The emergency meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 2 February may prove to be a decisive stage in the unfolding of the crisis between Iran and the international community over Tehran's development of nuclear power. A probable result of the meeting is that Iran will be referred to the United Nations Security Council; the council may in turn consider imposing a stringent sanctions regime on Iran. It is getting late for diplomacy to prevent this conflict of aspirations and perspective spiralling out of control. How did we get here, and is it still feasible to find a peaceful solution that ensures the security of all parties to the dispute?
As well as the IAEA itself, three major European Union states France, Britain, and Germany (the "EU3") have since October 2003 played a major, if interrupted, part in diplomatic negotiations with Iran over its nuclear plans. The EU3's main purpose and that of the entire European Union it represents has been to convince the Iranian ayatollahs (both before and after the election of new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in June 2005) to pursue nuclear research for exclusively peaceful purposes. It now seems clear that the EU3 has failed in its endeavour, but this is more an indication of Tehran's obstinacy than of the EU3's weakness. If the United States itself had tried to resolve the issue (an option that the Bush administration never seriously considered) the result would have been exactly the same.
Also in openDemocracy, Paul Rogers tracks events and issues surrounding Iran and Iraq in his weekly "global security" column. Among his recent assessments of the Iran crisis:
"Iran and the United States: a clash of perceptions"
(November 2005)
"Iran in Israels firing-range"
(December 2005)
"The United States, nuclear weapons, and Iran" (January 2006)
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The supporters of the EU's approach to Iran argue that it helped ensure that Iranian nuclear plans were frozen during the twenty-seven month period it lasted. Its critics say that the negotiations with Iran took far too long, and that Iran has used the time to prepare a secret nuclear-weapons programme. The drawn-out nature of the negotiations mean, according to this view, that the Iranian leadership may have come to believe that there was no danger of the "Iran file" being sent to the UN Security Council.
If this was its view, Iran may have miscalculated. Its attitude has presented the European Union with the first real test of the European Security Strategy (2003), and more generally of the EU's political credibility as a regional and even global power. That is one reason why the EU3 has been able to act cohesively, at least in public. Moreover, along with the United States, the EU has succeeded in convincing Russia to modify its pro-Iranian stance and propose its own practical solution to the issue of Iran's uranium enrichment. This diplomatic shift in Russia's position may include agreement at the IAEA special session in Geneva to support for UN Security Council referral.
The scheduling of the IAEA meeting for February is significant. Tanzania holds the January presidency of the fifteen-member Security Council; in February, the United States will take the chair, headed by its ambassador John Bolton. This creates space and time for a further round of discussion before key decisions are made: an important calculation here is that another regular IAEA board meeting in early March may be necessary before the UN Security Council comes to a united view, and the one-month period interim gives Russia, China, and Iran itself more time to change their positions.
But even if, at the end of this process, the Security Council decides in favour of economic sanctions, there are two reasons why it has little chance of convincing Iran to give up its uranium-enrichment programme. First, the higher the stakes, the more the international community will be divided and the economic stakes for some council members are very high. China imports 15% of its oil from Iran, and has long-term energy agreements with the country. Moreover, the withdrawal of some of Iran's oil barrels from the world market will increase oil prices even further. Any fragile Security Council consensus will rapidly evaporate.
Second, it has become crystal clear in recent months that Iran has invested too much time, money, and domestic prestige in its nuclear programme to be willing to surrender its right to enrich uranium. In addition, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's domestic political position makes him likely to exploit the nuclear issue for a nationalist, "rally-around-the-flag" effect. The bigger the response to Tehran's determination to continue its nuclear researches, and the more serious the impact of any international sanctions on the Iranian people, the more Ahmadinejad will blame the west and Israel.
The diplomacy of double standard
Iran's leadership has another rhetorical weapon in its arsenal: the discriminatory nuclear-weapons regime in the world. Iran does indeed seem to be in non-compliance with Article 3 of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), but it can equally point out that states possessing nuclear weapons do not fulfill their obligations under Article 6 of the same treaty.
The questions virtually ask themselves:
- why is President Chirac allowed to announce a new nuclear doctrine that, if anything, broadens the scope of its nuclear deterrent?
- why, when Britain is obliged under the NPT to move towards disarmament, is Tony Blair planning to modernise Britains nuclear-weapons "deterrent" so that they remain in operation until 2040?
- why do Russia and the United States still maintain around 10,000 nuclear weapons each, of which hundreds are on alert, ready to be launched in a couple of minutes?
- why does China continue to modernise its nuclear arsenal?
In short, if the nuclear-weapon states do not want to get rid of their prestigious toys, why would states like Iran cling to a treaty that they signed more than thirty years ago and that only the great majority of non-nuclear-weapon states seem to respect? In these circumstances, why should Iran (or Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Algeria, Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Japan, and Germany) not be allowed to have nuclear weapons?
It cannot simply be because such states might be thought to act "irrationally", whatever that means for if there is one iron law in international politics, it is that states have no tendency to commit suicide, as many in the current generation of terrorists do. And it is legitimate to ask to what extent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by countries like Iran will help groups like al-Qaida to "go nuclear" in the future.
In this light, it is no surprise that many non-aligned states will oppose military action against Iran. But even short of that, a punitive approach to Iran would raise many questions of legitimacy in different parts of the world - especially the middle east, where another state has secretly built nuclear weapons without ever admitting it and in a way that seems generally accepted by the international community.
Inside the maze
A view of the whole diplomatic picture surrounding Iran can only conclude that the current nuclear non-proliferation regime is in disarray and needs to be reformulated. To attack Iran "pre-emptively" or "preventatively" something that almost certainly could not be done with the authorisation of the UN Security Council will not work. In that case, Iran has a range of possible measures at its disposal:
- it would certainly withdraw from the NPT, following the North Korean example
- it may directly retaliate with its medium-range missiles against Israel, either with conventional or chemical warheads
- it may encourage Hizbollah in Lebanon and other extremist factions in the region to increase their level of operations against Israeli and western targets
- it may intensify its nuclear programme in the medium term, as Iraq did after Israel bombed its Osiraq reactor in 1981; thus an attack on Iran could well be counterproductive in terms of its stated intentions.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Iran nuclear crisis is the fact that the international community is prepared to step up the escalation ladder without the slightest indication that this will work. At the same time, it is hard to see how the process of escalation that Iran has triggered can be halted. This looks like a maze with no exit.
