 he escalating war of words between
the US and Iran shows all the signs of becoming
hotter in the next few months. Iranian President
Ahmedinejad has surprised the international community
by announcing that Iranian scientists have successfully
enriched a small amount of uranium to a level (3.5%)
where they could use it to generate nuclear power.
Iran is now saying that it will start to install
several tens of thousands of centrifuges over the
next few years and these could be used to produce
enough highly enriched uranium (at 98.5%) for a
nuclear bomb. Both the US and Israel are not prepared
to accommodate a Shia regime in Iran that could
be moving towards (but is still years away from)
developing a nuclear weapons capability. President
Bush has refused to rule out military action to
prevent this event.
A recent article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker
claimed not only that the US has sent undercover
forces into Iran but is also actively planning
for a possible air strike which might even use
nuclear ‘bunker buster’ bombs. In doing
so he has revealed the continually bizarre thinking
of the neo-conservatives. Undeterred by the shambles
in Iraq they are apparently convinced that ‘a
sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate
the religious leadership and lead the public to
rise up and overthrow the government’.
More recently the Bush regime has sought to deny
these leaks. However, even if the US currently
feels unable to take offensive action against Iran
whilst its troops are tied down in Iraq, it is
quite clear that the Israelis do not feel so restrained.
Israel’s determination to maintain its status
as the sole nuclear power in the region is now
deforming the whole discourse on ‘peace’ in
the Middle East. There is a serious danger that
Israel will lose patience and attack the key sites
where they allege that Iran’s nuclear development
programmes are located.
Such an action is unlikely to be as successful
as Israel’s bombing attack on Iraq’s
nuclear plant at Osirak in 1981. Iran’s nuclear
facilities are dispersed across many sites, some
(like the key uranium enrichment site at Natanz)
are buried deep underground, others dangerously
close to large centres of population. Such an attack,
whether by the US and/or Israel, would prove explosive
across the whole region. Iran would be likely to
carry out at least two damaging retaliations.
Firstly it would attempt to blockade and mine
the Straits of Hormuz through which one third of
the world’s exported oil supplies have to
pass. Although Iran has no comparable air power
to challenge the might of the US, it has been developing
rapid ‘underwater missiles’ as well
as sophisticated ground-to-ship stealth missiles
for exactly this eventuality. Even a limited blockade
would send oil prices spiralling up. In addition
Iran would instruct its Shia surrogates in Iraq
and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon to step up attacks
on US and Israeli interests throughout the region.
The US is currently deliberately upping the level
of tension as it will conduct a substantial naval
exercise in the Gulf during May entitled ‘Arabian
Gauntlet’.
In addition to refusing to deny that it might
use conventional weapons to attack Iran’s
nuclear facilities, Israel is the only Middle Eastern
nuclear-armed power. In the US and Britain there
is an almost total conspiracy of silence on the
issue of Israel’s declared threat to use
its substantial nuclear arsenal against surrounding
Muslim countries if attacked or if its nuclear
monopoly comes under threat. Since the 1960s when
Britain secretly supplied weapons grade plutonium
to Israel to help its nuclear programme get started,
Israel has developed a fearsome stockpile of over
200 nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, Israel has never
even signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
As a signatory of this treaty Iran is well within
its rights to join the nuclear club as long as
it confines itself to civil not military developments
of the technology. It is by no means impossible
to monitor nuclear activities to ensure that they
remain peaceful and there is every likelihood that
the IAEA will continue to be allowed to perform
this function in Iraq if El Baradei concedes Iran’s
legitimate rights to enrich uranium for civil purposes.
Ironically such monitoring was never done in the
many long years when Israel was developing its
huge nuclear arsenal despite valiant attempts by
Mordechai Vanunu to tell the world what was going
on at the Israeli’s secret facilities at
Dimona in the Negev Desert.
International attempts to get the IAEA to police
Iran away from proliferation whilst ignoring Israel’s
substantial but still undeclared nuclear stockpile
are seen as a blatant double standard. Throughout
the region this is seen as direct evidence that
the West is driven by a slavish obsequience to
the Israeli lobby in the US supported by a poisonous
confection of neo-conservative bullies and fundamentalist
Christian Zionists. Coupled with the West’s
blatant double standards in supporting the continuing
Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories
any escalation of this situation would be likely
to result in riots and uprisings throughout the
Middle East which might endanger some of the US’s
key allies in the region. The constant stream of
targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants
(and frequently of entirely innocent bystanders)
and the continuous humiliations of the occupation
- checkpoints and house demolitions by the Israeli
Defence Forces - is fuelling a growing anti- semitism
on the Arab street and amongst Muslim minorities
in Europe.
