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Sabre-rattling against Iran unlikely to succeed

Tariq Ali

Ringed by nuclear states, Teheran's atomic programme is scarcely unreasonable. So why has Washington manufactured this crisis?

TILL NOW, what has prevented the crisis in Iraq from becoming a total debacle for the United States has been the open collaboration of the Iranian clerics. Iranian foreign policy — fragmentary and opportunist — has always been determined by the needs and interests of the clerical state rather than any principled anti-imperialist strategy. In the past, this has led to a de facto collaboration with Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war, the clerics had no hesitation in buying arms from the Israeli regime to fight Iraq, then backed by Britain and the U.S. In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq — hoping, no doubt, that clearing the path for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar might have won them a respite — the regime took a tougher stance on the nuclear question.

The Bush administration appears to be psyching itself up for a safe strike against Iran either by itself or via the Israelis, whose new leaders have referred to the Iranian President as a psychopath and a new Hitler. Why has Washington manufactured this crisis? The hypocrisy of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac or Ehud Olmert — their own states armed with thousands of nuclear weapons — making a casus belli of what are, by all accounts, primitive gropings on Iran's part towards the technology necessary for the lowest grade of nuclear self-defence, hardly needs to be spelled out. So long as these powers are allowed to enlarge their nuclear armouries unimpeded, why should Teheran not?

The country is not only ringed by atomic states(India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel), it also faces a string of American bases with potential or actual nuclear stockpilesin Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. Nuclear-armed U.S. aircraft carriers and submarines patrol the waters off its southern coast. Historically, Iran has every reason to fear outside threats. Its elected government was overthrown with covert Anglo-American aid in 1953, and the secular Opposition destroyed. From 1980 to 1988, the Western powers abetted Saddam Hussein's onslaught, in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians died. More than 300 Iraqi missiles were launched at Iranian cities and economic targets, especially the oil industry. In the war's final stages, the U.S. destroyed nearly half the Iranian navy in the Gulf and, for good measure, shot down a crowded civilian passenger plane.

Best and worst of times

For the clerical state, the war on terror has been the best and the worst of times. Oil prices have soared. Enemy regimes on both sides, Baghdad and Kabul, have been overthrown. The Iraqi Shia parties that they have been fostering for years are now in office. Washington has been reliant on their help to sustain its occupations both there and in Afghanistan. Yet social tensions in Iran are high. In this context, the nuclear issue is one of the regime's few unifying projects.

There is no evidence that Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons now than was Iraq in September 2002, when Mr. Blair and Dick Cheney assured the world that Baghdad represented a "genuine nuclear threat." In the competitive scramble by European powers to enhance their standing with Washington after the invasion of Iraq, France, Germany and Britain were keen to prove their mettle by forcing extra agreements on Teheran. The Khatami regime immediately capitulated. In December 2003, they signed the "Additional Protocol" demanded by the EU3, agreeing to a "voluntary suspension" of the right to enrichment guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Within three months, the International Atomic Energy Agency was condemning them for having failed to ratify it; in June 2004, its inspectors produced examples of Iranian enrichment work, perfectly legal under the NPT, but ruled out by the Additional Protocol.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reaped the vote against Mohammed Khatami's miserable record between 1997 and 2005. Economic conditions had worsened and Mr. Khatami was prepared to defend the rights of foreign investors, but not those of independent newspapers or protesting students. Contrary to some reports, Mr. Ahmadinejad has not so far imposed any new puritanical clampdown on social mores. Instead, the most likely constituency to be disappointed is Mr. Ahmadinejad's own: the millions of young, working-class jobless, crammed into overcrowded living conditions, in desperate need of a national development policy that neither neo-liberalism nor Islamist voluntarism will provide.

To face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy — not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics.

The U.S. Undersecretary of State has spoken of "ratcheting up the pressure." Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has said that "Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability, and it must have the capability to defend itself with all that this implies, and we are preparing." Hillary Clinton accused the Bush administration of "downplaying the Iranian threat" and called for pressure on Russia and China to impose sanctions on Teheran. Mr. Chirac has spoken of using French nuclear weapons against such a "rogue state." Perhaps it is simply high-octane rocket-rattling, the aim being to frighten Teheran into submission. Bullying is unlikely to succeed. Will the West then embark on a new war? If so, the battlefield might stretch from the Tigris to the Oxus and without any guarantee of success. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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