Line Drawn in the Sand for Iran
// World Powers Prepare to Evacuate Their Citizens from the Country
This weekend the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution imposing harsh sanctions against Iran. The resolution gives Tehran two months to cease its nuclear program, but hopes that the ultimatum will be heeded are almost nonexistent. Instead, the world is bracing for the increasing likelihood of a military strike against Iran. Kommersant has learned that Russian companies working in the country are already working on plans to evacuate their employees, and Russian diplomats also acknowledge that preparations to evacuate Russian citizens from the country are underway and that evacuations could begin as early as May.
The Exit is Near
Rumors that almost all of the world's leading powers are concerned about an upcoming evacuation of their citizens from Iran were flying at the end of last week even before the adoption in New York of UN Security Council resolution #1747. The first to spread the story was the Associated Press, which quoted unidentified European diplomats and American officials as saying that Moscow is bringing home all Russian citizens currently working on the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran. Reports of preparations for evacuation were sharply denied at an official level by the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom and by Atomstroiexport, the company that manages all Russian-led nuclear power plant construction projects abroad. "These rumors are completely groundless," said Atomstroiexport spokeswoman Irina Yesipova. "What is happening is the normal process of rotating specialists at the construction site: some specialists are leaving, while others are arriving. There are currently around 2,000 people working at the site; last year there were moments when there were more – up to 2,500 people when the work was progressing particularly intensively – and there were times when their number shrunk to 1,500," she said. According to Ms. Yesipova, 100 to 150 Russian specialists will leave the Bushehr plant this month, while around 60 will arrive to replace them.
However, an official source in Rosatom confirmed for Kommersant that evacuation plans are being prepared in earnest. "Naturally, means of evacuating [Russian citizens] are being considered – after all, if the Bushehr site is hit with sanctions by the UN, then we will need to recall a large number of people within the month. Another difficulty is that, if that happens, the Iranians probably will not allow people to be taken out by plane directly from Bushehr, so we will need to organize some kind of ground transport to Tehran, etc. So all of this needs to be thought out in advance," emphasized Kommersant's source.
Employees of various Russian companies who are working in Iran also confirmed that preparations for evacuations have already begun. For example, according to information obtained by Kommersant, the company Interenergoservis has circulated a memo among its employees warning them that they may soon be forced to flee the country in Russian Emergencies Ministry planes.
In the wake of the adoption of the resolution by the UN, the subject of emergency evacuations from Iran was also taken up by the Israeli Jerusalem Post, which reported that foreign embassies in Tehran are preparing plans to evacuate their citizens and are beefing up their own security measures. European diplomatic sources told Kommersant that such preparations are necessary and that they may take several months to complete.
Kommersant sources in the Russian diplomatic mission in Tehran said that the situation appears calm so far, but they are also preparing for several possible courses of events, depending on how Iran reacts to the adoption of the resolution by the UN Security Council. For example, the Iranian authorities may take offense at Moscow's support for the anti-Iranian resolution, which could have an impact on Iran's welcome for Russian citizens traveling to the country. A Russian diplomatic source in Tehran predicted that tensions are likely to rise within the next two months.
The Russian Foreign Ministry's deputy press and information secretary, Andrei Krivtsov, told Kommersant that he has investigated the claims of evacuation preparations in response to requests from journalists. "So far I have found no confirmation of such [preparations]," he told Kommersant. However, an anonymous Kommersant source in the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that plans to bring Russian citizens out of Iran are in the works, although the lead figure in such a situation is the Emergencies Ministry, not the Foreign Ministry, and final decisions about any further steps will be made at a higher level than in the ministries.
War in the Movies and in Reality
While Russian diplomats are bracing themselves for a tense situation in Tehran, their British colleagues are already facing a crisis. Last Friday the Iranian Navy seized 15 British naval personnel in the boundary waters of the Shatt al-Arab river, a disputed waterway between Iran and Iraq, and despite demands from the British Embassy, there has been no further word about their whereabouts. The British government, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, maintains that the naval personnel were in Iraqi waters when they were seized and that they had not violated the Iranian border. According to the Iranian media, however, "the British aggressors, armed and in full uniform, encroached on Iranian territory." The Iranian Fars news agency reported that the 15 Britons have already confessed in interrogations that they entered Iran illegally. British diplomats have not been allowed to meet with the sailors.
The seizure of the sailors took place not long before the sanctions resolution was adopted by the UN Security Council, and it is clear that the burgeoning scandal is directly linked with preparations for the vote: the Iranian authorities knew that the document would be approved, and they decided to add their own fuel to the fire. Iran's top spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a speech last Wednesday that "if they (the countries of the West) want to take the path of threats and violence, the people and leaders of Iran will use all means at their disposal to strike at the enemy aggressor." The arrest of the Britons was obviously Tehran's first retaliatory strike.
Moreover, according to Ayatollah Khamenei Iran's war with the West has already begun: this confrontation already includes "psychological warfare, economic warfare, and opposition to the development and improvement of Iranian science," he said, adding that "psychological warfare is the most important component of the enemy's plan."
Tehran believes that one of the facets of the psychological war being waged by the West against Iran is the new Hollywood film "300," which tells the story of a contingent of 300 heroic Spartans (the bearers of democratic values) battling a hoard of villainous and treacherous Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. According to Gholam-Hossein Elham, an official spokesman for the Iranian government, the blockbuster is nothing more than propaganda against Persian values. "Of course, no nation can stand that. It is a hostile act, a psychological and cultural war." In an official protest lodged by Iran with the UN Security Council, the film is referred to as "a rude attempt to present Persians as a source of evil and moral decay." The Iranian authorities maintain that the film is designed to prepare Westerners for the upcoming war and to explain to them that even the ancestors of today's Iranians were hostile to Western civilization.
Iran is also preparing itself for actual war. At the end of last week, the Iranian Navy launched a massive program of military exercises in the Persian Gulf. The commander in charge of the training exercises, Admiral Mortaza Saffar, announced before the exercises began that "if the US starts a war against Iran, it will not finish it."
In fact, military exercises have been ongoing in Iran practically nonstop for the last several months, and even before they began Iranian officials were asserting that they do not fear an American invasion, because the Iranian army is ready to repulse any assault. Meanwhile, negotiations have been limping along, attended by weak promises to resolve the crisis peacefully. Even though they approved the last anti-Iranian resolution, Russia and the West are continuing to say that the door is open for negotiations to be opened and that the crisis can be resolved. However, it is becoming more and more difficult for them to hide the fact that no one is holding out any hope for a peaceful outcome.
Mikhail Zygar and Alena Kornysheva
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 26, 2007
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