On the Iranian Nuclear Deal

Whilst The Warwick Globalist has some technical issues with getting the new blog up and running I am using this one to comment on the Iranian nuclear deal. See here for an article I wrote for The Warwick Globalist’s temporary website on the relationship between the British establishment and the Gulf elites. There is a forthcoming piece on the relationship between the ‘realist’ international school of thought and international morality, a first blog on ‘theoretical’ issues in international relations.

Yesterday news came through that a preliminary deal had been struck between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear programme. I’ve written fairly extensively on this blog before about Iran, the West and the nuclear issue, including a brief history of Iranian-Western relations, discussion of whether or not Iran’s nuclear programme actually has military dimensions, military options for the prevention of Iran acquiring a weapon, and diplomatic options for a peaceful resolution to the issue. I stand by what I said in those posts and they all remain relevant for understanding the background to yesterday’s deal.

There has been a lot of comment on the deal by people who seem not to have taken the time to actually read it, and seem unaware that this is only a preliminary deal aimed at creating the needed mutual trust between the parties with a view to a comprehensive settlement in 6 months time. That said, the deal is fairly impressive in its own right. The White House release on the details shows how Iran is to “[h]alt all enrichment above 5% and dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%... Dilute below 5% or convert to a form not suitable for further enrichment its entire stockpile of near-20% enriched uranium before the end of the initial phase” (enrichment to around 3.5% is the level needed for civilian nuclear energy purposes- 19.5% can be used for some civilian purposes such as fuelling medical research reactors, but it is also closer to the around-95% enrichment needed for a bomb). Iran has already been recognised as keeping its stockpile of 19.5% enriched uranium at below the level Israel considers necessary to make one nuclear device. The latest IAEA report puts its stockpiles at 196 kg, below the 250kg mark needed for a bomb. Additionally, Iran will “[n]ot increase its stockpile of 3.5% low enriched uranium, so that the amount is not greater at the end of the six months than it is at the beginning, and any newly enriched 3.5% enriched uranium is converted into oxide”.

Furthermore, Iran will “[n]ot commission the Arak reactor. Not fuel the Arak reactor. Halt the production of fuel for the Arak reactor. No additional testing of fuel for the Arak reactor. Not install any additional reactor components at Arak. Not transfer fuel and heavy water to the reactor site. Not construct a facility capable of reprocessing.  Without reprocessing, Iran cannot separate plutonium from spent fuel”. This stops fears of Iran taking an alternative, plutonium route to a bomb at Arak. When it comes to inspections, the White House report describes “[u]nprecedented transparency and intrusive monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program”; Iran will “[p]rovide daily access by IAEA inspectors at Natanz and Fordow. This daily access will permit inspectors to review surveillance camera footage to ensure comprehensive monitoring.  This access will provide even greater transparency into enrichment at these sites and shorten detection time for any non-compliance. Provide IAEA access to centrifuge assembly facilities. Provide IAEA access to centrifuge rotor component production and storage facilities. Provide IAEA access to uranium mines and mills. Provide long-sought design information for the Arak reactor”. This comes off the back of a deal Iran recently struck with the IAEA to expand inspections of many nuclear sites. When it comes to centrifuges, Iran agreed “[n]ot install additional centrifuges of any type. Not install or use any next-generation centrifuges to enrich uranium. Leave inoperable roughly half of installed centrifuges at Natanz and three-quarters of installed centrifuges at Fordow, so they cannot be used to enrich uranium”.

Given the extensive surveillance and “unprecedented intrusive monitoring”, it will be hard for Iran to break these constraints and get away with it. Officials familiar with the deal told the Washington Post that “[t]he concessions not only halt Iran’s nuclear advances but also make it virtually impossible for Tehran to build a nuclear weapon without being detected”. It should also be noted that it was already the opinion at the beginning of the year of James Clapper, US National Intelligence Director, that “Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU (weapons-grade uranium) before this activity is discovered”.

