24 April 2006
US President George W. Bush and his senior officials have been multiplying the threats recently against Iran, with Vice-President Dick Cheney threatening "meaningful consequences" and US ambassador to the UN John Bolton going further by threatening "painful consequences".According to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the Bush administration has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and its plans for a possible major air attack against Iran had gone beyond contingency stage and are now at the operational level (New Yorker, April 17).
Hersh reported in early 2005 that he had been repeatedly told by intelligence and military officials that "the next strategic target was Iran". (New Yorker, January 24).
Even Democrats who oppose the use of force against Iran, like California Senator Dianne Feinstein, have been echoing the arguments of the Bush administration: unless Iran is stopped from acquiring the capability to produce nuclear weapons, "it would be a destabilising force in the Middle East and throughout the world".
Still, even if Iran were to become a nuclear power, why would that be a destabilising force in the Middle East?
What stable environment would a nuclear Iran threaten? The answer: the American occupation of Iraq, the continued Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the rise of democratically elected Islamic groups challenging the pro-Western secular regimes and the continued American threats against Syria.
If Iran were to become the second nuclear power in the Middle East, its threat to American and Israeli hegemony and the chaos they produced in the region may not be a destabilising development.
The unhelpful rhetoric of the Iranian leadership notwithstanding, a nuclear Iran could not possibly carry out its threat of annihilating Israel because it knows if such an enterprise were ever attempted against Israel, it would lead to the annihilation of Iran itself. Whatever the Iranian regime may be, it is not irrational or crazy.
The logic that prevailed during the Cold War and prevented the nuclear powers from thinking the unthinkable, the so-called doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, would prevail between Israel and Iran. This would induce more caution and deliberate decision making on the part of both countries.
But this logic would also give Iran a certain political power that only nuclear weapons can bestow upon nuclear countries: the power to intimidate enemies and potential rivals, and the power to set limits on what the enemy's use of force can achieve.
The Arab armies benefited from the effect of surprise and it was open to them to push their advantage quickly before the surprised Israelis recovered.
Notwithstanding Israeli propaganda, Israel's nuclear weapons had effectively deterred the Arab leaders from even thinking of threatening the existence of Israel itself.
Less belligerent attitude
The same logic prevailed in the North Korean crisis. Knowing that North Korea had nuclear weapons forced the US to adopt a less belligerent attitude towards it.
There is no reason to believe that a nuclear Iran would behave any differently, and that Israel's nuclear weapons would not effectively deter it from thinking the unthinkable.
This will not diminish the deterrent power of Israel's nuclear weapons, but it will diminish its political blackmail power; in short it will diminish Israel's ability to bully its neighbours and continue its series of attacks against the Palestinian people with impunity.
Nuclear weapons are not like conventional weapons, the continuation of politics by other means as the 19th century Prussian military historian Clausewitz put it.
Nuclear weapons' most effective role lies in their non-use. Their credibility comes from the fact that their enormous destructive power makes strategic sense only as a deterrent against aggression, not as a weapon of conquest.
The late French President Charles de Gaulle, and General Pierre Gallois, the father of the French force de frappe, convincingly argued that in the nuclear age, nuclear weapons could not be used on behalf of a third party; they can only have effective deterrent power for the defence of national existence.
Given their aggressive pre-emptive doctrines, sooner or later current Israeli and US leaders would be tempted to crush any challenge to their hegemony in the region before it materialises. Therein lies the real source of instability.
Professor Adel Safty is Unesco Chair of Leadership and President of the School of Government and Leadership, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul. He is author-editor of 14 books including From Camp David to the Gulf, and Leadership and Democracy, New York, 2004.
By Adel Safty
Gulf News 2006. All rights reserved.
