By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran has raised the temperature of the nuclear standoff with Tehran a couple of degrees by claiming there is credible data that “raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile”.
This reflects the more assertive stance of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog under Yukiya Amano, who took over as secretary general last December. Amano admitted in his first press conference there was no evidence of nuclear weaponization on Iran’s part. In the new report, however, the IAEA writes, “Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”
These accusations will likely boost the diplomatic efforts of the United States and other countries to impose new UN sanctions on Iran and, as a result, attention is now focused on a coming UN Security Council meeting on Iran in Ma
rch.
Esmae’il Kowsari, a senior Iranian legislator, said on Monday that sections of the report were politically motivated and “unreal”, adding that Tehran plans to inform the IAEA member states of these misgivings. “Unfortunately, Amano’s report is two-sided and some unreal issues have been intermingled with real issues,” he told the Fars News Agency.
Prior to the UN meeting, a new US intelligence report is likely to be published that revises the US intelligence community’s findings in December 2007 that Iran’s nuclear program has been peaceful since 2003.
Though the IAEA report indicates that the authority has received new information regarding Iran since Amano’s first press conference that would justify his turnaround, the “neutron triggers” alluded to in the report reinforce suspicions that a disinformation mill is operating when it comes to Iran. Amano’s predecessor, Mohammed ElBaradei, had described such information as “hype”.
An IAEA report from February 2008 said that all of several “outstanding issues” with Iran had been successfully resolved after the implementation of an Iran-IAEA work plan. Iran’s nuclear file could have been normalized as a result. Instead, the country is being subjected to a new round of accusations regarding nuclear and missile proliferation activities.
Iran views progress in its nuclear sector as serving its national interests and as reducing its dependency on foreign countries. A layer of deterrence added through a potential nuclear capability is seen as enhancing Iran’s national security posture.
However, it is far from clear that – absent of a serious threat to national security – Iran will tread the path towards full nuclear weapons status. Rather, Iran will likely aim for “semi-nuclear” status.
The reluctance to seek full nuclear status is linked to Iran’s self-understanding and how it views its international role. Tehran today is the product of a 1979 revolution that was aptly described by the late French philosopher Michel Foucault as a revolt against the “world order”, not simply an old order.
If Iran were to join the nuclear club, it become part of an old world order where nuclear powers such as India pay lip service to global disarmament while increasing their own arsenal. Some politicians in Tehran are unaware of the fact, but Iran’s original revolutionary idealism continues to weigh heavily on the decisions taken by its leaders.
This goes to the heart of the “Iran exceptionalism” displayed during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). In that conflict, the Islamic Republic made a conscious and costly decision not to respond to Iraq’s biological warfare in kind. Despite some 60,000 Iranians being injured or killed by Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, Iran did not reciprocate as it deemed such weapons as un-Islamic and amoral.
The decision was not an easy one, and it pitted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against military commanders. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander who spoke at Tehran’s College of International Relations said Khomeini used logic to persuade dissenting voices that acting like Saddam might win Iran battles, but it would lose Iran its distinction as a different and superior regime.
This legacy of “Iran exceptionalism” can be seen today in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran sees itself as taking a leadership role for non-aligned nations that is ideologically and religiously underpinned, since Tehran is still committed to acting as a revisionist power that addresses global injustice.
Iran’s “nuclear ambition” is still often misinterpreted as if the country is pursuing nuclear capabilities for the sake of power and prestige. Without a doubt, this element is present in Iran’s nuclear program, but there is a red line on nuclear weapons that is connected to Iran’s plans to change international society.
Tehran believes that a greater Iranian nuclear capability will strengthen the hands of non-aligned nations seeking to pressure “nuclear club” nations towards meaningful, rather than cosmetic, disarmament. By freezing Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons midway, Tehran can use concerns about the country’s “next steps” as a sophisticated disarmament strategy. A semi-nuclear posture also benefits Iran’s regional security calculations, since Washington has long treated the Persian Gulf as an “American lake”.
Secondly, bargaining leverage can be derived from a semi-nuclear status, as this will set new standards for non-proliferation. This will benefit the vast majority of the world’s nations who do not have nuclear weapons and are quite powerless when it comes to influencing and shaping the policies, postures, and doctrines of the “nuclear club”.
This is not to naively assume that Iran does not seek power. Rather, the political system’s identity remains what this author has long characterized as a “quasi-state”, which constantly integrates narrow national and broader globalist interests as the central axis around which all issues of national (security) interests revolve. This is tied in with Iran transcending the Islamist world view of the state as completely cosmopolitan and imbued with the notion of co-existence with other nations and religions.
The antipathy toward nuclear weapons shown by Iran’s Spiritual Leader Ali Khamenei, which he repeated this past week, is genuine and not fake, as many in the West fear. Much as this seems an abstract doctrine, it has important policy ramifications.
Beneath such expressions are ambitions of a different kind, that is, for Iran to play a leading role in “global management”. Such sentiments are often heard from President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, though he does not explain that Iran’s aim is not simply to join the management team, rather to restructure the global hierarchy in non-hegemonic and horizontal directions. Seeking this input in global affairs demands a complex and multifarious nuclear game on Iran’s part that is geared to garnering concessions from the hegemonic powers on several fronts.
This is certainly an ambitious agenda for a developing nation that has been in many ways under siege since the founding of the Islamic Republic 31 years ago, and there is a chance that Iran could succumb to nationalistic temptations and become a full member of the nuclear club.
However, Iran will most likely steer a middle path as a semi-nuclear state, the hallmark of which will the continuation of a post-revolutionary state that combines nationalism and patriotism without losing sight of larger global realities in which Iran has to operate in to satisfy its own internal and national security demands.
That path is strewn with overt signs of conventional military build-up, clearly reflected in this week’s launching of an ultra-modern naval vessel and in Iran’s missile program. But a unique distinction in such developments is that they are fueled by a historical self-understanding that will propel policymakers toward a policy of near distancing with regards to nuclear weapons.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. His latest book, Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) is now available.
Mohammed Abbasi 