Iran's possession or acquisition of nuclear technology could propel it, in a self-fulfilling cycle, towards social and state militarisation, writes Mustafa El-Labbad* With the advent of 2007, Iran continues to top the agenda of international decision-makers, political analysts and the media. Even North Korea's nuclear test, at the end of 2006, didn't elbow Iran out of the global spotlight. North Korea's entrance into the nuclear club does not threaten to overturn the international order, since North Korea remains countered in its region by two major powers, China and Japan. Iran, on the other hand, though it lags years behind North Korea in military nuclear capacity, is an international and, specifically, Western nightmare. Given Iran's strategic location overlooking the Gulf, through which passes nearly 40 per cent of the world's petroleum energy resources, and because of the nature of the current regime in Tehran and its regional influence, its entry into the nuclear club would not only irreversibly alter balances of power in the Middle East, but would throw the entire international order off kilter. Curiously, the current global order can tolerate nine nuclear powers (the US, Russia, France, Britain, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea), but it cannot tolerate a tenth, especially if it is Iran. Similarly, it can tolerate five Asian members in the nuclear club, but not a sixth, again if that sixth is Iran. Apart from the US and Russia, Iran would be the only other country in this club to have its nuclear influence bolstered by its economic and strategic leverage over oil. After all, technological prowess, military might and control over the world's primary raw materials, and over markets for these resources, are, as they have always been, major determinants of the rise and fall of nations. As the noted American historian Paul Kennedy pointed out, if Iran acquired nuclear military capacity, it would be in a unique position to affect the fate of other nations. The 18th century military strategist Clausewitz famously said that war was "a violent act intended to compel the enemy to submit to our will". In today's nuclear age, however, the concept of war, in the context of international power struggles, has changed considerably to become a clash of rival nuclear wills. Since World War II, there has never been a direct military engagement between nuclear powers; there have been standoffs in which both sides eventually backed off. This very fact is undoubtedly what has inspired certain factions within the Iranian ruling regime to push for the acquisition of military nuclear technology. Once in Iran's hands, it would form a formidable deterrent against outside pressures and military threats, especially from the US. But the confrontation between nuclear wills also engages, in addition to the various sources of military and economic power, a gamut of stereotypes and emotive value-laden symbols. When this combines with a clash between civilisations, stereotypes and symbols become even more potent, and the entire amalgam grows exceedingly perilous, as was the case during the protracted facedown between the West and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Today, Russia still possesses the same number of nuclear warheads that the former Soviet Union had. However, the West no longer fears its former adversary's potential destructive power since the communist ideological mindset that had once stood behind it no longer exists. What does worry the West, today, is the "jihadist" ideological mindset in some quarters of the Iranian regime, and the possibility of its access to nuclear military capacity. For then, any contest of wills between Iran and the West would not just be a contest over sources of strength and political and economic influence, but a much more volatile and potentially all-encompassing collision between Western civilisation and Eastern Islamic civilisation. Moreover, from the West's point of view, Iran's nuclear deterrent capacity combined with its above-mentioned geostrategic position, and the significant influence it has acquired over the past few years in the regional void opened up by the collapse of Iraq, would make Tehran an alarming opponent indeed. Iran -- even without a nuclear deterrent -- capitalised so deftly on America's war on terror, that it has become its foremost beneficiary. Bush's Middle East policies were highly instrumental in enabling Tehran to steadily push the frontiers of its regional alliances, well beyond the boundaries that Washington had set for it. From a once beleaguered nation isolated behind its borders with Iraq, Iran since 2003 has succeeded in extending its direct influence westward through Syria, to Lebanon and Gaza. Imagine, then, the situation if Iran enjoyed the shelter of a nuclear deterrent. Undoubtedly, it would strive to fan out a network of alliances into Central Asia and eventually wrest this region from Russian influence, and it would certainly also turn southwards and assert its hegemony over the Gulf. In this position, a nuclear Iran would sink today's global political map, as it would be able to tip the scales in its favour in more than one of the emerging international axes, whether that of Iran, Pakistan and China, or that of Iran, India and Moscow. In short, Iran would emerge as one of the major regional powers of the 21st century, outstripping India, which may outstrip Iran demographically and economically, but which lacks the key advantage of standing atop the world's most important petroleum energy artery. Of course, the impact of an Iranian nuclear capacity would not only reverberate outwards; it would also, and probably first, ricochet inwards upon the socio-political foundations of the regime and its balances of domestic alliances. One can easily envision, for example, the emergence of a domestic nuclear lobby, on the lines of those in Pakistan and India. Iran's would probably approximate the Pakistani lobby, which is dominated by the military, rather than the Indian one, which is based in India's civilian technocratic class. This is in view of the strong resemblance between the Pakistani military establishment and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is, after all, a quintessentially military establishment and, since its rise as a dominant force in government, has been holding effective control of ran's naval, air and land forces, and has an enormous budget at its disposal. It is upon it that has largely fallen the task of upgrading the Iranian military -- its ballistic missile systems in particular. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is the major military authority responsible for concluding Iranian arms purchases. In addition, it embodies the Iranian regime's ambition to build a powerful, ideologically-oriented army, in the manner of the Chinese revolutionary army and the Soviets' Red Army. The emergence of a nuclear lobby in Iran would inevitably lead to a redistribution of shares in the regime's structure. This is still characterised by a political-economic alliance between the clerical establishment and Iran's business establishment, or the bourgeoisie that dominates the country's "bazaar economy". At the pinnacle of this alliance sits the Supreme Guide of the Revolution Ali Khamenei, who enjoys broad constitutional powers, backed by one of the most important keys to government: authority over the various branches of Iran's armed forces, which currently consist of the Revolutionary Guard, the standing national army, and the volunteer army. Nuclear capacity would probably propel Iran towards the amalgamation of these forces into a single military establishment dominated by the Revolutionary Guard, and imprinted with the Guard's ideological zeal. This change would rebound upwards through the Iranian hierarchy, and downwards, to the socio-political infrastructure of this hierarchy. The newly- reorganised military establishment lopped off a large slice the Iranian bourgeoisie's share in power. According to this scenario, the supreme guide would no longer be the sole head of a conservative religious establishment, in alliance with the "bazaar economy" in which context the military is but an instrument of power. Instead, there would probably arise a power triad consisting of clerics, the bazaar, and the military establishment. The impact of this on the orientation of the Iranian regime, and society, would be profound. Behind the scenes, at least, it would undergo a major ideological shift from the "Islamification" of society, which grounds its legitimacy in the victory of the Islamic Revolution, to the "militarisation" of society, the primary raison d'être for which would be Tehran's possession of a nuclear bomb. * The writer is a political analyst specialised in Iranian affairs.
