The continued dithering over Iran's nuke program

Amir Taheri:

'UNHELPFUL": So British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described Iran's announcement that it has now joined "the nuclear club." Straw's French and German colleagues did no better. One saw Iran's provocative move as "regrettable the other preferred "disappointing." The European trio was echoing earlier comments from Washington that had chosen "unacceptable."

Well, as the late Raymond Aaron liked to say, when you say that something is "unacceptable," you have already accepted it as a reality. As for "unhelpful," that adjective is normally used in conjugal disputes when the aggrieved spouse wishes to say something without causing further aggravation.

Any thought that such moaning might make the mullahs shake in their sandals, let alone abandon their strategic quest for a nuclear surge capacity, would be naive to say the least. It's "so far, so good" for Tehran. The Islamic Republic has thumbed its nose at the "international community" at no cost to itself. Why should it stop when the going is so good?

Let us return to the central question in all this: Why does the Islamic Republic want a nuclear arsenal?

Anyone familiar with the history of proliferation would know that all of the seven confirmed nuclear powers decided to go nuclear in the context of conflict, actual or potential, with a clearly designated adversary. The United States developed nuclear weapons during World War II. Later, the Soviets developed their own bomb as a deterrent against the Americans. Britain and France, and later China, each sought an independent deterrent against the USSR. Then India, as a deterrent against China - and Pakistan as a deterrent against India.

No nation allocates huge resources to building a bomb and the means to deliver it without some real or perceived strategic imperative. So what is that imperative for Iran?

The shah's regime sought a nuclear surge capacity with an eye on making the Soviets deem it too risky to attack Iran. Sometime in the early '90s, the Islamic Republic decided to revive that program as a counter to the United States.

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With the fall of the Taliban in Kabul and the Ba'ath in Iraq, the old balance of power in the region has been shattered. President Bush wants to create a new Middle East that is democratic and pro-West. In such a Middle East, there would be no place for a regime like the one now in place in Tehran. The Islamic Republic is determined to sabotage Bush's plan and, instead, create a new Middle East that is anti-American, Islamist and controlled by Tehran. These conflicting ambitions make war a theoretical, if not an immediate, inevitability.

The Khomeinist leadership believes that it could hope to win in any prolonged conventional conflict if only because U.S. public opinion, as the Iraq experience has shown, lacks patience and is unprepared to accept even low casualty rates. That leaves tactical nuclear weapons as the only way for the United States to break the will of the Islamic Republic in any war. Thus the mullahs' move to develop their own deterrent.

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The anti war movement that has sought to discredit the US victory in Iraq has made war with Iran more likely. So have the dithering Europeans who keep trying to rule it out while Iran keeps trying to make it more inevitable. If the anti war movement had accepted the US victory in Iraq, then Iran would not think it has support in the US to keep the US from attacking. The anti war movement has made the Iranians more aggressive as have the dithering Euros.