What If America's Wrong About Iran's Nukes?

By Steve Hynd

I've always thought that those who argue "of course Iran wants the bomb" - especially those who then go on to say America or Israel should attack first - are saying more about their own psychology than Iran's intentions. For the "real experts" of US and Israeli foreign policy, whether they be Secretaries of State or well-known pundits, the ease with which each nation has been able to reach for the military option over the past few decades has made force a reflex, kneejerk, response. All of those "real experts" play down the consequences of an attack on Iran when comparing it to the consequences of Iran with atomic bombs.

But what if America and Israel are wrong about Iran's nuclear intentions?

Brian Katulis and others at the Center for American Progress, being "real experts", don't examine that possibility even as they challenge others in the think-tank community to rethink their assumptions about Iran with nuclear weapons and argue that a nuclear Iran is containable without a local arms race. maybe they should. As Eric Martin noted earlier today, there have been dire warnings of that elusive but apparently immanent Iranian nuke for thirty years now, and it hasn't arrived yet. Waiting for the Iranian nuke is like waiting for Godot. Suppose it's not ever going to arrive?

Iran's Speaker, Ali Larijani, was previously Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and Iran's top nuclear negotiator. On the 25th of february this year, he said clearly thatIran was pursuing what has become known as the "Japan Option", gaining the capacity to build a nuclear weapon swiftly if attacked but otherwise stopping short of that threshold. He chose Japan itself as the venue to do so and in return the Japanese foreign minister called for expansion of Iran/Japan ties.

The former head of the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, has no uncertainty - such a "Japan Option" is perfectly legal within the Non-proliferation Treaty's framework.

Iran wants a �nuclear weapons capability��which is not the same as actual nuclear weapons�to be taken seriously as a regional power by the United States. (Baradei says that Iranian officials have told him many times they have no problem with the United States as a global power, but want the United States to recognize Iran�s status as a regional power. Baradei also says that developing a �nuclear weapons capability��again, not the same as actual nuclear weapons�is �kosher� under the NPT.)

Which explains why the IAEA, unlike U.S. officials, don't talk about Iran violating the NPT.

And then there's the boogeyman himself, Iran's (term-limited, and he's on his last term) president Ahmadinejhad. Recently, he's been toning down the domestic-consumption rhetoric and taking a far more logical stance. As the New Statesman's Ian Smith wrote yesterday:

The international community's boycott of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech to the New York nuclear non-proliferation conference this week was a cynical gesture that belied the rationality of what he said.

Here is the Iranian president's analysis of the causes of the NPT's problems (such a review being, after all, the purpose of the conference):

1. States seeking dominance by suppressing others.


2. The policy of producing and using nuclear weapons in the past.


3. Nuclear weapons used as a means of deterrence.


4. Threatening countries such as Iran with the use of nuclear weapons.


5. Exploiting the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency.


6. The United States' double standards towards Israel's nuclear stockpile.


7. Equating nuclear weapons with nuclear energy.


8. Imbalance in the mandates of the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

If the US, the UK, France and the other countries that walked out cannot deal with this scripted Ahmadinejad, it is difficult to maintain hope for the increasingly important diplomatic process. The truth is that western leaders' ears are closed.

Not just the West's leaders, but it's policymaking and pundit elites too. Their closed-minded inability to really think outside the boxes they have created may yet lead the world into yet another war between the US and a Moslem nation. That this might happen when there's no actual "there" there, again, would be beyond tragic.