Think Again: Iran

Tehran's desire for a nuclear bomb has put it in Washington's cross hairs. But neither President George W. Bush's repeated condemnations of Iran's clerical rulers nor the threat of military force will advance the cause of democracy there. When Iran reforms, it will happen because its youth -- not the United States -- demands it.

BY CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE | MAY 5, 2005

"If Iran Gets a Nuclear Bomb, Iran Will Use It"

Very unlikely. Let's assume that the Iranians have a nuclear weapons program. What do they intend to do with it? Iran almost certainly does not intend to brandish a nuclear bomb in an attempt to intimidate its regional enemy, Israel, or its global nemesis, the United States. Such belligerence could be catastrophic for the Islamic Republic. Iran's clerical leaders govern a country with little revolutionary zeal and a fundamentally unsound economy dependent on oil revenues. Iran's economy cannot withstand the sanctions that would come with nuclear gunslinging. Furthermore, the clerics have blessed a partial détente with their Arab neighbors and with the European Union (EU), whose major powers (Britain, France, and Germany) are engaged in delicate negotiations with Iran. The clerics are in no mood to give up the economic and diplomatic benefits of these relationships.

If Iran wanted nuclear technology for peaceful uses, it is fair to ask, why did it hide efforts to get that technology? The Iranians argue that alerting the world to its nuclear acquisitions would have allowed the United States to block its supply lines. That may be true, but there is another possible explanation: Iran hid its interest in nuclear technology because that interest was military in nature. There is plausible circumstantial evidence most of it collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- to suggest that Iran's nuclear program is not purely civilian. For more than 10 years, Iran concealed important changes to its nuclear inventory and maintained a clandestine procurement effort. Some of Iran's actions violated the explicit terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); others flouted its spirit. The IAEA's failure to find hard evidence that Iran is trying to weaponize its nuclear technology does not mean that there is no such effort.

But Iran's nuclear ambiguity is calculated, a reaction to the vulnerability it feels. Iran probably intends to gather all the elements necessary for bomb making, so that it can go nuclear the moment that it feels a U.S. or Israeli attack is imminent. In the meantime, Iranian officials brag -- speciously, some argue -- of their "mastery" of nuclear fuel-cycle technology. As one senior State Department official put it, "The Iranians don't necessarily have to have a successful nuclear program … they merely have to convince us, others, and their neighbors that they do."

 SUBJECTS: IRAN
 

Christopher de Bellaigue covers Iran for The Economist and is author of In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).