With its thinly veiled hint that it is preparing for military action to stop Iran’s nuclear program, Israel has dangerously upped the stakes in the current uneasiness. Ever since Iran broke UN seals at a uranium enrichment plant Jan. 10 and said it was resuming nuclear research after a 2 1/2-year freeze, the international climate has been tense. Adding to the buildup to Feb. 2, when the IAEA will meet to discuss the referral of the issue to the Security Council for possible UN sanctions against Iran, have been other dramatic developments. Not least was the recent statement by French President Jacques Chirac that France would respond with nuclear weapons against any state-sponsored terrorist attack, and unconfirmed reports that Iran had begun moving its foreign currency reserves from European banks. Now enters Israel whose Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says Tel Aviv will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability.
The apprehension comes not necessarily from Iran’s stand but from the West’s reaction. After Iran decided to resume research two weeks ago at a nuclear facility, the mood in Washington has looked eerily reminiscent of the months preceding the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The concern is that the Iranian nuclear process could ultimately be used to generate electricity as well as to make nuclear weapons. The West has clearly decided that Iran would much rather seek the latter. What countries in the West would want us to forget, however, is that under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, all countries are allowed to develop their nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes. Thus, the current impasse is the result of the West’s refusal to acknowledge Iran’s rights.
The development of a nuclear capacity has come to epitomize the Iranian national dream but there is a problem. Having given nuclear development such high priority and mobilizing public opinion, even if they wanted to lower the ceiling of their nuclear ambitions, the Iranian government could not without losing credibility at home. The costs of giving in might be higher than the price of standing tough.
Analysts say it would be hard for Israel to launch an effective airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities because they are dispersed around the country and heavily protected. Even if that were not the case, even if Iran’s reactors were in central Tehran in broad daylight for all to see, such an attack would be internationally illegal. If the crisis is to be defused, it must be done through legal diplomatic, political and economic channels.
How ironic it is that Israel, the latest country to criticize Iran for its nuclear program, is the only country in the Middle East which possesses nuclear weapons. And with its violent history of mistreating the Palestinians, its occupation of a part of Syria, and Egypt and Lebanon in the past, and its 1981 air attack on the Iraqi nuclear research center, there is ample historical and present-day evidence that Israel is the country that cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
