Nothing but Frustration Aplenty

The great powers’ diplomatic efforts to solve the Iranian nuclear issue are becoming increasingly similar to their sterile attempts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The world’s most powerful rulers know everything; they are all eager to suggest different plans and they all put in a great deal of effort. Yet, no one can fix anything.

The negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are stuck in a vicious circle, regardless of whether they take place on neutral ground or at the initiative of U.S.-appointed mediators. No one should expect Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations, nor see one single moment of peace, for that matter, as long as both claim Jerusalem as their own, indivisible capital.

This is just one of many issues in the region. Someone must also deal with the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the scandal involving the security wall, the issue of Palestinian prisoners, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. For each side of the war, negotiations depend on the other side’s compliance to their terms – compliance that is impossible to obtain.

U.S. President Barack Obama sends his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to the Middle East in vain with hopes of receiving some good news. No matter how competent and experienced Hillary may be as a diplomat, there is no solution to the crisis. This happens because the approach to the issue, on a global scale, is incorrect: it is as if they were trying to solve a math problem backwards.

If one analyzes the actual chances of resolving the issue (and not only these chances), the whole fuss over the supposed Iranian nuclear threat seems to follow a pattern similar to the one in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: negotiation, resolution, and disillusion. The Iranians are not currently at war with anyone. Yet, former U.S. President George W. Bush did a great job causing mass panic about Tehran’s intentions to develop nuclear weapons. In fact, not only did Bush, Jr., see weapons all over the place, apparently he could also predict who intended to build them. All of this is in spite of the fact that he failed to locate Saddam Hussein’s and bin Laden’s weapons of mass destruction. Tough luck!

The gentleman that he was, George W. Bush passed on to his successor, Barack Obama, a legacy of worries about the Iranian atomic bomb. The poor guy had little else to leave Obama beside a budget deficit, a broken and bloody Iraq, and an Afghanistan war where American soldiers lose their lives almost every day. Barack Obama took the worries (it is not nice to say no), the unprecedented deficit, and the sickly Iraq, as well as the Afghan problem, and went into battle. The financial situation, though, is more difficult to handle now that the global economic crisis is in full swing; the issue of Iraq is too delicate, and Congress finds the issue of Afghanistan too sensitive.

In order to preserve the U.S.’s position as world leader, Obama has plunged into the Iranian nuclear-file scandal alongside France, Italy, Great Britain, China, and Germany. Things are stalling in this department, as well. The six great powers have set and reset deadlines. They suggested that the U.N. impose sanctions against Iran, and they pressed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to conduct thorough inspections of plants where they thought Iranians were producing enriched uranium. The result: nothing but frustration aplenty.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, without doubt, an imperfect and eccentric individual. However, he is neither an idiot nor a coward. He has claimed throughout the scandal that Iranian nuclear technologies are used strictly for economic purposes. His statement is highly credible if one bears in mind the fact that Iran’s uranium is generally enriched only to 3.5 percent. In order to be able to use it as a nuclear weapon, uranium should be enriched to approximately 90 percent. Obama, however, does not seem to understand this. And, as long as he fails to understand, the issue of the Iranian nuclear threat will be revisited again and again, just like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.