[lit-ideas] The Iran Charade
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:44:13 -0800 (PST)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1688938,00.html
Comment
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The west has picked a fight with Iran that it cannot
win
Washington's kneejerk belligerence ignores Tehran's
influence and the need for subtle engagement
Simon Jenkins
Wednesday January 18, 2006
The Guardian
Never pick a fight you know you cannot win. Or so I
was told. Pick an argument if you must, but not a
fight. Nothing I have read or heard in recent weeks
suggests that fighting Iran over its nuclear
enrichment programme makes any sense at all. The very
talk of it - macho phrases about "all options open" -
suggests an international community so crazed with
video game enforcement as to have lost the power of
coherent thought.
Article continues
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Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit
post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the
head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil
producer in the world. Its population is heading
towards 80 million by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a
mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its
culture is ancient and its political life is, to put
it mildly, fluid.
All the following statements about Iran are true.
There are powerful Iranians who want to build a
nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not.
There are people in Iran who would like Israel to
disappear. There are people who would not. There are
people who would like Islamist rule. There are people
who would not. There are people who long for some
idiot western politician to declare war on them. There
are people appalled at the prospect. The only question
for western strategists is which of these people they
want to help.
Of all the treaties passed in my lifetime the 1968
nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) always seemed
the most implausible. It was an insiders' club that
any outsider could defy with a modicum of guile. So it
has proved. America, sitting armed to the teeth across
Korea's demilitarised zone, has let North Korea become
a nuclear power despite a 1994 promise that it would
not. America supported Israel in going nuclear.
Britain and America did not balk at India doing so,
nor Pakistan when it not only built a bomb but
deceitfully disseminated its technology in defiance of
sanctions. Three flagrant dissenters from the NPT are
thus regarded by America as friends.
I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb
but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly
protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits
between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a
nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to
its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied
at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam
Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say
such a country has "no right" to nuclear defence?
None the less this month's reopening of the Natanz
nuclear enrichment plant and two others, though
purportedly for peaceful uses, was a clear act of
defiance by Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) remain unsure whether it implies a
secret weapons programme but the evidence for this is
far stronger than, for instance, against Saddam
Hussein. To have infuriated the IAEA's Mohamed
ElBaradei takes some doing. As Saddam found,
deviousness in nuclear matters is bound to arouse
suspicion. Either way, the reopening yielded a strong
diplomatic coalition of Europe, America, Russia and
China in pleading with Ahmadinejad to desist.
On Monday, Washington's kneejerk belligerence put this
coalition under immediate strain. In two weeks the
IAEA must decide whether to report Iran to the UN
security council for possible sanctions. There seems
little point in doing this if China and Russia vetoes
it or if there is no plan B for what to do if such
pressure fails to halt enrichment, which seems
certain. A clear sign of western floundering are
speeches and editorials concluding that Iran "should
not take international concern lightly", the west
should "be on its guard" and everyone "should think
carefully". It means nobody has a clue.
I cannot see how all this confrontation will stop Iran
doing whatever it likes with its nuclear enrichment,
which is reportedly years away from producing
weapons-grade material. The bombing of carefully
dispersed and buried sites might delay deployment. But
given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death
and destruction caused to Iran's cities would be a
gift to anti-western extremists and have every world
terrorist reporting for duty.
Nor would the "coward's war" of economic sanctions be
any more effective. Refusing to play against Iranian
footballers (hated by the clerics), boycotting
artists, ostracising academics, embargoing commerce,
freezing foreign bank accounts - so-called smart
sanctions - are as counterproductive as could be
imagined. Such feelgood gestures drive the enemies of
an embattled regime into silence, poverty or exile. As
Timothy Garton Ash wrote in these pages after a recent
visit, western aggression "would drain overnight its
still large reservoir of anti-regime, mildly
pro-western sentiment".
By all accounts Ahmadinejad is not secure. He is
subject to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
His foe, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, retains some power.
Tehran is not a Saddamist dictatorship or a Taliban
autocracy. It is a shambolic oligarchy with
bureaucrats and technocrats jostling for power with
clerics. Despite a quarter century of effort, the
latter have not created a truly fundamentalist islamic
state. Iran is a classic candidate for the politics of
subtle engagement.
This means strengthening every argument in the hands
of those Iranians who do not want nuclear weapons or
Israel eliminated, who crave a secular state and good
relations with the west. No such argument embraces
name-calling, sabre-rattling, sanctions or bombs.
At this very moment, US officials in Baghdad are on
their knees begging Iran-backed Shia politicians and
militias to help them get out of Iraq. From Basra to
the suburbs of Baghdad, Iranian influence is dominant.
Iranian posters adorned last month's elections.
Whatever Bush and Blair thought they were doing by
invading Iraq, they must have known the chief
beneficiary from toppling the Sunni ascendancy would
be Shia Iran. They cannot now deny the logic of their
own policy. Democracy itself is putting half Iraq in
thrall to its powerful neighbour.
Iran is the regional superstate. If ever there were a
realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this
one, however distasteful its leader and his
centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun,
the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your
enemy.
simon.jenkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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