by Rod Mamudi
In its nuclear program, [Iran's] government enters with full power and has complete authority. I have given the nuclear negotiations portfolio to foreign ministry. The problem won’t be from our side. We have sufficient political latitude to solve this problem.
Such were the words of Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani, [...]]]>
by Rod Mamudi
In its nuclear program, [Iran's] government enters with full power and has complete authority. I have given the nuclear negotiations portfolio to foreign ministry. The problem won’t be from our side. We have sufficient political latitude to solve this problem.
Such were the words of Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani, last Wednesday, speaking to both domestic and foreign audiences by way of NBC News. They came one day after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei spoke of the virtues of “heroic flexibility” in negotiations. Since then speculation that Presidents Obama and Rouhani could meet at this week’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) — and in doing so, transform relations between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran — has been flourishing.
Unsurprisingly, Israeli concerns over this possibility are dovetailing with their reported dissatisfaction over the Syrian chemical weapons-transfer. Their key complaint was alluded to by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu last weekend when he repeated his call for a “credible military threat” in the US’s dealings with Iran. Tehran insists that its nuclear program remains geared towards peaceful purposes, but Netanyahu argues that the perceived military climb-down over Syria will embolden Iran in its alleged nuclear-weapons pursuit while it stalls for more time.
But Israel stands to gain the most from a peaceful resolution to this issue.
A non-nuclear Iran is a clear security imperative for the Israel. But this is just one component in the Israeli calculus. More broadly, Israel has a serious interest in maintaining the current Middle Eastern nuclear status quo, in which Israel is tacitly acknowledged as the sole regional state with a nuclear arsenal.
A negotiated resolution to Iran’s nuclear dossier can preserve this overall objective. A military strike on the other hand, while the most direct short-term route to a non-nuclear Iran, could endanger Israel’s nuclear monopoly.
Meeting with US Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey last month, Netanyahu stated that Iran “dwarfs” all other security challenges. In July, Netanyahu said on US television that Iran was now pursuing both uranium and plutonium routes to weaponization, and working on inter-continental ballistic missiles. A credible threat of force against Iran is therefore necessary, according to Netanyahu, because it is “the only thing that will get their attention”.
But Netanyahu has described the threat of force as necessary, not force itself. The Israeli position, vividly illustrated at last year’s UNGA, could be the “bad cop” to the US’ “good cop”; a method to harness both stick and carrot.
At some point, however, not delivering on a threat starts to become dangerous. Some speak confidently of Israel’s ability to conduct a surgical strike and eliminate an immediate threat of nuclear weaponization. But Iran is not Iraq or Syria. Either way, few argue this would keep Iran from a bomb indefinitely. In fact, striking Iran could speed up Israel’s worst nightmare as a cornered Iran rushes to defend itself.
There are, however, three possible alternatives to war: a continuation of the regional nuclear status quo; a proliferation of weapons in response to escalation; or a renewed drive to establishing a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, which I will focus on.
Normally a NWFZ treaty will seek to prohibit the acquisition, testing, and use of nuclear weapons in the region. It will involve some kind of framework for the treaty’s monitoring and implementation, and, importantly, positive and negative guarantees from the five nuclear-weapons states (NWS) including security assurances in the event of an attack from outside the Treaty-area and on the non-use of nuclear weapons against the treaty’s signatories. There have been various reservations to these norms, but this is the pattern.
Currently there are five NWFZ Treaties across the world. A treaty was applied in the Caribbean and Latin America in 1969. Costa Rica had made a proposal as early as 1958, but the reaction was cool. But by 1963, a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico joined Costa Rica’s call. By February 1967, despite outright hostility from some quarters, a Treaty was prepared for signature. Cuba was the last to ratify in 2002.
The geostrategic situation post-Missile Crisis was ostensibly the same as that of the pre-Missile Crisis. The warheads had been removed, but the nearest countries had received a rude awakening; the crisis had thus served as a catalyst.
Prospects for a NWFZ in the Middle East are slim now for a number of reasons. But the idea is there. Iran and Egypt called for one in 1974. In 1990, Hosni Mubarak called for a weapons-of-mass-destruction free zone. UNSC Resolution 687, which terminated the 1991 Gulf War, described Iraqi disarmament as one of “steps towards the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction”. The UN’s 2010 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Review Conference called for a meeting on this subject by 2012 (yet to occur).
Political flux further complicates the issue. Outside powers may yet decide such changes require a stronger commitment framework.
