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Iran's Enriching Experience
The United Nations Security Council more-or-less wants Iran to stop enriching uranium, which Tehran insists is part of its civilian nuclear programme.
Moscow, Washington and London are each alarmed by recent threatening statements from Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The United States says what most world leaders are thinking: That Iran is aiming to develop nuclear weapons. Alongside members of the "EU3" of France, Britain and Germany, Washington is seeking to punish Iran with trade sanctions if it continues to defy the international community.
Unfortunately, this appears only to have increased Tehran's defiance. The permanent members of the Security Council are divided on what to do next. According to a leaked British memo, Iran is unlikely to pay much attention to anything that is decided. Iran's leaders probably see themselves in a comfortable position. Russia and China have important trade deals with Iran (Russia's for nuclear technology, China for gas among other things). Neither power is likely to want to provoke Iran into cancelling its agreement - or risk losing lucrative deals to sanctions.
But there must be more to it than that. Russia claims to be concerned by Iran's antics and says it wants Tehran to suspend enrichment. If Iran is in the bomb-building business and continues to be one of the world's leading suppliers of military, financial and political support to terrorist organisations, the future victims of its nuclear largesse might not be limited to Israel and the West. Russia has the small problem of a revolt in Chechnya which has taken on an increasingly Islamist flavour. If, as expected, Iran's nuclear weapons programme convinces its neighbours to revive their own doomsday weapons plans, then any future Chechen nuke could come from any number of sympathetic regimes in the Middle East.
Additionally, if Russia loses the contract to build Iran's civilian power stations, who else is going to do it?
China doesn't have Russia's Islamist worries, but like Moscow, Beijing is reluctant to strain ties with the Iran's mullahs. But even if China backs sanctions against Iran, would Iran tear up its contract with China as punishment? China has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and is home to 1.3 billion people. Iran's mullahs are plainly mad, but they are not stupid: Tearing up an agreement to supply one of the world's biggest nations with oil and gas would damage Iran too.
The west's reluctance to use force against Iran, mainly because of the US and UK's entanglement in neighbouring Iraq, emboldens Tehran further. This week it tests a fast-moving torpedo, designed to threaten US ships in the Gulf. A missile program capable of striking western Europe is marching apace. Iran has scheduled war games involving 150,000 troops in the desert for this week.
It's claimed that Iran has been building up to this confrontation for at least five years. History may judge its progress to war as inevitable, thanks to its belligerent attitude towards the west when the Mullahs seized power in 1979. In any case, Iran is said to be ready.
But so is the US. Strike plans were revealed this week for "surgical strikes" against Iran's nuclear facility - though it is difficult to see how secret programs buried deep underground could be destroyed by anything other than other nukes. Such an attack would require that Iran's air defences were wiped out beforehand.
Any plan would be fraught with danger. The Americans would not want to send ground troops into Iran, so Iran's enormous army might have to surge into Iraq or even Afghanistan for their promised apocalyptic confrontation with the soldiers of The Great Satan. Outside the realms of speculation, even discussion of military solutions convinces Iran of the need to get its nukes built even faster - and thus accellerates the conflict.
Iran probably imagines it occupies some sort of moral high ground too. Israel has nuclear weapons, it would argue. Only last month George Bush effectively gave his blessing to India's nuclear weapons program. Why should Iran be any different?
Well of course there are numerous reasons why Iran should be different, clear to anyone with half a brain. But can we credit the UN's negotiators with even that much intelligence?
Let's hope that diplomats can work as quickly as Iran's nuclear scientists.
