Impetuousness and double standards have driven the catastrophes of American regional policy and seem set to do so again if the US engages Iran, writes Ayman El-Amir Who is afraid? By definition, every hostile rival in the wider Middle East region that has no nuclear deterrence capability should be. In the post-Cold War era, nuclear deterrence has devolved from the two central superpowers to regional fringes where unresolved disputes persist. However, this is no longer about waging nuclear war or the threat of it but a catalyst for the creation of one sphere of influence or containing another and backing both up with military might. It is what Israel has been trying to do by war, occupation and intimidation and it does not want to have a rival power that would contain its ambitions. This is the essence of the US-led Western confrontation with Iran over its enrichment programme. The Bush administration is driving the European Union, the IAEA and the UN Security Council into this confrontation; and Israel's surrogates in the Bush administration are driving the US agenda in the Middle East. The US is conducting the campaign against Iran on the pretence of holding it to its international obligations under the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Over its 36-year life span, the treaty has been shredded to pieces by breaches, exceptions, double standards and selective enforcement. The premise of the treaty has been that the five big powers -- the permanent members of the Security Council -- possess enough nuclear firepower to destroy the world many times over. There was no need, they said, to have this Armageddon technology spread to those who do not have it, especially small, irresponsible states that may be tempted to use it in small disputes with their neighbours. Worse still, the argument went after the 11 September terrorist attacks, evil states might pass the technology on to organisations like Al-Qaeda that could use it to destroy Western civilisation. While almost all member states of the United Nations subscribed to the treaty, a minority, including India, Pakistan and Israel, opted out. Israel, which was the first non-signatory state to develop nuclear weapons in the early 1970s, has consistently stuck to the ambivalent statement that, "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East." North Korea at first signed the treaty but later withdrew from it. South Korea, another signatory and a staunch US ally, was twice caught cheating on its obligations, having developed its peaceful nuclear research programme to uranium enrichment capability in 2000, close to 77 per cent of weapons-grade levels. This may have prompted North Korea to restart its uranium enrichment programme in 2002, and withdraw from the treaty in 2003. Unlike Iran, South Korea was never brought before the Security Council. The most serious flaw in the treaty is that it was founded on the provision that nuclear states would undertake to reduce and eliminate their nuclear stockpiles. Secondly, they were to pledge never to attack non-nuclear states. The same powers reneged on both provisions. Iran is right in claiming that its obligations under the NPT do not preclude the acquisition of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, such as the generation of electricity. It has also claimed that the enrichment of its domestically mined uranium was intended to produce fuel for a series of nuclear reactors it planned to build in cooperation with Russia. Scientists, however, know that by mastering uranium enrichment technology Iran will have a very short distance to travel from the production of enriched fuel rods for power generation to weapons- grade uranium. In the 25-year-old political environment of distrust between the US and Iran, the US may be right in assuming that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability. Iran's successful testing of intermediate-range ballistic missiles further corroborates this assumption. So, what if Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons programme somewhere down the line? Western consensus is that it would be adding more fuel to an already flammable region while Israel sees it as a mortal danger. The latter's anxiety has been worsened by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's firebrand statements about Israel, the US and the UK. The Arab side of the coin seems to welcome this possibility as creating a counterweight to Israeli excessive military power. Israel's daily assassination of Palestinians fighting for their national rights and intimidation of its neighbours needs little elaboration. But Iran's case is also perceived as correcting Western double standards vis-à-vis the stipulation for nuclear non-proliferation, under which India was subjected to US sanctions a decade ago only to be embraced earlier this year as a partner with "a responsible nuclear track record". India has reportedly developed an estimated 100 nuclear warheads and Pakistan is trying hard to catch up. Iran may as well benefit from the US's double standards too. Arab Gulf States' worries of a nuclear Iran are overblown Western exaggerations of the so-called Sunni-Shia rift in Islam. To cite the escalating civil war in Iraq as evidence is misleading. It is not a religious but a political struggle where religion is used as a tool for mobilisation. To cite history, it should be noted that with the advent of Islam and the defeat of the Persian Sasanian dynasty in 636 AD, Iran became a Sunni Muslim state that lasted until the early 11th century. By contrast, Sunni Egypt was ruled for two centuries by the Shia- oriented Fatimids, from 969 until 1171. Nevertheless, a nuclear Iran is bound to drive some Arab states with Shia minorities, like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, into a misguided arms race as a self-defence mechanism. But the fact is that Iran's revolutionary rhetoric, not its nuclear power ambition, is the source of anxiety to traditional Arab regimes that seek to freeze in time the dynamics of historical change. Iran rightly sees itself as a legitimate regional power whose rise is being stymied by the heavy-handed policies of both the US and Israel. It has to cope with the destabilising effects of two US military campaigns in its immediate vicinity -- Afghanistan in the east, and Iraq in the west. A string of menacing US military bases and a flotilla of warships encircle its borders from the mid-east to the northwest. Moreover, Israeli bombers loaded with nuclear weapons can reach Tehran in 45 minutes and return without refuelling. Iran also has to manage a complex set of inter-ethnic and political relations with its Asian neighbours in the north. It is an unenviable situation. Of all Western European countries, the savvy French recognised Iran's status, in the words of Foreign Minister Philippe Douste- Blazy, during his visit to Beirut in early August, as "a great country, a great people and a great civilisation which is respected and which plays a stabilising role in the region". The Middle East has long been unstable because of aggressive Israeli territorial ambitions and its systematic massacre of the Palestinian people. This has been further exacerbated by the 2001 US campaign against Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq in the so-called global fight against terrorism. Washington's challenge to Tehran is a no-win confrontation, just like the misadventure in Iraq. Protection of US interests by direct political and military hegemony on the one hand, and by Israeli intimidation on the other, is working against both of them and is fuelling the rise of new terrorism. The month-long military confrontation between Lebanese Hizbullah and Israel and the rising number of daily US casualties in Iraq are strong signals to US foes and friends alike that its Middle East policy is unbalanced and not working. The Bush administration has committed a serious blunder by exchanging the quest for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East with the hawkish drive to fight terrorism. Working with a moderate Iran, even one with nuclear ambitions, may restore the lost balance and weaken the political underpinnings of regional and global terrorism.
