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Iran-US nuclear row |
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Teheran repeats pre-emptive strike threat
Iran which is threatening to start its nuclear weapons programme despite the threat of UN sanctions because of a damaging report by the IAEA, has reiterated that it would retaliate any Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities. The Iranian Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi, who was on a visit to New Zealand, said on Aug 25 Iran has a defence capability which will certainly keep others from exercising such a threat.
Only last week, the Iranian Defence Minister, Ali Shamkhani, for the first time threatened a pre-emptive strike against US troops in the region. In an interview on al-Jazeera Television when asked if Iran would respond to an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, he said “We will not sit [with folded hands] to wait for what others will do to us”. He said preventive operations were not America’s monopoly. Referring to the possibility of the US or Israeli strike against Iran’s atomic power plant at Bushehr, Shamkhani said it will be considered an attack on Iran as a whole and we will retaliate. Reacting to some loud thinking in Israel about the possibility of a surprise attack on its atomic reactors, Iran’s Foreign Ministry also admonished Israel for not scotching such speculation. An exchange of threats between Israel and Iran in recent weeks has led to speculation of a repeat of Israel’s strike against Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osirik in 1981.
Political observers say Iran’s warning that it would retaliate vehemently in the event of a preemptive Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities is another storm warning in a region already battered by typhoons. Ever since the Iranian conservatives won the elections last year after coercing the moderates, the mood in Teheran seems to have hardened. Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 must weigh on Teheran, although Tel Aviv had then acted alone without Washington’s nod, unlike now when the US could well be a partner in the enterprise.
This probably drives the International Atomic Energy Agency’s desperate efforts to get Iran to allow full inspections of its nuclear facilities. Last week, US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice even threatened unilateral military action if Iran did things that could lead to a nuclear weapons programme. Whether this hints at surgical strikes or covert action is anybody’s guess, but observers say, it would be a high-risk gamble for President George Bush, especially in the pre-election season. After the WMD fiasco, Bush will find it very difficult to sell the accuracy of US intelligence to Americans. Also, while Israel sees an Iranian nuclear bomb as a fundamental threat, the US is motivated by a larger goal of shoring up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that seems to have failed to stop the spread of nuke technology.
Political observers note that just two years after the notorious dossier by Britain on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and getting the approval of UN Security Council sanctions against the Saddam Hussein regime, the US seems to be trying to repeat similar pressures for action against Iran. The ingredients are well-known: sexed-up intelligence materials which puts the target country in the worst possible light: moves to get the UN to declare it in non-compliance, thereby claiming justification for going in unilaterally even if the UN gives no support for invasion; and at the back of the whole brouhaha, a clique of American non-conservatives whose real agenda is regime change.
The immediate focus for action against Iran is the IAEA which has produced five reports on Iran in the last 14 months. Part of the UN, with an international board that acts like a mini-Security Council, the IAEA’s reports have raised questions about Iran’s professedly civilian nuclear programme and its desire to create its own fuel cycle which could eventually be used to produce bombs.
To satisfy its critics, Iran agreed last year to allow so-called intrusive inspections. As a confidence-building measure, it also stopped enriching uranium. In a few days’ time, the IAEA will issue a new report and it is its wording that is causing the latest flurry. John Bolton, the Bush Administration’s pointman, has been rushing round Europe claiming that the evidence of sinister Iranian behaviour is clear, even though the IAEA has consistently made no such judgment. It has called for more transparency but prefers to keep probing and, like Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq in 2003, insists it needs more time. Iran meanwhile says the IAEA should accept that nothing wrong has been found, close the dossier and let Iran receive the civilian nuclear technology with the safeguards that go with it which countries like Germany and France have promised.
The differences between the US on the one hand and France and Germany on the other on the Iranian nuclear issue are a legacy of the pre-Iraq war days but this time Britain is with the latter and not with the US. Bolton wants the IAEA Board to say Iran has violated its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and takes the matter to the Security Council for a decision on sanctions or other stern action. France and Germany are resisting a move to the UN. Together with Britain which this time is siding with France and Germany, the US will find it difficult to garner support for any military action. Slightly less impatiently, there are hints that the CIA will step up its campaign to overthrow the regime in Teheran by encouraging anti-Government TV and radio broadcasts from abroad and infiltrating opposition movements.
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