Iran stares down America and the UN over its nuclear hopes

Iran today successfully stared down a new move by the US, France, Britain and Germany to push it to the wall despite a strongly worded United Nations watchdog agency report that it might still be trying to build nuclear weapons.

Few qualified observers doubt that Iran is covertly conducting a nuclear weapons program and controversy continues over whether it is a year or a decade away from success. But Teheran is running circles round the Western powers, which may suffer significant loss of face in the eyes of China and other Asians if they fail to bring it to reason.

After two days of closed meetings, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors approved a weak resolution expressing “deep and increasing concern” about Iran’s nuclear program, including its “possible military dimensions”. Russia and China voted in favor because the resolution did not reprimand Teheran or threaten new sanctions through the UN’s Security Council in New York. Iran’s representative immediately denounced it as biased and vowed that his country would pursue “work with further determination”. He did not admit to any kind of nuclear weapons program.

However, the belief is growing that Iran wants nuclear weapons, however dirty or imprecise, to deter Saudi Arabia. It fears that the Saudi’s are trying to grab leadership of the Arab world following instability in Egypt, by riding on the coattails of US military power and Israeli distrust of Teheran’s intentions. The Saudi’s are the largest Arab buyer of conventional weapons from the US and Teheran is convinced that they might be used against it someday.

In Teheran’s eyes, the Saudis have no enemies and it fails to see why they need such a heavy military buildup or why Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait house very significant US naval and military presence, if not aimed at Iran. Teheran also has a historical dread of Saudi Islam, especially the mutations of Salafi and Wahhabi Islam that emerged over the last two centuries. The fear also flows from a long history of wars since Iranians are mostly Shia Muslims and Persians racially distinct from the Semitic origins of Arabs and Middle East Jews.

Many Asians are convinced as are some in the West that Teheran is determined to weaponize its so far peaceful nuclear program to obtain deterrents capable of holding America’s Gulf allies at bay. China and Russia see no peril to their own interests from such deterrence and do not think it necessary to punish Iran severely.

On the other hand, Persians have been wily diplomats throwing smoke screens for over 2,500 years and it cannot be ruled out that behind Teheran’s ingenuous denials at the IAEA lurk Mullahs who may be fanatical or crazy enough to grievously hurt Israel if they could.

Still, no UN resolutions or sanctions are likely to get Teheran to back down since all the key domestic players support its nuclear weapons program. They will also refuse to bow to Western pressure in the absence of a major military defeat. Both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supporters and those of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are united behind this position despite their growing frictions on other domestic matters.

In any event, US-led military action is not on the table, despite rhetoric about nothing being off the table. Severe economic sanctions, such as blocking sale of Iranian oil or stopping all bank transactions, are unlikely to work because China and India are hungry for Iranian oil and gas and Russia does not want to lose Teheran to China by backing the West.

So the only path to stopping Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program is to foment enough street protests to obtain regime change. But that has its own dangers because the Al Khamenei mullah’s and the elite Republican Guards, many of whom back Ahmadinejad against the Supreme Leader’s factions, might join hands to strike blindly if there is a real threat to their hold on power and wealth-creating businesses.

Yet, the longer the standoff continues between the West and Iran, the harder it will become to enforce non-military punishment through sanctions. It is worth remembering that the severest of sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq failed to stop him from gathering political and economic power because they are notoriously hard to impose successfully against an oil and gas rich country.