Ahmadinejad: The Swindler and Con Artist

With the six-party talks beginning today, the United States and Europe want Iran to back down once again in the nuclear dispute. Iran is allegedly now working hastily on the production of nuclear weapons and wants to use negotiations with the West for its own political purposes.

It’s like déjà vu all over again. Starting today in the six-party talks in Geneva, yet another attempt at negotiation will be made to have Iran make concessions related to its nuclear program. In many previous attempts, negotiations with Iran have ended with nothing accomplished. Iran has not been moved by persuasion and generous offers of cooperation from the European Union (E.U.) made in exchange for a suspension of uranium enrichment. Tehran has pressed on with its production of nuclear fuel in spite of recent ineffective and halfhearted sanctions from the U.N. Security Council.

With all of this going on, Iran is also working full tilt on the development of short- and intermediate-range missiles armed with nuclear weapons which could strike both Israel and American military bases in the Middle East. One does not have to be a genius to put one and one together here and recognize where Iran’s ambitious production of nuclear materials is heading.

Now for the first time, even the United States is sitting at the negotiation table next to Germany and the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China. For years, critics led the Bush administration and top Western “Iran experts” into believing that Iran wanted nothing more than to talk directly with the United States. These critics claimed that the refusal of the U.S. government to accept such direct communication was the only thing preventing the Iranian mullahs from shelving their nuclear plans.

But now, because President Obama has offered to talk to Tehran without preconditions, Iran will certainly want to discuss all potential “global challenges,” as President Ahmadinejad stressed yesterday, but it will say nothing about its nuclear program.

Kowtow to the “Great Satan”

The rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran envision the imminent negotiations as a special kind of a propaganda lesson for the United States and Europe. Ahmadinejad says the meeting will be a test for the six participating nations on how much they respect Iranian rights. It will be an “opportunity for the U.S. government and the European countries to change their position in the world and to reform the way they deal with other governments.”

To make a long story short, in Ahmadinejad’s view, the readiness of the United States to talk is a sign of its weakness and decline. He feels that, from now on, he is in a strong position to dictate new conditions to the Americans for establishing international relationships with the Islamic Republic, when nations in the past probably had to check with Washington first and kowtow to the “Great Satan.” The Iranian leader firmly believes that the coming of the Mahdi, the Twelfth Iman said to be hidden by God, is about to happen, and when it does, it will herald an age of global conversion to an Islamic order of salvation.

But until that happens, Ahmadinejad is certainly counting more on very earthly instruments of war in Iran’s dealings with the West. In previous weeks, Western government leaders seemed flabbergasted and behaved with great indignation as they heard an admission from the Iranian government that it had constructed a second, previously secret uranium enrichment plant which would soon go into operation. This disclosure by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should really be considered, for all intents and purposes, as more of an extension of an olive branch than as some sort of response to a flagrant violation of international demands.

Obama Does Not Want to Act Like George W. Bush

Their indignation made the leaders of the Western world look like forlorn actors in some sort of tragicomedy. It must have been apparent to them for years that the Islamic Republic of Iran was working hastily and in secret on nuclear weapons technology. As far back as 2006, for example, an IAEA inspector verified the existence of a secret nuclear program in Iran and was consequently booted out of the country. Yet, since the beginning of this year, the United States and the E.U. have appeared to be on a path toward demonstrating to the Iranian regime the consequences of its actions by applying tough economic and political pressure.

But the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, still has to carve out the essence of his foreign policy using his lofty cosmopolitan rhetoric. He definitely does not want to look like his hated predecessor George W. Bush. In talks without preconditions, Obama only wants to gauge whether or not the Iranian leaders might turn out to be reasonable partners in cooperation, and whether or not friendly persuasion might suffice. That is why he sidestepped the U.N. Security Council demand that Iran must suspend its enrichment of uranium.

