MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-08-14 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] I was just in the neighborhood and thought
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Iran tips the nuclear balance
IAN MATHER
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT
WITHIN days of being installed as Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
the conservative son of a blacksmith, has won the first round in the
biggest confrontation with the West since the seizure of the US embassy
a quarter of a century ago.
He has called the bluff of the UN's nuclear watchdog and restarted
Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment programme, receiving in return a mere
slap on the wrist.
Ahmadinejad is hailed by the poor as an Iranian Robin Hood because of
the promises to distribute Iran's oil wealth that won him a landslide
victory. But he combines this with appeals to the traditional Iranian
Shi'ite obsession with martyrdom, which is deeply embedded in the
Iranian psyche.
In a TV speech to the nation he asked: "Is there art that is more
beautiful, more divine and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A
nation with martyrdom knows no captivity.
"The message of the Islamic Revolution is global, and is not restricted
to a specific place or time. It is a human message, and it will move
forward."
Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, advises
Iranians on how to volunteer for an Iranian regime-sponsored martyrdom
squad, including an Iranian women's group that is dedicated to carrying
out martyrdom operations against US, British and Israeli forces, the
London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports.
An announcement in his name reads: "Acts of martyrdom are the great
pinnacle of the Iranian people and the height of its courage. The
commander [Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has
announced registration for the forces of martyrdom in all of Iran's
provinces, in order to defend Islam and to fight the enemies of Islam.
"Our sacred organisation, the organisation of martyrs belonging to the
Islamic Republic, is intended for those interested in carrying out
shahada [martyrdom]. The volunteer, male or female, will join
specialised courses. Brother and sister believers who want to defend
Islam are invited to contact us and request to join the martyrs' corps."
The sudden arrival on the scene of an Iranian leader who combines a
driving ambition to turn Iran into a nuclear state with extolling the
virtues of suicide bombing has alarmed Western governments. Ahmadinejad
claims that access to nuclear technology is Iran's "inalienable right",
a move that could lead to Iran facing UN sanctions, and even to a
military attack on its facilities by Israel or the United States, which
both fear that Iran's long-term ambition is to produce nuclear weapons.
Yet the wily Ahmadinejad, who honed his negotiating skills as mayor of
Tehran, has already proved more than a match for the West.
First, he rejected a compromise package of incentives from the EU, which
has been trying to persuade Iran not to resume the fuel enrichment at
its Isfahan plant. Last week a senior Iranian official said: "Iran has
decided to resume activities in Isfahan and no one at home and abroad
can stop it." Iranian nuclear officials at Isfahan then cut the IAEA
seals and put the enrichment plant into full operation.
The decision marks a bitter failure for Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and
for the governments of France and Germany - the so-called EU3 - who have
been working together for two years to persuade Iran to give up its
nuclear ambitions.
Last week the EU3 called an emergency meeting of the UN's nuclear
watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but it did no
more than express "serious concern", and ask the agency's chief,
Mohammed ElBaradei, to provide it with a comprehensive report on Iran's
compliance with an agency safeguards agreement by September 3.
The 35-nation body refused to refer Iran immediately to the UN Security
Council, as the Europeans urged. This is despite the fact that the IAEA
accuses Iran of deception over its nuclear programme after its
inspectors uncovered a nuclear fuel enrichment programme that Tehran had
been hiding for 18 years.
Yet the opening to the West offered by the EU could bring huge economic
benefits to Iran. The EU3 proposed to support Iran as the main transit
route for oil and gas from central Asia if it froze its nuclear fuel
activities, and also to allow Western companies to build nuclear power
stations in Iran and supply fuel for them.
That would have answered Iran's objections that it has no nuclear
weapons ambitions, yet needs nuclear power stations to meet booming
demand for electricity. The EU3 offer could have helped it to meet that
demand without having to process its own nuclear fuel, which could be
used to make bombs.
But the mood in Tehran is uncompromising, experts say. With Ahmadinejad
in power, the reform period has ended and hardliners now control all the
institutions of power.
"I think Iran is serious about resuming enrichment," says Gary Samore,
recently a nuclear proliferation expert at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies in London. "Iran has probably concluded that the
talks with the EU3 were a mistake. I suspect that the main decision on
enrichment has been taken and what we are seeing now is the tactical
issue of how to bring the talks to an end."
The failure of the EU's diplomatic initiative will confirm the American
Bush administration's view that Ahmadinejad - a former Revolutionary
Guard whom it accuses of having taken part in the occupation of the US
embassy in 1979 - is a dangerous extremist who must be prevented at all
costs from getting his hands on nuclear weapons.
In the end it will be up to Washington to take action, since in the
Security Council Russia and China are likely to veto any attempt to
impose sanctions on Iran.
A Russian foreign ministry official said: "Nobody has demonstrated that
Iran has a military nuclear programme. There is no evidence that Tehran
is in breach of anything, and its actions in this sphere are
transparent. The Security Council deals with issues that pose a threat
to the international community. Iran's nuclear programme does not
contain such a threat."
However, Ahmadinejad, who has the backing of Iran's supreme religious
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other non-elected senior religious
leaders, now finds himself in direct confrontation with another
hardliner, John Bolton, the new US ambassador to the UN, who heads the
US drive for punitive measures against Iran.
Bolton said in a speech: "If we permit Iran's deception to go on much
longer, it will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons." Even
though Bolton failed to win confirmation by the US Senate, he was still
appointed by President Bush, and is a firm disciple of the president's
foreign policies, which include labelling Iran as a member of the "axis
of evil" and a state sponsor of terrorism.
"None of this means that the US should be planning an attack tomorrow,"
says Gary Schmitt, director of the Project for the New American Century,
a leading neoconservative organisation in Washington. "But it does mean
that we have no reason to relax, nor can we postpone difficult decisions
indefinitely."
He was speaking after a US intelligence report leaked to the Washington
Post concluded that the West's nightmare of a nuclear-armed Iran was not
as close as was feared.
The National Intelligence Assessment, representing a consensus among US
intelligence agencies, confirmed the Bush administration's view that
Iran was determined to build nuclear weapons, but said that it was
unlikely to have enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb
for 10 years.
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