The excitement of the Board of Governor's meeting is over and the participants have not been slow to express their views at the outcome. The Iranians are defiant, the Americans triumphant, the Russians cautious, the Europeans smug, the Chinese inscrutable, the Arabs joyous at directing a new argument at Israel, the latter pleased over Iran's predicament yet angry over a dent in their nuclear ambiguity, and the Indians self-righteous. This is no mean achievement for a four page document!
What were the issues at Vienna? How were they addressed? Where does the debate go from here? Will the principals concede ground or remain adamant in their respective postures?
The thirteen paragraphs in the preamble and nine in the operative sections of the IAEA Resolution of February 4 need to be examined minutely. They tell the Iran story as viewed by the victors of the Battle of Vienna. Post-vote remarks amplify it unambiguously.
The United States achieved its objective of hauling Iran to the Security Council as a logical corollary to the failed policy of Dual Containment of Iraq and Iran, enunciated after 1991. In the process, Iran has been deprived of all its rights under the NPT, including nuclear research, and has been saddled with duties and obligations that go beyond its treaty commitments 'for an extensive period of confidence building'. The subjectivity is as evident as was the case with the Treaty of Versailles; so is the paranoia.
The build up to Vienna revealed new global arrangements. The P-5 plus one dinner meeting in London invested itself with the authority to speak in the name of the 15-member Security Council. Germany's de facto inclusion in that exclusive grouping went unnoticed and unchallenged in India. Russia gained importance and Western endorsement with its proposal for enriching Iranian uranium on Russian soil. All those who supported it displayed ignorance of Czarist and Soviet imperial ventures in Iran and the Iranian national resolve that dispelled them time and again.
The proceedings displayed a sense of imminence, of looming disaster. Is this the case? Has Iran acquired the unmentionable device? U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte was specific in his Senate testimony of February 2: We judge that Tehran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and has probably not yet produced or acquired the necessary fissile material'. Despite this, neither the President nor his Defense Secretary would take the (unilateral) military option off the table.
An analysis in Israeli daily Haaretz of February 5 is revealing: 'According to Israeli intelligence, Iran will have the knowledge, ability and technology to create nuclear weapons some 12 to 18 months after it begins to enrich uranium. However, they also note that it will be another two or three years before Iran will have the quantity of material needed to assemble its first atom bomb. American intelligence, in contrast, puts the time needed at eight years, due to expected difficulties in acquiring equipment, materials and technology, as well as know-how'.
Operative paragraph 3 is tantalising in what it reveals and conceals. The one-page document, voluntarily disclosed by Iran to the IAEA Inspectors, is played up but not its well-known origin. In fact, the anxiety to conceal its role in proliferation, sheds much light on the crass political nature of the Vienna exercise. If Iran's alleged misdeeds are to nailed, the role of all those - state and non-state actors - who were accessories to the act must be revealed. A failure to do so is suggestive of selective connivance. The list of proliferators is in fact impressive - France (in the case of Israel), China (for Pakistan) and Pakistan (for Iran).
A relevant factor in the debate concerns intentions and capabilities. It is a truism that capabilities remain while intensions may change. By that yardstick, the quantities of enriched uranium in Germany, Japan, South Africa and some other places should give rise to concern, but does not. Why?
And finally, the Indian reaction. The Prime Minister said all the right things in his Press Conference: diplomacy, dialogue, within the framework of IAEA, and through consensus. Iran must get all its rights under the NPT and fulfil all the obligations undertaken. The end result of the Vienna vote, however, is a denial of all this. The government considers the Resolution a 'balanced' document; a reader may wonders what an unbalanced one would be. Foreign policy has finally become a contentious issue; the public outcry is indicative of the divide.
Nobody in his senses wants nuclear proliferation. The focus of the debate, nevertheless, remains on sanctifying selective proliferation: the P-5 as birth right, Israel as protector of Western interests in West Asia, India and Pakistan as gate-crashers whom the West has befriended. Nuclear disarmament, despite being an integral part of the NPT, remains unmentionable.
So does the Iranian sense of dignity and its long history of confronting Western efforts at subjugation. The Indian public is perceptive; can the same be said of the elite in its quest for gharb-zadegi (West-toxication)?
The writer is a former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, former Ambassador in Iran and former Vice Chancellor, Aligarh Muslim University. He is presently a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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