Miguel Murado

At the root there is always some irony: The Irani nuclear programme, the same which has now set off the alarms in Washington, was initiated by Washington itself. Iran was still Persia back then and it was ruled by the late Shah. Then President Eisenhower gave his ok to the building, by German engineers, of the Bushehr facilities which now Bush would like to see destroyed.

The irony is twofold: Today’s Iran, the heir to ayatollah Khomeini, says it’s only demanding its right to develop a nuclear programme. She seems to have forgotten that one of the first things Khomeini did when he got to power was to freeze all nuclear research. He deemed the Atom bomb “un-Islamic” and even issued a “fatwa”, a religious veto, against its construction.

But, is Iran, really, building the bomb? As of now, everything seems to indicate that it isn’t. Evidence is flimsy, at best. Even the one that yesterday led to reporting Iran to the Security Council. The fuss is about a manual explaining how to build nuclear weapons which Iran admits having bought in the black market. No big deal. If anything, it makes one suspicious of Pakistan, since the document carries the signature of no other than the sinister Dr. A.Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who, under the protection of Mushraraf, has been selling nuclear secrets to anyone who pays enough for them. Talk of nuclear proliferation… And, by the way, Pakistan has the bomb, like India and Israel. All three of them live in Iran’s neighbourhood and, unlike Iran, none of them has signed the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This double standard is Teheran’s best defence and so it has been recognized by the IAAE in their report yesterday when they included the reference to a “nuclear-free Middle East”. A hint obviously directed to Israel.

From what we know so far, Iran is not in breach of the NPT. The treaty allows its signataries to enrich uranium as long as it is for peaceful purposes and under international supervision. That is why the crisis has been reworded in terms of trust. Or, to put it in Washington’s parlance, “preventive mistrust”. In 2003 Iran acknowledged having kept in secret until then part of its nuclear programme, something the US had found out through the Irani opposition (more precisely, through the Peoples Mujahaidin; oddly enough, they are included in Washington’s list of terrorist groups). What the US fears, of course, is that Iran would do what North Korea did: Leaving the NPT once they know how to make the bomb. And it could very well be. A nuclearized Iran would change the balance of power in the Middle East, and to renounce to such a wild card voluntarily and in exchange of nothing is asking too much from a country that feels as much under siege as Israel does.

What’s next? Everything is on hold until the new report from the IAAE, scheduled for March. Thus, this crisis will be cast in El-Baradei’s voice too, now invested with the wreaths of his Nobel Peace Prize. He is unpredictable: Three years ago the ambivalence and messy wording of his report on Iraq helped a lot in the confusion which led to the war.

Luckily, this is not about war yet, but sanctions. This is problematic too. Iran is well prepared for them. It counts on the revenues from his oil sales, which had been doubling through the last few years due to high prices. When the savings dry out, Iran can still threaten with a world economic crisis by limiting its oil production. Iran is the third world producer and it won’t be possible to compensate its 4.1. Million barrels per day. Prices could rocket to 130 or 150 dollars.

Actually, is the World who can’t afford the sanctions. Iran’s main commercial partner is the EU, which depends on Teheran for his energy supply, the same as China. Japan is number one buyer of Irani crude. Not to mention Russia. Among many other things, the Russians are building Iran’s power plants, and they are doing it on credit. If these countries have allowed Friday’s resolution to get across it's only because it didn’t mean immediate sanctions, and maybe also as a warning to Ahmadinezhad, whose diplomatic clumsiness is in great part to blame for this crisis in the making, a crises he has forced upon Iran and the rest of the International Community.

(Miguel Murado is a former Middle East correspondent and current political analyst for the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia)

Miguel Murado
La Voz de Galicia, 05 Feb 2006