Iran continues to challenge the international community over its nuclear program. Yesterday’s update from the International Atomic Energy Agency states that while Tehran was finally being more cooperative on the history of its nuclear drive, it continues to withhold information on its current uranium-enrichment activities while defying the UN Security Council by pressing on with the construction of a heavy water reactor.
Iran’s failure to allow fuller inspection of its nuclear facilities comes despite assurances it would. The IAEA nevertheless reports that the Iranians now have almost 3,000 centrifuges, the key number that atomic experts say is necessary to enrich enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon within one or two years.
Yet the Iranians continue to protest that their nuclear program is for power generation alone. They are not trying to acquire atomic weaponry. As King Abdullah observed on his European tour, if that is indeed the case, then Iran has no reason to fail to comply with the IAEA inspection rules, to which as an IAEA member it is clearly subject.
If Iran’s uranium-enrichment program is entirely innocent, then it should understand what a dangerous game it is playing. Saddam Hussein thought he could bluff the world into believing he still had WMDs. It gave the Bush White House, which probably knew the real truth, a perfect excuse to attack. Now Bush in the twilight year of his calamitous two-term presidency is all too capable of launching cruise missiles at Iranian nuclear and other strategic sites.
The extra regional and indeed global chaos such an assault would cause would be of small consequence to a failed president. It would however have massive repercussions for the real world. If Tehran is counting on China and Russia to block a US attack, it has miscalculated. The Russians do not want a nuclear-armed Iran on their southern border. They are however perfectly prepared to let Washington do their dirty work for them and still reap the diplomatic benefits of posing as a champion of dialogue and compromise. Meanwhile China is too far away and probably not yet ready to challenge US hegemony in the Far East or the world stage.
Iran may believe it has the high moral ground — why should Washington block a nuclear Iran while countenancing and indeed assisting the creation of Israel’s nuclear arsenal? But the dust that would be raised by a US attack will quickly obscure the moral case. The overriding ambition should surely be a nuclear-free Middle East. Simply by allowing the suspicion that they are rushing to acquire their own deadly atomic weaponry, the Iranians are legitimizing the Israeli nuclear stockpile. At the moment the world can see that Washington has long been guilty of double standard. But if Iran is in truth itself going nuclear, the Americans will be able to trot out the need for balances of power and new deterrents and an extended regional presence. All this, when what is really needed is to get rid of all these loathsome weapons, everywhere.
