The
useless UN will not stop Iran
By : Fraser Nelson January 22, 2006
IRAN’s leaders may be crazed and dangerous
fanatics, but they are not stupid. This is the crucial flaw in Tony Blair’s
plan to refer the country to the United Nations Security Council: Tehran knows
it has nothing to fear.
To the west, it sounds like a fairly dramatic
escalation as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the UN’s
nuclear watchdog – discusses washing its hands of Iran and referring to the UN
with a view to imposing sanctions. But this doesn’t translate in Iran.
From Sudan’s Janjaweed militia to Saddam
Hussein, the bad guys have learned to be relaxed – even relieved – when the
UN is considering their case. This is why we should expect Iran to acquire a
nuclear weapon by the end of next year.
For all the talk in Britain about international
law, one could almost imagine such a thing exists as a palpable force. Iran’s
mullahs are under no such delusions. It is the number four world oil producer,
flush with petrodollars and wants nuclear weapons.
While European governments think in terms of
treaties and consensus, rogue states such as Iran and North Korea understand raw
power. Iran produces about 200m tons of oil and 80m tons of gas a year – more
than any Gulf state.
With Russia offering to sell Tehran arms and
China rushing to sign contracts for as much oil as the mullahs will sell, Iran
feels rightly confident enough to break 50 seals placed by the UN on its nuclear
facilities in Natanz and Arak.
The greatest weakness of the UN is its cliched
predictability. Tehran can envisage the next steps. The IAEA meets in Vienna on
2 February and refers Iran to the UN Security Council which spends a year
debating and proposes sanctions in spring 2007.
The World Bank could, at worst, be persuaded to
stop lending Iran money – it doled out about $1.1bn in the past two years. But
for a country that is collecting about $12bn a year in oil sales alone, this
would not be crippling.
Rather than wait for this diplomatic dance to
conclude, Iran is this weekend withdrawing an estimated £30bn of foreign
reserves from European banks so the west will have no assets to freeze. It is
prepared for all options.
The Israeli air strike that destroyed its nuclear
facility at Osirak in 1981 has taught the mullahs to disperse their nuclear
research and development facilities to scores, perhaps hundreds of locations
where precision bombs could not reach.
And if there is no one to tame Iran, there is no
one to calm the nuclear-armed Israel this time around. In its short history,
Israel has proven itself not the sort of country to wait for enemies to strike
first.
Last Thursday, a suicide bomber wounded 20 in Tel
Aviv. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. The next day, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
Iran’s president, met leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad on a visit
to Syria. To the west, such meetings look outrageously undiplomatic even for a
firebrand such as Ahmadinejad, who has already pledged to wipe Israel “off the
map”. To the Israelis, such a summit would understandably look like a council
of war.
Once, the UN would have been able to persuade
Israel that Iran would be dealt with through proper international channels. Now,
only the most naïve optimists believe this is still a solution.
Israel is reminding the west that it will act
alone if necessary. “Under no circumstances can Israel allow anyone with
malicious designs against us to control weapons that threaten our existence,”
its acting prime minister said last week.
And last week Jacques Chirac used a visit to a
nuclear submarine base in Brittany to remind “regional powers” that
the nuclear option was very much alive. When the President of France resorts to
such language, you know the UN is finished.
The threat of war is the strongest guarantor of
peace, as the Cold War showed. But the UN is powerless if it is not taken
seriously by the rogue states it seeks to intimidate. This is why the Israel v
Iran standoff is growing so dangerous.
If Iran suspected it was dealing with a decadent
and incompetent west, it needed no greater confirmation than the occupation of
Iraq. But, conversely, the mullahs’ greatest threat also comes from the
wreckage of Iraq. As the full results of its election came in, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim
– leader of the largest Shi’ite party – made a pitch for the centre ground
of the (enlarged) Sunni vote saying: “They are our brothers and they will get
their rights.”
Amid the kidnapping, power shortages and suicide
bombings – the vast majority of which are coming from Sunni insurgents – the
basis of Iraqi home-grown democratic pluralism is being forged. This cannot
but encourage Iran’s reformers.
A poll last week suggested 80% of Iranians have
lost faith in the Islamic Republic – and know, after the sham of the last
election, they will not have their say under a theocracy that struck off 1,000
opposition candidates. There is appetite for change.
The UN Security Council is not the hope for
containing Iran. Nor is the war-weary United States. The main hope is a dim one:
regime change from within Iran itself. The main question is how much longer
Israel will be
prepared to wait.