Steve Quayle News Alerts

Jan. 7, 2003
By Ehsan Ahrari

Even before George W Bush's axis of evil speech, Iran's nuclear programs, though they are publicly described as aimed at the peaceful use of nuclear energy, have been the chief source of concern for the United States and Israel.

By some strange coincidence, if Washington were to slack off on the issue, Israel would make sure that the span of America's inattention did not last long. Israel, more than the United States, understands the real intentions of Iran related to its nuclear programs. Those are related to the regional balance of power and to Iran's aspirations to dominate not just the Persian Gulf area, but also the entire Middle East. That is precisely what Israel does not want to see.

American journalist Seymour Hersch's book, The Samson Option (1991) - despite its related criticisms - is an interesting study of the Israeli resolve in the late 1950s and 1960s to acquire nuclear weapons by hook or by crook. The United States was very much against nuclear proliferation then, as it is now. However, in those decades there were no elaborate nuclear nonproliferation regimes. The Cold War was the focus of global contest, and the "evil-doer-in-chief" was the Soviet Union. The world was divided into two camps - the co-called "free world", though it included many US-supported tyrannies, and the "imprisoned" communist countries of Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam and Cuba. There were no other pseudo pariahs a-la the so-called rogue states.

The chief supplier of nuclear knowledge to Israel was France, whose own acquisition of nuclear power is generally regarded as the outcome of President Dwight Eisenhower's "heavy-handed" treatment of the French (along with the UK and Israel) invasion of the Suez canal in 1956, when Gamal Abdel Nasser flexed his pan-Arab muscles and nationalized it. The imperial grand designs of France and Great Britain had not become things of the past by then. Of course, Israel was driven by its own grand aspirations of teaching the neighboring Arab leaders - the godfathers of pan-Arabism who were running rampant in the entire Arab world, carrying out their own "Arab cold war" with the pro-Western monarchical regimes - a lesson in humility, and emerging as a dominant actor in the process.

Pan-Arabist leaders had to wait until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war before learning a bitter lesson in humility, when the armed forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan were badly beaten by Israel. Consequently, the entire Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights came under Israeli occupation, and the Jewish state emerged as a dominant regional power, a position that it continues in today.

That intricate mega-conflict aside, what emerged toward the end of the 1960s was a nuclear Israel. According to the Federation of American Scientists: "Although the United States government did not encourage or approve of the Israeli nuclear program, it also did nothing to stop it." The French notion of grandeur that drove its foreign policy then - as it drives its foreign policy in the post-September 11 era - saw a strange similarity between Israeli nuclear aspirations and that of its own.

However, the similarity of the aspirations that drove France and Israel toward nuclear cooperation is not underlying current Russia-Iran nuclear cooperation. Russia dismisses US charges that Iran's real motives are to develop nuclear weapons. It is hard to believe that Russia is being naive about what Iran really wants to accomplish with its now-peaceful nuclear programs. It is possible that Moscow would not mind one more nuclear power in its immediate neighborhood in the coming years; after all, China has been a nuclear power since 1964, and India and Pakistan since 1998. It is likely that Russia's sensibilities related to nuclear threats have dulled since the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the two communist nuclear neighbors went to the brink of nuclear exchange stemming from a combination of ideological and border disputes. It is also possible that Russia envisions the emergence of a nuclear Iran as a positive development, in view of its own preference for the emergence of a multipolar global system, which will bring an end to the current unipolar global order characterized by the dominance of the United States.

But for the Israelis, there is an uncanny similarity between their acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities and the path chosen by Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. As a victim of Arab hostility since its inception, Israel perceived the possession of nuclear weapons as an ultimate guarantee for its survival. Once it acquired it, mum was the word to describe that capability. Consequently, as the sole undeclared nuclear power, Israel continues to have its cake and eat it too. As such, it will be treated as a non-nuclear state in the highly biased vision of the US government.

Perhaps there is also a lesson for Iran here. Iran was the victim of Iraqi aggression and chemical and missile attacks in the 1980s, realities that played a crucial role in its resolve to acquire chemical weapons and at least middle-range ballistic missiles. In the post-September 11 era, Iran also perceives the acquisition of nuclear weapons as a guarantee that it will not be treated by the lone superpower as Iraq is currently being treated. Iranian rulers are fully cognizant of the differences between Washington's handling of Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein. They will not be at all off the mark in concluding that the presence of nuclear know-how (and a general perception that North Korea possesses a few nuclear weapons) is the reason for that difference. Mao Zedong of China and Charles de Gaulle of France came to similar conclusions about their respective countries in the context of balance of power in earlier decades. As did David Ben Gurion of Israel.

However, as long as the international environment is not conducive for it to develop nuclear weapons, Iran will continue to publicly renounce that option. In the meantime, it must concentrate on enhancing its indigenous nuclear know-how. This is a rather strange way of emulating the Israeli example of acquiring nuclear weapon capabilities. But, in the calculation of the Iranian leadership, that is their only viable option in a hostile strategic regional environment stemming from the heightened American militarism.

So Iran is determined to continue its march on the road to nuclear power. Toward the end of December 2002, it was disclosed that two additional nuclear plants were being built in Arak and Natanz in central Iran. But Iran also declared its intentions of cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, by opening its nuclear facilities for inspection. It also announced that it is shipping spent fuel back to Russia in order to ensure those concerned of its intentions of the peaceful use of nuclear energy. However, the United States and Israel continue to ask why Iran, with its estimated oil reserves of at least 100 billion barrels of crude oil and 29.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, would want to develop nuclear energy.

Israel is convinced that it knows the answer. As, in their time, Mao, de Gaulle and Ben Gurion were so convinced. As is, now, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran.

Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com//atimes/Middle_East/EA08Ak02.html