After Iran’s refusal of Russia’s proposal to enrich Iranian Uranium on Russian soil, the issue of its nuclear program has been taken up by the UN Security Council this week. Different assessments and conflicting interests once more claim to be powerful obstacles on the way to a mutual decision. While some argue for further negotiations, others seem willing to go further, including the use of military options.
When Hamid Reza Asefi, speaker of Iran’s foreign ministry officially rejected the Russian compromise on Sunday, it put a preliminary end to the first round of the search for diplomatic solutions. The Russian proposal included the enrichment of uranium, a step that is necessary for both civilian and military use. The crucial difference lies within that very process: Only highly enriched uranium can be used for nuclear weapons, while ‘regularly’ enriched material is the matter of choice to run nuclear power plants. The proposal therefore aimed to prevent any possible abuse of the enrichment technology, which experts say is fairly simple to do. The proposal however didn’t meet Iran’s agenda for greater independence, as Kazem Jalali, spokesman for Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission said in a general statement: "Having the fuel cycle inside the country is our red line, and we cannot compromise over our national interests".The debate on Iran’s nuclear program has been heated since Iranian authorities removed official IAEA seals on facilities last August and on others this January in order to resume their research. The nuclear program had been largely suspended since the Iranian program had been made public by the Iranian leadership in February 2003. Negotiations between a European group of Germany, France and Britain, and Iran have since been conducted.
Iran's Threat Between Reality and Rhetoric
At the same time, the potential risk of granting Iran the right to pursue nuclear research on their grounds is widely debated. As US WMD-expert David Kay remarked on NBC’s Today Show, so far there is only talk of “intentions – that’s always the weakest link in intelligence, and it certainly is in this case”. Kay’s assessment is shared by the report the IAEA transferred to the Security Council last week. IAEA head Mohamed El Baradei used the event to state his positive outlook: “I´m still optimistic because I think sooner or later that all the parties will realize that there is no other option but to go back to negotiations”.
Apparently, the US political establishment does not share this undecided stand: The Democratic Party already defines Iran as a “Nuclear Threat” in its attacks on the ruling Republicans, while President George W. Bush has repeated the metaphor that had ruled headlines three years ago: In a speech at the conference of the Newspaper Association of America Bush once again spoke of “an axis of evil”, which by now only included North Korea and Iran. A few days later during a visit to the George Washington University, Bush accused Iran of supporting insurgencies in Iraq, supporting terrorists, and pursuing nuclear weapons.
Iranian rhetoric isn’t helping matters: Even though the Iranian Foreign Ministry has stated that “Tehran respects the UN charter and has never used or threatened to use force”, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intention to “wipe Israel off the map” is still standing. Mohammad-Nabi Habibi, Secretary-General of Iran's Islamic Coalition Party, has argued Iran needs nuclear research to increase “the possibility of realizing peace in the region”, and that scientific advancement is needed to make “Israel abandon its goal of achieving hegemony from Nile to the Euphrates”. While this can be interpreted as advocating the possession of nuclear weapons, Iranian officials point to Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fatwa, forbidding the production, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons. As Clerical Leader, Khamenei’s word is regarded as the most important voice in Iranian politics. Critics such as Dr. Rolf Mützenich, head of the Group of German-Iranian MPs in the German Parliament, see this Fatwa’s importance severely compromised. As Dr. Mützenich told Jurnalo: “This Fatwa’s status is suffering from the lack of anything written. We have never seen factual proof it exists, only vague references”.
There are also technical questions deriving from a possible failure to reach diplomatic concord. Besides its political agenda, it is also far from certain that Iran could develop nuclear weapons any time soon. Dr. Gary Samore from the International Institute for Strategic Studies produced a study last September, according to which “even if Iran tried to go for a bomb as quickly as possible, it’s likely to take at least five years to overcome technical obstacles to produce enough fissile material for a single weapon”. Former UN weapons’ inspector Hans Blix shares this opinion, estimating the time necessary as “many years”. Even the Israeli assessment seems moderate. During a visit to Washington, D.C.’s Hudson Institute ten days ago, retired chief of staff Moshe Ya’Alon estimated that it would take 6-18 month to complete the theoretical research, and a total of 3-5 years to construct a bomb.
The Option of Sanctions
In any case, European states as well as the US have apparently diagnosed a need for action, following the failure of purely diplomatic means so far. While sanctions are the most talked about measures at this point, there has also been consideration of military strikes. Of course, the legitimacy of any reaction has to be examined. While Iran stresses its right to pursue civil nuclear research granted under the Non-Proliferation-Treaty (NPT), its secrecy might have forfeited that right, Iran-critics argue. Yet, this line of argumentation is also debatable, since Iran has not signed the Additional Protocol to the NPT, which would allow IAEA officials to detect undeclared nuclear research through unannounced inspections. Iran expert Mützenich outlines the conflicting positions stating that, while Iran’s point of view must be understood and considered, Western concern wasn’t unjustified: “The situation in the Middle East right now cannot be compared to that during the Cold War. Different standards have to be applied, since we shouldn’t be expecting purely rational behaviour in that region any time soon.”
