[Allan Topol / AllanTopol.Com]
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of International Intrigue
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With Friends Like These
by Allan Topol, [IMAGE]2005

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, September 20, 2006

Photo Courtesy: Julie Zitin
[Allan Topol / AllanTopol.Com] The United States has been making a strong and concerted effort to head off Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. The urgency of this objective has become far more immediate since the outbreak of the war this summer initiated by Tehran’s pawns in the Hezbollah. With Iran pulling the strings, Hezbollah demonstrated a reckless willingness to fire missiles at random into civilian populated areas in northern Israel.

These Hezbollah missiles were supplied by Iran. There is no question about that. Fortunately, the Iranians did not have nuclear weapons and could not supply nuclear warheads to the Hezbollah forces.

At the present time, Iran has assembled a potent missile arsenal of its own pointing at Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Persian Gulf states. Again, these missiles are not equipped with nuclear weapons because Iran does not have them. If they are developed, you can be certain that the missiles will be equipped with nuclear weapons.

The risk is not merely theoretical. Throughout the Middle East, Tehran is engaged in a bitter struggle to spread Shiite rule across a crescent from Iran to the Mediterranean. Armed with nuclear weapons, the Shiites will have a far more potent force to deal with their Sunni adversaries who rule countries such as Saudi Arabia. So the stakes are enormous in the current confrontation with the United States over nuclear development.

Responding to criticism about how the United States launched its war against Iraq, President Bush and Condoleezza Rice decided to try cooperation and coordination with our allies before considering military options to derail the Iranian nuclear project. From consultations with Britain, France and Germany, as well as China and Russia, the United States was willing to consider negotiations with Tehran, offering a program of carrots and sticks to persuade Tehran to move away from its nuclear program. What was foreseen was tough negotiations. As a starting point, the United States insisted that Tehran agree to freeze its enrichment program while the negotiations proceeded. This interim freeze was seen as a precondition to negotiations, and it was an important part of the Bush administration’s position.

Yesterday, President Jacques Chirac of France, who in the past has taken a hard line against Iran, shifted position and proposed that Iran would not have to freeze major nuclear activities in order for the talks to proceed. Now it was France and Chirac who were acting unilaterally. They were taking positions and making concessions to Tehran without consultation with Washington. In a single stroke, Chirac has undermined the unity between the United States and the Europeans in dealing with Iran. At the same time, he has undercut the Bush administration’s position and reduced the chances that Iran can be forced to abandon its nuclear ambitions without resort to military force.

Chirac did not stop there. He went on to state that he was not in favor of economic sanctions against Iran. In Mr. Chirac’s words, “I have never seen that sanctions were very effective.” With this last comment, he took away the most powerful stick that the Bush administration had.

What is particularly troublesome about the French leader’s words is that the Bush administration had been hoping that a unified front between the United States on the one hand and England, France and Germany on the other, would be enough to carry along Russia and China, who have been dragging their feet on taking any action against Iran. It’s not hard to see what’s been driving China and Russia. Industrial firms from those two countries are doing an enormous amount of business in Iran. They do not wish to take any action which will jeopardize those business relationships. One has to wonder whether similar economic considerations were responsible for Chirac’s change of position.

The Bush administration doesn’t have many good options at this point. As the Iranian President’s speech at the U.N. indicated, he is truculent and unwilling to yield. It is questionable whether the United States, bogged down in Iraq, can pose a sufficiently credible threat of military action at this point.

Then to make matters worse, today Gamal Mubarak, the son of Egypt’s president, and probably his father’s eventual successor, proposed that his country pursue nuclear energy. Since Egypt is one of our strong allies in the Middle East and a recipient of $2 billion a year in economic assistance, it is indeed unfortunate that they chose this moment to embarrass the Bush administration by raising nuclear aspirations of their own. What we’re seeing, unfortunately, is fallout from the Iranian stalemate. If Iran moves ahead with its nuclear program, many other countries will do the same. Unless Iran can be stopped, the world will become a much more dangerous place.