Within the next week or so the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency will have to decide whether or not to refer the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations’ Security Council for alleged violations of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). We must thus expect a great deal of smoke-and-mirror diplomacy on all sides as no one knows how to negotiate this dangerous bend on the road.
Despite its uncompromising posture the Iranian side has already made a number of concessions that would have been regarded as impossible a few weeks ago. The IAEA is now allowed to interview all the Iranian nonmilitary personnel it has had on its lists for the past four years. The agency has also received answers to a set of detailed questions that it had posed to Iran last January. Tehran sources also suggest that the Islamic Republic is prepared to continue its suspension of all activities at Natanz, a plant built to produce military grades uranium.
The problem, however, is that the Islamic Republic, suffering from a huge deficit of trust, is in no position to convince its critics, notably the United States and the European Union, that it has put an end to a policy of deception and subterfuge that has continued for almost two decades. Even Russia, now engaged in a desperate effort to help the Islamic Republic avoid sanctions, admits that it cannot fully trust any promises coming from Tehran.
No one knows for sure whether or not the Tehran leadership has decided to produce nuclear weapons. But the way it behaves leaves little doubt that this must be the case.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Iran wants to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle so as not to become dependent on imports of enriched uranium needed for producing electricity. “If we do not produce our own (enriched) uranium,” he says, “those who produce it will be able to dictate any price or even hold us to ransom.”
That argument, however, is hard to sell. Do the OPEC countries use their oil production to dictate whatever price they like or hold any other nation to ransom?
Under a compromise proposed by Russia, the Islamic Republic would get all the enriched uranium it needs to produce electricity. Even Iran’s own experts admit that what Russia offers is a good deal if only because the fuel from Moscow would cost less than one-third of what it would to produce in Iran.
Now let us sum up the situation.
• Iran doesn’t have any nuclear power station yet and thus has no urgent need of nuclear fuel.
• Iran’s only nuclear power station is being built in the Bushehr Peninsula by Russia which is contracted to provide all the fuel it needs for its entire life-span of 30 to 35 years.
• The fuel that Russia offers will be 23 percent cheaper than the similar product made in Iran itself.
• The uranium processing plant at Isfahan and the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz have a larger production capacity than Iran would need for Bushehr and can only be justified in military strategic terms.
• It is a mystery why Iran has built a heavy water plant at Arak when it does not have nor plans to have any nuclear power station using plutonium.
All this shows that suspicions regarding Iran’s intentions are not entirely unjustified. But is referral to the Security Council the answer?
Iran, of course, always has the option of withdrawing from the NPT and, as Ahmadinejad likes to say, decide its own nuclear policies without any outside interference.
Such a move, however, is certain to be seen by everyone, including Tehran’s last few friends, as an admission of duplicity.
Iran now finds itself in the situation Iraq was during the last years of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Iran cannot prove that it has no secret nuclear program while its critics cannot prove that it has. The IAEA is as helpless in the case of Iran as it was in Iraq three years ago.
There are only two ways to find out the truth. The first is to march into Iran and find out on the spot. That means invasion, regime change and an Iraq-style undertaking only on a much larger scale. It is clear that even the most gang-ho advocates of regime change do not have the stomach for such an adventure.
The second way is to wait until Iran detonates its first bomb and brings the good news to the whole world.
In the meantime any talk of tough resolutions and even sanctions could prove counterproductive. Iran has lived under a set of sanctions since 1979 and is geared for sustaining even tougher ones.
Ahmadinejad may actually welcome a UN resolution followed by sanctions that may hurt the average Iranians but would not shake the regime. He would be able to sell his macho image further by claiming that, unlike his predecessor Muhammad Khatami who tried to please the West, he is standing up to the “arrogant powers”.
Narrowing the focus on the nuclear issue has other benefits for the Islamic Republic. It diverts attention from its repressive policies at home and its disruptive moves throughout the region, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will send the wrong message to democratic forces inside Iran by showing that the only issue that interests the major democracies is the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
The UN sanctions may be welcomed by both the Bush administration and the European Union as a fig leaf to cover their manifest inability to develop a coherent policy on Iran. Condoleezza Rice would be able to apply to Iran Madeleine Albright’s formula about Saddam Hussein: “We have him in a box!”
