Up in Arms: Iran and the Bomb

We are all, by now, familiar with the narrative regarding Iran and its nuclear programme. Iran is a theocracy that believes Israel should be wiped off the map. It is the chief global sponsor of terrorism through groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Equally, there is much evidence to suggest that a nuclear-armed Iran would soon be followed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and perhaps others.

The narrative has been honed over several years and is still being peddled today, and not only by American neoconservatives. The alarmist rhetoric is grounded in three discourses. The first is that Iran is a rogue state that cannot be expected to act rationally. The second is that an Iranian bomb would trigger a regional nuclear arms race. The third is that Iran would be likely to supply nuclear weapons to its terrorist clients, Hezbollah and Hamas. It all makes for a bleak picture, but should we accept these conventional wisdoms?

Implicit in the rogue state argument is the notion that such states do not accept the logic of nuclear deterrence that persisted throughout the Cold War. The rationality that was presumed to persist between the United States and the Soviet Union, underpinned by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, is deemed inapplicable to rogue states led by irrational leaders. But those same analysts who argue that Iran must not possess a bomb because it is liable to act irrationally also present the Iranian leadership as cautiously calculating, clinging to power in a Machiavellian fashion against a strengthening reform movement. Looking past the headline grabbing rhetoric of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran is neither overtly confrontational or prone to erratic shifts in its behaviour. There is no compelling argument to refute the possibility that a nuclear-armed Iran would, with a renewed sense of legitimacy and security, become more responsible. This seems more plausible to me than the notion that Iran would actively pursue policies that would threaten its own destruction.

What of a regional nuclear arms race? The idea of the nuclear domino effect goes back to the 1960s but, as with many arguments in international relations theory, what it possesses in pith it lacks in historical accuracy. China’s acquisition of the bomb in 1964 was supposed to trigger an arms race involving Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan. In the years since, we have heard arguments that Sweden, Germany, Italy, Canada, Brazil and numerous other countries may ‘go nuclear’. Yet it hasn’t happened.

And then we come to the truly nightmarish scenario; the possibility of a rogue state supplying nuclear weapons to a terrorist group. This is more the stuff of 24 than the stuff of reality. It is premised on the fallacious notion that Iran would be willing to part with enriched uranium that it clearly values incredibly highly. Furthermore, it assumes that terrorist groups such as al-Qaida are actively seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, an assumption made highly questionable by the recent research of terrorism expert Anne Stenersen. Finally, it ignores the ability of the US to make clear to Iran that it would be held responsible for any nuclear attacks on the West by terrorist groups. A similar warning was issued to the Soviet Union regarding attacks from the communist world during the Cold War. Such an approach may actually force Iran to act with greater restraint regionally.

One of the golden rules of diplomacy is that we must try and put ourselves into the other persons’ shoes. That does not mean ‘going native’ and advocating positions contrary to our own national interests. But it does mean trying to see things from all perspectives and trying to prudently gauge Iran’s motivations.

Iran is a Persian Shiite state surrounded by Arab Sunni neighbours who view it with suspicion. It faces a strong US presence to the east and west. The regime is facing increasing pressure from its internal dissidents and the reform movement. This fits the historical pattern of states seeking nuclear deterrents when they are located in unstable regions or face conventional strategic vulnerabilities. Iran suffers from both problems and is further motivated by a desire for standing and prestige in the international community, a status that is seen by the regime as bound up with possession of the bomb. Attempts to thwart Iran’s acquisition of a bomb is a classic case of treating the symptom and not the disease.

As the West presses on with sanctions through the UN we must remember that Iran cannot be viewed in a political vacuum. Nuclear weapons have the potential to cause the most horrific devastation. But alarmism is not strategy. We must return to history to develop a more nuanced understanding of how and why international society has escaped nuclear catastrophe between far more belligerent and dangerous protagonists. When we do, we might find that an Iran possessing a nuclear weapon may not be the end of the world as we know it.