Iran, the US, and Israel locked in three-way battle of wills
Despite the increasing Western pressure on the pro-Iranian Assad regime in Syria, Iran has reasonable grounds for satisfaction, particularly given Russia’s hostile reaction to the proposed lifting of the European Union arms embargo on Syria’s opposition forces. Equally, on the nuclear front, the latest International Atomic Energy (IAEA) report indicates that its strategy of foot-dragging to buy time has enabled it to get steadily closer to its assumed goal of acquiring nuclear weapons while making any unilateral Israeli military action progressively more problematic. There also remain clear differences between Israel and the United States over how to deal with Tehran, differences that are likely to have been exacerbated by Russia’s strong response to the EU move to arm the Syrian rebels.
Western and Israeli policy on Syria continues to benefit Iran. At the beginning of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, neither the West nor Israel was certain that they wanted to see the downfall of the minority Alawi regime, despite its pro-Iranian orientation and links to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Assads, after all, had provided stability on Israel’s northern border for 40 years, and, besides, neither China nor Russia were prepared to allow a rerun of the Libyan scenario.
Now, a belated move by France and Britain to provide arms to the Syrian rebels is unlikely to prove as effective as they would like for two reasons. First, the initiative is widely opposed in Europe, partly because of the predominant role Sunni Islamist elements are playing in the rebellion and partly because of the chronic splits within the opposition. It is said that there are over 120 ‘brigades’, factions, and armed militias fighting the Assad regime.
The second reason to doubt the likely effectiveness of the Franco-British initiative to arm the rebels is because it has provoked a furious Russian reaction that is likely to negate its effects. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has accused the EU of “throwing fuel on the fire” and committed Russia to supplying the Assad regime with S-300 systems capable of intercepting both manned aircraft and guided missiles.
Ryabkov said on 28 May: "We think this delivery is a stabilizing factor and that such steps in many ways restrain some hothead...from exploring scenarios in which this conflict could be given an international character with participation of outside forces, to whom this idea is not foreign."
This increased Russian support for Assad also comes at a time of increasing support from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group, and from Iraq.
All of this would suggest that the predicted demise of the Iranian-led ‘Shia crescent’ is still uncertain. Even if/when Assad does eventually fall, as Iran’s efforts to woo the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt show, for Tehran pragmatism often outweighs dogmatic sectarianism. Besides, its gains in Iraq, where the Shia are now dominant, will not be undone.
Meanwhile, the latest IAEA report shows that Iran now has 8,960kg of 5% enriched uranium and 324kg of 20% enriched uranium (up 44kg since the IAEA’s last report in February). However, Iran continues to convert a significant proportion of its 20% enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into uranium oxide, a solid form of uranium that cannot be further enriched in centrifuges without being converted back into gas.
In total, Iran now has 182kg of UF6, which remains below Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ‘red line’ threshold of enough 20% enriched uranium to produce one bomb if further enriched to the requisite 90% (around 240kg).
But there is little comfort in the fact that Iran is keeping its 20% enriched stockpile below Netanyahu’s redline threshold given that it is thought to be advancing with the construction of a plutonium production reactor; it is deploying more powerful centrifuges; it could reconvert its uranium oxide stockpile (which is far greater than needed to fuel its Tehran Research Reactor) back into centrifuge-useable gas in a matter of weeks; and, in any case, it is still increasing its stockpile of 20% enriched UF6 .
And, as a Carnegie Endowment analysis of the latest IAEA report put it: “After a decade of uranium fuel production, Iran only has less than half of what it would need to make a single year’s worth of fuel for its Bushehr power reactor. It’s safe to conclude that Iran isn’t enriching uranium to generate electricity for its people…Politically, Iran’s incremental progress means that sanctions aren’t stopping Iran’s nuclear program.”
For the moment all decisions on Iran are on hold until after Iran’s presidential election on 14 June. Iran’s Guardian Council (GC) has ensured that the ‘principle-ists’, that is Islamist conservatives backed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, will dominate the election. The GC has disqualified President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad’s aide Esfandiyar Rahim-Mashai and former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. The former is seen to be too nationalist and not sufficiently Islamist (part of the ‘deviant current’), while Rafsanjani is seen to be too pro-reform because of his opposition to the 2009 post-poll crackdown on ‘seditionists’.
An important question now is whether pro-reform voters will support centrist figures such as Hasan Rowhani and Mohammad Reza Aref or boycott the election. Rowhani is a former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator during the presidency of the reformist Mohammad Khatami. He is close to Rafsanjani, who may try to unite reformist voters behind his candidacy. Aref was also part of the Khatami administration as first vice-president. But in truth, it is hard to see the reformists upsetting the applecart, or the election making much difference to Iran’s trajectory of confrontation with the West, which brings us back to Israel.
Netanyahu continues to insist that Israel is ready, willing, and able to use military force to prevent Iran from crossing his red line, and following the release of the IAEA report, Netanyahu told UK’s Foreign Secretary William Hague that Iran’s continued progress in “pursuing its nuclear weapons programme…is the biggest challenge facing us…the biggest challenge of our time…”.
So far Netanyahu has been held back by the United States which feels, because of its superior firepower, that it can afford to wait longer, or even – in Netanyahu’s worst nightmare – live with a nuclear-armed Iran. It would appear that this three-way battle of wills is heading towards its climax, with Iran’s confidence boosted both by Assad’s durability and by the Russian response to the EU’s move to arm the rebels; with US caution reinforced by the strong Russian reaction to the EU move; and with Israeli scepticism about the effectiveness of sanctions reinforced by the latest IAEA report. JdeC.