The real issue that Albright wanted to avoid was whether or not it was possible to remold the Middle East with Saddam Hussein in power in Baghdad. And the issue that Rice now faces is whether or not the new democratic Middle East envisaged by President George W Bush can be built against the will of Iran, the region’s largest and most ambitious nation.
The question is what to do with Iran and not what to do with Iran’s real or imaginary nuclear program. And that is precisely the question that both the US and the EU are keen to avoid. My guess is that we are heading for another diplomatic fudge to allow all those concerned to dance around the real issue for as long as possible. The question is how long such a dance can go on.

Rationalising Pakistan’s steamy affair with Israel
Irfan Husain

A few years ago, no Pakistani leader would have dared receive the chairman of the American Jewish Council openly. Yet, Musharraf did just that the other day. Jack Rosen was interviewed on national TV as well, another first. Although currently muted by the disastrous earthquake, the debate triggered by the meeting between the Pakistani and Israeli foreign ministers in August rumbled on in our media for weeks. Letters to the editor, op-ed articles and TV talk shows argued interminably for and against the Musharraf initiative. Alternately, the general was lambasted for being an American stooge, and hailed as a visionary. But oddly, this discussion did not resonate in the streets of Pakistan. In the immediate aftermath of the Istanbul meeting some three months ago, mullahs managed to round up a few hundred followers at dispirited rallies, but this was not a cause to pull out the crowds.
This is not to suggest that the plight of the Palestinians does not evoke sympathy in Pakistan. Since the Intifada and its brutal suppression became daily fare on television, events in Palestine have helped radicalise thousands of young Pakistanis. Indeed, the Israeli narrative has been completely drowned out, even among the educated, Westernised elite. It was not always thus. Until the 1967 war and the subsequent occupation of Palestine by Israel, many Pakistanis admired the Jewish state for its pluck and inventiveness. They empathised with a state created under adversity, and located in the midst of hostile neighbours. The parallels with the conditions Pakistan faced after its creation in 1947 are too obvious to dwell on here. During the 1956 Suez war, a Pakistani prime minister said dismissively of frontline Arab states: “Zero plus zero equals zero.” In the Fifties and Sixties, most secular, socialist Arab leaders kept Pakistan at arm’s length, finding Nehru’s India a more congenial ideological friend. And Pakistan’s membership in US-led pacts like CENTO and SEATO went against the grain of pro-Soviet Arab regimes. These attitudes began changing with the 1973 war and its resultant oil-price hike that swelled Saudi coffers. Earlier, Pakistanis felt let down by the Americans in their disastrous war with India in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh. With the loss of its eastern wing, Pakistan’s centre of gravity swung from South Asia towards the Middle East, a process hastened by Saudi largesse, and the flood of Pakistani workers to the Gulf.
All these changes made Pakistanis more aware of events in the Middle East. Gradually, anti-Israel sentiments came to dominate the media and public discourse. However, it was not until the first Intifada in 1988, and the earlier invasion of Lebanon with its searing images from Shatila and Sabra, that Israel was perceived as the villain of the piece by a wide spectrum of Pakistani society. This sentiment was reinforced by the anti-Americanism that became rampant when Washington imposed sanctions on Pakistan due to its nuclear programme. Curiously, but not surprisingly, this anti-Israel, anti-American attitude has united the religious right and the secular left. Both groupings have come together in their hatred of Washington and Tel Aviv, seeing in them the source of all that is wrong in the world. With this background, what prompted Musharraf to engage Israel, running the risk of a serious backlash? Obviously, the burgeoning relationship between India and Israel, with its military implications, was one factor in the general’s calculation. The other was the clear advantage in changing the hostile attitude of the Zionist lobby in Washington at a time when it could derail the supply of F-16s and other military hardware to Islamabad.
