Iran must be forced to give up nuclear weapons

The Telegraph UK:

Iran's seemingly ineluctable progress towards acquiring nuclear weapons has publicly resumed with the conversion of raw uranium outside Isfahan. According to Alireza Jafarzadeh, an exiled dissident based in Washington, it may never have been suspended, despite an agreement to that effect reached last November with the European Union troika of Britain, France and Germany.

He claimed yesterday that the Iranians had manufactured about 4,000 centrifuges, capable of enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels, at a plant in Natanz, and had hidden this activity from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), thus maintaining a well-tried pattern of cheating. READ MORE

Those hoping for a willingness to compromise took heart two years ago from the appointment of the supposedly pragmatic Hassan Rohani as the chief nuclear negotiator. By the same token, they have been dismayed this week by the choice of the conservative Ali Larijani as his successor.

But in fact these changes have been mere footnotes to a text that, since the time of the Shah, has made nuclear weapons status a prime aim of national policy. Moreover, under the Islamic Revolution, that policy has been the prerogative not of the elected head of state but of the Supreme Leaders - Ayatollah Khomeini and, since 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

America has been both percipient in recognising this reality and forthright in wishing to thwart it. It rightly sees Iran as a power hostile to Western interests through its desire to destroy Israel and its support for terrorist organisations such as Hizbollah.

Yet the difficulties in deterring Teheran are immense. The acquisition of nuclear weapons as an expression of Iranian hegemony in the [Persian] Gulf is popular at home, as the recent election as president of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has demonstrated. Iran would be hurt by economic sanctions imposed by America and the EU, and that would count for something in a country chronically unable to provide jobs for its youthful population.

On the other hand, the regime may calculate that continuing high oil prices and sanctions-breaking by countries such as China would sufficiently compensate for any reduction in trade with, and investment from, the West.

Beyond that, as a last resort, lie selective or comprehensive military strikes on Iran's nuclear installations. Given the Bush Administration's predicament in Iraq, where Iran has huge potential for mischief, there is as yet no appetite for this option.

The next few months are likely to see a steady ratcheting up of the crisis, from yesterday's emergency meeting of the IAEA to an attempt to get the matter referred to the UN Security Council and then persuade China and Russia not to veto economic sanctions.

Iran's past mendacity renders wholly unconvincing its claim to be innocently pursuing nuclear production of electricity. But bringing it to book is proving extraordinarily frustrating.