Attempts by the US to hobble Hamas, despite the
fact that it was democratically elected are viewed
as sheer hypocrisy. In contrast with the growing
hatred and open condemnation of US and Israeli
behaviour throughout the Middle East, in the West
anyone uttering even the mildest criticism of Israel
is likely to be labelled as anti-semitic. The UN
is now perceived throughout the Middle East as
complicit in the US’s attempts to reprimand
and threaten Iran for developing a civil nuclear
capability which could proliferate into a weapons
system whilst refusing to acknowledge the actual
existence of a comparatively huge Israeli armoury.
If the consequences of an attack on Iran are potentially
so catastrophic, why is it being entertained as
an option and why is there such reluctance to learn
the lessons of Iraq? Two US professors, Stephen
Walt and John Mearsheimer have recently sparked
controversy by attacking the pro-Israeli lobby
in the US. They argued that the influential group
of pro-Israeli politicians and lobbyists steered
the US into the Iraq conflict in order to advance
Israeli rather then US interests. The reason for
US backing of Israel they say is ‘the unmatched
power of the Israeli lobby’. This same lobby
is now trying to engineer increasing diplomatic
and if necessary military pressure on Iran. Such
a foreign policy, they argue, runs absolutely counter
to the US’s real interests.
Walt and Mearsheimer claim that Israel and its
US allies have skewed the national interest, inflamed
Islamic opinion and endangered US policy around
the world. They claim that many foreign policy
experts in the US and beyond are starting to realise
that continued support for Israel’s continuing
repression in the occupied territories ‘is
morally obtuse and a handicap to the war on terrorism’.
They even go so far as to argue that the war in
Iraq was motivated less by oil supplies than by ‘a
desire to make Israel more secure’. Predictably
they have been accused of anti-semitism and have
received numerous threats following the publication
of their report.
Rather than Iran being the main destabilising
influence in the region it is actually Israel and
its US supporters who are pushing confrontation
to the brink. Their increasing pressure on Iran
has already resulted not in a liberalisation of
the country but the election of a hard-line President,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has directly threatened ‘to
wipe Israel off the map’ in retaliation for
the constant Israeli threats against Iran. Whilst
Iran has no powers to carry out this stupid and
dangerous threat, the same is not true of Israel
in respect of Iran. Diplomatic, political and now
a threat of military pressure from the West is
allowing the more conservative elements in Iran
to retrench and consolidate their hold on power.
In these circumstances the Iranian regime has resumed
open attacks on dissenting students, young people,
ethnic minorities and women campaigning for liberalisation
after the more relaxed years under President Khatami.
After many years of watching the politics of deterrence
during and after the cold war, Iran may have concluded
that it will only be safe once it has obtained
nuclear weapons. It has observed that the US has
been unable to do anything concrete to restrain
the North Koreans because they are known to actually
have nuclear weapons. Of course this is exactly
the same view as the Israelis have of Iranian attempts
to obtain nuclear status and explains why they
are so keen to maintain their regional hegemony
by seeking to obstruct Iranian ambitions by any
means necessary. Mearsheimer points out that the
implicit aim of US non-proliferation policy is
to prevent limits being placed on Washington’s
freedom of action in dealing with other countries – ‘the
country that acquires nuclear weapons becomes unattackable,
it is precisely for that reason that it wants them’.
Given the increasing likelihood of confrontation
between Iran and the US/Israeli alliance (with
every probability that the UK will be in tow as
usual), it is vital that we understand more about
what is going on in Iran so that at least we know
what we might be getting ourselves into.
Iran is a highly contradictory country. Despite
appearances its form of Shia theocracy is much
more liberal than the Wahhabism of the Taliban
or the Saudis. The late Ayatollah Khomeini used
to constantly inveigh against ‘the anti-Koranic
ideas propagating the baseless and superstitious
cult of Wahhabism’. Education for girls is
proactively sponsored by the state (at the university
level women are 60% of the student body) and whilst
covering the head is still mandatory for women
there is considerable genuine involvement by women
in government, the professions and the judiciary
(though women are not currently allowed to become
judges). However there continue to be ridiculous
restraints on women who, for example, are currently
not allowed to watch the national male soccer side.
Women are in serious danger if they are found contravening
any of the many strict codes concerning adultery
or pre-marital sex.
Whilst the regime is now becoming increasingly
authoritarian under Ahmadinejad, the Majlis (Parliament)
is still open to real and open debate. Dilip Hiro
characterises it as ‘the liveliest parliamentary
forum in the Middle East surpassed only by the
Israeli Knesset’. Contrary to the prevalent
Western view of a deeply authoritarian regime in
power, ‘the Iranian constitution has more
checks and balances than many of its Western counterparts’.
Many of the contradictions in Iran go back to
the early days of the revolution with a still unsolved
argument running throughout the political system
over the primacy of Islam or democracy. The conservatives
see the role and status of the Leader as deriving
from God. Liberals or ‘reformists’ (including
a considerable number of religious figures for
whom the state should be separated from religion
in line with historical Shia practice) see the
leader needing legitimisation from a popular mandate.
