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EDITORIAL: Are we facing an Iran-US showdown?

Iran says it is going to restart enriching uranium “for peaceful purposes” and break the agreement it had reached with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year to keep the seals on its enrichment plants. Upon hearing this, the IAEA held a crisis meeting on Tuesday to try to stop Iran from doing so. The European countries who have been trying to make a deal with Tehran over the whole enrichment imbroglio have therefore broken off talks. They say Iran might have to face UN Security Council sanctions if it does not stop. America has warned Iran to desist or there will be trouble. Russia, which has given Iran one of its nuclear plants, has told Iran to take it easy.

As a signatory of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran can enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under full-scope safeguards of the IAEA. It swears that it is doing just that, but the powers behind the NPT don’t believe it. In the recent past Iran was found to have hidden some of its nuclear facilities from the IAEA inspectors. It even owned up to not opening some facilities as required under the rules — and, according to the IAEA, some traces of weapons-grade uranium were found at one of its plants. This has been at the root of the quarrel between Iran and the less hostile European Union powers. America looms in the background as the real enemy ready to punish Iran. It has the advantage of not being isolated on the issue now that the European powers have delivered their warning.

Let us all hope that there is something positive about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s message to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that “he had new ideas to resolve the nuclear standoff with the West and was ready to continue nuclear talks with the EU.” Let’s hope it means that he will postpone enrichment and go back to the talks. He also said, “Iran had done nothing unlawful by resuming uranium conversion at a nuclear facility near Isfahan.” But, more ominously, he has rejected the incentives offered by the EU to give up enrichment, calling them “an insult to the Iranian nation”. Any reference to national honour in Iran is to be feared. He said, “They have talked to us as if the Iranian nation was suffering from backwardness and the time was 100 years ago and our country was their colony”. It normally takes little effort in Tehran to equate the EU with the US. And that brings us to a review of Iran-US relations.

Normal rules don’t apply to the US-Iran equation. Both sides tend to see each other outside the usual realpolitik of global politics. In October 1979, the revolutionary militants of Imam Khomeini took US embassy diplomats hostage for 444 days. In 1980, a military operation to free the hostages by President Jimmy Carter came to grief. Then began Iran’s low-intensity war against the United States. The Hezbollah movement was created to counter the US allies in the region. The United States encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in September 1980. Washington froze some $24 billion in Iranian assets and denied Iran access to global capital markets, World Bank loans and new technology. What followed was mayhem: 241 Marines were killed in Beirut and 27 American were taken hostage in Lebanon at different times. In 1987, a US task force, sent to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers against Iranian attacks, destroyed more than half the Iranian navy.

One reason why Iran’s neighbours have to worry about the worsening situation is that Iran continues to be an isolationist state. Its efforts to break out of its ideological shell and handle its foreign policy with supple dexterity have come to nought after the defeat of the moderates in national elections. American sanctions have not deterred friendly countries from doing business with Iran. The latest example is the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Not only will the pipeline usher in an era of peace and cooperation in the region, it will prise Iran out of its habitual honour-bestowing isolationism and restore it as an important regional power. But if the UN Security Council imposes multilateral sanctions on Iran it will be difficult for Pakistan and India to defy them. In a way, the security of Pakistan will be affected by how Iran handles its quarrel with the EU. *

EDITORIAL #2:Britain starts doing the needful

Even as President Pervez Musharraf defensively accuses the United Kingdom government of having been too “soft” on Muslim radicals in the past, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced his government’s resolve to outlaw the Al Muhajiroon and Hizbut Tahrir as “extremist” organisations. To counter the growing objections to Britain’s soft stance, London has also announced its decision to deport 500 Muslim extremists. A plan to train Britain’s own imams is also on the anvil. No Pakistani imams will be imported to poison the wells of British culture.

The firebrand cleric Abu Hamza Al Masri is already behind bars, and the head of Al Muhajiroon, Umar Bakri, has been escorted out of the UK. Mr Bakri had the status of a “handicapped person” in the UK and received £300,000 in social security and was recently given a car by the government worth £31,000! It’s been tough in the past to get a ban placed on the extremists through the courts, but now the law will be changed through a parliamentary consensus. On the other hand in Pakistan, President Musharraf’s plan to oust foreigners from the madrassas may flounder because the ruling party is against it. The cleansing is to be done by the federal education ministry but the subject of education is provincial under the Constitution. That’s where the rub is going to be. *

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