In an interview with CBC, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he fears a nuclear Iran.
“I’ve watched and listened to what the leadership in the Iran regime says, and it frightens me,” Harper said. “In my judgment these are people who have a particular fanatically religious world view and their statements imply to me no hesitation about using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes. I think that’s what makes this regime in Iran particularly dangerous.”
All options are on the table in deciding how to deal with Iran, Harper said, noting that he sees “a growing belief of a number of governments that my assessment is essentially correct.”
“It’s important that Canada work with its allies,” he said. “I’ve raised the alarm. I think I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can. But obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we can get consensus.”
Harper’s comments add another facet to an increasingly difficult situation, which is perhaps not as black and white as the prime minister suggests.
There are two main issues at hand, say experts: First, whether the Iranians are indeed developing nuclear weapons, and second, what they might do with those weapons once they have them.
On the first, there is little dispute, said Aurel Braun, professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto and author of NATO-Russia Relations in the Twenty-First Century.
Harper’s assertion that the Iranian regime is developing nuclear weapons is not “unusual or particularly controversial,” he told iPolitics. “This seems to be the very wide and deep consensus among all western intelligence services and governments.”
It’s not simply a matter that Iran is developing a nuclear program. There are other worrying developments, said Braun, including fact the Iranians have built delivery systems for nuclear weapons.
“They have built long-range rockets that are capable of carrying a considerable amount of throw weight and… these rockets… can reach just about any part of Europe. And they have developed naval capacity,” he said. “So when you look at a nuclear weapons program, it is not just a matter of being able to explode a bomb, but also of being able to build something and have delivery systems, and Iran has been moving along all those lines.”
But there are divergent views on whether the Iranian regime is bent on using a nuclear weapon, should it acquire one, as Harper suggested.
“The prevailing view among people who watch Iran closely is that their primary concern is to preserve their regime intact, and that, in fact, the Iranian regime is not suicidal,” Roland Paris, research chair in international security and governance at the University of Ottawa, told iPolitics. “It is very worrying, the prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. But that is not the same thing as judging that they would be likely to use a nuclear weapon, which is a very different conclusion.”
The fact that Harper is suggesting otherwise is curious, Paris said.
“I want to know exactly what information the prime minister is basing his judgment on,” he said.
Not only that, but Paris wonders why the Prime Minister might be making these comments now.
“What is the prime minister doing? He doesn’t… generally seem to make these comments lightly. Who is he communicating to and for what purpose?” Paris said. “I think that if he were seeking to prepare Canadian public opinion for a stronger Canadian policy or more aggressive Canadian policy towards Iran, that these would be the kind of comments he would begin making.”
Braun suggested the world should be wary, given how Iran has approached conflicts in the past and the mentality toward violence it embraces.
“This is a theological regime that glorifies death to the extent where they are willing to sacrifice their own people if they can kill an enemy,” he said, adding that deterrence usually requires an assumed psychological pattern of self-preservation. If that’s not present, “then they don’t operate on the same basis of calculations you do, and consequently, deterrent is not going to function.”
The second issue is how to handle the Iranian regime in the future. On this point, there is some nuance — delicate diplomatic maneuvering which Harper might have harmed this week in making what Paris called “bellicose” comments on Iran’s intentions, should it acquire weapons.
Part of the diplomatic effort to curb Iranian nuclear expansion has been to put in place sanctions.
In his interview, Harper said sanctions imposed against Iran have had some effect — in the short term, they might be making the Iranian regime “more desperate.”
However, he added: “They’re not dissuading them from the nuclear course at the moment. Whether [the sanctions] are delaying them or not, I think, is a matter of debate.”
The Iranian currency, the rial, has suffered already, losing 40 per cent of its value against the U.S. dollar in the last month, according to reports. Inflation is also ballooning, officially sitting at 20 per cent, though it’s estimated the real number could be much higher.
The question of just how to implement further economic sanctions on oil purchases without pushing the price too high is of concern to both Western powers and other global trading partners. An increase in the price of oil could end up hurting already weakened markets around the world.
