United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to be complimented for her candour. Her press conference in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unavoidably focussed on Iran's nuclear plans and Mr. Lavrov said Iran had the right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) to the nuclear fuel cycle. Dr. Rice said, "this is not a question of rights but whether or not the fuel cycle can be trusted in Iran." The Vienna problem is thus political; the technicalities of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations are of secondary relevance.
The recent debate about the IAEA meeting in Vienna seems to have overlooked a factor that underlies much of American, even European, thinking. This relates to Israel. Israel is not a signatory to the NPT, is the only nuclear-weapons state in West Asia (considerably endowed), and one whose nuclear programme was clandestinely assisted by one or more of the Western powers.
Abba Eban pointed out in 1995 that the conditions that made the Arab-Israeli wars possible, and threatened Israel's existence, no longer existed. None of this, however, has affected Israeli strategic thinking, conditioned in recent years by right-wing ideologues and subscribed to in increasing measure by successive administrations in Washington. The Israeli impulse is hegemonic rather than existential.
Nor is it new. On the third day of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt of 1956, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion told the Knesset that the war's purpose was "to re-establish the Kingdom of David and Solomon" and to liberate Egyptians from the tyranny of Nasser. He received a standing ovation. On that occasion, America disagreed and, together with the USSR, forced the invaders to withdraw.
As part of its vision to be the regional hegemon it has been Israeli policy for many years, in the words of General Shahak-Lipkin, "to use all its power and direct all its efforts to preventing nuclear development in any Arab state whatsoever." The distinction between civilian and weapons programmes was carefully overlooked.
This exclusion was extended to Iran after 1979. It was also adopted wholesale by the United States not withstanding its civilian nuclear cooperation agreement of 1957, its supply of several kilograms of enriched uranium, its setting up of a Nuclear Research Centre in Teheran in 1967, and its 1975 agreement to sell eight reactors to Iran. In 1976 Iran purchased stakes in Eurodif and agreed to finance an enrichment plant in South Africa. Iran then was kosher; today, its demonisation serves a purpose.
Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University has shed light on Israeli strategic thinking in a paper presented in a seminar in Washington in January 2005. His un-stated assumption (as that of the U.S. and the European Union) is that nuclear capability is a weapons-capability.
Thence onwards the argument is carefully developed: the development of an Iranian nuclear capability and a multipolar nuclear environment would end the Israeli nuclear monopoly and fundamentally change the calculus of strategic deterrence in all strategic dimensions. In this context the need for a credible second-strike capability and maintenance of Israel's policy of deliberate ambiguity would become increasingly difficult. Additional options would be necessary by way of a sea-based retaliatory force, equipped with cruise missiles, of diesel-powered German-built submarines already in Israeli inventory. Even this may not result in a stable deterrence since there are no direct communications with Iran and its leadership. The prospects of an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability and regional proliferation would revive talk of a U.S.-Israel defence pact and Israel's membership of NATO.
For these reasons halting the illicit Iranian acquisition of fissile material remains the best policy option for the U.S., Israel, Europe, Russia, China, and for the region.
In April 2005, the former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, told Haaretz that "Israel, for its part, could not hope for a better combination of players and circumstances in the political campaign that is underway in relation to Iran's nuclear project." This would result in the containment of Iran and the neutralisation of the danger it poses to Israel - "without Israel having to consider whether to cope alone" with the threat.
The entire argument in the present case is built around an as yet unproven assumption. If the process of IAEA investigation is under way, why not await its outcome? Another unproven premise of the argument is that a nuclear programme can only be a nuclear-weapons one. This may be valid for Israel, but can hardly be subscribed to by NPT signatories - Germany, Japan, Brazil, and others.
The haste exhibited at Vienna was agenda-driven; the agenda, as Prof. Steinberg amplifies, is specifically political not altruistic.
The writer is a former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, former Ambassador to Iran and former Vice Chancellor, Aligarh Muslim University. He is presently Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Source: The Hindu, October 20, 2005.
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