Iran seeks entry to the lion's den
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Iran has started its global lobbying for inclusion as a non-permanent member of
the United Nations Security Council, and in light of its enhanced role in the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Tehran has a decent chance at grabbing a seat for a
two-year period [1]. This is provided it eschews one-sided criticism of the UN
in favor of a more balanced approach that recognizes the council's critical
contributions to world peace and stability.
In his benchmark speech at the 15th NAM ministerial meeting in Tehran on
Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad hit all the right notes that
resonate with the NAM's ideological sensibility, challenging the movement to
adopt an action-oriented approach towards burning global problems, including
big-power
hegemony, reform of the UN and sustainable development. He also urged the NAM
to launch a global front for peace and justice. [2]
This, together with Ahmadinejad sounding conciliatory toward the United States
in an interview with a US television network [3], as well as calling for
greater Iran-India cooperation via the NAM, has bolstered Ahmadinejad's image
as a nuanced global leader. He now appears determined to utilize the NAM-led
multilateralism to reshape and restructure current global distortions in terms
of power hierarchy and ossification of international institutions and regimes
due to manipulations by a few big powers.
Responding positively, various foreign ministers attending the NAM summit,
ranging from Oman to Nicaragua to Kenya and Sri Lanka, praised Ahmadinejad's
blunt speech. This reflects how the developing world can at this juncture
benefit from a vocal populist leader who articulates the needs and interests of
the world's aspiring nations without fear of reprisals.
Indeed, the much-talked about "revitalization" of the NAM is not possible
without a measure of self-retrieval, that is, rekindling the fiery spirit of
the NAM's founding leaders who during the 1950s and 1960s kept the torch alive
with their electrifying personalities, seeing how, sadly, India and South
Africa in particular are today lagging behind in this regard.
Wearing the hat of the 118-member NAM at world organizations, including the UN,
mandates a revised script for Iran, however. Ahmadinejad will have to temper
his criticism of the UN Security Council if Iran is serious about joining the
council.
The Security Council "did not end the Vietnam War", as Ahmadinejad rightly
stated in his speech, and he is equally correct in criticizing the council's
other (rather egregious) shortcomings, including its passivity over the
"Palestinian problem", as well as its inability to be critical of the US.
But the Security Council does deserve praise for the areas in which it has been
successful, in fulfilling the UN's mandate on issues of war and peace, such as
ending the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
That the UN played a critical role in ending the bloody eight-year war between
Iran and Iraq, thus saving thousands of lives on both sides, has been aptly
documented in a book by Giandomenico Picco, Man Without A Gun. Acting as
the secret envoy for then-UN secretary general Pereze de Cuellar, Picco, who
was also instrumental in Russia's exit from Afghanistan in 1988, narrates his
marathon efforts that culminated in Iran's, as well as Iraq's, acceptance of UN
Security Council Resolution 598, recalling de Cuellar's statement on the eve of
a crucial Security Council meeting, "Giani delivered me the Iran-Iraq peace."
Iran's revolutionary leader, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, agreed to the terms
of Resolution 598, partly as a result of the increasing Americanization of the
Iran-Iraq war and related concerns about "Iraq's imminent plans to launch
chemical attacks on Iran's cities", to paraphrase former Iranian president,
Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
At the time of the ceasefire, Iran's resources had been exhausted and it would
have been suicidal to continue prosecuting the "imposed war" that was
prohibitively costly for Iran in terms of human, physical, national security
and other considerations.
Thus, in retrospect, although Iran had valid criticism of the Security
Council's inexcusable inaction with respect to Saddam Hussein's invasion of
Iran in 1980, this should not detract from the council's invaluable and
critical contribution to Iran's national interests by acting as the conduit for
ultimately silencing the guns.
Such an acknowledgement is long overdue and could be remedied by an official
Iranian honor bestowed on Picco in recognition of his important contribution.
This aside, Iran's quest to join the Security Council raises anew the thorny
issue of the council's sanctions resolutions on Iran's nuclear program, which
have been dismissed by Ahmadinejad in the past as "worthless papers".
Iran is under three sets of Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt
uranium enrichment, a process which makes nuclear fuel but which can also lead
to the creation of the fissile core of an atomic bomb.
In Geneva this month Iran was set a two-week deadline - which runs out on
Saturday - to answer to the world powers which have offered a package of
incentives for Tehran to halt uranium-enrichment activities. Iran has said it
will not adhere to any deadline, arguing that it agreed in Geneva to use the
two-week period to examine the proposal put forward by the "Iran Six" - the
five permanent UN Security Council members, Britain, China, France, Russia and
the United States, plus Germany.
