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The Blind Men and the Iranian Elephant
// The price of the question
The Israeli military operation in Lebanon made the world forget about Iran for a little while. But as soon as the bombing and shooting stopped, all eyes were on Iran again. Events there, it seems, are more suspenseful than the showdown between the gallant Israeli army and those brave Shiite radicals. Everything was out in the open in the Lebanese conflict. It was clear that the Jewish state wanted to teach the Islamists a good lesson for kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, and Hezbollah was trying to break Israel once and for all of the habit of trying to teach it lessons. Everything was concrete, seen at one glance: here are the soldiers, here are the militants, the refugees, the smoldering ruins.
Iran, with its veil of secrecy over its nuclear program, is a completely different story. No one is bombing here, no humanitarian catastrophe is looming, and everything looks calm from the outside. In the Iranian nuclear crisis, little is seen at first glance but much is imagined from talk about what if… What if they enrich uranium? What if they make a nuclear weapon? What if they help others make nuclear weapons who are just as dangerous and immoderate as they are?
In a situation like this, every world power has the chance to interpret the situation as it sees fit. In the United States and Israel, they are sounding the alarm. Tehran will soon have its own Islamic bomb and then Hezbollah's rocket fire on Israeli territory will look like child's play. Beijing and Moscow think the accusations against Iran are based on completely different political and economic motives from what is being stated, mainly U.S. hostility to the uncontrollable regime of the ayatollahs. Europe dithers indecisively. It cannot decide who it agrees with and whether or not it will impose sanctions when the decision becomes unavoidable. In the light of day, this is what the picture looks like: there are countries that think there is a real threat involved in the Iran situation. And there are countries who “expressed concern” over Iran when pressed because they don't want to get in a fight with a third group that thinks that there is no threat in Iran, just the phantom of a threat.
Today perception of Iran is a litmus test, the criteria in the world community for attitudes to many problems that are not directly connected to the Iranian atom from democracy and public policy to global development and international security measures.
To paraphrase an old saying, tell me what you think about Iran and I'll tell you who you are.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 01, 2006
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