As Hiro says: ‘the issue of where sovereignty
lies in a society of Muslims has baffled religious
scholars for many generations’. The role
of the different organs of the state are almost
designed to ensure stasis with the powerful and
conservative Guardian Council acting as a restraint
on any real liberalisation by overturning legislation
and banning liberals from standing for a place
in the Majlis. At the apex of the structure is
the Leader of the Islamic Republic (currently Ali
Khamenei) who is Commander in Chief of the armed
forces and has powers to approve Presidential candidates
and appoint them after election (as well as potentially
to dismiss them). The Leader has to be a senior
cleric and he picks the 12 clerics who make up
the Guardian Council.
Elected directly for a four-year term, the President
has power to appoint a Prime Minister who then
has to seek the endorsement of the Majlis. It was
this system that effectively hobbled the attempts
by President Khatami (1997-2005) to liberalise
the media, and reform other political structures.
Another major societal schism is between ‘reformists’-
by and large young people and the upper middle
classes in the main urban areas who are broadly
in favour of change and critical of the theocracy,
and on the other hand the conservatives - the clerical
class allied to traders in ‘the bazaar’ and
other lower middle class and rural elements. Two
thirds of Iran’s population are under 25
and have no direct experience or memory of the
years of the Shah before 1979. Their commitment
to the revolution is therefore less than wholehearted
and they represent a huge challenge to the regime.
Young people have ready access to information about
the West and are able to use the internet and mobile
phones. There is a major problem with heroin and
opiate abuse as Iran straddles the drug smuggling
routes from Afghanistan to Europe. On the other
hand a number of petty restrictions are alienating
substantial numbers of young people. They can get
into trouble for attending mixed sex parties, drinking
alcohol and listening to Western music in public,
watching television channels via satellite or even
holding hands with someone other than a marriage
partner.
The Israelis often explain their behaviour by
pointing to the fact that they are surrounded by
enemies who are seeking to undermine them at every
turn. The same argument is used with as much if
not more force by the Iranians. Few Iranians forget
the invasion by Iraq with massive Western backing
in 1980. Over the next eight years Iran was subjected
to a colossal war losing an estimated 300,000 dead
by the end of hostilities in 1988. Robert Fisk
gives an unforgettable eye witness account of the
slaughter in his extraordinary book The Great War
for Civilisation – the Conquest of the Middle
East. To the north of Iran are a number of unstable
Caucasian and Central Asian states as well as Russia
with nuclear weapons. To the east is Pakistan (potentially
unstable and mostly Sunni with nuclear weapons)
as well as war-torn Afghanistan with its numerous
US bases. Beyond these are China and India – both
nuclear states. To its West is Israel with nuclear
weapons as well as Iran’s traditional enemy
Iraq and Turkey (a leading NATO ally). To its south
is an unstable Saudi Arabia and a number of other
Gulf states which have a long history of enmity
with Iran that is complicated by the Sunni/Shia
and Arab/Persian divides. Turkey, Saudi and other
Gulf States are also home to massive stockpiles
of US nuclear armaments at its many navy, air force
and army bases. Iran is also in easy striking distance
from Diego Garcia, the massive US air base in the
Indian Ocean.
Dilip Hiro in his recent book Iran Today concludes
that any military strikes by Israel or the US would
merely delay Iran’s nuclear programme, not
eliminate it. ‘They would alienate Washington’s
allies in the West and the Muslim world and turn
many Iranians who dislike the theocratic regime
into America’s enemies’. In the event
of prolonged hostilities, Iran would be very unlikely
to collapse in the face of a US and Israeli onslaught
in the way that the Iraqi army did initially. The
culture of Shia martyrdom and the 425,000 strong
Islamic Revolutionary Guards (in addition to a
regular army of around half a million volunteers
and conscripts) would mean that there would be
a fight to the death. Meanwhile every threat from
the US and Israel strengthens the hand of the hard-liners
at the expense of reformists and moderates. A military
intervention by the US or Israel would turn even
the severest Iranian critics of the current regime
(whether resident in Iran or part of its very substantial
diaspora in the West) into implacable opponents
of the US. The consequences at a military, economic
and humanitarian level would dwarf the situation
in Iraq.
Instead of Iran it is actually Israel that is
the elephant in the living room. A continuing attempt
to attack and undermine Muslim Iran without even
mentioning Israel’s flagrant contravention
of international convention, nuclear proliferation
agreements, UN resolutions and so on is not even
in the interests of the US itself. For Britain
to be dragged into such a mess even as a passive
supporter would be a further blow to our relations
throughout the region and beyond it. Although far-fetched
it could be that a serious attempt by all powers
to negotiate and then impose a nuclear free zone
in the Middle East (including Israel) would represent
the only safe and sensible way forward.
Iran Today by Dilip Hiro, Politicos £12.99
The Great War for Civilisation by Robert
Fisk, Fourth Estate £25 |
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