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U.S. and Iran face difficult nuclear arms negotiations
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

On April 11, 2006, Iran threw a party.

Speaking to his countrymen and the world—while Iranian scientists danced in the crowd, chemical test tubes aloft—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared his nation had “joined the club of nuclear countries.” With the announcement, Iran launched itself to the forefront of foreign policy discussions with an American administration intent on being remembered for its foreign policy.

At the end of May, Condoleeza Rice proposed talks with Iran—an option neither country has explored in over 25 years. The idea for talks came about because of the realization that Rice had after visiting with foreign ministers in Berlin that, according to the New York Times, the “coalition against Iran was at risk of falling apart.”

Talks are a good idea, but don’t break out the champagne yet. The Washington Post says the U.S. will offer a choice to Iran between “improved international relations and a relatively painful isolation,” and that “most likely, the regime (Iran) will try to dodge the choice…or reject it all together.” This is almost certainly a conclusion the Bush administration has considered as well; if so, it begs the question: Is the U.S. more interested in diplomatic relations with Iran, or speeding up the timetable for military action? An important question, considering that if diplomacy and the threat of sanctions fail, the United States will likely strike Iranian nuclear facilities—possibly with nuclear weapons.

According to an April article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker, a former senior intelligence official said the planning for this eventuality “is enormous.” The official “depicted the planning as hectic, and far beyond the contingency work that is routinely done.” The nuclear option “presented to the White House this winter,” Hersh reports, “calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon…against underground nuclear sites.”

The International Herald Tribune, in response to talk of a U.S. strike, laid out “four compelling reasons” not to attack Iran. Without an imminent threat, the Tribune said, the act would amount to unilateral war; this decision would almost certainly lead to more difficulties in Iraq; oil prices would climb higher; and America would become an even more likely target for terrorism. These are honest and important observations. The Hindu said the negotiations “must be unconditional,” and The Seattle Times said to give them “enough time to get established before [they are] prematurely declared a failure.”

But, with the war in Iraq continuing unabated and the war against terrorism showing limited and slow successes, deterring Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is perhaps the last chance the Bush administration has to redeem itself. If Bush fails to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will fail in one of his central post-9/11 security goals: preventing, as he put it in his 2002 State of the Union Address, the “regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world.” Bush will not let the opportunity to act slip through his hands—even if it means going to war.

It is impossible to ignore that what the Bush administration really wants to see in Iran is regime change. Nor is the Bush administration ignoring the possibility. According to civilian employees in the Pentagon whom Hersh talked with, American combat troops are in Iran “studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds.” According to Hersh. the official said the main goal is to “‘encourage ethnic tensions’ and undermine the regime.” This fact points to the possibility the administration is maybe not as eager to use nuclear weapons as it says it is—nor, maybe, as eager to conduct talks.

A showdown between the United States and Iran has been brewing for decades. Between the CIA overthrow of Iran’s government in 1953, and the 444-day hostage crisis in 1979-81, U.S.-Iranian relations in the 20th century have been tumultuous, to say the least. Ironically, the United States sold Iran its first nuclear research reactor in the 1960s, encouraging the then U.S-friendly dictatorship to participate in the wonders of atomic energy.

Then in 2002, President Bush declared Iran part of “an axis of evil,” alongside Iraq and North Korea. In 2003, a Time headline reported Iran was moving “closer to operation of a facility to enrich uranium,” and in 2004 the Wall Street Journal editorial page, citing “yet another damning report” on Iran’s continuing nuclear program, lambasted the administration and the international community for “treating it all as a matter of indifference.” Now, instead of preventing a hypothetical situation, Bush is faced with the task of postponing, indefinitely, a realistic one.

A nuclear Iran means an unstable Middle East, and an unstable Middle East is not good for the world. It would mark a new aggressive tack in Bush administration policy—and would put the United States in a whole new category of superpower, one that preemptively uses nuclear weapons to establish world peace.

American foreign policy might not be popular right now—or even, at times, logical—but the United States needs to continue diplomacy that would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. And it should think twice about using its own nuclear weapons if talks don’t work.