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Will Iran have upper hand?

Will Iran have upper hand?
Tehran's nuclear program has international community on edge
Jan. 14, 2006. 01:18 AM
SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU

LONDON—The clash over Iran's nuclear program has an anxious international community hearing echoes of the run-up to the Iraq war.

No Western power is threatening all-out conflict with Iran, which they suspect may be trying to build nuclear bombs.

But the prospect of the Islamic republic being sanctioned by the UN Security Council sets the stage for the kind of escalating brinksmanship some fear can spiral out of hand.

Iran yesterday threatened to stop co-operating with United Nations nuclear inspectors if it's hauled before the Security Council for possible sanctions. And U.S. officials, allied with Europe and Canada in taking Iran to the UN body, won't rule out a unilateral military strike.

The high-stakes diplomacy adds pressure in a volatile Middle East, where a violent campaign by insurgents continues to make Iraq's future uncertain almost three years after the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has described bombing Iran's nuclear centres as a military option and Iran has vowed to retaliate. Israel's warplanes destroyed Iraq's main reactor in 1981.

In Washington yesterday, President George W. Bush said the United States repeatedly has told Tehran that developing nuclear weapons capability is unacceptable.

"And the reason it's unacceptable is because Iran armed with a nuclear weapon represents a grave threat to the security of the world," he said, noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

But, with experts estimating Iran is at least five years away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb, many more months of diplomatic wrangling are expected before military action becomes a real possibility.

The confrontation escalated Thursday when France, Britain and Germany declared an end to 2 1/2 years of nuclear negotiations with Iran. The decision came after the oil-rich country resumed work on a nuclear program it voluntarily suspended.

It broke internationally monitored seals on three nuclear operations, one of them designed to enrich uranium, a process that can produce electricity or make nuclear bombs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN proliferation watchdog based in Vienna — may debate referring the matter to the Security Council later this month.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged some fear a repeat of the run-up to the Iraq conflict, where "hawks" in the U.S. pushed the process towards war. He insisted the dispute with Iran "can only be resolved by peaceful means.

"Nobody is talking about invading Iran or taking military action against Iran," he said yesterday, hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S., "at this point," was not considering a military strike.

Straw and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney have talked about proposing a Security Council resolution that would set specific obligations for Iran and impose sanctions if it does not comply.

The international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which Iran has signed, gives it the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. European nations and the U.S. insist Iran forfeited that right by spending 18 years secretly building a nuclear program.

Hard evidence of Iran's secret program came to light in December 2003, when Libya ratted out a global nuclear smuggling network run by scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb.

Khan admitted selling nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran. The Libyan sales included blueprints for a nuclear warhead — a product Iran insists it did not buy.

Iranian authorities argue they were forced to buy the technology on the black market because a U.S. trade embargo made it impossible to do so legally.

UN nuclear inspectors have examined Iranian sites since the revelations and so far have found no evidence of Iran trying to build a nuclear weapon.

For now, British and American officials are rejecting comparisons with the process that resulted in the Iraq war.

The Security Council cannot deal with Iran like Iraq, ruined by war and obliged to give UN inspectors unfettered access.

Iran is, instead, acting like it has the upper hand.

Energy deals with Russia and China raise the prospect of these veto-wielding members of the Security Council balking at efforts to drag Iran before the UN body.

It's perhaps safe to assume that China, which in 2004 signed a $70 billion (U.S.) deal to buy oil and gas from Iran, won't agree to an embargo on Iranian oil sales if sanctions become an issue.

Far smaller steps reportedly being discussed include a ban on travel by Iranian diplomats and restrictions on new commercial contracts and on participating in sporting events.

On Monday, senior officials from Britain, the U.S., Russia and China will meet in London to try and agree on how to proceed.

Moscow recently has taken a tougher stand against Iran but China's UN ambassador Wang Guangya warned yesterday that referring the country to the Security Council "might complicate the issue" and harden positions.

Iran believes the U.S. and Britain are mired in Iraq and cannot spare the military muscle to pick a fight. That could as well make life for U.S. and British soldiers there far more difficult.

The war brought Shiite Muslim groups long sponsored by Iran to the heart of power in Iraq. Tony Blair's government has already accused Iran of being responsible for armour-piercing bombs used against British soldiers in southern Iraq.

"As long as there is chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. needs Iran — at least until those areas are stabilized," said Mahjour Zweiri, director of Iranian studies at Britain's University of Durham.

Wrote Oxford University professor Timothy Garton Ash: "As President George Bush might privately put it, Tehran has Washington by the cojones."

Iran's rising fortunes in Iraq, which under deposed president Saddam Hussein was its arch-enemy, means it also has a stake in preventing more instability.

Further forcing the theocratic regime to tread carefully is a domestic crisis of legitimacy.

Ahmadinejad's surprise election victory last June put Iran solidly in the hands of ultra-conservatives after several years when reformers controlled the presidency and the parliament.

Many Iranians, perhaps a majority, wage a daily struggle against a regime run by ayatollahs whose fundamentalist mores they consider foreign to Persia's long heritage of straddling East and West.

For Europe and the U.S., the challenge is to forge a path that does not push this dissenting mass into rallying around its unloved leaders.

Surrounded by Israel, Pakistan, Russia and India — all armed with nuclear weapons — many Iranians see joining the club in terms of security.

"The idea of having nuclear capability, whether peaceful or military, is one of the few things that unites Iranians," former U.S. president Bill Clinton told the BBC.

Hans Blix, who led the pre-war UN inspection team in Iraq, accuses Europe and the U.S. of not giving Iran enough economic and political incentives to make a deal. But it's unclear if Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will accept anything less than the ability to enrich uranium.

At one point, Iran seemed ready to do so, said a Western diplomat with knowledge of the Iran-Europe negotiations. The deal tabled included allowing Iran to buy a light-water reactor and ending trade restrictions on spare parts, which helps explain the tendency of Iranian planes to fall out of the sky.

When Ahmadinejad seemed sure to become president, France, Germany and Britain made the reactor offer far less certain, the diplomat said.

Iran then balked at an offer to have Russia supply enriched uranium, saying Moscow's recent gas dispute with Ukraine shows how easy it is for a supplier to turn off the tap.

Said another Vienna-based diplomat: "The danger now is that it all gets out of control."


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