It should also be noted that the relief Iran has received in return is minimal- maybe $6-7 billion in sanctions reductions (despite what an Israeli disinformation campaign in Washington tried to claim). The White House release boasts how it is “maintaining the vast bulk of our sanctions, including the oil, finance, and banking sanctions architecture”. Iran’s $100 billion in foreign exchange holdings will also be unavailable to their government. A US official told Foreign Policy that “Iran will actually be worse off at the end of this six month deal than it is today”. The sanctions are already severely affecting Iranian people; a Foreign Policy piece details how the “results have been devastating for the Iranian population, triggering a collapse of industry, skyrocketing inflation, and massive unemployment. As the rich and politically-connected prosper under sanctions, Iran's middle class has disappeared, and even access to food and medicine has been compromised”. Given that this is expected to continue and perhaps worsen, it is surprising that Iran has given in to such stringent demands at all.

The reactions to the deal have been revealing. All along Netanyahu slammed the prospects of a deal, seemingly before he even knew what the final details would be. After the deal was sealed in the early morning of Sunday, Netanyahu described it as a “historic failure”, and the Israeli Economics Minister, Naftali Bennett, proclaimed that “[i]f a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid it will be because of the deal signed this morning”. The deputy speaker of parliament, MK Moshe Feiglin, of a ruling coalition party Likud, claimed the deal was “tantamount to the Munich Agreement of the late 1930s”. These wild ravings push Israel more and more to the fringes of the international community and are isolating it even from its allies. It could count on its new friend France to do its best to scupper the deal early on in the process, but now the only allies Israel seems to have on this issue are the Gulf dictators, chiefly the totalitarian Saudi Arabia. The Defence Minister also reaffirmed that “[a]ll options are still on the table”, an illegal threatening of the use of military force, not that anyone pays any attention to international law.

Reading through the English-language Israeli press has been an interesting experience too- some more measured reactions from Haaretz and the US-based Forward are counterposed against some more dubious responses. The online Times of Israel, for instance, explained that the problem isn’t that the details of the deal are bad, just that Iran is “a cunning and deceptive adversary”, and that “Iran has never acknowledged that it is in fact marching to the bomb”. Yedioth Ahronoth, one of the biggest newspapers in Israel, said that one of the problems with the deal is that “[t]he Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will effectively be finished”- not true, but both editorials are even more odd in light of the fact that Israel itself has refused to admit to its nuclear arsenal and refused to sign the NPT, seriously damaging its efficacy.

The fact is that the only thing which would make Netanyahu happy would be a complete elimination of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities, an absurd position, not least because Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear enrichment for civilian purposes under the NPT. He knows this demand is never going to be met, so as Trita Parsi put it in Foreign Affairs, “[t]here is reason to believe, then, that Israel’s insistence on zero enrichment is aimed to ensure that no deal is struck at all”. Even some parts of the Israeli military establishment seem at odds with Netanyahu on this: Christian Science Monitor reported that an Israeli military official told them that the “intelligence branch does not think this demand is realistic”, and that the negotiations offered prospects for stability in the region. Every state needs to exaggerate the threat posed by its enemies in order to further its domestic agenda, and Israel is no different. Whilst Netanyahu asserts that “[i]t’s 1938 and Iran is Germany”, the vast majority of scholars one should take seriously consider the Iranian regime to be a ‘rational actor’, not the kind of actor which will fire nuclear weapons at Israel in what would be the clearest case of state-suicide in history. Netanyahu wants to eliminate any possibility that Iran could ever challenge Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region. If he were serious about eliminating the very-real scourge of nuclear weapons he would take seriously the possibilities for establishing a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East; but since that would entail Israel giving up their arsenal, he would prefer to use illegal force against Iran.

