IRAN may not be hell-bent on building a bomb just yet, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has ample evidence the country is working on a nuclear weapons program. And in the style of Saddam Hussein and the North Koreans, every time the Iranians are caught out lying about their aspirations to acquire weapons of mass destruction, they adopt tones of injured outrage, calling everybody else aggressors. And like those two dictatorships, the Iranians have relied on diplomatic delays and divisions among their opponents to acquire more time to work on their weapons capacity. With a bit of luck, the days when this strategy worked may be over. At an IAEA meeting at the weekend, China and Russia agreed with the US and the major European powers, plus 30 or so other countries, to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council. While this will only occur after March, when an IAEA report on Iranian aspirations to develop WMD is due, all five Security Council members with veto power have signalled they are unhappy with Iran. While a lot can happen before the Security Council finally addresses the issue, the Iranians know now that they cannot rely on the diplomatic divisions and duckshoving that stopped the world uniting against Saddam. This is very good news. Despite the shambolic talking shop the UN General Assembly has become, a united Security Council is a voice not easily ignored.
The bad news is that Iran may be prepared to do exactly that. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly makes it clear he does not care what anybody thinks of him. In domestic politics he alienates the clerical establishment, which shares his religious zeal, with his talk of redistributing the country's oil wealth. And he goes out of his way to advance the most outrageous arguments imaginable. Mr Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust did not happen and talks of the destruction of Israel. And January he said he would ignore UN orders to abandon Iran's nuclear aspirations. This man, and the regime that allowed him to come to power -- the clerics veto election candidates they do not approve of -- are in the same league as North Korea. The peace of the world dictates that they cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
But stopping Mr Ahmadinejad will be a great deal more difficult than dealing with other aspiring warlords. North Korea is bankrupt and constantly close to starvation. Many among the Iraqi people are now angry with the US, but few of them were prepared to fight for their former dictator. In contrast, Mr Ahmadinejad's country is rich in oil, which the West needs as much as Iran needs the income it earns from energy exports. Sanctions may simply be too hard. Surgical military strikes to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities are equally unappealing. The Iranians do not have all their assets in one convenient location, having learned from the way Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in one air raid in 1981. Certainly, the Israelis might well still attack if they believed that a man who argues for their obliteration was close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. But bombing Iran would unite tens of millions of Muslims in support of Mr Ahmadinejad and perhaps bring the region to war. Yet the strength of Mr Ahmadinejad's position depends on his being prepared to make Iran a pariah by defying the Security Council. And while the Iranian President may be willing to do this, his many political opponents at home would use it against him. For all his tough talk, it is a fair bet that Mr Ahmadinejad is now considering how he can avoid Security Council censure. There is still time for talks between Iran and the IAEA to reduce the risk of a confrontation. But the world cannot afford anything other than a united front against Iran.
|