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Nuclear Chicken
// Who Will Swerve First?
Not long ago I had a conversation with a senior European diplomat from one of the countries in the European Troika. His country is demanding that Iran suspend its nuclear program and supports sanctions. "The current sanctions against Iran are useless," I reasoned. "Iran will not abandon its nuclear program. There is only one way to stop it: war." The diplomat did not argue. "There is one school of thought that believes that there is nothing terrible about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Do you remember how, during the Cold War, there was the theory of nuclear deterrence and mutually-assured destruction? Neither the US nor the USSR could afford to start a nuclear war, because both sides would have been destroyed no matter what. It's the same here: Israel and Iran both have nuclear weapons. That guarantees that neither side will use them. By the way, that's not at all the official position of our Foreign Ministry. It's just an opinion," he concluded significantly.
Almost everyone has come to grips with the fact that Iran either already has nuclear weapons or will have them soon. The Europeans are still talking about the necessity of suspending uranium enrichment, but they understand that the road back is closed. Forbidding Tehran from having a bomb isn't going to work, so it doesn't even pay to try.
Four years ago, after the war in Iraq, the Europeans were already preparing to stave off an attack on Iran. The foreign ministers of Great Britain, Germany, and France went to Tehran together to guarantee Iran protection and defense. In the Iranian press, that visit was equated with the guarantees given by the European powers to Poland at the end of the 1930s: well, first we gave away Czechoslovakia (i.e., Iraq), but now we've thought better of it.
Iran turned down that offer of protection. President Khatami, a moderate, was replaced by the radical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who decided that the means of preventing war is not negotiating with Europe but building weapons. But the mood among the Europeans has remained the same: even a nuclear Iran is better than a new war in the region. President Ahmadinejad annoys the Europeans, but they are not ready to sacrifice their business in Iran just to eliminate him.
The US holds the opposite opinion. The American administration has not and will not acquiesce to a nuclear Iran. Tehran has already stripped George Bush of all of his conquests: both Iraq and parts of Afghanistan are controlled by Iran, not the US. To acquiesce would be to admit that everything else was a mistake.
In sum, everyone is dissembling. Iran is saying that it is developing a peaceful atom. The US maintains that it is not planning to go to war against Iran. The Europeans say that Iranian nuclear weapons are unacceptable and are threatening Tehran with sanctions, but they're also hoping that George Bush will finally squander the last of his presidential capital and not succeed in starting another war.
As that senior European diplomat admitted to me, there is only one drawback to the scenario described above: many countries will want to follow Iran's lead. And what to do ten years down the line about a nuclear Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, etc.? It doesn't even bearing thinking about.
Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 27, 2007
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