The US has done what it must in putting aside the more extreme of Israel’s demands, and we can only hope that the reports coming out that Netanyahu is, in private, willing to give the deal a chance, are true. Let’s hope that this editorial from Yedioth Ahronoth, which seems to suggest that Netanyahu is and should be willing to risk World War 3 over this deal, represents the fringes of mainstream thought in Israel. 

The Economist and Media Bias

I’ve read The Economist every week for years now, and every so often an article comes along which reminds me never to underestimate the newspaper’s ability to infuriate me with its incredible reserve of pro-Western war mongering. The July 22^nd-28^th issue featured a front cover with ‘Can Iran Be Stopped?’ plastered across it, the name of the main leader in the paper this week. It also contained a 3 page briefing on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The Economist has a proven track record at advocating every intervention and Western war our elites cook up, including the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and intervention in Libya and Syria. The language it regularly uses about the need to ‘punish’ nations which ‘misbehave’ economically or politically often has more than a slight undertone of good-old British imperialism. This week’s leading story was another case study in the art of omission and distortion that the newspaper has mastered.

The main leader started with an effort to claim that the West should disregard the recent victory of Hassan Rohani in the Iranian presidential elections; Rohani was considered the moderate in the contest. We shouldn’t laud the new President’s calls for serious negotiation with the West according to the paper, as apparently ‘Iran’s regional assertiveness and its nuclear capacity mean that it is a more dangerous place than it ever was before’. By ‘regional’ they mean the Middle East, and a glance at Arab public opinion, the majority of citizens in the Middle East, shows that they actually consider the United States to be the biggest threat in the region, not Iran. According to a study by the Wilson Center and the United States Institute of Peace carried out in 2011, ‘Iran remained far behind… the United States: 59 percent identified the United States, and 18 percent identified Iran as one of the two greatest threats’ in the region. Other studies show similar, or even more pronounced results. Of course, The Economist has little regard for the ignorant opinions of the natives. That they consider the US to possess far more ‘regional assertiveness’ than Iran is irrelevant. That Israel is the only country with ‘nuclear capacity’- actually nuclear weapons- is also presumably irrelevant. Note also the construction of Iran as a ‘dangerous place’, not merely a dangerous state or government. The portrayal of enemies and far-away lands as mysterious and dangerous has a long tradition in Western journalism and writing.

The paper notes with implicit approval that Western-imposed sanctions have inflicted ‘severe economic pain… on Iran’s people’, ‘with 40% of Iranians thought to be living below the poverty line’; there is no comment on the fact that our actions are seriously harming the lives of millions of innocent Iranians.

It then provides a sober analysis of Obama’s recent decision to arm the rebels in Syria: ‘many believe the greater reason was [Obama’s] reluctance to see Mr Assad hold on to power as a client of Iran’s’. This cynical ‘real politic’ is actually applauded by the paper, which claims that a major reason to not only arm the rebels but to establish a no-fly zone over Syria is to ‘stem the rise of Persian power’. Apparently it is ‘not in the West’s interest that a state that sponsors terrorism and rejects Israel’s right to exist should become the regional hegemon’. That one of the West’s major allies in the region (Saudi Arabia) is probably a far greater sponsor of terrorism than Iran is of little importance to the paper. So presumably is the fact that Israel and the US have carried out terrorist assassinations of civilian scientists in Iran and sponsored exiled Iranian terrorist groups like MEK, something I wrote about briefly here. The historical context is utterly stripped from the article, and Iran is portrayed as the aggressive would-be hegemon in the region, a fantasy which ignores the elementary facts available to anyone who cares to look: namely that the US and Britain have sought to control the Middle East for their own interests, often with extreme aggression and terrorism, for decades. The piece ends with the battle cry: ‘When Persian power is on the rise, it is not the time to back away from the Middle East’; suggesting that there is some voluntary retreat from the Middle East by the Western powers, a fabrication unsurprisingly not elaborated on by the paper.

