Iran sees hope in war of
words By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
You know something is amiss
when Central Intelligence Agency director Michael
Hayden defends the recent US intelligence finding
on Iran, that claims Tehran stopped its nuclear
weapon program in 2003, and, in the same breath,
alleges Iran has a "nuclear weapons drive".
Although in sharp contrast with recent statements
by Director of National Intelligence Michael
McConnell, who is seeking damage control by saying
that the NIE report he supervised should have put
it differently, Hayden's "double-speak" at least
has the protean value of neutralizing the
anti-Iran war drive led by Vice President Dick
Cheney, who in his recent tour of the Middle East
stated unequivocally that Iran is enriching
uranium to "weapons grade". There is no empirical
support for Cheney's claim, that puts him at odds
with the various International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) reports on Iran
that
consistently cite low-grade
enrichment on Iran's part, ie, about 4%, that is
fully monitored by the IAEA's robust inspection
regime. In comparison, Hayden's carefully-chosen
vocabulary, emphasizing Iran's tendency or "drive"
to be more precise, has the advantage of heating
up the pot of allegations against Iran without
necessarily bringing it to boiling point.
That is the likely decision of the next US
president, who must choose between stark
alternatives toward Iran, as many US think-tanks
are now churning out reports on the Iran and
Middle East priorities of the next occupier of the
Oval Office. Meanwhile, the recent IAEA report,
citing slow Iranian progress in installing
cascades of its centrifuges, acts as yet another
brake on Iran-bashing, by highlighting the fact
that, contrary to some Israeli and
neo-conservative claims, Iran is nowhere near the
"point of no return".
There is still a
great amount of time "left for diplomacy", to use
the common catchphrase in Western capitals. Iran's
reported difficulties with its old P-1 centrifuges
and its bold, new attempt with the more advanced
P-2/IR-2 centrifuges, have raised questions about
the wisdom of devoting so much of the its
scientific resources to the enrichment program,
when other aspects of Iran's nuclear program could
well benefit from the diversion of those
resources.
That is a question that,
perhaps, could become paramount the closer next
year's Iranian presidential elections come. After
all, whatever rightful national pride there is in
mastering the nuclear fuel cycle, the light-years
gap between Iran's P-1 and advanced European or
American centrifuges reminds one not so much of
Iran's technological progress but rather of its
lagging behind. Iran's behavior is not dissimilar
to the Cubans priding themselves on cobbling
together 1950s foreign vehicles.
The real
pride rests in an effective closing of the
relative gaps, and it is precisely here where the
down side of Iran's singular emphasis on the
enrichment program deserves attention. (Especially
as this is done to the detriment of other
dimensions of its nuclear program, geared to
address the nation's power grid, a necessity for
economic progress.) This warrants consideration of
recent media reports of the US taking issue with
two Russian institutes, subsidized by the US,
which are involved with the Bushehr nuclear power
plant in Iran.
US officials opposed to
Bushehr have no legal ground to stand on, given
that the United Nations Security Council has
exempted Bushehr from any sanctions and, as
repeatedly stated by Russian officials, has given
Russia the green light to proceed with the
completion of the much-delayed power plant. In
addition, as pointed out by Iranian Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in a recent letter to
the UN secretary general, the UN Security Council
has failed to take into account the successful
resolution of the so-called "outstanding
questions" that were for a long time the prime
reasons for the US's and its allies' allegations
of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
Mottaki has dismissed some US information,
much of it taken from a laptop computer of a
"deceased person", and has called for sanctions on
those imposing sanctions on Iran. The Security
Council recently paved the way for a third round
of sanctions on Iran over its uranium-enrichment
program. From Tehran's vantage point, in the war
of attrition over its nuclear program being fought
in the arena of world public opinion, the chips
are piling up against the US and its allies.
The Iranians see
more and more nations, not only in the Third
World, becoming convinced of the unfairness of the
UN sanctions. The recent US$10-22 billion
Iran-Swiss gas deal, raising the ire of US
officials without a comparable negative backlash
in Berlin and a number of other European capitals,
points at frustration in the US's policy of
isolating Iran, a main energy hub for Europe.
Signs of a discrete parting of the ways between
the US and the European Union are already
discernible in the controversy about this gas
deal. This is bound to encourage similar deals
between Iran and European gas and oil companies;
the net of sanctions is wearing thin and gaping
holes in it will soon be so huge as to make it
irrelevant.
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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