Support for sanctions runs high within the United States. An ABC News poll showed a decisive 71%-26% ratio in favour of sanctions across Americans. The public thereby is in line with its representatives in the US Congress, who are currently trying to pass a bill imposing mandatory sanctions on foreign firms working in Iran. According to Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns however, “the proposed law could blow the coalition apart,” alienating partners such as Russia or China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov has periodically voiced his scepticism concerning the use of economic sanctions: “I don't think sanctions as a means to solve a crisis have ever achieved a goal in the recent history”, Lavrov said. China’s UN ambassador Wang Guangya made a similar statement. "I think we want a constructive statement," Guangya told the Associated Press, adding "I think they want to be too tough" in reference to the Western UNSC members.
European powers have not been so decided. During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday, French President Jacques Chirac announced the strong willingness “to do the maximum to also understand Iran's position,” reports the Islamic Republic News Agency in Tehran.
Still, plans to impose sanctions remain. As recently as Sunday, Vice President Richard Cheney has confirmed US ambitions to forward “targeted sanctions” such as travel restrictions for high-ranking Iranian officials. According to the Financial Times, Cheney is currently attempting to form a “coalition of concerned countries” to implement “meaningful consequences”. This plan is matched by a UK senior official, who points to sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa throughout the Eighties. Cited by Reuters, there might be an option including “different countries at different times and in different ways”, i.e. a system of sanctions imposed outside the UN frame.
Besides the political resistance, possible sanctions would also have to be checked for efficiency. Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group in Washington, D.C., said in the German Der Spiegel, that “sanctioning Iranian oil would likely hurt the Europeans as much as it would the Iranians”. His opinion is mirrored in a short-lived threat to use oil as an economic weapon, that was hinted to by Interior Minister Mustafa Pourmohammadi on Saturday, but put in perspective just one day later, with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki promising Tehran “will not use its abundant oil exports as a political tool,” according to Reuters.
Military Options
From Henry Kissinger to Senator John McCain to Vice President Cheney, almost every influential political actor in the US appears to agree that military action should not be excluded. Senator McCain, who by many is believed to be a likely successor of George Bush as the next Republican presidential candidate, said in a TV interview with CBS: “There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option. That is a nuclear-armed Iran”. American UN ambassador John Bolton confirmed that Iran could face "painful consequences" if it continues "down the path of international isolation”, according to Voice of America.
Retired Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’Alon has confirmed that “Israel has the ability to launch a pre-emptive strike that could set back Iran's nuclear programme for years”.
Other experts disagree. Says Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy to the New Yorker: “You can’t be sure after an attack that you’ll get away with it. The US and Israel would not be certain whether all the sites had been hit, or how quickly they’d be rebuilt. Meanwhile, they’d be waiting for an Iranian counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you can’t begin to think of what they’d do in response”.
Iranian officials are also warning the US. Javad Vaeidi, head of the Iranian delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency, issued a heavy warning last week: “The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and pain”.
Should the conflict escalate, former US officials and generals have already warned, that the US military might not be in the shape necessary to carry out additional large-scale missions. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright confirmed worrying details of the report: “Although the United States can still deploy air, naval, and other more specialized assets to deter or respond to aggression, the visible overextension of our ground forces could weaken our ability to deter aggression”. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the report as “out of date” or “misdirected”. According to The Australian, Rumsfeld went on to describe his troops as “battle-hardened” and “very effective”.
Other Solutions
In the meantime, the US administration has opened up another front in the conflict. Aiming to topple the Iranian regime from within, a $75 million program has been initiated to advance democracy in Iran. The money will be used to fund NGOs and to expand media broadcasting in Iran, according to the Washington Post. The paper also cites criticism of the program coming from those the measures are intended to help, the human right activists in the country, who complain that their work is sabotaged by the more extreme Iranian lobbyists in Washington. Says one activist: “We are under pressure here both from hard-liners in the [Iranian] judiciary and that stupid George Bush […] I feel Ahmadinejad and President Bush are like two blades of a scissor”.
Still, the international pressure might already have implemented some changes within Iran. Today’s International Harald Tribune quotes a senior Iranian official complaining that “for 27 years after the revolution, America wanted to get Iran to the Security Council and America failed. In less than six months, Ahmadinejad did that".
Also, there might be a silver lining appearing after all. A week ago, Iranian television quoted President Ahmadinejad as demanding reimbursement from the international community: “The IAEA now has to compensate Iran for causing damage to the development of its science, technology and economy”, Ahmadinejad said referring to the months-long suspension of its nuclear research program. What appears to be yet another provocation has by some observers been regarded as a carefully disguised peace offering.
