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Crackdown on Iran could be exactly the wrong thing

The world has reason to worry as Iran moves along a course that could lead to development of nuclear weapons. But there's no need to panic or rush into military action, most experts agree.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published April 15, 2006

Although it has enriched uranium, Iran is probably seven to eight years away from producing a workable bomb. And if it does develop one, it is unlikely to use it for offensive purposes, but rather as a deterrent against what it sees as two hostile nuclear powers, Israel and the United States.

"If somewhere down the line Iran has nuclear capability, the question is: What are they going to do with it?" asks Brian Michael Jenkins, an expert on terrorism at the Rand Corp.

"Are they going to launch a missile and wipe out Tel Aviv? Are they going to launch a nuclear weapon against the United States? That would be the end of Iran."

Iran has no recent history of aggression against other countries, although it supports Islamic proxies like Hezbollah that have been blamed for terror attacks against Israel and U.S. soldiers in the Middle East.

Iranian radicals also held 52 American hostages for 444 days after an Islamic revolution toppled a secular, U.S.-backed government in 1979.

"Iran wants to be a nuisance for the U.S. and Israel but they have never taken the real hard steps that would force the U.S. or Israel to enter into conflict," says Abbas Milani, head of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford.

Milani says last week's boast by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran "has joined the club of nuclear nations" had two main goals: to boost internal support for his regime and to convince outsiders that Iran is so far along in uranium enrichment there is no point trying to stop it.

"It was partly to build national pride and show Iranians the regime is standing up to the West, but it was also intended for the world in the sense that the enrichment game is a fait accompli," Milani says.

"I don't think it is a fait accompli - I think if the Chinese and Russians join the Europeans and U.S. in a very firm position, the regime will have to reconsider."

The Bush administration is pressing for a U.N. Security Council resolution that could lead to sanctions or pave the way for force unless Iran drops its nuclear ambitions. But getting a resolution will be hard because two key council members, Russia and China, have strong economic ties to Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter.

China, with its huge appetite for fuel, might be especially reluctant to act for fear of jeopardizing its new $100-billion oil deal. In agreeing to let a Chinese company develop a vast oil field, Iran "hopes China will pay back the favor by making sure the council doesn't pass any harsh and punitive resolution," Milani says. China's president, though, will undoubtedly feel pressure from the White House when he visits this week.

Since the hostage crisis, the United States has maintained its own economic sanctions against Iran as part of what analysts say has become a counterproductive policy.

"Ahmadinejad and the nuclear crisis are the product of U.S. policies toward Iran in the last two decades," says Hooshang Amirahmadi, head of Rutgers' Mideastern studies program and president of the American-Iranian Council.

"The more you isolate, the more you sanction, the more you breed dictators. That's just a fact of life - look at Cuba, North Korea, Iraq."

Hooshang says there "really is no alternative" to dialogue with Iran, and thinks the United States should resume diplomatic relations. Wouldn't that legitimize a radical regime?

"If you have established ties, then you have taken away the regime's most vicious instrument and that is its anti-Americanism," Hooshang says.

Despite their president's harsh rhetoric, Iranians are considered among the most pro-American people in the Muslim world. The State Department is asking Congress for $85-million to "promote democracy" in Iran, with the money to be used by dissidents in and out of the country to improve communications, shore up civic education and encourage political participation.

However, analysts say the United States must walk a fine line between supporting reforms and appearing to force a new government on Iran's 69-million staunchly independent people.

Any change "must be seen as coming from within Iran and shaped by Iranians," Milani says.

Most Arab countries are nervous about the growing power of Iran, a non-Arab nation whose influence now extends through Iraq and clear to the Mediterranean. Given the problems in Iraq, however, the United States would have little public support for bombing Iran, a country far larger in size and with more than twice as as many people.

"I would be concerned about the United States being put in the position of taking unilateral military action, which others may even secretly want us to do but where we pay the price," says Jenkins of the Rand Corp. He thinks the administration should cool its rhetoric: Continuing the war of words only feeds Iranian nationalism and "plays to a script written in Tehran," he says.

Amirahmadi of Rutgers also warns against precipitous military action, noting that in the time it would take to develop a nuclear bomb, Iran will have held two or three presidential elections.

"There will be another person in charge, and more importantly, by then most of its first generation of radicals are dead," he says. "But if we continue the way we are, the next generation will also be radical."

[Last modified April 15, 2006, 21:27:02]