Iran's nuclear programme and the west

Abstract

Judged by the media reports and statements by US officials in recent months, the USA is seriously considering, or at least thinking about, taking military action against Iran, if it refuses to forgo its legal right to enrich uranium for its nuclear energy programme, which Washington claims is a cover for making nuclear weapons. Iran denies the allegation. The effects of such an attack on Iranian society and the political ramifications beyond Iran's borders are discussed and analysed here. The irony of the present dispute between the West and Iran is that, for three decades up to the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Europeans and Americans helped, in fact earnestly encouraged, Iran in the development of its nuclear programme. The article explains the reasons for the failure of talks between Iran and the European trio to resolve the issue. It argues that, even if the question of Iran's nuclear programme were resolved, the 27-year conflict between the two countries would be unlikely to end in the near future. For Washington the name of the game is ‘regime change’ in Iran, either through military means or through fomenting internal chaos, hoping for implosion. But considering the political and military difficulties that Washington is experiencing in Afghanistan and Iraq, achieving either of these options is highly problematic.

Notes

1 ‘US plans to hit Iran N-sites’, The Australian, 13 February 2006, p 11.

2 ‘Its regime change, again’, at http://www.commondreams.org, 13 March 2006.

3 Seymour Hersh, ‘The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Teheran from getting the bomb’ The New Yorker, 17 April 2006, at http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060417fa_fact

4 Respectively, Anatol Lieven, ‘We do not deserve these people’, London Review of Books, 20 October 2005; and Richard Falk, ‘Storm clouds over Iran’, The Nation, 27 January 2006.

5 Cited in Siddharth Varadarajan, ‘India, Iran, and the nuclear challenge’, The Hindu, 16 January 2006.

6 ‘Russia, US clash on Iran nuclear “rights”’, Agence France Presse (afp), 15 October 2004.

7 Paul Craig Roberts, ‘The coming war on Iran: Fox News fans hysteria’, at www.counterpunch.com/roberts01302006.html.

8 These figures were given by an Iranian official of the oil ministry at an energy conference in Madrid in October 2005. See ‘Official: Iran could run out of oil reserves in nine decades’, at www.payvand.com, 5 October 2005.

9 For the information in this paragraph, I am indebted to Professor Mohammad Sahimi's article entitled, ‘Iran's nuclear energy program: its history’, accessible at www.payvand.com/news/03/oct/1015.html.

10 Ibid.

11 See, respectively, Asadollah Alam, The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, ed Alinaghi Alikhani, New York: St Martin's Press, 1991, entry 8 April 1976, p 478; and Sahimi, ‘Iran's nuclear programme’.

12 Tony Benn, ‘Atomic hypocrisy: neither Bush nor Blair is in a position to take a high moral line on Iran's nuclear programme’, at http://www.zmag.org, 5 December 2005.

13 Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Iran: imperialism's second strike’, Frontline, 10 October 2005. This article is also reproduced on www.zmag.org, 13 October 2005.

14 Fred Halliday, ‘Iran vs the United States—again’, at www.openDemocracy.net, 14 February 2006.

15 ‘Russia, US clash on Iran nuclear “rights”’.

16 Steve Watson, ‘The staged terror is set (for war with Iran)’, at www.inowars.net/articles/november, 3 December 2005.

17 ‘The US steps up pressure on defiant Iran’, The Age (Melbourne), 17 January 2006, p 8.

18 Jon Keegan, ‘How to tackle the threat of nuclear Iran’, The Age, 14 January 2006, p 9.

19 ‘Iran threat like Hitler: Merkel’, The Australian, 6 February 2006, p 11.

20 See, respectively, Charles A Kupchan & Ray Takeyh, ‘The wrong way to fix Iran’, Los Angeles Times, 26 February 2006; and The Sunday Times, cited in ‘Cheney's daughter takes on Iranian mullahs’, The Australian, 6 March 2006, p 13. Kupchan and Takeyh argue that conditions in Iran are not, unlike in Poland, conducive to outside pressure for regime change and that the US intervention in Iran could backfire. But they and other commentators have not questioned the legality and legitimacy of interfering in the affairs of a sovereign state, however odious that state may be to others.

21 Zbigniew Brzezinsky, ‘American debacle’, Los Angeles Times, 9 October 2005.

22 Stephen Zunes, ‘El-Baradei and the iaea's Nobel Peace Prize: a mixed blessing’, Foreign Policy Focus, 13 December 2005, at www.fpif.org.

23 Sahimi, ‘Iran's nuclear energy program,’ at www.payvand.com, 9 September 2005.

24 See John J Mearsheimer & Stephen M Walt, ‘The Israel lobby and US foreign policy’, at http://www.commondreams.org, p 38.

25 ‘Interview: Iran's nuclear negotiator’, at http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk.

26 ‘Experts tell House Committee US lacks intelligence on Iran’, at www.irancouncil.org/pressreleases/press314.asp.

27 Farideh Farhi, ‘Iran's nuclear files: the uncertain endgame’, Middle East Report Online, 24 October 2005, at www.merip.org.

28 Alice Slater, ‘Living on the edge: striking nuclear danger’, Common Dreams, 26 January 2006, at www.commondrfeams.org/views/06/0126-25.htm.

29 ‘Iran stands firm on its nuclear right despite sanctions risk’, afp, 11 January 2006.

30 ‘EU and US policy won't stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons’, cited in www.payvand.com, 10 December 2005.

31 For more details, see Jim Lobe, ‘Polls: anti-Iran propaganda working’, at http://www.Antiwar.com, 10 February 2006.

32 Mark J Gasiorowski & Malcolm Byrne (eds), Muhammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004, p 134.

33 Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, New York: Harper Perennial, 2004, p 13.