Wednesday, Japanese officials expressed concern about the potential effect of further economic sanctions on its domestic banks. Even in the U.S., with a presidential election underway, a rise in oil prices could damage political reputations if the economic recovery were to be disrupted further, Braun said.
However, it’s been suggested that there are options on how to implement sanctions to Iran’s oil sector. Writing for Bloomberg this week, Ruel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz suggest the West not implement a “blanket ban,” but instead target particular oil purchasers around the world.
“The objective here is to reduce Iranian oil revenue, which can be accomplished through fewer purchases of Iranian crude, or through drops in the price Iran receives per barrel, or both. We could choose which nations and companies we wanted to punish for doing business with Iran’s central bank, and let others (namely China) off the hook for the time being,” they write. “The U.S. Treasury Department would not need to interfere in all the normal commercial activities of the Iranian central bank; it would just selectively prohibit oil transactions denominated in dollars.”
At the same time, other Middle Eastern oil producers would have to agree to increase their production in kind, in order to make up for any shortfall. Such a scheme would potentially allow for countries like China — a large importer of Iranian oil — to continue buying crude, and still allow for a significant tightening of the screws on Iran’s economy.
Added to it all are the questions of covert warfare, another facet of the diplomatic struggles playing out in the background.
Over the last two years, a handful of Iranian nuclear scientists have been found dead, likely assassinated. The most recent incident occurred early this year when an explosive detonated under the car of 32-year-old scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan.
In November 2011, an explosion at a munitions base killed 17 Revolutionary Guards, and earlier last year, the Stuxnet computer virus invaded Iran’s nuclear facilities, disrupting operations.
Nobody knows who is behind the recent assassinations, but Paris said they have the mark of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. Others appear to agree. A report in The Sunday Times this week quotes unnamed Israeli sources as stating that Ahmadi-Roshan’s killing was indeed an Israeli operation.
Except these kinds of specific strikes might not work to deter the Iranians, Braun said. In fact, it might simply make Iran more determined to mover forward and to do it faster.
Even worse, the covert operations might be counter-productive, Paris said.
“There are rumours that the Americans were… genuinely unhappy with the killing of the Iranian nuclear scientist at a moment when they were hoping to be drawing Iran into a new dialogue,” he said.
Prior to the assassination there were signals from individuals, including the speaker of the Iranian government, that the regime might be open to discussing the possibility of having a nuclear program that stopped short of developing weapons.
Enter Harper.
“Into all of this, weighs our prime minister, who says in the bluntest terms I think I’ve seen from any NATO leader that Iran would likely use a nuclear weapon, if it had one,” Paris said. “It’s not the most helpful kind of comment to make at this perilous, delicate moment. It’s raising the temperatures.”
And while Canada might not carry the kind of influence needed to determine the actions of other NATO partners, Paris warns that Canadians ought to be concerned with the kind of approach Harper has taken.
“[We] have an interest in knowing what kind of policy prescriptions our government and our prime minister is advocating to our allies. At this moment, the prime minister’s public comments have become quite bellicose towards Iran, more, it seems, than the comments that are coming from our allies,” Paris said.
Given that, Canada’s opposition parties have “a responsibility to call upon the government to clarify those possibilities: what it would consider doing, what it is advocating?” he said.
For Braun, avoiding military action must be a primary goal, but at same time, the world needs to weigh the possible outcomes. The way forward is not simple.
“Can anyone say 100 per cent for sure that if Iran had nuclear weapons, they would use them? Of course not,” he said. “But that is putting it the wrong way, I would respectfully suggest. I think it should be put the other way: Is it a reasonable risk to have nuclear weapons in the hands of such a regime?”
He compared it to a popular cultural phrase: “As in the… movie, where Clint Eastwood asks, ‘do you feel lucky?’ Do we feel that lucky that we can afford to gamble with this kind of regime?”
Original Article
Source: iPolitico
No comments:
Post a Comment