Let's Make Sure We Do Better With Iran Than We Did With Iraq

Let's Make Sure We Do Better With Iran Than We Did With Iraq

The west's next step on Tehran's nuclear plans should be to understand the regime and society, not to start bombing
by Timothy Garton Ash

Now we face the next big test of the west: after Iraq, Iran. As the Islamic revolutionary regime breaks the international seals on its nuclear facilities, and prepares to hone its skills in the uranium enrichment that could, in a matter of years, enable it to produce nuclear weapons, we in Europe and the United States have to respond. But how? If we mishandle this, it could lead not only to the edge of another military confrontation but also to another crisis of the west.

The European policy of negotiated containment, mistrustfully backed by America and ambiguously accompanied by Russia, has failed. It was worth trying, but it was not enough. The Europeans did not carry sufficiently credible sticks and the Americans did not wave large enough carrots to sway the theocrats in Tehran. Neither half of the old transatlantic west could induce oil-hungry China and energy-rich Russia to play the diplomatic game sufficiently clearly our way.

The seemingly half-crazed new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would probably regard a cost-benefit analysis as an invention of the Great Satan and a prime example of western secular decadence. Allah, he would say, is not an accountant. Yet if cooler heads in the regime behind him are making a cost-benefit analysis, they could still conclude that this is a risk worth taking. The mullahs are floating high on an ocean of oil revenue: an estimated $36bn last year. This money can be used to buy off material discontent at home

They know that the US is deeply mired in neighbouring Iraq, where the Iranians wield growing influence in the Shia south. As President George Bush might privately put it, Tehran has Washington by the cojones. The mullahs also know that China (which has a large energy-supply deal with Iran) and Russia have very different interests from Europe and the US; and they know that countries like Germany and Italy will be deeply reluctant to let sanctions restrict their lucrative trade with Iran. That's a strong hand.

Everyone seems to agree that the next major step is for the matter to be referred to the UN security council. Even the Bush administration, so contemptuous of the UN during the Iraq crisis, now regards that as Plan B. What then? The security council raps Tehran over the knuckles. President Ahmadinejad says go to hell. The security council comes back with sanctions, which would be limited by the geopolitical and energy interests of China and Russia, and the economic interests of Germany, Italy and France.

This is going to get ugly, and left up to the US, it will get real messy, real quick