The briefing on Iran’s nuclear programme is somewhat more subtle, revealing in what it excludes rather than what it asserts. It follows the tradition of nearly every Western politician and journalist of the last decade and a half in hysterically asserting that the time is near when Iran will be able to acquire nuclear weapons- maybe true, but the humble reminder that people have been making that charge- falsely- for years, is again unsurprisingly missing from the paper’s piece. It presents Iran as making an ‘impossible demand’ in negotiations, ignoring the US role in scuppering potential deals and negotiations, something I wrote about here. It claims that ‘British and American intelligence sources think [Iran] is about a year away from having enough fissile material to make a bomb’, ignoring that it is the intelligence agency’s assessments (and the IAEA’s) that Iran hasn’t made the decision to attempt to get a bomb. Jacques Hymans wrote in Foreign Affairs the other month that ‘at the end of January, Israeli intelligence officials quietly indicated that they have downgraded their assessments of Iran's ability to build a nuclear bomb… Now, Israel believes that Iran will not have its first nuclear device before 2015 or 2016.’ That will probably be pushed back even further in the future.

It quotes a researcher at the highly establishment RAND Corporation, Greg Jones, and a more respectable source, David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, to back up its arguments. It also references the oft-mentioned 2011 IAEA report that I discussed here. Left out of the picture are those such as former Director of the IAEA’s Iraq Action Team, Robert Kelly, who argues that the report proves nothing, and former head of the IAEA, Hans Blix, who has claimed that the hysteria about Iran is over-hyped. Even Jack Straw has come out recently to say that there isn’t sufficient evidence to prove Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapon- far from it.

Ultimately, thankfully, the paper doesn’t advocate a military attack on Iran, though for strictly practical reasons, as is the usual in the media. The (il)legality, or the (im)morality of a strike, isn’t even discussed. They do have the sense to recognise the danger that an attack upon Iran could end with a ‘full-scale invasion’ of the country, something even The Economist doesn’t want.

This is an example of the endless systemic bias inherent in the media, often represented most clearly in liberal papers like The Economist. A source of information they may be, but one needs to know how to read the media: a task I am still learning. 

An Elementary Thought Experiment

A short summation of the 4-piece series on Iran, from the perspective of an alternative world:

Imagine, if you will, that in 1953 Iran overthrew the elected government of the United States and installed a puppet dictator who would rule for 26 years, keeping US natural resources firmly under the control of Iranian companies. Imagine that in 1979 this Iranian-backed ruler was overthrown in a popular revolution, and US national independence restored. In time, Iran would invade both Mexico and Canada, building at least 42 military bases in the surrounding region, replete with a naval fleet to patrol the Gulf of Mexico. Iran then utilises politically distorted intelligence estimates to demand that the US surrender its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, in return for a vague promise not to pursue ‘regime change’ in the US. Any pretence of negotiations is undermined by the threat of an attack upon the US, in violation of the UN Charter. Imagine American scientists are assassinated, infrastructure decimated by ‘cyber-bugs’, and devastating sanctions imposed, causing a pharmaceutical crisis for the US people. Iran’s major regional ally, Venezuela, works with US Christian terrorist groups who seek to overthrow the US government. A conference on establishing a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in the Americas, to be attended by the US, is whimsically cancelled by Iran to ensure that their ally Venezuela be allowed to unilaterally retain the only nuclear weapons in the region.

Rhetorical musings aside, everything written here has manifested itself in reality, with one key difference: the official ‘enemy’ is not the perpetrator of the crimes. We are.

Iranian-Western Relations Part 4

Diplomacy

The final full piece on Iran; reviewing perhaps the only hope for eliminating the spectre of WMDs from the Middle East: diplomacy.

Given the apparent repeated failure of the talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the permanent 5 on the Security Council plus Germany) at Kazakhstan recently (http://tinyurl.com/bow2gzg), this option would seem to be a proven failure. However the Western media have failed to give the full story on diplomatic efforts. There are two avenues in particular which should be pursued urgently.

Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone

The first is the possibility of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East; a treaty, governed by the UN, which would place obligations upon all states in the region to forgo any current nuclear weapons, or nuclear-ambitions, and submit to a wide-ranging regime of inspections and verification, either through the IAEA, Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Additional Protocol, or a new body set up to monitor compliance. Such verification wouldn’t be 100% accurate but it would be pretty close- the capacities of institutions like the IAEA are generally respected. Such zones already exist in Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia and Latin America (http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nwfz), and have so far been more or less successful.

Efforts to achieve such a zone in the Middle East have been on-going for decades, headed historically by Egypt in particular. Patricia Lewis recently wrote an article in International Affairs documenting the history of such efforts. It is recorded how ‘In 1974… Iran and Egypt formally tabled a joint UN General Assembly resolution calling for the establishment of an NWFZ in the Middle East. The resolution was adopted by a majority of 138 votes, with only Israel and Burma abstaining’ (http://tinyurl.com/cvpf3ej). Furthermore, a 1995 resolution passed at the NPT Review Conference calling ‘upon all States in the Middle East to take practical steps… aimed at making progress towards… the establishment of an effectively verifiable Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological, and their delivery systems, and to refrain from taking any measures that preclude the achievement of this objective’, and was accepted and voted for by all relevant states, including the US. Subsequent efforts culminated in an agreement to hold a conference on the establishment of a zone in Helsinki in December 2012.

Several months before the conference Iran announced it would attend (Jerusalem Post- http://tinyurl.com/c73jmdb). Shortly after that announcement, the US cancelled the conference, a decision slammed by Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA as a ‘flagrant violation of the NPT’ (http://tinyurl.com/cd9dakg). The suspected reason for Washington’s sudden cancelation is Israel’s refusal to attend. Israel has a policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’, refusing to admit or deny its possession of nuclear weapons, but it is widely believed by all respected observers to be the only state in the Middle East to have nuclear weapons. Given that this was a chance for an international effort to eliminate a danger to humanity in one of the most volatile regions in the world, one would have expected the United States to seize the opportunity with both hands. Instead, even the possibility of such an achievement was blocked. In a statement, the State Department claimed that ‘the United States will continue to work with our partners to support an outcome in which states in the region approach this issue on the basis of mutual respect and understanding’ (http://tinyurl.com/c3gdgrx), reminding me of a talk by Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow in which he called for negotiations to be undertaken with respect for Iran’s history and desire to be accepted into the international community (http://www.chathamhouse.org/events/view/182925); precisely the opposite of how diplomacy has been conducted so far. We have come a long way from the times when British diplomats wrote how ‘we English have hundreds of years of experience on how to treat the natives’ in Iran; but an air of superiority and arrogance remains in the US’ approach to negotiations. Take for instance one of their bargaining chips: a promise not to pursue ‘regime change’ in Iran in return for certain Iranian concessions. I wonder how the US would respond if Iran gave a vague promise not to pursue ‘regime change’ in the US in return for giving up certain aspects of its nuclear programme. When the precursor to negotiations is vast cyber-attacks and threats of an attack (even the very threat is actually against international law), it is unsurprising that negotiation often fail to get anywhere. It increases distrust and willingness to defy the opponent who comes across as an arrogant, aggressive bully.

Interestingly, I couldn’t find a single article on the conference for a nuclear-free Middle East in the mainstream British or American media. Such silence is stunning when the threats of nuclear proliferation are considered. Such a conference may come to nothing, but unless we at least try we can never know.

