Iran impasse

THE International Atomic Energy Agency’s board meeting on Thursday seemed to offer little hope insofar as breaking the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear programme is concerned. Last week, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, was cautiously optimistic when he said Iran had been making progress in addressing the UN watchdog’s concerns. But he reiterated after this week’s meeting that the IAEA was still not convinced about several important aspects of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. No wonder the observations have failed to calm the fears in the West. The US and Europe have been quick to call for tougher sanctions on Iran. They have even demanded a deadline be set for Iran as waiting for President Ahmedinejad to come clean no longer seems to be a viable option. But the permanent members of the Security Council are divided over the issue. While the US and Sarkozy’s France are tilting towards options like military intervention, Russia and China are rightly reluctant to go head with such drastic steps. They have called for further negotiations. While the IAEA report on Iran has only served to harden the already tough stand of the West, fissures are getting more and more prominent within Iran. With elections round the corner, the Ahmedinejad government has apparently twisted the IAEA report in its favour. It is claiming that the report says that Teheran is showing “proactive cooperation” and the nuclear programme is peaceful and aimed at developing civilian facilities, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is sparing no efforts in projecting the nuclear mission as a matter of national pride — if the West has it, why can’t Iran get its own nuclear programme?
Fair enough. But the political elite is evidently loath to give in to any populist agenda. Voices of dissent are getting louder. Eminent personalities like Nobel laurate Shirin Ebadi has spoken out against the enrichment programme in public. In what can be regarded as a rare attack on the president, a leading hard-line newspaper has accused Ahmedinejad of harassing political opponents. Apparently, the Iranian president is branding anyone opposing the nuclear programme as traitor. President Ahmedinejad’s report card insofar as the economic progress is concerned is also not very satisfactory. Inflation is reaching an all-time high. So it remains to be seen, in the face of increasing domestic and international pressure, what will help tide President Ahmedinejad over until the general elections. And, as it has been pointed out on several occasions, the US and its allies will do well to remember that restraint or flexibility will go a long way in avoiding another dangerous misadventure in the Middle East.

Humiliation of Howard

AS JOHN Howard is voted out of office in a stunning electoral defeat for his centre-right Liberal National Party, it marks more than a generational shift in Australian politics. For, the echo of this fall will be reverberated across the globe, if only for the reason that Howard, who stood as a rock behind American President George Bush in the epoch-making Iraq War, is simply going the Tony Blair way: humiliated out of office. This is not simply a defeat for a party, which is part and parcel of electoral politics, and something that everyone takes in his or her stride. Worse, the current elections saw a virtual banishment of a colossus from the Australian parliament — Howard being only the second prime minister in the 106-year history of the federal government to have been accorded this humiliation by the voters. Clearly, Australians were looking for a change and a new leader for some time now. Which is why, even with no new serious issues coming to the fore to upset the ruling side’s applecart, the voters switched sides. In fact, they got on the side of the Labour the moment they saw a new leader at the helm of the party, in the form of former diplomat Kevin Rudd, 11 months ago. There was no looking back for Rudd, and the party he led, from Day One. Overnight, he turned the tables on Howard, and got him and his party to win all the opinion polls, a process that culminated in the present voting for the Parliament. Even Howard’s tall claim’s about “good management” of the Australian economy over his four terms in office didn’t cut much ice. And, to which, the people’s response was, “Enough is enough”.
As Australians give up a 69-year-old leader for a young, energetic politician, the mood is palpably upbeat. People would seem to agree with Rodd’s stand that the outgoing prime minister is “out of touch with modern Australia” and is “ill-equipped to deal with new-age issues such as climate change”. Yet, clearly, it was not matters like the Liberal Nationalist leader’s offer to sign the Kyoto Protocol that tilted the balance against Howard. Voters craved for a change. And, Rudd, by virtue of his eminent performance in the past one year, fit the bill. In all fairness, it cannot be said that Howard failed to gauge the public mood turning against him, a reason why, possibly, he had made it clear he would not stay on as leader for more than two years if he won this time. It would appear that this statement had, however, only worked to his added disadvantage — though, his aim might have been to hang around for a little more time and then perform a Blair in Australia. By some reason, wickets were falling one after another, a la Iraq, when it came to the main protagonists of the 2003 misadventure; or, the Bush allies, rather. It started with Spain’s prime minister, followed by Britain’s, and now Australia’s. The culmination of this process is anybody’s guess. But, at the other end, Iraqis are still fighting the war, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, yet.

—Khaleej Times