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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
By Simon Jenkins
01/18/06 "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.
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@guardian.co.uk
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