The Brazil-Turkey Deal

There are other avenues, and diplomacy has worked to some extent. Iran have recently diverted ‘a third of their enriched uranium fuel rods to medical research’ (Foreign Affairs- http://tinyurl.com/c4c3fmj), and Iran has been ‘careful to stay well below the 240kg mark’ of 20% enriched uranium which would be necessary for a bomb (Economist- http://tinyurl.com/c68gbt5). Furthermore, in 2009 the Obama administration approached Brazil asking them to broker a deal whereby Iran would ship out around 1,200kg of 5% enriched uranium, in return for a research reactor and 20% enriched uranium fuel rods usable for medical reactors only. Iran initially opposed the idea, but by 2010 Brazil and Turkey managed to get signatures on paper to achieve such an end (see here- http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010_06/FuelSwap and here- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8685846.stm). However the US and UK then did a complete U-turn, refusing to back the deal (http://tinyurl.com/cuunbmn) which they had tried to foment previously. A common refrain has become that ‘the US doesn’t know how to take yes for an answer’. After Iran gave way to diplomacy, potentially opening up avenues for further agreements, the US humiliated the Iranian concession by destroying the deal.

This record of botched diplomacy could show one of many things. It could just be an unfortunate consequence of the challenges and complexities of international diplomacy, or it could be the result of a lack of respect for Iran and a certain arrogance on the part of Western powers. It may even betray a lack of sincerity on the part of the US to actually engage in serious negotiations. There is part of the US establishment that still hasn’t forgiven Iran for freeing itself from US dominance in 1979, and wants to re-establish control. Iran is one of the most important countries in one of the most important regions in the world, and the imperial mentality of the US is such that there is still a lingering feeling that they have a right to own Iran. In order to do that you need a war and regime change, something which has long been desired by the more hard-right elements of the US establishment.

There is certainly a wish on the part of the US to stop Iran getting weapons (although this certainly has more to do with the fact that a nuclear Iran would endanger US and Israeli power in the region rather than any concern for nuclear proliferation- Ehud Barak was quoted in Foreign Affairs as saying that the reason a nuclear Iran is so feared is that it would ‘undermine Israel's strategic monopoly in the Middle East’- http://tinyurl.com/c4c3fmj), but the mentality of the US state is one culturally prone towards war and violence rather than diplomacy. There are also more sinister motives underlying their aggressiveness towards Iran. The US is the world’s only empire, and ever since the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup the US has tried to dominate and control Iran in its interests. Disobedience to The Empire is often considered the greatest crime; one Iran is unlikely to be forgiven for whatever it does, short of complete submission to the iron will of the United States of America.


A short summation of the 4-part series will follow.

Iranian-Western Relations Part 3

Iran Part 3- what to do

I clearly miscalculated when I said that there would be a 2-part series on Iran; it is now a 4-part series.

Given that Iran may well be attempting to move towards nuclear capability or weaponisation, it is sensible to review the options available to Western governments and the international community regarding Iran’s nuclear programme. Apologies for length and the occasional slightly technical passages, but this is a complicated and important issue which needs a thorough examination. This post will review letting Iran have a bomb, attacking their nuclear facilities, and waging low level warfare (the current policy). The next post will look at diplomatic options.

Let them get a bomb

There are some in academic circles who believe that nuclear proliferation is a force for stability in the world- notably Kenneth Waltz, the giant amongst international relations scholars, who wrote an article in Foreign Affairs recently entitled ‘Why Iran Should Get the Bomb’ (http://tinyurl.com/7mwgp9v). They argue that the destructive power of nuclear weapons is so vast that no regime would ever be the first to use them, as they require ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD). Simplifying somewhat, their argument rests more or less upon historically precedent; we have had 70 years of the nuclear age and, so far, no two nuclear powers have ever gone directly to war with each other. They claim that this shows that nuclear weapons prevent leaders from going to war with other nuclear powers, lest they start a nuclear war and are both obliterated.

There are many reasons to be sceptical of this argument in any situation; it ignores the millions killed in proxy wars during the Cold War between the US and the USSR, and ignores how, in the words of the then-US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, ‘it was luck that prevented nuclear war’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lrH7RtiobQ) between the US and USSR in the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. Try to apply the argument to the modern day Middle East and things get shakier.

