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EDITORIAL: Is the Iranian nuclear issue finally at an end?

Iran and Russia have reached a “basic” agreement aimed at easing fears that the Islamic republic could acquire nuclear weapons, namely, an agreement to jointly enrich uranium. The two countries have “agreed in principle on the Russian offer (to enrich in Russia), but details still need to be worked out”. There were “practically no technical, organisational and financial problems left” in talks on the Russian enrichment proposal. Moscow has stated for the consumption of the United States and the European Union that the “Iranian nuclear dossier would be kept within the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)”.

Has Iran sensibly backed down after a game of dare? An IAEA meeting on March 6 is to start a process that may lead to Iran’s punishment by the UN Security Council through sanctions. The Russians say that they will try to “help resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis ahead of that date”. But it is obvious that more advance has to be made in the direction of what Russia has proposed before the West will be assuaged. The next step that the opponents of Iran’s enrichment will demand is Iran’s return to a full freeze of sensitive nuclear-fuel work that lies at the heart of fears that the country could acquire a nuclear arsenal.

Iran’s stance so far has been that of defiance. Mr Ahmadinejad, the new president of Iran, has upped the ante with his generally aggressive verbalisations against the United States and, lately, the EU. His cantankerous attitude has put a lot of sensible Iranian leaders on the defensive. Realising that nuclear issues invariably contain hints of nuclear weapons in the Islamic world, which in turn attach themselves to nationalism and regional big-power status, the pragmatist Mr Rafsanjani and the moderate Mr Khatami have had to come out and stand by a proud nation offended at being treated unfairly by the nuclearised West. The spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, too, owes his newly enhanced status to recently kissing Mr Ahmadinejad in public. In this environment of inflamed passions, can Iran afford to be seen by the Iranian people as eating the humble pie and agreeing to stop enrichment in the country?

Ayatollah Khamenei is known to be a very cautious man, always ready to draw back from the brink. Can he step in to slow down the mercurial Mr Ahmadinejad and use a little ambiguity to make the West believe that Iran is finally willing not to enrich material for weapons? No one believes his earlier edict that the Quran actually forbids Iran from making the bomb. (The 1998 nuclear test in Pakistan was accompanied unofficially by references to Sura Anfal of the Quran actually permitting the making of a bomb!)

Iran’s isolation is more palpable than Iran’s leaders thought when they began relying on the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s understanding that member states could enrich for power stations. With the discovery of secret facilities and other telltale signs of completing the nuclear cycle to make the bomb, friendly states have backed off from support. Pakistan says it accepts Iran’s right to enrich but it is in favour of Iran and the West negotiating an agreement on “other matters” at the IAEA. Iran’s more important ally, India, has not shown backbone in the face of American pressure. It has not voted for Iran at the IAEA and has removed its energy minister Mani Shankar Aiyar as he was too aggressively focused on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that the Americans did not want to go ahead.

The Americans may have given India special treatment. Thinking that India’s support could bolster Iran’s rejectionist resolve, they may have got Saudi Arabia to weigh in at a crucial time. King Abdullah’s recent visit to India and Pakistan could have been part of the campaign that has featured a nuclear deal between the US and India. The King proposed that India could be invited to the OIC with Pakistan’s consent; then he got India to jointly announce that while Iran’s enrichment was within the NPT it had to accept international inspections. The Indo-Saudi agreement finally was that Iran’s nuclear ambitions should be curtailed.

The immediate face-off has apparently been avoided, but Russia will have to report more progress before March 6 for the members of the IAEA to let Iran off the hook. Iran’s increasing isolation (especially with regard to big trading partners like India and China) makes the investors fear that Iran’s breaking of the nuclear barrier will lead to a crisis that might jeopardise their projects in Iran. The biggest disadvantage in Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric is its interpretation by the neighbouring Arabs as a threat to themselves. Iran’s friends can’t tell Iran to desist, but the current situation is clearly signalling this message. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Two heroes, two attitudes

Born-again Muslim singer Junaid Jamshed told a gathering at a girls’ college in Lahore on Monday that the Muslims had reacted to the Danish cartoons in a most “shameful way”. He said the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) would have expected the Muslim to behave as he did in the face of insult, and “not like barbarians”. He was referring to the damage the mobs had inflicted on public property in Pakistan in the wake of the cartoons.

Ironically, the same day Pakistan’s other born-again Muslim hero Imran Khan was actually protesting — in his own words — against Denmark on the streets of Lahore. Imran Khan has supported the MMA-opposition line that Islamabad should have recalled its ambassadors from the offending countries. On the other hand, Junaid Jamshed has focused on the decline in public behaviour that the protest has caused in the country. Instead of blaming the government he has appealed directly to the people to desist from violence. Many among the shopkeepers of Lahore will heed his message. *

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