ROUND THE WORLD
New Delhi, 9 May 2006
Iran’s Nuclear Postures
Towards
Inevitable Confrontation
By Dr. Chintamani
Mahapatra
School of International Studies, JNU
Iran has
threatened to walk out of the NPT, if it is pressured
too much to give up its uranium enrichment programme. How is it going to help Iran? Will it
make its nuclear programme more legitimate? Will it assist
in warding off the threat of possible
international economic sanctions or military intervention?
The United States
and its European partners and the IAEA have complained that Iran has been
clandestinely seeking to develop a nuclear weapon capability. It has been
alleged that Iran
has secretly sought to acquire nuclear programme related technology and
equipment for about 18 years in the international nuclear black market.
Several years of pressures
and months of negotiations have failed to bring Iran on to its knees. Iran appears
hell bent to go its way as far as its domestic nuclear programme is concerned.
Citing political arguments based on the concept of national sovereignty,
economic compulsion based on diversification of its sources of energy and
security- related justification, based
on the limits of oil and gas resources, Iran has shown its determination to
acquire a full civilian nuclear power cycle capability. It has uranium mines
and now it claims that it has developed the capacity to domestically enrich
uranium to generate nuclear fuel to run nuclear power reactors.
Iran has been a member of the NPT, the
most extensive and inclusive nuclear non-proliferation regime. It has been a
member of the IAEA, the international nuclear watch dog. It claims rights under
international law and under the NPT and IAEA provisions to pursue a civilian
nuclear power programme.
The US
and several other countries in the West, however, do not have confidence that Iran will
confine its ambition only to acquire a capability to run a full cycle nuclear
power programme. Tehran
is suspected to have been keeping an ambition to develop nuclear weapons.
What are the bases of such suspicions? First of all, Iran has been
under the rule of a theocratic system since 1979 and has adopted a policy of
confrontation with the West. It has withstood the US pressure
and policy of isolation for long by systematically trying to cultivate good
relations with the major powers and other countries. It seeks to enhance its
capability in the face of alleged persistent US hostility.
Secondly, Iran
has witnessed the US role during the Gulf War I and Gulf War
II; and the fate of Iraq. It does
not want to take any chances and seeks a capability that could prevent foreign
military intervention. Thirdly, it has strong grievances against the Western
silence over Israeli nuclear weapons capability. Fourthly, it has seen the
emergence of a nuclear Pakistan
which has often been dubbed as a failed state and which has survived the
Western non-proliferation pressures
despite its clandestine activities and involvement in nuclear black market. If Pakistan could, why cannot Iran?
That Iran
may have an ambition to develop nuclear weapon capability is reflected in its
uncompromising stances on this issue
and its fearless rhetoric
challenging the US and its
allies, including Israel.
Never before any Middle-Eastern country threatened to obliterate Israel from the global map, as Iran did
recently. Israel,
which has won all wars fought with various combinations of Arab countries, is
also a nuclear capable country. Issuing
a threat to Israel’s
existence can have two meanings. One, the threatening country has nuclear
weapons capability. Two, the leader issuing
such threats has a target audience to woo and he does not mean what he says in
true sense of the term.
The problem is that Iranian people cannot be fooled. They
know the military capabilities of Israel and would not support any
direct confrontation with that country. That means Tehran may have developed a capability to
build a crude bomb and is indirectly demonstrating its capability by using a
combination of defiant action and rhetoric.
Tehran broke the lock and resumed its
nuclear programme contrary to IAEA directions. It stopped IAEA inspections of
its nuclear programme. It also confidently rejected the EU-3’s diplomatic
initiatives and proposals. Russia,
which has very friendly and close ties with Iran, also came up with a sound
compromise formula. But Iran
discarded it. The US Security Council passed a resolution asking Iran to stop uranium enrichment within a month,
but Iran
turned it down. On the contrary, it declared its new technological breakthrough
in the field of uranium enrichment. The latest in Iran’s defiant attitude towards the
international community and determination to go ahead with its nuclear
programme is its warning that it would walk out of the NPT.
Why is Iran
so defiant? Can a leadership be so audacious without strength – in this case
nuclear weapon capability? Iran’s
political behaviour is to some extent perplexing. Currently, there is a lively
debate in the US about the
rights and wrongs of taking military action against Iran. Although very powerful
arguments are being put forward against military intervention, the US
Government does not rule out military option.
There is no doubt that the Bush administration wants
diplomacy to complete its full course before it would decide on military means.
The past mistakes in the case of Iraq have brought significant
lessons for the US Administration and President Bush clearly would not like any
repetition of those. The Congressional elections also pose another set of
political problems for President Bush. On top of it all, his opinion ratings
among the people has been rapidly sliding down. There is no guarantee that yet
another military adventure would bring any political benefit to him.
If these factors, along with Russian
and Chinese opposition to punitive measures against Iran,
have enabled Iranian leadership to withstand the Western pressure, the world in general and Persian
Gulf in particular are safer. Even then, Iran’s
obstinate behaviour is increasingly making it difficult for Russian, Chinese and other friendly countries to
unconditionally support its stand.
The question is what happens if Iran announces its nuclear
capability after walking out of the NPT? Iran’s nuclear weapons will not be
considered legal either under the NPT or otherwise. So it may very well stay
out of the NPT and launch itself as a new nuclear weapon state. Analysts in
several western nations do not believe that Iran currently has the nuclear
weapon capability. But their prediction may go wrong, as it has been so in so
many other instances.
More hair-raising question is whether the neo-conservatives
in the Bush Administration would confront a nuclear Iran or make fences with it. (What
with Washington
dismissing. Iranian President
Mahmohd Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush to “propose new ways” to resolve
the matter) Will Iran face tough sanctions or even military intervention? Will
Russians and Chinese come to the
rescue of a nuclear Iran or
sit idly and watch yet another case of US unilateral intervention?
(Especially against the backdrop that both have rejected the US proposal to
invoke Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which provides for enforcement i.e. more
sanctions and war. Instead they had
suggested another Security Council rejection to demand Iran stop its
nuclear programme) It is most likely that some sort of confrontation is in the
making as far as US-Iranian relations are concerned.---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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