Countdown to a Showdown

Christopher Dickey, Newsweek:

If Armageddon happens, those who survive will look back and see the warnings—so many of them—that were somehow lost from view in the numbing rush of 24/7 news. They will remember that Iran pushed ahead with a nuclear program it claimed was peaceful, although no one (not even some of those who defended its right to do so) really believed that was the case.

People will recall the growing sense of urgency as threats were leveled against the mullahs, sometimes from unexpected quarters. Who had thought the French would be the first to say publicly they’d use limited nuclear strikes to retaliate against terror attacks and protect access to vital natural resources? Who could have mistaken Israel’s seriousness when Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told a conference in Herzliya that his country "must have the capability to defend itself, with all that that implies, and this we are preparing”? READ MORE

The Iranian leadership, certainly, will be seen as having misread the signs. Great hostage-takers that they were, the mullahs figured the whole world was shackled by its dependence on relatively cheap oil. Any sanctions brought against Iran would mean skyrocketing prices, the ayatollahs’ minions smugly declared. SUVs would go the way of the dinosaur; the global economy would enter its ice age. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dared the West to take that risk. And then …

If all this sounds alarmist, well, it should. The risk of fatal errors grows every day. Add the influence of messianic fanaticism in Tehran, Jerusalem and, yes, Washington—an apparent desire for apocalypse in some quarters—and it’s hard to have confidence in common-sense solutions defusing this nuclear crisis. (Might the Vanished Imam figure in negotiations? Or the Second Coming? One shudders to think.) It seems we can’t even trust the self-consciously secular rationalists of France. When President Jacques Chirac, 73, said last week that the alternatives of “inaction or annihilation” were unsatisfactory, and a third way could be limited nuclear strikes, he may have been playing to a domestic audience. Or he may have been dreaming about his legacy. He might have been just an old man trying to prove he’s still got some juice. But Chirac is a commander-in-chief with the authority to launch some 300 warheads, and you shouldn’t wave those kinds of things around unless you’re ready to use them.

So where do things go from here? As the historian Barbara Tuchman pointed out half a century ago, “Men will not believe what does not fit in with their plans or suit their prearrangements.” They will march off to wars as if the conflicts were divinely preordained instead of badly misjudged; they will blame fate—or bad intelligence—instead of their own stubborn ignorance. History is full of examples, the Iraq invasion of 2003 being only the most recent. The question before us now is how to keep Iran from being the next.

For starters, let’s unravel the diplomatic game. Next week there’s going to be an emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, which may or may not refer the Iranians to the United Nations Security Council. This sounds like a waste of time, and it is. Notwithstanding hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles racked up in the last few days by European and American diplomats scouring the globe for support at the meeting, it’s unlikely anything decisive will come of it. Far more important is the regularly scheduled IAEA session about six weeks from now on March 6. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei says he could issue a report there that will “reverberate … around the world.” And well he might. ElBaradei is a little like the black-and-white Detective Joe Friday on “Dragnet” in the old TV series: he wants “Just the facts, ma’am,” and his checklist is clear.

The agency would like to know a whole lot more about Iranian deals with the clandestine nuclear network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and his cronies during the 18 years when the mullahs were building their nuclear program in secret. Since 2003, agency inspectors have talked to members of those networks and questioned A.Q. Khan himself through intermediaries. The inspectors now have a pretty good idea what sort of nuclear enrichment technology and hardware was passed on, and they know that in at least one other case, Libya, the package included bomb designs. But the Iranians have supplied very little credible documentation about what they got in 1987 and 1994, what they did with it afterward, and when and where and how.

Then there’s the problem with the papers Iran did cough up. Last fall, after more than two years keeping the IAEA waiting, the Iranians finally produced two cardboard boxes full of papers which they allowed inspectors to examine only in an Iranian government office in Tehran. As the IAEA’s people read through the documents, they came across about 10 pages that looked suspicious, to say the least: general specifications for casting uranium metal in a spherical form that could well make up the core of an atomic bomb. In a curious arrangement, the Iranians videotaped the inspectors while they were looking at the papers, but wouldn’t allow the IAEA to make any photographs or copies. The IAEA wants to get those documents in its hands, and it wants to know what the hell they were doing in the files of Iran’s “peaceful” program to begin with.

Another item on the list: An Iranian nuclear research facility known as Lavizan was bulldozed after it was identified as a suspect site. The IAEA wants to take swabs known as “environmental samples” from the machinery that was there and talk to the technicians and scientists to determine just how far the research went. Thus far, Tehran has kept both the machines and the staff out of agency hands.

Finally, there’s the question of missile design. Starting in 2004, the CIA conducted a road show presenting what it said were the contents of a laptop computer stolen from Iran. Hundreds of pages were presented to the top officials at the IAEA, focusing on what appeared to be designs for missiles specifically meant to carry nuclear warheads. The IAEA is looking for explanations and elucidations from Iran about that laptop and its contents, and it’s not satisfied with what it’s heard so far.

We keep hearing that the Iranians are ready to negotiate. As far as I can tell from my conversation with ElBaradei, there’s nothing much left to talk about. The IAEA either gets credible answers to all of its questions in the next few weeks, or it submits a damning report on March 6. For world opinion, including the many non-aligned countries that have a voice on the IAEA board and in the Security Council, this is the judgment that counts, not the proclamations of U.S. President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the aftermath of Iraq, they don’t have much credibility. If Nobel Peace Prize laureate ElBaradei concludes that Iran just won’t give him the information needed to determine its nuclear program is peaceful, then the road to the Security Council, and to possible sanctions or to stronger action, is much clearer.

We are coming to the litmus test in the next few weeks,” ElBaradei told me when I saw him I Vienna. “Diplomacy is not just talking. Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force. We have rules. We have to do everything possible to uphold the rules. … If not, then you impose them. Of course, this has to be the last resort, but sometimes you have to do it.”

Unfortunately, it seems Washington, the Europeans and the Russians are confusing these issues almost as much as the Iranians. Next week’s rushed meeting of the IAEA board of governors is more likely to be a forum for U.S. grandstanding than for ElBaradei to present his firm conclusions. This morning he sent a response to the French, British, Australians and Americans, all of whom requested a written report from him about the five points on his checklist. He’s almost ready to do that, but not quite, and IAEA credibility could be damaged needlessly by a lot of blunt questions that he’d have to meet with equivocal answers. Any “prejudgments” will just sound like prejudice to many listeners. ElBaradei said a new “verification” mission was on its way to Iran next week—in effect the last chance for Iran to come clean. “Due process,” he said in his response, “must take its course before the Secretariat [i.e. ElBaradei] is able to submit a detailed report.”

A meeting set for mid-February between the Iranians and the Russians is likely to be another distraction. The Russians are offering a deal allowing Iran to enrich nuclear fuel on Russian territory. Iran has already turned them down once, and that’s hardly surprising. For centuries the Persians have seen themselves at risk of Russian domination. Putting the future of their nuclear energy program in Moscow’s hands would be a dubious proposition for any government in Tehran. Given the Russian bear’s petulant performance turning the natural gas tap on and off in Ukraine, and now the suspicious sabotage of pipelines to Georgia and Armenia, any Iranian regime would balk at a vital energy partnership.

So let’s not let ourselves be rushed toward an apocalypse with too-fast, too-furious diplomacy. Let’s keep our eyes on the IAEA, and keep the message to Iran as clear as Joe Friday’s: “Just the facts, Mahmoud.” If Iran doesn’t deliver, and it almost certainly will not, then the world should move ahead toward tough, targeted, effective sanctions. But more about those in my next column.