A crisis, coupled with the many complications arising from an arms race, may begin to drive momentum on a NWFZ in the Middle East. None of this means Israel would disarm, but it could make its position extremely politically complicated. And however remote this prospect may seem today, the tides of change hardly look like they’ve receded in the Middle East. Indeed, how many could have guessed six months ago that much of the buzz ahead of the 68th annual UNGA would be around a potential US/Iran meeting?
Using the “military option” on Iran could see off an immediate threat to Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly, but it could also trigger a crisis that compromises Israel’s currently favored status quo. But a negotiated settlement — the seeds of which could be planted at this week’s UNGA — bypasses this dilemma altogether, not to mention the many pitfalls of using force against Iran.
– Rod Mamudi is a recent graduate of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po Paris, where his research focused on Iranian foreign policy.
- Photo Credit: United Nations
]]>It was just over four years ago, on 5 April 2009, that President Obama delivered remarks on the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. His remarks were received with hopeful enthusiasm throughout the world. They may have contributed to the decision to award him a Nobel Peace Prize later that [...]]]>
It was just over four years ago, on 5 April 2009, that President Obama delivered remarks on the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. His remarks were received with hopeful enthusiasm throughout the world. They may have contributed to the decision to award him a Nobel Peace Prize later that year.
If today the Obama administration’s achievements are measured against the agenda that the President sketched out on that spring morning in Prague, the record can best be described as “mixed”.
The conclusion, in 2010, of a substantial agreement with the Russian Federation to reduce the number of nuclear warheads deployed by both sides is a worthy achievement. The administration has imparted momentum to global efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear material, and high-level political commitment. US support has helped to bring about the creation of an international nuclear fuel bank, so as to increase confidence in the sustainability of nuclear fuel supplies and narrow the rationale for national fuel supply programs.
But that’s about all.
The administration has not attempted to secure US ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which opened for signature in 1997 and, to date, has been ratified by 159 States. This is a serious blow to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation, because US non-ratification has provided Egypt, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, China and North Korea with an excuse not to ratify. Ratification by two of these States, Iran and North Korea, would in one case serve as an additional nuclear confidence-building measure, and in the other inhibit the development of reliable nuclear weapons.
The proposal for a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty remains becalmed. To be fair, this is not for want of US effort. It nonetheless has to be accounted as a setback on the President’s proclaimed path to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
And, third, the administration has failed to have any discernible impact on the nuclear program of the one state that was a manifest nuclear proliferation threat when the President spoke in Prague: North Korea. On the contrary, since April 2009 North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, has threatened the deliberate first use of nuclear weapons, and has acquired at least one uranium enrichment plant to complement a small stock of plutonium.
Furthermore, the outlook for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has darkened. In 2010 the administration was able to take pride in having engineered a successful NPT review conference and stilled fears about the US commitment to the Treaty, fears which had been aroused by the G. W. Bush administration’s cavalier approach to the 2005 review conference.
On 29 April 2013, however, Egypt walked out of the second of three conferences tasked with preparing the 2015 review conference. They did so because the US, as they saw it, had failed to secure Israeli participation in exploratory work on creating a Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ).
The administration may be inclined to shrug this off as a temporary glitch, which can be rectified by subjecting to pressure an Egyptian government that is financially dependent on the US and some US allies. If that is the case, however, the administration may be underestimating the importance Egypt attaches to the NWFZ concept and the readiness of the Egyptian government to risk US displeasure on this account. Israel’s un-avowed possession of nuclear weapons is a long-standing affront to Egyptian self-respect and a cause around which it is easy to rally the Non-Aligned States which constitute nearly two thirds of the NPT community.
I come at last to my main point. If I were a US official who had the ear of the President, I would want to argue for the burnishing of this mixed post-Prague record by treating Iran as a nuclear non-proliferation opportunity.
To those who are accustomed to hearing Iran described as a nuclear proliferation threat, that will sound like a crazy paradox. But that description does not accord with the facts. In reality the evidence points to Iran being a NPT party that is ready to re-affirm its non-proliferation commitment, to offer state-of-the art international monitoring of that commitment, and to clear up concerns about certain nuclear-related activities prior to 2004, in return for the US accepting that Iranian enrichment of uranium under safeguards and for peaceful purposes, is not a breach of the NPT, and lifting obligations imposed, at US behest, by the UN Security Council.
Settling the Iranian case on such terms would be entirely consistent with the vision sketched out by the President in Prague. It would show that the US had reverted to a classical interpretation of the NPT, to the interpretation which has helped to motivate 185 States formally to renounce nuclear weapons since 1968. It would strengthen, not weaken this central pillar of the international system.
Photo: President Barack Obama delivers his first major speech stating a commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons in front of thousands in Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>