It’s not that Iran or any other state would be reckless enough to launch a nuclear missile at an enemy, unprovoked (as Richard Betts wrote in Foreign Affairs recently, ‘there is no evidence… that the Iranian leadership has any interest in national suicide, the likely consequence of an Iranian first nuclear strike’- http://tinyurl.com/bo74n4u); rather, wars often start from miscalculation and accident. As political scientist Scott Sagan has pointed out, accidents are a statistically inevitable part of any system (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xupuaqu_ruk).

Whilst Iran has ‘never launched a regular war against its enemies’ (Betts), the power and arrogance that can flow from having the world’s most powerful deterrent could embolden it to engage in more destabilising behaviour in the region. Waltz himself even admits that new nuclear states will ‘feel freer to make minor incursions, deploy terrorism, and engage in generally annoying behavior’ (http://tinyurl.com/bggroaj) , and given Iran’s apparent support for the Syrian regime, Hezbollah and Hamas, this is hardly something to welcome. The respected Geoffrey Robertson QC has documented the Iranian regime’s regional and domestic human rights abuses in Mullahs Without Mercy: Human Rights and Nuclear Weapons, and points out that a nuclear Iran would be disastrous for the region. Miscalculation between Iran and the US and Israel could cause a nuclear war.

Military Strike

Interestingly, some polls of Arab opinion have shown a majority in favour of Iran having a nuclear bomb in order to deter Israel and the US, who are considered to be the greatest threats to peace in the region by far (The Wilson Center and USIP- http://tinyurl.com/al48lzl). However it seems no one seriously interested in peace and stability could be in favour of a further extension of weapons capable of destroying humanity, regardless of the fact that Iran is generally considered to be what international relations scholars call a ‘rational actor’ in the world system (that is, a regime that won’t willingly undertake activity which it knows will lead to its self-destruction).

The other extreme is a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, in order to forcibly halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and (until recently) Defence Minister Ehud Barak are said to favour such an action, and there are certain sectors of the US government who are also in line with such thinking. Articles such as ‘Time to Attack Iran’ have appeared in major journals like Foreign Affairs. An article recommending a regime-toppling attack was even considered mainstream enough to be published (http://tinyurl.com/ckofvhx).  Such an attack would have to take out Iran’s considerable air defences, and heavily bomb dozens of facilities all over the country, perhaps even using M.O.B’s (http://tinyurl.com/324j56) or M.O.P’s (http://tinyurl.com/c6f7q6x) on underground facilities like Natanz and Fordow. Consequences are hard to predict, but civilian casualties from the bombing campaign would run at least into the hundreds; the best case scenario is that the nuclear programme is set back several years and Iran fails to retaliate to the attack on its sovereignty.

A realistic assessment of possible outcomes leaves us with dire scenarios. As Robert Jervis in Foreign Affairs points out, ‘Washington knows that the likely results include at least a small war in the region, deepening hostility to the United States around the world, increased domestic support for the Iranian regime, legitimation of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the need to strike again if Iran reconstitutes [the programme]’ (http://tinyurl.com/c6dcqms). Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz (Reuters- http://tinyurl.com/cr5h83f), through which around 20% of the world’s oil supplies travel. A closure would rack the global markets and possibly send the world back into recession. Furthermore Iran is likely to respond, as any nation with substantial military capability would when attacked; Colin Kahl writes that such a retaliation would probably take the form of ‘proxy attacks against U.S. civilian personnel in Lebanon or Iraq, the transfer of lethal rocket and portable air defense systems to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, or missile strikes against U.S. facilities in the Gulf [which] could cause significant U.S. casualties, creating irresistible political pressure in Washington to respond’ (http://tinyurl.com/6p2f5pu). If Israel were involved in the strike, the Iranian-backed Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Gaza-based Hamas could fire masses of rockets into Israel, leading to a swift response from the government there, and potentially a new conflict in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc.) are extremely hostile to Iran, and any retaliatory attack upon them from Iran (many of them host US bases which could be a launching point for an air attack) could draw them into a huge region-wide conflict, unseen in decades. It is little surprise then, that former head of Mossad (Israel’s intelligence services) Meir Dagan has called an attack on Iran the ‘stupidest idea [he’s] ever heard’ (http://tinyurl.com/94w4xnt).

