Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement that his country has gone nuclear has sounded alarm bells the world over, writes Mustafa El-Labbad The declaration by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that his country has made an important breakthrough in nuclear enrichment coincided with the disclosure of the existence of concrete American plans to attack Iran. The possibility that Iran might soon join the world's eight-member nuclear club combined with the prospect of another military conflagration in the region has catapulted the Iranian situation to the forefront of the international crisis agenda, most of the items of which centre on the Middle East. If international political and strategic research centres are intensely studying the ramifications and repercussions of a possible American strike on this volatile part of the world, many countries in the region are simultaneously contemplating how Iran's possession of a nuclear military capacity might impact upon regional balances of power. It is perhaps not surprising that the stormy debate over the Iranian nuclear issue should give rise to the notion of an "Islamic bomb". To people in this part of the world, the term signifies the possibility of offsetting Israel's nuclear capacity and redressing the imbalances in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the West, it is part of the escalating campaign to demonise the regime in Tehran and to psychologically prepare Western public opinion for "pre-emptive" military measures against Iran. In fact, the notion of an "Islamic bomb" defies logic: we do not speak of a "Christian bomb" or a "Jewish bomb" just because France and Israel have nuclear weapons. It also defies the historically borne-out reality that the use of military arsenals, nuclear or otherwise, is government by national interests, not by religious affiliations. The Pakistani bomb has but one function and this resides in the matrix of Pakistani-Indian balance of terror. In all events, Iran does not possess the bomb, but rather the ambition to possess nuclear technology, which, perhaps, at a later phase could be upgraded for military purposes. The US is dead set against this ambition on the grounds that Tehran heads a regional alliance that conflicts with America's ambitions and interests in the region. In short, Washington and Tehran are set on a collision course, which one envisions could take three possible directions, each with different ramifications for the regional balances of power. First, the situation could continue to escalate, culminating in a US military strike delivering a fatal blow to the Iranian nuclear programme. Second, Tehran could succeed in outmanoeuvring US pressures long enough to come into possession of the technology to produce the full nuclear fuel cycle and, hence, nuclear weapons. Third, tensions could be defused as the two countries could come to an agreement over Iraq and an understanding over Iran's role as a regional power in general. Naturally, the first scenario would have grave repercussions throughout the region and on Arab interests. Iran has recourse to more than military options in order to retaliate against an American strike. Not least of these is its ability to wreak havoc on the international oil market. Not only is Iran the second largest oil producing nation in OPEC and not only does it have the second largest natural gas reserves in the world, it happens to be strategic located along one of the most important transportation routes for the oil industry. With its short range missiles poised only 12 kilometres from the Straits of Hormuz, it could easily obstruct the passage of oil vessels through this vital waterway between the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. In short, the shrapnel from a military confrontation could strike a vital nerve centre of the international economy. To this we can add the regional cards Tehran could call into play via its alliances with the Unified Iraqi Coalition, Damascus and the Lebanese Hizbullah. A military strike against Iran would thus ricochet in the form of retaliatory violence across the Fertile Crescent from Iraq through Syria to the borders with Israel. In addition to the regional turmoil, toppling the regime in Tehran, supposing this is the ultimate aim of an American-led attack, would create a vacuum that would draw other forces to the region. One could easily imagine Russia attempting to extend southwards into northern Iran and India westwards into the Gulf. Because both of these countries are stronger by far than Iran, Arab interests would be in even greater jeopardy than they are at present. Proof of how serious the repercussions of regional vacuums can be to this region is to be found in Iraq. Iraq prior to 2003, when it was under the thumb of economic and political boycott, posed no serious threat to its neighbours. The toppling of the regime and the fragmentation of political forces inside the country gave Iran the opening to fill the void, availing itself of its geographical proximity, demographic and sectarian connections, and, above all, the consequences of American ineptitude. Iraq as it stands today, with effective control over the country in the hands of Tehran and Washington, poses a greater threat to regional integrity than the former Iraqi regime. In short, a US-engineered military solution to the Iranian crisis is not in Arab interests in the short, medium or long term. From the Arab perspective, the second scenario would be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, Iran's entry into the realm of advanced nuclear technology would bring into reach the possibility of nuclear parity with Israel. On the other hand, the balances of power in the Gulf would shift even more in favour of Iran, which is already stronger, militarily, demographically and in strategic depth, than all the other countries of the Gulf put together. Obviously, Iran's possession of a nuclear capacity would give it a clear negotiating advantage over the Arabs in the event of any dispute. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Arabs are in something of a quandary over how to handle the Iranian crisis. The lofty aspiration of transforming the Middle East into a zone free of nuclear weapons will remain unattainable as long as Israel's regional monopoly of a nuclear weapons capacity remains unbroken. At the same time, it is equally unrealistic to expect Iran to voluntarily abandon its uranium enrichment programme. Since the rise of the modern state in Iran, Iranian leaders, regardless of their ideological affiliations, have striven to strengthen their country as a regional power and ever since the onset of the nuclear era they knew that the possession of a nuclear capacity was one of the major keys towards this end, all the more so after India and Pakistan attained that capacity. But then, from the Arab perspective, the third scenario would not lead to substantially different results. An accommodation between Washington and Tehran over Iraq and then over Iran's regional role would also work to strengthen Iran's regional influence. The Arabs' challenge with respect to the Iranian nuclear crisis is to manage this crisis in a manner that exerts optimal pressure against Israel while preventing the Iranian presence from overshadowing the region. It appears, moreover, that no solution to this conundrum will be feasible without reviving the Arab regional alliance centring around the formidable Egyptian- Saudi Arabian fulcrum. Only such an alliance is capable of filling the current political void in the region in a manner conducive to Arab interests. In yielding so completely to the American agenda -- the example of Iraq stands out -- the Arabs only contributed to marginalising their own regional and international influence. While American failures in Iraq translated into net losses for the Arabs, they ultimately translated into net gains for Iran, to the extent that, today, a US-Iranian dialogue over Iraq could usher in the effective end of the Arabs as a regional force. The underlying reason for this grim development is the absence of an Arab agenda. An Arab agenda does not have to stand in permanent opposition to the American agenda, but nor should it allow itself to be permanently eclipsed. But, any agenda that is going to hold its own must not only have its priorities clear, it must also stand on solid regional foundations enabling for an effective division of labour. The most effective formula for this would be an alliance consisting initially of the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus Egypt and Syria and founded upon a principle of mutual support whereby the latter two countries would undertake a defence role in the Gulf in exchange for GCC investment in their economies. When this idea was first raised in the early 1990s it was quickly shelved due to the objections from both Washington and Tehran. Today, the circumstances surrounding the Iranian nuclear crisis offer a golden opportunity for resuscitating the idea, especially in view of the fact that the "Six plus Two" formula not only will enable the Arabs to assert themselves again as a factor to be reckoned with in the regional equations but that it will draw Syria away from its current alliance with Tehran and restore it to its natural fold in the Arab world. In connection with this strategy and for Egypt's own national defense interests, Cairo might also consider rehabilitating and revamping its own primitive nuclear facilities at Anshas.
