Confident Iran

A striking theme emerged from an international conference last week at the Institute for Political and International Studies in Tehran, the Iranian foreign ministry’s think-tank: confidence.

The conference was addressed by Iran’s foreign and defence ministers, and the head of the Expediency Council, Hashemi Rafsanjani. The assurance they exuded was backed up by presentations from a range of Iranian analysts, as well as many informal discussions on the conference fringes.

Rafsanjani’s contribution is especially significant, given his position as former president and speaker of the Majlis (parliament), and the fact that he may be a candidate in the June 2005 presidential election. His and other speakers’ quiet satisfaction conveyed the sense that the leadership is not necessarily convinced that the United States would go as far as attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Rafsanjani and his colleagues may well be wrong about this, but it does appear to be their view.

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Much of this confidence seems to derive from events in Iraq, including the outcome of the 30 January elections. From an Iranian perspective, what has happened in Iraq has been broadly favourable to the country’s interests. True, the United States has 150,000 troops in Iraq, several thousand more in Afghanistan, and controls the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian sea; but it is also enmeshed in a bitter and continuing insurgency in Iraq, while facing the political prospect that a core aim of its strategy there – a client government with permanent military bases in this immensely oil-rich country – may eventually prove untenable.

Moreover, for the Iranians, Iraq’s elections have effectively delivered a Shi’a-dominated legislature. The United States may dominate the country through its massive embassy, economic influence and occupying forces, but Iran’s view is that the US will eventually be worn down and forced to withdraw most, if not all, of its military forces. Whether or not this analysis is accurate, it helps to buttress the worldview of Iran’s theocratic leadership.

There is little evidence that Iran is currently seeking much influence in Baghdad, but there is no doubt whatsoever that it has the ability to do so if it wished. Iranian intelligence operatives are embedded within Iraq, some of the Shi’a militias work closely with Iran’s revolutionary guard units and, above all, several of the emerging Iraqi political leaders were exiled in Iran during the Saddam Hussein era and maintain strong links with the country.

The rising Shi’a influence in Iraq is mirrored across the wider Shi’a community in the region, including Bahrain and the oil-rich eastern areas of Saudi Arabia. This week’s huge demonstration in Beirut organised by Hezbollah is a salutary reminder that the Shi’a of Lebanon are the country’s largest confessional group and wield significant political influence.

Inside Iran, the expensive new high-rise apartments in central Tehran and the luxury residential areas close to the mountains in the city’s northeast – a notable change to a visitor returning after several years – reflect the investments in land and property by rich Shi’a families from the western Gulf states. This connectivity of Shi’a communities across the region has been given new heart by Washington’s Iraq involvement.

Iranian politics and economy

Iranian politics are in a particularly complex phase at present. The reformist project of outgoing president, Mohammad Khatami, has clearly failed. The more conservative elements that currently dominate the Majlis have succeeded in largely subduing the student revolts of recent years and arresting their leaders. The overall human rights record has scarcely improved.

The economy, much of which is still controlled by the revolutionary foundations, is both highly inefficient and fairly buoyant. Iran is now self-sufficient in wheat production, petrol is well under a dollar a gallon, and Tehran’s roads are beginning to approach the chaotic levels of Mexico City or Bangkok.

There is also extensive poverty, and widespread corruption extends to elements of the clergy. At the same time, material life is improving to an extent currently sufficient to dampen outright opposition to theocratic rule. If anything, political apathy is more evident than a vigorous civil society seeking political and social emancipation.

But one message emerges clearly from a wide range of people holding diverse political views: the effect of a major attack – from the United States, Israel, or both – would be to produce a degree of nationalist unity that would transcend the major political divisions in Iran.

The nuclear issue

Whether or not Iran has an active programme to develop nuclear weapons, the maintenance of its civil nuclear power plants – such as the new reactor facility at Bushehr – is very widely supported. Many Iranians do see the acquisition of nuclear weapons as essential to their security, deterring a United States administration that has declared Iran to be a part of the “axis of evil” and in need of regime change.

Many Washington analysts see Iran’s massive oil and gas reserves as evidence that Iran’s civil nuclear power programme must be the basis of a weapons capability, but Iranians respond by pointing to their uranium ore deposits and substantial investment in hydroelectric power to argue that the civil programme is merely part of a wider pattern of energy resource diversification.

George W Bush’s and Ariel Sharon’s administrations do not accept this argument, but it is likely that the Iranian government will remain both committed to pursuing its nuclear power programme and deeply reluctant to abandon its nuclear fuel-cycle programme – even if they provide Iran with technologies more relevant to a nuclear weapons capability.

Will there be war?

In current circumstances the risk of a United States or Israeli military attack on Iran looks all too plausible at some time in the next eighteen months – a timescale that relates to the installation of uranium fuel rods in the Bushehr reactor. Any attack that includes the destruction of Bushehr could result in a Chernobyl-level disaster spreading to Saudi Arabia and other western Gulf states, as well as large parts of Iran itself.

The Iranian government may gesture towards a long-term fuel-cycle freeze, and even accept higher levels of inspection from the International Atomic Energy Agency, but its near-certain intention to develop the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons – even if it does not go the whole way – will clearly be unacceptable in Washington and Tel Aviv. It is not at all clear that the Iranian leadership is prepared to make sufficient concessions to forestall the risk of war, or even sees any reason why it should.

There are small indications that the huge risks surrounding an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities are making even some neo-conservative elements in Washington look for other solutions to their Iran problem. The Project for the New American Century, for example, recently published a paper discussing the need for diplomatic pressure combined with various forms of support for Iranian opposition groups.

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

The ingredients of confrontation persist. Events in Iraq have further boosted Iran’s self-perception as a country with a major regional role, an outcome very far from that envisaged by the Bush administration when it terminated the Saddam Hussein regime. Almost two years on, it seems likely that the result of United States strategy in Iraq will be to make conflict with Iran more likely. The Europeans are going to have to exert a huge amount of diplomatic energy if they are to help avoid another dangerous war in an already volatile region.