SPEAKING
FREELY Much ado about nothing in
Tehran By H Aghaie
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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The Iranian capital,
Tehran this week hosts the 16th summit of the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM),an international
organization comprised of 120 member states. The
summit itself and month-long security preparations
for holding the meetings of some 145 delegations
on August 26-31 were of paramount significance for
the Islamic Republic at a time when the country is
seen as an international pariah.
But, is
it much ado about nothing? What will Iran earn
from holding the pow-wow both politically and
economically? Will the
summit be deliberately
projected as a festival of indignation against
Israel or a true venue for dealing with the trials
and tribulations facing the developing world?
What's the salience of the summit for Iran and the
developing world?
The capital of Iran has
an estimated population of 8.5 million. All
government offices, banks, schools and even THE
Tehran Stock Exchange are closed during the five
days of the conference, and citizens also are
advised by the state media to take a break from
the hustle and bustle of the metropolitan city and
head on trips to other cities. Almost all news
agencies as well as state TV channels are involved
in a minute by minute coverage of the arrival of
foreign delegates and boisterous tete-a-tetes on
the sideline of the conference.
UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will attend the
summit on Thursday, despite Tel Aviv's attempts to
dissuade him from giving Iran such high-profile
attention, and most importantly from meeting with
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has
recently said: "Israel's existence is an 'insult
to all humanity'."
The acerbic philippic
against the Jewish state of Israel comes as Iran's
efforts to exonerate itself from the charge of
perusing nuclear weapons have foundered, and a
yawning difference between the United Nations
nuclear watchdog and Iran remains unresolved.
"Some progress" was made, but differences
remained, said Iran's ambassador to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali
Asghar Soltanieh. But not even the slightest beam
of hope was visible on the faces of Herman
Nackaerts, deputy director general for safeguards,
and Rafael Mariano Grossi, assistant director
general for policy, who met Soltanieh last Friday
in Vienna as part of marathon talks to end the
nuclear dispute between Iran and the West.
The IAEA appears to be at its wits end
over Iran's nuclear dossier, and in the meantime
Israel is launching a fresh round of
saber-rattling against Iran, aimed at driving the
US administration into war with the Islamic state.
However, US President Barack Obama has frequently
tried to dissuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu from taking unilateral action,
emphasising that Washington still favors diplomacy
and negotiations backed up by a string of
tightening international sanctions against the
Iranian regime. Iran's economy has been hard-hit
by international sanctions levied against the
country by the UN, European Union, and numerous
countries.
Now that Iranians are feeling
the pinch of sanctions, and with the regime more
isolated than ever thanks to an incessant
inundation of undiplomatic comments made by
Ahmadinejad, the Islamic Republic takes every
opportunity to extricate itself from this
political and economic debacle by demonstrating
that Tehran is genuinely not internationally
isolated as it has been rendered by the Western
media.
Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to
mention that irrespective of all the ballyhoo
surrounding the Non-Aligned Movement Summit, and
the lavish welcoming ceremonies held by the
Iranian officials for the visiting authorities of
over 100 states, one thing is irrefutable: by dint
of holding the conference, Iran seeks to muster
NAM's support for its nuclear drive, and in
addition to that, it is endeavoring to sign trade
deals or at least canvas economic cooperation from
remaining friends in Asia, Latin America and
Africa in an apparent bid to circumvent
international sanctions.
Blowing hot
and cold But there is a caveat: the NAM is
deeply divided over a string of major issues,
ranging from combating poverty to monitoring
member states' compliance with non-proliferation
provisions.
As an organization dedicated
to promoting the needs of the developing world,
the NAM has traditionally allocated its energy to
ensuring that the inequalities of the
international political order are addressed. To
that effect, NAM representatives in the UN General
Assembly, the Conference on Disarmament, the board
of governors of the International Atomic Energy
Authority, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review
Conferences are engaged in diplomatic efforts to
ensure that disarmament obligations are fulfilled
by both nuclear and non-nuclear-weapon states.
It is interesting to indicate that in 2003
and 2004, the NAM member states hailed Iran's
cooperation with the IAEA, and later on threw
their weight behind Iran over its nuclear
enrichment plans. But it is much more intriguing
to know that, much to the consternation of Iranian
diplomats, the very same NAM states voted to refer
Iran to the UN Security Council in 2006, a move
that shocked Iran and profoundly exposed fissures
within the organization.
To conclude,
pundits observing the trends concerning the
ongoing meetings in Tehran should be cognizant of
three important factors: first, some key NAM
member states such as India are realistically
fixated on maximizing their own countries' trade
and economic benefits, and are not happy to
support Iran's nuclear program.
There is
no long-term and reliable NAM solidarity with Iran
over its security and strategic concerns in the
region. This is a chilling fact to which the
clerical regime is oblivious.
Secondly,
the NAM conference risks being molded into an
exclusive venue for dealing with Iran's nuclear
plight at the cost of neglecting some of the most
essential threats and concerns facing humanity,
such as poverty and human rights.
Thirdly,
if Iran is willing to come clean about its nuclear
intentions, it should (a) actively pursue
comprehensive negotiations with the P5+1 (the five
permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council plus Germany), (b) refrain from delivering
malicious hate-mongering speeches against Israel
and other entities, (c) respect the human rights
of all its citizens and political prisoners.
It is also incumbent upon the European
Union to flex its soft power by mediating rather
than jumping on the Israeli's bandwagon in its
tricky campaign to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
As Winston Churchill once commented, "To jaw-jaw
is always better than to war-war."
References 1.
Ogilvie-White, Tanya. 2007, "International
Responses to Iranian Nuclear Defiance: The
Non-Aligned Movement and the Issue of
Non-Compliance", The European Journal of
International Law, Vol. 18 No. 3, 453?476. 2.
See here.
H Aghaie is a master student at
Link๖ping University in Sweden, majoring in
International and European Relations
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
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