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Issue 271, Friday 25 November 2011 - 29 Dhu al-Hijjah 1432 Living with a ‘Nuclear Iran’ maybe the safer option By Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Is the debate on Iran’s nuclear programme fixated on the wrong questions and assumption? Up to now, the discussion focused on whether Iran is working to acquire nuclear weapons, and how to stop it. The assumption is that Iran poses a serious and present danger to the world. Equipped with nuclear capability, it would be unstoppable. Therefore, only pre-emptive action to derail Iran’s nuclear programme, by any means necessary, could avert this danger. On closer examination, it could be this rhetoric which is the threat to world security. In a world of sovereign states, each state is invested with the sole responsibility for safeguarding its own security. Only voluntarily acceded to treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), oblige Iran to render accounts of its nuclear activities and prove that they are solely peaceful. It can choose to do what India, Pakistan, Israel and others have done, and decline to accede to the NPT and refuse to account its actions. It is true that, since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, it has not helped its case as a responsible member of the international community. But Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is hardly the primary source of regional insecurity. Iran is currently more a problem to itself and its own people than it is to the world or its immediate neighbours. Most of Iran’s neighbours, in fact, are not complaining. Turkey is more than happy to do business with Tehran, while both Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to the US-led invasions, have been transformed from mortal enemies to very close friends of Iran. Most Gulf countries are far from worried, and those that have expressed concerns, mainly Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, are the cause of their own problems. Israel, the most vociferous protester against the presumed Iranian threat, is in a similar position. Its persecution of the Palestinians and occupation of territories belonging to other states is the cause of its endemic insecurity. Israel, under its mendacious and war-mongering Prime Minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, is the country leading the clamour for a military attack on Iran. It is also Israel’s allies in the West, mainly in the United States, where the approaching elections makes American politicians even more cowardly than usual, who are also citing Israel’s security worries to advocate belligerent action against Iran, with scant regard for the consequences. Both Israel and America have shown a remarkable skill at losing friends and influencing people to hate them. Not long ago, Iran was America’s closest ally in the region and one of Israel’s few friends in the neighbourhood, as was Turkey. The Shi’a community in Lebanon did not treat Israel as their main enemy, and in fact had issues with the PLO and Palestinians factions. The Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories gave Israel little cause for worry. However, American-Israeli alignment with dictators in Iran and elsewhere, their rampaging in Lebanon and intolerable repression of the Palestinians, generated so much anger that hostility to that alliance became deeply ingrained among wide sections of the population throughout the region. The Netanyahu regime is thinking up new ways to daily torment the Palestinians and steal their land, making their lives even more intolerable. More recently, it has turned against Israeli human right groups in a reminder, if any was needed, that this is a fascist regime. It is no doubt Israel, an actually rather than hypothetically nuclear armed, repressive and expansionist state, which is more of a threat to security and stability in the region than Iran. There is a far better case for a Nato intervention there to protect captive civilians than in any other neighbouring country. However, we do not need a reminder that intervening in a country in possession of a huge arsenal of mass destruction is a hazardous affair. That is why the Cold War was built on a balance of terror, and why the US would not dare attack North Korea. This also casts serious doubts on the claims made about Iraq’s WMD arsenal before and during the wars against it. For if those attacking Iraq believed what they were saying, they would have been guilty of acts of gross irresponsibility in exposing millions of servicemen and civilians to unconscionable dangers. The more benign interpretation of their conduct would be that they were not telling the truth. The same could be said regarding Iran, which does not have borders with Israel and therefore cannot pose a direct threat to it. It is not possible for Iran, or any other country for that matter, to launch a nuclear attack against Israel without endangering neighbouring Arab countries allied to Iran. Such action could only be a last resort desperate action, a suicidal ‘Samson Option’, in the words of Seymour Hersh on Israel. In this regard, Ahmadinejad was right: a few nuclear warheads are not going to protect Iran against the limitless arsenals of its enemies. But let us not take Iran’s words at face value. The Iranians insist that they are not pursuing a military nuclear option, for both moral and pragmatic reasons. In the current debate, Iran has been burdened with the impossible duty of proving its innocence of charges its enemies have not been able to substantiate. This is putting justice on its head. But let us concede the worst and say that Iran is indeed pursuing a military option. Would the greater threat to regional peace and security come from Iran stashing up a few nuclear heads it cannot use, any more than its arch-enemy Israel, or from launching an actual war no one knows how it would end? Attacking Iran would not be as easy as the attack on Iraq in 1981, for Iran has a huge capacity to retaliate. Moreover, the regime has substantial popular support inside and outside Iran, and waging war on it could entail destabilising many countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and a number of Gulf countries, not to mention multiplying threats in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Living with a nuclear Iran, assuming that this was the ‘threat’ in question, would appear to be a much safer bet than igniting a hundred-year war in the region. After all, we have learned to live with a nuclear Pakistan and a nuclear North Korea. The person who needs restraint and advice at this juncture is that Samson guy, Netanyahu, who wants to set the whole region ablaze in order to win PR points, not to mention those unwise Republican presidential candidates who are vying with each other on who would be ‘tougher’ on Iran, while they know very little about Iran, and even about Israel. Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Reader in Politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. |
The Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, southeast Bushehr