Thus far, nothing much has resulted from this “strategy” other than the loss of more valuable time. And even now, nothing is happening despite all of the terse words from Western leaders. Iran answered Western protests about the Qom nuclear plant with new high-profile missile tests. When one realizes that Obama just recently abandoned the plans for a missile shield in Europe, this provocation was on a scale meant only to humble the United States.

A Master of the Cat and Mouse Game

In this context, the West wants nothing more for the time being than just an assurance of being able to talk to Iran, or simply to figure out exactly what Iran might really wish to talk about. Although the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany speak of a “serious crisis of confidence,” they still hope (even though it’s not much hope) that the six-party talks with Tehran could nevertheless be a turning point.

Yet how much trust does the Western side still have in the sincerity of the Iranian mullahs? The Western countries must have learned from numerous earlier rounds of negotiations that Iran only uses diplomacy for the purpose of stalling and gaining more time to make more nuclear materials. Even the current move of declaring the existence of a second nuclear plant after years of denial, before disclosure by Western intelligence, shows again how Tehran is a master of the cat and mouse game.

With this admission, Iran has merely thrown a bone to the world community for it to chew on for a while. That is why it will now be tough to haggle over whether any or how many IAEA inspectors will be allowed to inspect the nuclear plant near Qom. Meanwhile, Iran has ample time to prepare everything so that the inspectors will not find anything significant. This is consistent with the pleasure Ahmadinejad took in announcing that the negotiations beginning today would “take a long time.”

Obama and Disillusionment

Whoever wants to deal with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran must know that it regards deceiving and lying to the “infidels” as a religious duty. It will never be ready to make concessions without serious pressure. Russia cannot be expected, or taken for granted, to go along with sanctions if the United States and the EU intensify their efforts. Right now the United States and Europe may indeed be going ahead with a policy of harsh sanctions and an international isolation of Iran. But without the assistance of Russia and China in this regard, which is really needed to hurt the Iranian regime, merely cutting off certain Western high technologies will not be enough to oust the Iranian leadership.

Anyway, even Barack Obama is not ruling out the military option to prevent the Iranian bomb just yet. But it seems as though he is approaching the same level of disillusionment in dealing with the regime in Tehran that the Bush administration had previously experienced. That is why this brings to mind the clever remark made by the recently deceased American political commentator Irving Kristol that “a neo-conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.”

But if the West should finally come to the conclusion that there is nothing else left to do than to go ahead and play hardball against imminent Iranian nuclear weapons, it could be too little too late. The British intelligence service now thinks it is likely that Iran is already working on a nuclear warhead.

Fears of a Massive Military Buildup in the Arab World

It really is debatable whether the regime in Tehran is truly contemplating taking the final step toward building a bomb, much less actually launching a nuclear missile. The sheer certainty that it would be capable of doing so sometime would put it into the position of being able to continue its present strategy of destabilization in the region and wearing down Israel with unchecked attacks by Iranian proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. By resorting to this approach, Iran keeps itself out of any direct military confrontation. Even an American or an Israeli military attack on Iran could at best set back its nuclear weapons program only one or two years. It is not an accident that the nuclear plant near Qom was built at a location in the side of a mountain and is under the protection of Revolutionary Guards armed to the teeth.

Furthermore, the political price for such an attack would be high and would involve the risk of further destabilization in the region. Iran has many eager supporters at its disposal inside Iraq who could plunge the country into civil war. Also, in Afghanistan, Iran could make life for Western troops even more difficult than it already is. As the West considers withdrawing from both countries, it is depending more and more on Iranian good will to leave behind at least something approximating stability in its wake. On the other hand, if Iran had the bomb, this development would bring about a massive military buildup in the Arab world, which fears its Iranian arch enemy almost as much as Israel does. Iran’s nuclear weapons could unleash a deadly chain of events leading to a big and terrible war in the entire region.

If there should be any chance left for containing the ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would lie in a harsh policy of sanctions and the systematic international and political isolation of its government. In the long run, one would have to hope for its demise from within. But does the West really still have the will, the power and the stamina for such an effort?