Matthias Küntzel
World Politics Review Exclusive
Sanctions resolutions were passed by the U.N. Security Council in December 2006 and March 2007. But whereas the resolutions showed Iran to be politically isolated, they did not damage the Iranian economy. Only the unilateral measures undertaken by the United States in fact had an effect on business interests: Thus in 2006 a considerable number of banks and firms withdrew from doing business in Iran, since they would otherwise be faced with negative consequences on the American market. As other companies were leaving Iran, however, the Austrian energy concern OMV was moving into Iran -- and in a big way. On April 21, 2007, the 30 percent state-owned Austrian enterprise signed a letter of intent for the largest natural gas deal that a European company has ever concluded with Iran. Subsequent efforts by newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy to establish a unified European sanctions regime were foiled by the determined resistance of Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain. (See the WPR report here and my earlier article "Berlin and Vienna Stand Against the West.") As recently as Nov. 20, the German Ambassador to Tehran, Herbert Honsowitz, declared to the Iranian media that Germany was doing everything to maintain or even strengthen bilateral economic ties with Iran. In a report published by Iran's Press TV, Honsowitz is quoting as saying that the bulk of Germany's $4 billion worth of exports to Iran are now reaching the country via Dubai.
After the NIE
In light of the foregoing, it is positively surreal that now even the American President attributes the supposed halting of the Iranian nuclear weapons program to "diplomatic pressure" and adopts the rosy evaluation of the NIE. "The NIE talks about how a carrot-and-stick approach can work," he noted in his Dec. 4 news conference. "The strategy we have used in the past is effective," he added. Perhaps such remarks are meant to encourage the international community to impose additional sanctions. But acting as if everything is going well, when the facts prove the opposite, hardly serves the cause.
America's National Intelligence Council has not provided the public an objective evaluation of reality, but rather a fantasy. Why? My thesis is that the authors of the report have put forth a radical reevaluation of the Iranian threat in order to disguise what in fact amounts to a fundamental reorientation in America's Iran policy. This policy reorientation is revealed by a footnote in the report, which reads: "By 'nuclear weapons program'. . . we do not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."
Whereas up to now Washington has wanted to use tough sanctions in order to prevent Iran from enriching uranium on an industrial scale, the authors of the NIE seem prepared to accept Iranian uranium enrichment so long as it is declared to be for "civil" purposes. Whereas the aim was hitherto to impede the building of potential bomb factories -- and thereby nullify Iran's nuclear option -- it seems that the NIE authors are only concerned about preventing the "restarting of the weapons program" by way of IAEA monitoring and external pressure.
In 2003, the United States rallied to the European Iran policy and accepted the existence of an Iranian nuclear program, so long as it was not weapons-related. In 2007, the NIE authors indirectly suggest accepting even a weapons-related program: "Iran's declared civil work related to uranium enrichment." This means that Iran will be denied a "weapons program" and the direct possession of the bomb -- but not the procurement of the technologies required for the production of the bomb. It is to be noted that in acquiring the latter, Iran will already have advanced far along the path to realizing one of its principal foreign policy aims: According to a recent public opinion poll, if Iran obtains the technical prerequisites for building a nuclear weapon, 27 percent of Israeli Jews will leave Israel.
Ahmadinejad can be well pleased. Iran expert Ray Takeyh's October 2003 assessment of the Iran policy of the EU-3 is more relevant today than ever:
. . . the deal [between the EU-3 and Iran] ensures that Iran will be the next member of the nuclear club. . . . Only by dismantling all Iran's nuclear plants can the United States be sure that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapons capability under the auspices of a civilian research program. . . . The Bush administration would be wise to chart an imaginative new course. Relying on the defective IAEA and the European Union will not stem the tide of proliferation in Iran.
No one needs intelligence agency reports in order to be able to recognize the political and military aims of Iran. Seldom has a country declared its aggressive intentions so clamorously to the entire world. In the next weeks and months, we will find out if the Bush administration and the American public will reject this "dangerous, misguided and counterproductive" report, as Alan Dershowitz has described it, or if America's government is indeed "in the grip of shadowy powers using 'intelligence' as a tool of control," as Bret Stephens has written in the Wall Street Journal.
In 1938, Chamberlain gave the Czech "Sudetenland" to the Nazis in the hope that this would placate them. As the then-President of Czechoslovakia Edvard Benes wrote in his memoirs of the Sudetenland crisis, "among persons without moral strength," Chamberlain's act of appeasement "provoked a feeling of relief." Today, will one give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "civil uranium enrichment" in the hope that this will placate him?
Matthias Küntzel is a Hamburg-based political scientist. His book "Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11" was recently awarded the Grand Prize of the London Book Festival. The above article was translated from German by John Rosenthal.
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