Iran may be gambling the survival of its regime on nuclear brinkmanship with the West, writes Graham Usher in New York President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution on 11 February to confirm that his government had "successfully" enriched uranium from three to 20 per cent. The announcement buried a United Nations plan for defusing the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme by sending most of its low-enriched uranium abroad for enrichment. It also put Tehran in violation of five Security Council resolutions calling on it to suspend uranium enrichment. The president went on to say that Iran has "the capacity to enrich uranium to more than 20 or 80 per cent", or very near the threshold required for a bomb. "Please pay attention", he added, in a sweep of the arm that included the United States, Europe, Israel and Arab Gulf states. "The people of Iran are brave enough that if it wants to build a bomb it will clearly announce it and build it and not be afraid of you." Iran, he thundered to the massed ranks in Tehran's Azadi (Independence) Square, is "a nuclear state". Word and deed are the clearest signs yet that Iran's ruling regime has decided to evade the domestic turmoil caused by Ahmadinejad's contested presidential election last June by confronting the US, Europe, Israel and certain Arab states over its nuclear programme, an issue that commands majority support among Iranians. It is to play with fire. Iran is "racing forward to produce a nuclear weapon," Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told European diplomats in Jerusalem on 9 February. "This means crippling sanctions and these sanctions must be applied now," he said. Elsewhere, Israel has threatened to do to the Iranian nuclear programme what it did Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 and an alleged nuclear site in Syria in 2007. United States President Barack Obama has also said Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. But "the next step is sanctions," he told a White House press briefing on 10 February. That remark more or less drew an end to the American president's policy of "engagement" with Iran. Since October the United States -- with Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China -- had proposed a compromise on the nuclear programme. Iran would export most low-enriched uranium abroad where it would be processed into a form that could be used for civilian energy but not for making a bomb. Iran accepted, then hedged, then rejected the trade. Last week it said it would enrich the uranium itself. And the so-cool-as-to be-cold American president could barely suppress his anger. "We've bent over backwards to say to the Islamic Republic of Iran that we are willing to have a constructive conversation about how far they can align themselves with international norms and rules", he said. And "they have made their choice." On 10 February the US Treasury imposed sanctions on personnel and companies owned by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), overseers of the nuclear programme and chief instrument of state repression since the presidential election. Obama wants these to serve as the template for a fourth round of SC sanctions that will target the IRGC banking, shipping and insurance interests. The reach is to hurt the regime without inflicting too much damage on Iran's economy or people. And the purpose -- insist US government officials -- is "about driving [Iran] back to negotiations", not regime change. But the difference is becoming vague. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a tour of the Arab Gulf states on 14 February described Iran as "a military dictatorship", code in US-speak for sliding down the Iraq-like pole to illegitimacy. SC members UK and France (and non-SC members except for Iran's largest European trader Germany) support sanctions. So does Russia. "Actions such as starting to enrich the low-enriched uranium up to 20 per cent raise doubts in other countries and these doubts are fairly well-grounded," said Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's Security Council. "Political-diplomatic methods are important for a resolution but there is a limit to everything". The only SC hold-out is China: with trade totalling $36.5 billion and Iran supplying 11 per cent of its gas and oil needs it has most to lose for any sanctions. But it too may be shifting. The main purpose of Clinton's regional tour is to persuade Saudi Arabia to underwrite any losses incurred by China should sanctions be imposed, a pledge some energy analysts doubt the Saudis can bear. Clinton is also scheduled to see Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In recent months Turkey has been a lone voice on the Security Council pointing out the "hypocrisy" of the UN levying sanctions on the nuclear programme of a country that lies within the Non-Proliferation Treaty while ignoring the nuclear arsenal of another (Israel) that remains, thanks to the US shield, beyond it. But Iran's recent actions have exasperated friends even more than foes. A fourth round of SC sanctions is almost certain. But new sanctions are no more likely to reverse Iran's nuclear policies than previous ones. Nor will they be the "crippling" action curbing Iran's energy sector so desired by Israel. China -- and to a lesser extent Russia -- have made it clear they won't approve sanctions unconnected to Iran's nuclear industry or not tied to proliferation. Yet in singling out the IRGC, sanctions may raise the spectre of regime change and strengthen those in the Iranian leadership who argue that the surest form of defence is to seek, if not the bomb, then the capacity to assemble one. This would heighten the risk of an Israeli strike. As with pre-occupied Iraq, the endpoint of sanctions could be war.
