What Do You Do About Iran?

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What Do You Do About Iran?

Nayan Chanda

Psychiatrists track five stages of human emotion after someone has been told of terminal illness starting with denial, passing through anger, bargaining and depression and ending in acceptance. The way Washington and perhaps the western world have been dealing with Iran’s emergence as a nuclear weapons state follows a broadly similar process. The growing acceptance of the inevitability of a new nuclear power in Tehran is, however, accompanied by hope that a breakout by Iran would be contained by the threat of annihilation as it has deterred other nuclear powers in the past. That may be a misreading of history.

Although a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has long been suspected of secret efforts to develop weapons. However, it was not until 2002 that the first evidence of a secret nuclear site emerged. That angered Washington and Europe and led to calls for sanctions. Then came a phase of denial: Perhaps Iran is bluffing about its progress, analysts wondered. In 2007, the US intelligence community concluded that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. But the relief proved short-lived as Iran rejected the offered bargain to exchange its stock of enriched uranium for medical isotopes.

Last September, Tehran revealed that it had built a second uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom. The IAEA report followed, giving details of Iran’s potential for producing a nuclear weapon and its plans to develop a missile-ready warhead. Now comes a Japanese report: North Korea has supplied Iran 45 tonnes of unenriched uranium concentrate (known as yellowcake), enough to produce a few bombs. Now, with the US intelligence community revising its earlier comforting assessment, Washington is close to reaching the final phase. Officially, the line is that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but there is a growing sense of resigned acceptance of the inevitability of an Iranian bomb.

It arises from the fact that neither of the two considered options – increased sanctions and air strikes against the enrichment sites – have any real prospects for success. There are already sanctions in place and apart from hurting common people and shoring up anti-western nationalism, they have scarcely dented Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Even tougher sanctions, aimed at the Revolutionary Guard Corps who are in charge of the nuclear programme, are unlikely to do better. There has been talk of possible military action but there is no enthusiasm in Washington for a venture that is fraught with risk and unlikely to significantly derail Iranian nuclear plans, even if successful.

After all, even if sites at Natanz and Qom are destroyed, Iran could yet have other undisclosed sites to produce fissile material. In the event of a US or Israeli attack, there can be little doubt that these backup sites would be ramped up to produce a functioning nuclear device. A Q Khan is believed to have supplied Iran with a warhead design, obviating the need for them to carry out a test. More immediately, Iranian retaliation could upend oil tanker traffic through the Persian Gulf, sparking an immediate crisis in the world economy and igniting violence by Iran-backed groups across the Middle East.

Washington has implicitly acknowledged the fait accompli of Iran’s nuclear programme by offering a nuclear umbrella to its Arab allies. American strategists are preparing for Iran’s nuclear debut by noting that in the end, the same containment and deterrence, which worked with Russia and China, will prevent any adventurism. However, history offers a worrisome counter-example. Within a year of testing its nuclear bomb, Pakistan undertook the most daring of assaults on Kashmir in Kargil, emboldened by the calculation that fears of a nuclear confrontation would constrain India’s response. It was later revealed that Pakistan had prepared its nuclear-tipped missiles before ultimately withdrawing its battered infiltrators.

How a nuclear-armed Iran would behave is anybody’s guess. It is sobering to recall that the country’s nuclear programme is under the control of Revolutionary Guards, the same organisation which acts as the patron of Hezbollah and almost certainly Hamas, among other terrorist groups. The West’s acceptance of the Iranian nuclear bomb may be the last inevitable phase of confronting this bad news, but that may not be the end of the story.