In the event, the backlash did not materialise. From day one after the Istanbul meeting, Musharraf and his prime minister Shaukat Aziz have repeated the mantra that final recognition of Israel depends on the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. This reiteration of a long-standing policy has taken the wind out of the religious right’s opposition to any contacts with Israel. Also, virtually every secular party, although resentful of Musharraf’s dictatorial ways, has supported the initiative. One reason the mullahs are having problems getting much traction on this issue is that the average Pakistani understands that Israel is here to stay, and Pakistan’s refusal to recognise it changes nothing. The media debate is more of an intellectual exercise, and allows people to let off steam on a matter close to their heart. The public acceptance of Israeli assistance for earthquake victims is an indication of how far Pakistan has travelled on this sensitive issue. A major change to have occurred over the last half century is that most Pakistanis now equate Israel with Jews, period. Hardly anybody here has ever met a Jew, and to a generation increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world, their only abiding image of Jews is of soldiers in body armour shooting at defenceless Palestinians. Drawing room discussions about the Middle East soon wander off into half-baked analyses of Greater Israel, and the diabolic grip the pro-Israel lobby has over policy makers in the United States. And if you wait long enough, somebody will bring up the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
And yet, underlying this veneer of anti-Semitism, is a grudging admiration for Israel’s many achievements. Many letters published in newspapers recently point out that Pakistan has no quarrel with Israel, and if Egypt and Jordan have recognised it, why shouldn’t we? Having tested the waters, and found them to be a comfortable temperature, I have little doubt that Musharraf will push ahead and build on this first public contact, stopping short of formal recognition until the state of Palestine comes into being. His ground-breaking address to the American Jewish Council in New York on his visit to the US last September indicates his readiness to engage with Jews at the highest level. I have no doubt more contacts will soon follow.
 

Bad boys versus bad girls & obsession with bad news
Malou Mangahas

AS most political leaders are prone to do in the face of sliding popularity ratings, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo last week declared open hostilities with the media, chiding it for its supposed obsession with “bad news.” In a speech before a convention of broadcasters, she said the media should shift its coverage from stories about losers to that about winners. It was time, she added, for journalists to practice “responsible journalism” and shed their “bad boy” image. “I appeal to you not to be used wittingly or unwittingly as pawns in political games, pawns in destabilisation,” she said, citing that “the coverage of kangaroo courts, lynch mobs and witch hunt assails the peace of mind and the hope of our people.”
By all indications, what gets her all riled up is the incessantly extensive coverage of free and cable TV networks of congressional inquiries, talks shows that often feature opposition leaders as panelists, and periodic protest rallies. The “kangaroo court” she referred to is the opposition-sponsored Citizens Congress for Truth and Accountability that is hearing out evidence that she allegedly cheated her way to power in the 2994 presidential elections. Instead of negative news, Ms Arroyo exhorted journalists to highlight government’s efforts to reduce the budget deficit, the peso’s recovery vis-à-vis the greenback, and better management of the treasury. To soothe media’s ruffled feathers, her deputy rushed to explain that Ms Arroyo was merely being frank and honest. She is frustrated, the deputy intoned, over the ‘missed opportunities’ of the Philippines, supposedly a country on the verge of economic takeoff, because of “the propensity of some sections of the media to magnify or be fixated on negative occurrences and issues.”
Expectedly, the President’s speech drew mild, and grudgingly polite, applause. The journalists in the house promptly fired back. A columnist noted that Press freedom is part and parcel of the deal that is democracy. A journalism professor reminded Ms Arroyo that the media’s obligation is to inform the people, and not simply to report stories unfavourable to the government. A network executive stressed that media’s main duty and loyalty should be to promote the needs and wants and welfare of the people, and not Ms Arroyo’s administration.
Yet by far the most acerbic comments came from the non-journalists in the Philippine Congress and Senate, who dutifully rose to the defense of free speech and Press. A senator compared that if journalists were the Philippines’ “bad boys,” then for “lying, cheating and stealing” the vote in last year’s elections, Ms Arroyo is the Philippines’ “bad girl.” The President’s lecture against the media harvested a barrage of criticism from both administration and opposition lawmakers. “Tyrants”, according to a senator, “shoot messengers who bring bad news...(no) matter if the news is true.” Ms Arroyo is “not a winner by any measure,” seconded another. A third advised that defeat is foreordained in any president’s war against the media. Ms Arroyo’s predecessors had all picked fights with the Press, he noted, and “(they) are no longer around yet the Press remains alive and kicking.”