The Realist

Hello everyone – I’ve been out of action for a few months but I’m back.

A lot has changed in Iran since I last wrote on this blog, but in many ways things have not changed. There have always been two related but distinct things at stake in Iran, the first being the political future of the country and the second being the fate of the country’s nuclear programme. The latter has to always remain the primary focus of any external analysis because the advent of an Iranian nuclear weapon would have consequences for the future of the Middle East and the course of history of an almost uniquely profound nature. No event in the recent history of the region would compare. The Obama administration has acknowledged that it is focused on the nuclear programme by stating that its policy of engagement will continue despite the fact the Iranian regime is even less legitimate as a result of the latest election. The nuclear issue is just that important. It’s worth stating what some of the consequences of an Iranian bomb might be, because they’re not often spelt out in the media:

1. It would almost certainly result in a race by the Arab states to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Interestingly, they never feared the Israeli bomb enough to look for weapons of their own, but the fear of an Iranian bomb is strong enough in Cairo and Riyadh for them to begin their own programmes. Nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East will ultimately benefit no-one and will make more likely that someone will fire a weapon, or one will fall into the hands of terrorists. Because the system would be new, and without precedents, it would be unstable.
2. Iran would be able to pursue its goals in the Middle East under a nuclear umbrella. This means that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Afghanistan would all be operating with greater impunity. The possession of a nuclear weapon by Iran’s theocracy would increase its credibility and allure as well as its power; Iranian attempts to export their method of government, which is inimical to Western interests almost by definition, would be aided. Iran’s ability to influence the course of events in Iraq would be greatly enhanced, posing a grave threat to the future of the country.
3. The Iranian-Israeli relationship would become more strained and would become liable to a catastrophic nuclear miscalculation. Rational, practical views of the relationship always stress the fact that neither side is crazy enough to actually nuke the other; history and experience teaches us that uncertainty combined with fear almost always leads to a miscalculation of the gravity of a threat. Hatred of Israel is so inculcated in the people who make up the Iranian regime – here is the latest example – that it is not at all impossible to imagine scenarios in which the Iranian regime, especially if it was threatened from within by a restive population, used its nuclear weapon against Israel, or threatened to do so to the extent that the Israelis launched a pre-emptive strike.
4. Iran could pass on nuclear technology and knowhow to other countries or terrorist groups – history teaches us that the rest of the world has few recourses to stop this from happening. Sanctions and threats tend to do little to dissuade the regime in question. Indeed, most countries with nuclear weapons undergo a period of brief isolation after their development of a weapon but quickly gain acceptance of their new status and perogatives as the rest of the world adjusts to the new reality.
5. The development of an Iranian nuclear weapon would greatly complicate the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by heightening Israeli security anxieties and hatred of Hamas and Hezbollah. It is possible to imagine a scenario where the Arab states became more pliant in finding a final status settlement to counter Iran’s growing influence, but this gambit would be risky because the Iranian weapon would increase the attractiveness of the Iranian rejectionist approach which also enjoys broad support among Arab populations.

I think it’s worth stating these consequences because it reminds us of exactly what is at stake in the Iranian nuclear programme. While the political situation in the country is tragic, I think there has been a touch of intellectual dishonesty in its presentation in the media.

Nothing that has happened in the last few months was really that surprising and none of it really told us anything about the Iranian regime which we did not know already, if we faced reality squarely in the face: it was only a surprise because liberal commentators and the media had spent a long time telling us Iran had changed when in fact it hadn’t. A tone of shocked surprise swept the media during the post-election violence because their own narrative had been discredited, but it wasn’t a surprise shared by many Iran-watchers. As expected, the regime fixed the election and then responded with oppression when it was caught in the act; if there was any surprise, it was focused on the sheer audacity of the election-fixing.

The result simply could not be believed and there is little indication that the regime cared about making it believable, which is one reason opposition to the poll has been so widespread and permeated the clerical establishment. If one studies the statements of some clerics who have criticized the result, you can see that their ire is focused on the magnitude of the electoral fraud, which they say will cause people to lose faith in the Islamic system as a whole. After all, the last presidential election was also widely believed to have been fixed, but in a more believable fashion, and it did not elicit the same scale of protest from the clerics. While the split within the clerical establishment has certainly been deep, one must beware that we don’t lionize clerics as paragons of liberalism and democracy just because they oppose this election result. Neither Mousavi or Rafsanjani or even Khatami would necessarily pursue policies welcome to the Western world or liberal opinion in Iran. Crucially, none of these figures seem likely to end the nuclear programme.

And this is the most important point. Whatever changes Iranian society is undergoing, the timescale for real reform is much longer than the timescale for the completion of the mullahs’ Manhattan Project. In fact, if Iran becomes more unstable and the hardline regime becomes more threatened by internal dissent, then it is likely to expedite the nuclear programme – after all, it’s an issue with a proven track record of uniting Iranians and focusing their minds on Western interference and pesky and intrusive arms controllers rather than on the crimes of their own regime.

However much we might ultimately desire and hope for positive political change in Iran, we have to deal with the situation as we find it, not as we wish to find it. The reform movement is weak and on the run, and it is very unlikely that it will be able to deliver change of the magnitude we need on the timescale we need it. No probable short or medium-term future in Iran is likely to alleviate our fears of the nuclear programme. Despite everything that has happened recently, it is this, and the need to search for a realistic answer to it, which needs to be uppermost in our minds when we think about Iran.