Midnight April 01, US-led five plus one delegation found an agreement with Iran to commit to a framework of regime to oversee its nuclear development activities and to delay a possible production of weapon-grade plutonium without scarping any part of the Islamic Republic's current nuclear infrastructure. Perhaps this is the reason why Israel has opposed and denounced the deal. But what about the rest of the world? Can the world live with or without Iran as a nuclear power having vast oil and gas reserve and an organised Army that could repel any attack on them by Western powers and which is capable of dominating as regional "supremo" over other states in and around Mesopotamia.
Historically, Persia, now known as Iran, had always been at the crossroads where both Greek and Central Asian warriors passed through to the East to establish their empires. Iran also has a long tradition of building civilisation on their own and carrying their influence from valleys of Euphrates to that of Huang Ho. Iran built a culture and tradition of civilisation more than six thousand years. While tribes in Judea Samaria were nurtured by successive prophets, Iran had already established civilised traditions.
Against this background, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged Friday (April 03) that his country would honour what he called a historic agreement to curb its nuclear programme, provided that world powers upheld their end of the deal to ease economic pressures."We don't cheat. We are not two-faced," Rouhani declared in an upbeat televised address to the nation a day after negotiators reached a framework on the nuclear deal. He added: "If we've given a promise.?.?. we will take action based on that promise. Of course, that depends on the other side taking action on their promises, too."
Since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was announced, the Obama administration-echoing previous pledges that nuclear talks with Tehran do not presage a U.S.-Iranian "grand bargain"-has assiduously reaffirmed that progress on the nuclear issue does not signal a wider diplomatic opening.
Such a posture ignores an overwhelming strategic reality: America's position in the Middle East is in free fall, and the only way out is to realign U.S. relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Washington must do this as purposefully as it realigned relations with the People's Republic of China in the 1970s when it struggled to extricate itself from the self-inflicted debacle of the Vietnam War and to readjust its diplomatic options for the Cold War's last phase and beyond. By not using nuclear diplomacy as a catalyst for broader rapprochement with Iran as Nixon did with China, Obama and his team will bring about further erosion of America's standing as a great power in the Middle East, and globally.
U.S. engagement in the Middle East over the past quarter century is a textbook example of what Paul Kennedy famously described as "imperial overstretch"-a great power's expansion of strategic ambitions and commitments beyond its capacity to sustain them. To recover, Washington must embrace a new Middle East strategy-one aimed not at coercive dominance but at a reasonably stable balance of power in which major regional states check one another's reckless impulses.
Such a strategy requires understanding of the following factors: First, Washington needs to engage-positively and comprehensively-with all important regional actors. Second, Washington needs to recalibrate relations with America's traditional Middle Eastern allies-most notably, Israel and Saudi Arabia. A robust diplomatic opening to Iran is essential to both these tasks. Whether American elites like it or not, Iran is an unavoidable power in today's Middle East. The Islamic Republic's influence is due to its revolutionary commitment to independence and its participatory Islamist order. Its influence is, therefore, rising in arenas across the region-and will continue to do so when and as Middle Eastern Muslims gain greater access to participatory politics.
Unlike other five members of negotiating team, US particularly has been subjected to both domestic and external criticism for so easily conceding to a framework that will leave largely all of Iran's nuclear infrastructure unaltered and unchecked. The proposed inspection regime by IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) will provide information only of deviation, violation to framework agreement and of any clandestine effort on the part of Iran for building an enrichment facility, but will not be able to take action to remedy it, unless the signatories, the US in particular, take coercive stance for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
If nuclear negotiations fail, Iran might still stop short of building a bomb. That way it could enjoy the deterrence that comes from "threshold" nuclear status without weaponising, which might provoke its neighbours to build nukes themselves. It's even possible that if the U.S. sabotages Thursday's deal, a future U.S. president might strike another nuclear agreement with Tehran. But by that point, sanctions would likely have eroded and Iran's nuclear programme would be further along. Which means that such a deal, far from being tougher, would be a lot weaker than the current one?
When announcing the deal, President Obama said: "This deal offers the prospect of relief from sanctions that were imposed because of Iran's violation of international law. Since Iran's supreme leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, this framework gives Iran the opportunity to verify that its programme is, in fact, peaceful. It demonstrates that if Iran complies with its international obligations, then it can fully rejoin the community of nations, thereby fulfilling the extraordinary talent and aspirations of the Iranian people. That would be good for Iran, and it would be good for the world."
The initial development of nuclear technology, during World War II, was military. Two nuclear bombs made from uranium-235 and plutonium-239 were dropped on Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively in August 1945 and these brought the long war to a sudden end. The immense and previously unimaginable power of the atom had been demonstrated. Then attention turned to civil applications. In the course of half a century nuclear technology has enabled access to a virtually unlimited source of energy at a time when constraints are arising on the use of fossil fuels. The question now arises, to what extent and in what ways does nuclear power generation contributes to or alleviate the risk from nuclear weapons? In the 1960s it was widely assumed that there would be 30-35 nuclear weapons states by the turn of the century. In fact there were eight - a tremendous testimony to the effectiveness of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its incentives both against weapons and for civil nuclear power, despite the baleful influence of the Cold War (1950s to 80s) which saw a massive build-up of nuclear weapons particularly by the USA and the Soviet Union.
The nuclear non-proliferation regime is much more than the NPT, although this is the pre-eminent international treaty on the subject. The regime includes treaties, conventions and common (multilateral and bilateral) arrangements covering security and physical protection, export controls, nuclear test-bans and, potentially, fissile material production cut-offs. The international community can apply pressure to states outside the NPT to make every possible effort to conform to the full range of international norms on nuclear non-proliferation that make up this regime. This was seen during 2007-08 with India.
The nuclear reality in the world we live in, exists as follows:
n Most countries participate in international initiatives designed to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
n The international safeguards system has since 1970 successfully prevented the diversion of fissile materials into weapons. Its scope has been widened to address undeclared nuclear activities.
n The IAEA undertakes regular inspections of civil nuclear facilities and audits the movement of nuclear materials through them.
n Safeguards are backed by diplomatic and economic measures.
In nuclear weapons states, IAEA safeguards apply under a "voluntary offer agreement". Where offered, facilities are put on each state's "list of facilities that are eligible for IAEA safeguards" and it is up to IAEA to decide which (if any) to inspect. However, all these facilities must maintain IAEA-standard accounting.
However, Israel has never admitted that it has ever developed any nuclear facility and refused to sign on NPT and IAEA inspection. But Israel arbitrarily destroyed Iraqi nuclear reactor without giving any notice to IAEA or to Iraq. Various American government officials, who were in office during the Cold War period, are now advocating the elimination of nuclear weapons. These officials include Dr. Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sen. Sam Nunn, and William Perry.
They believe that the doctrine of mutual Soviet-American deterrence is obsolete, and that reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.
Iran nuclear deal is primarily relevant to US geopolitical strategic architecture in the Middle East, its engagement in rehabilitating fractured Arab alliances, in extricating from long-term involvement in Afghanistan without causing weaknesses to the new political institutions and in eventually setting up two-state solution to Israel-Palestine conflict and thus remedy the root cause of worldwide terrorism.
kbahmed1@gmail.com
The nuclear reality in the world we live in
K.B. Ahmed | Published: April 09, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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