Iran
Diplomacy to the Fore

When the US military briefed on its capability to attack Iran in Washington in early November it seemed more like the last gasp of the military approach and an acknowledgement that the diplomatic track is now the only viable approach, comments David Watts

  Time was when nuclear non-proliferation was an almost religious commitment for nations of the West intent on holding down the lid on the bottle of nuclear genies. Now it seems it is just another tool in the diplomat’s box. Witness the stand-off between the United States and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme, with the Europeans dancing in attendance.
   Central to the argument now, from the perspective of Washington, is the ability of Iran to create problems for the United States in Iraq, and from the perspective of Tehran, to stabilise Iraq in a way that will not overtly threaten it and to enhance its sphere of influence through its Shia co-religionists.
   The argument over the Iranian nuclear programme is now being framed in the context of mutual trading of concessions over the two issues. Both sides know that Iran is well placed to make things even more difficult for the United States in Iraq in the event of an American attack on the Iranian homeland to destroy or delay the nuclear programme. Equally, the Iranians know how stretched the mighty American war machine is.
   The Americans and the British have long claimed that Iran was encouraging the militancy of Shia groups in Iraq targeting the troops of the two nations. It has also been claimed that Tehran is behind the deployment of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), and it has been reported that British special forces have been deployed along the Iran–Iraq border to prevent their transport from Iran. To what extent that has happened remains unclear but it seems certain that the design and technology of the IEDs have been of Iranian origin.
   President George W. Bush himself targeted the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in January as being behind the smuggling of weaponry into Iraq and there have been a series of seizures of Iranian personnel — most notoriously from their Irbil liaison office in Kurdistan — none of whom appear to have been linked to any alleged attempts to smuggle weaponry into Iraq. The net result so far has been an irritated Iraqi government and lack of any evidence of wrongdoing by members of the IRGC, which has now been labelled a terrorist organisation despite close cooperation with Washington at an earlier stage of the so-called war on terror.
   Either the Americans have been on the wrong tack or the Iranians have been particularly good at covering their tracks. The latter is not beyond the bounds of possibility, as witness the recent assessment of the Iranian programme by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Though generally upbeat and reporting a more positive attitude toward cooperation the IAEA noted that there had been a consistent effort to conceal the activities of the last two years or so. It would be surprising if the Iranians had not gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal their nuclear programme out of sight of satellites, given the capabilities and intentions of the Israelis who have the most to lose if Iran achieves operational capability with nuclear weapons.
   For the moment the balance of mutual stress, along with some cautionary words in the background from American military commanders, seems to have persuaded the Americans to hold back from a military campaign. So when the military briefed on its capability to attack Iran in Washington in early November it seemed more like the last gasp of the military approach and an acknowledgement that the diplomatic track is now the only viable approach.
   Despite the overstretch of the army and marine corps there was ample American air power in the region to carry out attacks on Iranian targets, according to the briefing, with an aircraft carrier in the Gulf region with some 60 fighters and other aircraft plus the air assets deployed in Iraq and Qatar plus some 2200 Marines on regular deployment to the Gulf aboard a group of vessels led by USS Kearsage, an amphibious assault ship. Among possible targets, apart from the nuclear installations such as the centrifuge plant at Nantaz, there are the Republican Guard and naval bases which the Iranians might use to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation.
   But the reality is that far from there being an increase in capability, the US Navy has actually reduced its presence from two aircraft carrier battle groups to one.
   Despite recent warlike talk from Vice-President Dick Cheney, that the US ‘would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon’, and President Bush himself warning in mid-October that an Iranian bomb could mean ‘World War III’, a short while later at a joint press conference with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, the American President’s emphasis was on a diplomatic solution and he made no mention of the military option.
   Whether it is leading his policy options or not the French leader’s backing for sanctions and the conversion of the Germans to a tougher sanctions regime has provided President Bush with a powerful panoply of European backers just when he needed it.
   Gordon Brown of Britain was already on board, perhaps reflecting the British military’s reluctance to take on any more commitments, while Angela Merkel of Germany has been persuaded that despite the potentially considerable damage to the German economy, sanctions are much preferable to an expanded area of conflict in the Middle East. Germany is a big provider of high technology and industrial products to Iran, which were worth $5.6 bn in 2006. Sanctions will clearly bite into that lucrative slice of business but the Germans realised that with the French and British on board they were the only major European power outside the sanctions coalition. According to some reports, there was also a powerful but unofficial sweetener on the table when the German Chancellor met President Bush at his Texas ranch: a commitment that if the issue of German permanent membership of the UN Security Council came to a vote the Americans would vote in favour of Berlin.
   With that solid wall of sanctions power in place it will be much more difficult for Tehran to resist American blandishments. The wild card, however, remains the situation in Iraq. If Tehran overplays its hand no one can say how the lame-duck President might react.

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