Cui Tiankai may only be China’s assistant foreign minister but his arrival yesterday in Tehran is a welcome sign that Beijing is now prepared to join with Moscow to play a role in the crisis over Iran’s uranium-enrichment program. Hopefully Tehran will recognize that strong though its position may seem at the moment, continued intransigence over proper inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency will undermine and in the long term wreck it.
Washington may imagine that its continued saber rattling, the latest a renewed threat of the ultimate use of force from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is serving some useful purpose. It is not. The Russians and Chinese are not going to be railroaded into joining a UN Security Council resolution approving military action. Worse still, every new menace from the United States only hardens the attitude of Iranians who have long regarded Washington as an enemy. At the present time, the most useful contribution from the Bush administration would be a period of profound silence.
Moscow has its own good reasons to be unhappy that a nuclear power could be established to its South. China, with its emerging commercial and economic engagement in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf, is sensitive to regional demands, most recently expressed formally by the Gulf Cooperation Council, that the Middle East be a nuclear-free zone. The principal weakness in Iran’s refusal to fulfill its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow full inspection of its nuclear program, is that if, as it continues to insist, it has no plans to build itself a nuclear weapons arsenal to go with its newly revealed rocketry, then it has nothing to hide.
The question of fuel enrichment for use in new generation fast-breeder reactors can on paper be settled easily. The Russians have already offered to provide and reprocess such material. Given that Iran has abundant hydrocarbon resources, there is no way that such an arrangement would be surrendering a vital economic key to another power. China could no doubt complement such an offer with arrangements of its own.
The only good reason that Iran can have for holding out in this crisis would be to turn the spotlight onto Israel’s uninspected and unregulated nuclear program and arsenal. If the Chinese and Russians can be persuaded to address this issue seriously in return for Tehran’s NPT compliance, then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will have pulled off a brilliant diplomatic coup for which the whole region would be grateful. As long as Washington backs Israel and decries Iran over the threat of nuclear weaponry, it has nothing useful to contribute to the confrontation, because it will continue to be seen as guilty of hypocrisy and double-dealing. Beijing and to a lesser extent Moscow are seen to have no ax to grind in Iran and the Middle East. If the Iranians allow themselves to be persuaded back to their NPT commitments, China and Russia as well as Iran will be the winners and America the loser.
