
As stated, the Iran nuclear crisis
represents a litmus test for NAM that the movement
can utilize to upgrade itself. But it can do so
only if it pushes for the following:
A more horizontal process at the IAEA.
A more "hands-on" approach to the negotiation
process at both the UN and the IAEA.
More energetic pressure, and linkage, between
the Iran nuclear standoff and NPT norms and IAEA
verification guidelines.
More vocal opposition to the current efforts
to supplant the NPT and IAEA standards by
arbitrary standards set at the UN Security
Council.
What is needed is nothing short
of a noticeable departure from "business as usual"
that, as stated, has had deleterious consequences
for the legitimacy and coordinated mechanisms of
the NAM as a whole, and its persistent struggle
for a just world order.
Note 1. Interview with Graham T
Allison, Iranian Diplomacy, March 9, 2008
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, and is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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