The package, offered to Iran in June, includes trade incentives and assistance
with its civilian nuclear program in return for the suspension of enrichment
activities.
At this critical juncture, Ahmadinejad's dismissive attitude towards the
council's resolutions is no longer viable; Iran needs to adopt a more nuanced
and proactive approach that recognizes the importance of the Security Council
as the highest world organ responsible for maintaining world peace and
security.
In turn, this means Iran must find a viable solution for the "nuclear riddle"
whereby both Iran's interests as well as the integrity of the Security
Council's overarching power on global issues can be respected. Otherwise, the
risks of more UN sanctions and Iran's further isolation may be difficult to
avoid.
In this connection, Ali Larijani, Iran's speaker of the Majlis (parliament),
has called for a "third alternative" as a middle way between Iran's own package
of proposals and the package offered by the "Iran Six". Larijani's idea sounds
good as long as sufficient details are inserted to connect the missing dots.
Conceivably, the "third alternative" could include elements of the "stand-by
option" whereby Iran's uranium-enrichment program would be put on a less than
full-scale suspension for a definite period, for the sake of
confidence-building. Such a step, while preserving Iran's rights under the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue a civilian nuclear program, may be
necessary to arrest any further deterioration of the nuclear standoff and to
eventually resolve this crisis through comprehensive negotiations.
This crisis has put severe strains on Iran's economy (inflation is running at
about 26%), and the situation will get worse if a new round of sanctions is
adopted at the Security Council. This does not bode well for Ahmadinejad's bid
for re-election next summer.
Just as he and his key advisors have recently tempered their rhetoric toward
the US, Ahmadinejad must now elevate his discourse on the UN and other world
organizations, instead of consistently condemning them as mere founts of big
power politics.
In his speech at the NAM summit, Ahmadinejad posed the question, "While the
philosophy and the foundation for the creation of these international
organizations has been for the sake of addressing the interests of certain big
powers, who are themselves the sources of many of the tensions and
instabilities, how can these problems be resolved by resorting to these
organizations?"
Again, as stated above, Iran's experience with respect to the Iran-Iraq war,
where a UN fact-finding commission found in Iran's favor by labeling Saddam the
aggressor, sheds crucial light on the answer to Ahmadinejad's question.
On a broader level, as discussed by a number of experts in international
affairs, it is a mistake to portray the international organizations as mere
props for big power politics. They are better understood as "contested
terrains" whereby lesser powers can exert influence and reap the benefits of
collective action. This was the case of UN reform, in which the NAM played an
important role in nipping in the bud efforts to impose on the UN the dangerous
doctrine of "pre-emptive" warfare, even though former UN secretary general Kofi
Annan backed that effort.
Iran's fiery president can either adopt a more sophisticated and nuanced
approach toward the UN, which will in turn increase Iran's chances of joining
the Security Council, or he can continue with a critical discourse that does
not serve either Iran's interests or those of the NAM that is now chaired by
Iran.
Note
1. In October, the UN General Assembly will vote to fill five of the 10
temporary seats on the Security Council. One of those five seats is set aside
for an Asian country, and to date only Iran and Japan have entered the race. To
win a seat, a nation must obtain the backing of two-thirds of the UN's 192
member-states, or 128 countries. The NAM has 118 members, 117 of which have a
vote in the General Assembly (the 118th is "Palestine".)
2. Ahmadinejad also stated that "the big powers are going down". But who
exactly are the "big powers"? Don't China and Russia, on whose support in the
nuclear row Iran seriously counts, think of themselves as big powers? To avoid
any misunderstandings on Russia and China's part, Ahmadinejad must clarify what
he means by big powers. This in turn introduces other complications, both
politically and theoretically speaking. With disturbing sings of Dmitry
Medvedev's Russia inching closer toward the US on the Iran nuclear issue,
Tehran can ill-afford such misunderstandings.
3. In an interview with NBC TV, Ahmadinejad said, "The entire world of nations,
particularly the world elites, are displeased with the status quo of the world
today, because the ongoing conditions are contrary to human beings' prestige
and such conditions are beneath peoples' dignity ... But if the path [towards
peace] is based on mutual understanding and cooperation, talks are needed for
defining the appropriate fields for cooperation, and the Islamic Republic of
Iran would rather choose the latter approach, but we would leave it up to the
other side to make that decision."
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. For his
Wikipedia entry, click here.
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