Prepare for a fallout

By Zafar Hilaly

Iran wants the bomb and not because of some fixation with Israel; it goes beyond that. Possessing nuclear weapons will elevate Iran's global status; consolidate her claim to be a regional power and provide her with a credible deterrent against powerful international adversaries.

With the bomb, Iran, in league with Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria could challenge Israel's hegemony and once Egypt sheds Mubarak, possibly extricate the region from western clutches. The fact that Saudi Arabia would become infinitely more pliable, and the Gulf sheikhdoms more amenable to settle their territorial disputes with Iran, would provide Tehran the proverbial icing on the cake.

To achieve all this Iran needed time and adroit diplomacy to bring her nuclear plans to fruition. Unfortunately, diplomacy has never been revolutionary Iran's strongpoint and certainly not that of the Ahmadinejad administration. In it bluster and bluff prevail together with sad, implausible takes on world history and interminable and cantankerous sermonising. True, Ahmadinejad's utterances warm the cockles of the hearts of many who loath the West but they do little else and did not prevent China and Russia from supporting the western-engineered UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran.

The Iranian president's criticism of China for supporting sanctions is an indication of how self-defeating his utterances can be and how he has misread China. He forgets that China is no longer a revolutionary but a status quo power. She is plugged into the world economy and certainly that of America's. China has a vested interest in seeing the US prosper; at least long enough to pay back its debts and especially the $1 trillion China has invested in US treasury bonds. And to keep the dollar, which forms a sizable portion of the $2.5 trillion that China has in foreign currency reserves a viable currency while the world struggles to discover an alternative.

Perhaps Ahmadinejad was misled by China's dependency on Iranian oil, which makes up as much as 10 per cent of her imports. However, for China the risk of war, if America were to be left on its own, was considerably greater and especially the dislocation of supplies and the spike in oil prices resulting from war. For Beijing, therefore, sanctions were a way of defusing the pressure on America for military action and, at the same time, signalling Ahmedinijad to engage more convincingly in negotiations.

Ahmadinejad must have found Russia's ganging up with the US less surprising though no less galling given the substantial and long-standing defence relationship with Moscow. Tehran should have known that for both China and Russia, America is far more important than Iran and if anything this equation will get more pronounced.

Or perhaps Ahmadinejad never stood a chance of winning Chinese and Russian backing. First because the P5 have made it evident that they mean to preserve their nuclear monopoly come what may - the NPT is about as discriminatory a treaty as one can imagine. And, secondly, because none of the P5 can stomach another nuclear weapon state in the Middle East and most definitely not one with Ahmadinejad's finger on the nuclear trigger.

Though Iran failed to parry UN sanctions the outcome of the UN vote did give some cause for hope. The nuclear swap deal with non-permanent Security Council members Turkey and Brazil keeps alive the faint hope that a negotiated settlement may eventually be possible. If nothing else the swap arrangement "amounts to an interesting starting point" for further negotiations. Besides, when Washington brusquely rejected it out of hand, the outcry prevented a unanimous vote in favour of the resolution thereby diluting its moral force.

With irate Brazil and Turkey leading the charge for further negotiations and a diplomatic solution to the crisis most of the Muslim and non-aligned world will back their initiative. However, not Saudi Arabia, which has long been greasing the skids for Iran's fall. And although Riyadh has denied that it has granted Israeli planes the right to overfly the Kingdom to attack Iran no one believes that the Saudis would put up any resistance were Israel to do so.

Predictably Ahmadinejad has scoffed at sanctions comparing them to "used handkerchiefs". Of greater consequence was the remark of Iran's representative on the IAEA who said, "Not only will Iran continue her enrichment activities but even a second enrichment activity will not be suspended." He was referring to Iran's recent move to enrich uranium to a higher level of purification, an unmistakable sign that Iran remains defiant and is willing to up the ante.

There remains a year or two before matters come to a head and either Iran caves in or the West adopts a more emollient attitude. And if neither happens then Israel will likely have its way which is to bomb Iran's nuclear sites and some infrastructure critical to the Revolutionary Gaurds - the current guardians of the clerics who rule Iran.

Were war to break out between Iran and the US or Israel the impact on Pakistan could be enormous. Anti-Taliban sentiments would subside with public ire focussing on symbols of western presence. If disturbances intensify and spread there will be the usual doubts about the safety of our nuclear arsenal, which may well prompt further threats from Israel and America backed up by India.

It will take a lot of cool heads and a willingness to take extreme measures to retain control in the wake of disturbances that may follow a US-Iran war. Bitterness and hostility towards the West, already high, could reach explosive levels. And if, by some chance, Muslim shrines in Iran were hit by accident or design the kind of mayhem witnessed in Pakistan following the Mecca incident of 1979 may very well follow. But, most threatening of all would be the spread of the Salafi-Shia tensions.

While there is nothing that Pakistan can do to prevent a US military strike against Iran we should be aware of its dangerous implications and do a lot better at managing our internal situation. Currently, the central and provincial governments are struggling to deal with the home-grown Taliban. The present lawlessness bordering on anarchy puts at risk our strategic interests. Even without the additional dangers posed to society by an Iran-US conflict we are fighting desperately for our survival. Therefore, unless we are prepared for the likely fallout of that conflict, we will be courting disaster.

The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com