Low level warfare

We are now 10 years on from the Iraq War and it would take incredible amnesia to repeat the disaster which has unfolded there; whilst the above passage was committed to the practical consequences of an attack on Iran, there is also a very strong moral and legal case to be made against a strike (this perspective on the debate is nearly invariably left out of mainstream journals and media); the afore mentioned Geoffrey Robertson QC is against an attack ‘because it’s wrong’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p3hnl). Recently a legal memo was leaked from the British government declining US requests to use British bases as a launching pad for an attack upon Iran; the memo stated that such an attack would be in violation of international law, since Iran does not yet pose a ‘clear and present threat’ (Guardian- http://tinyurl.com/8gzhatj).  

A step down from a full blown strike would be low level warfare: sabotage attempts, sanctions, cyber warfare, funding opposition within Iran etc. This resembles the United States’ and Israel’s current policy. Vast sanctions have been placed upon Iran, causing the value of its currency to plummet by up to 80% in value (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19786662), and allegedly causing a pharmaceutical crisis for the population, as the sanction are so broad that civilian goods get caught up in them (Guardian- http://tinyurl.com/cwo5q3d).  Scientists working on Iran’s nuclear programme have been assassinated (BBC- http://tinyurl.com/7xn4plk), and the famous ‘Stuxnet’ cyber virus was thought to have originated from the US (described by some legal experts as an ‘illegal act of force’- http://tinyurl.com/crxyocb).

The murky underground war against Iran goes further; an Iranian opposition group called the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) has the public support of a number of US citizens high up in the US establishment, including James Woolsey, the former CIA director, and the former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who has campaigned to have the group removed from the US list of terrorist organisations (http://tinyurl.com/btyecg4). The group has been previously involved in Marxist terrorist activity (testament to the fact that many sectors of the US government will work with anyone if it furthers their strategic and economic interests- Al Jazeera http://tinyurl.com/c7fsqp6). Senior US officials allegedly told NBC news that the MEK has been involved in assassinations of Iranian scientists, carried out with the support of Israel (http://tinyurl.com/clhojjl).  

Israel has a seemingly strange relationship with another terrorist organisation: the Sunni Jundallah. Foreign Policy reported last year on how Mossad agents posed as CIA operatives and attempted to recruit members of Jundallah to help fight the covert war against Iran (http://tinyurl.com/6rz9jab). The idea of Israel working with Pakistani-based Sunni terrorists against a Shia government would be amusing if it weren’t so troubling. There is a long history of our government and our allies working with extremist groups and Islamists to further their own interests, most famously in the 80's when they funded Bin Laden and the groups which would later become the Taliban and Al Qaeda in their fight against the USSR in Afghanistan. The consequences of that policy are well known to all.

There is of course a similar argument to be made against such a policy in Iran- not only will these actions likely backfire, as it allows the government in Iran to muster up domestic support by using the threat of hostile powers as an excuse to expand its power and control- but these activities are most probably mostly illegal and certainly immoral. We can imagine what the US response would be if Iran were assassinating its scientists and launching huge cyber-attacks on its nuclear infrastructure (indeed we know what the Israeli response would be- when the Iranian-backed Hamas or Hezbollah launch any kind of attack against Israel, Israeli officials claim that they have a ‘right to defend their country’ and respond with huge force). The murder of civilian scientists for political aims and in order to scare away graduates from pursuing such a career is the very definition of state (or state-backed) terrorism.