Few current issues in international affairs so vividly illustrate the limits of both hard and soft power as the Iranian nuclear conundrum. The diplomatic approach has been championed by the “EU Three” – Britain, France and Germany – who have for three years pursued difficult on-off negotiations with the Iranians. That course in the end proved fruitless. Now a new chapter has opened, with diplomatic efforts moving to a different arena, the UN Security Council.
These efforts too will prove long and arduous. For one thing, Russia and China – reluctant to join a more-or-less intact US-EU consensus -- will slow down the collective momentum and thus buy a certain amount of time for Iran. For another, there is growing nervousness about what will happen if diplomacy – even if backed with economic and other sanctions – fails to persuade Iran to change course. Will the Bush administration – or the Israelis -- resort to military action? It is not just the Russians and the Chinese who are apprehensive. The crisis over Iraq has engendered so much mistrust of American intentions that it will be difficult to muster international support for military action against Iran. Even in Washington there are doubts within policy circles. While some hawks favour pinpoint military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities -- even if America has to act alone -- other decision-makers see military action as distinctly unattractive. Among the risks:
Resort to force would produce an upsurge of nationalism in Iran and rally support behind an unpopular regime.
It would set back, but not end, Iran’s nuclear ambitions – thereby raising the question of whether the US has the appetite to repeat the exercise at a later date.
It would destabilise an already turbulent region, deepening the current intensely anti-American mood.
It would provide fresh recruits for Al-Qaida and other jihadist groups. （Regardless of their dislike of Iran and Shi’ism, it would reinforce the image of an aggressive superpower striking one Muslim country after another.）
It would produce a backlash among the Iraqi Shia and the Shi’ite
political parties which have close links with Tehran.
As a result, the current course of stepping up international pressure on Iran seems the least bad option – even though the outcome cannot be certain. Political leaders in Iran were anxious that the nuclear issue should not be referred to the UN Security Council. There is accordingly a mood of disquiet, despite the continuing rhetoric of public defiance. Privately, pragmatists such as former president Hashemi Rafsanjani are highly critical of the hard-liners who, they argue, have mishandled the issue and increased Iran’s isolation. They regard the high-profile speeches of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the hard-liner elected president last year, as particularly unhelpful. His call for Israel to be wiped off the map and his denial of the Holocaust have made it harder for Iran to drum up much-needed international support – and have reinforced the argument that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an unacceptable threat to its neighbours and to the world.
If the feeling persists that the hard-liners are making a bad situation even worse, this will open up cracks within the conservative camp which, since the presidential elections and the defeat of the reformists, has come to dominate the political scene. The president has put many noses out of joint by his clumsy interventions in foreign policy and his ill-advised political appointments. Moreover he has threatened well-entrenched vested interests with his populist policies designed to root out corruption and distribute more of the country’s oil wealth to the poor.
But the cold reality is that, however much pressure is piled up on the Iranian regime, it may not be enough to deter it from the pursuit of nuclear weapons – something both the decision-makers and many ordinary Iranians regard as their inalienable right. If neither soft nor hard power can prevent Iran’s eventual acquisition of such weapons, this will enhance the prospect of a regional arms race and set an unhappy precedent in efforts to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
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