By Nguyen Minh Huyen
While the world is pre-occupied with the war between Israel and its immediate neighbours, it shows little inclination to foresee how the squabble over Iran’s nuclear programme will end.
Will the effort be declared mission impossible or will it be decided to meddle still further in the already chaotic Middle East?
The portents are for more of the latter.
For while the Security Council cannot stop the slaughter of Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli civilians, it can demand – as it did on July 31 – that Iran suspend its nuclear programme by August 31 or face sanctions.
The resolution that for the first time included legally – binding demands was carried 14 to 1.
The Security Council’s only Arab representative, Qatar’s Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, said he voted "No" because of the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
"We don’t agree with the resolution at a time when our region is in flames," he said.
The demand is for Iran to "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development."
Otherwise, the members will consider "appropriate measures" under Article 41 of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter that includes both diplomatic and economic sanctions.
But Iran had earlier confirmed that it would reply to the six-nation package already on offer by August 22; so it is not surprising that many believe the vote was an attempt to distract attention from the slaughter of civilians in the Middle East.
And just a day after the resolution was carried, Iranian Deputy President Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee said Tehran was still considering the package, offered by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China in June.
The package includes commercial and technical incentives in return for a halt to the nuclear programme.
The Security Council resolution sparked a predictable reaction in Tehran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on national television to tell his people: "If some think they can still use threatening language to speak to the Iranian nation, they are badly mistaken.
"The Iranian nation considers the peaceful use of nuclear fuel as its right."
The country’s UN Ambassador Javad Zarif said: "Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme poses no threat to international peace and security. Therefore, dealing with this issue in the Security Council is unwarranted and void of any legal basis or practical utility."
Spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s foreign affairs and security commission, Kazem Jalali, said the resolution was "unacceptable" and would create a situation where no one benefits.
Two of Security Council’s veto-wielders who have opposed sanctions against Iran, Russia and China, argued that the resolution would quicken the diplomatic effort.
The council would only "discuss" punitive measures, said Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said China hoped the resolution would help the diplomatic effort end the impasse.
"China calls on all the parties concerned to keep calm and exercise restraint, and continue to push forward for an early resumption of negotiations," he said.
Nuclear potential
Whether Iran has nuclear weapons or is close to obtaining them is unknown.
Scholars at the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says Iran is at least ten years from producing enough highly enriched uranium for a single nuclear device.
Economists forecast that sanctions will hurt the West more than Iran.
It’s a view shared by Iranian Economic and Finance Minister Davud Danesh-Jafari who commented in the Tehran Times that 27 years of sanctions by the United Sates had not amounted to much.
The minister conceded that the US may – as it had done previously – resort to the disruption of Iran’s trade in dollars through its subordinate financial institutions.
But this would be more symbolic in nature than real threat to the country’s economy.
The minister used the sudden fall in oil prices in 1998 to show that his country could survive by the use of its Oil Stabilisation Fund.
Military analysts say that Iran, the world’s fourth producer of crude oil, could block the Straits of Hormuz if the offensive against it goes from diplomacy to arms.
The strategic straits are choke-point for oil exports to Japan, the United States and western Europe.
The shortfall would be difficult to make up.
Majis Research Centre chairman Ahmad Tavakkoli forecasts that any sanctions would reduce global economic growth by 50 per cent.
The loss of only 2.5 million barrel a day – Iran’s daily production – to the would push the price of crude to US$120 per barrel for the first three months before it settled at $80 per barrel, he says.
Deputy editor-in-chief of the Ha Noi-based International Studies magazine Pham Ngoc Uyen, believes negotiation of the six-nation package offered to Iran will – like the six-nations talks about the threat of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula – drag on for sometime.
"The six nations and Iran will probably demand concessions from each other as a prerequisite to any deal," he says.
"Iran will very likely give a ‘Yes, but’ reply to the offer and then ask for further talks."
But do not anticipate an early breakthrough. — VNS
