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IRAN'S LAST BUT ONE CHANCE<aut>Sergei Karaganov
<src>Rossiiskaya Gazeta, February 4, 2006, p. 3
<sum>Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council, on the Iranian problem: Tehran is facing a choice.</sum>
<cov>SERGEI KARAGANOV, CHAIRMAN OF THE FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY COUNCIL, ON THE IRANIAN PROBLEM
Tehran's patent disinclination to drop potentially military nuclear programs and determination to set up machinery for uranium enrichment have persuaded the West that Iranian leadership is using the talks to buy time. Russia lasted the longest, withstanding for years the Western pressure on it to force it to abandon construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushier, Russia that proved itself a reliable partner indeed. Moscow even sold conventional weapons to Iran.
Generally speaking, Russia views Iran as a friendly state and a potentially valuable geopolitical partner in the region.
Russia even came up with the offer of organization of a joint venture on its territory that will enrich uranium for Iran. It would have eliminated all suspicions of Tehran's true intentions. Negotiations began - with little to show for it. Russian offers were turned down, the talks were resumed again, and finally Tehran asked for Beijing's involvement in the project.
Expert and political circles in the West at first and even Russian experts now became convinced that Tehran is but buying time to make a nuclear bomb.
What experts used to claim was that Iran needed a nuclear program to barter it for abandonment of the existing semi-isolation and improvement of its international prestige are no longer confident of that.
Tehran vehemently denounces all suspicions that a bomb is what it really is after. Nobody trusts it anymore. No country with a closed political system is trusted.
Statements of the president of Iran concerning Israel only made things worse for Tehran. The image of a responsible country began falling apart.
I'd like to point out right here and now that the Iranians have a moral right to aspire for nuclear weapons. They live in a dangerous region. They have Pakistan with nuclear weapons in the south, a country that may explode literally any moment. They have unstable Iraq with American troops in it in the west, and Israel as well - the country Tehran calls its bitter enemy. (In the meantime, this is mostly a problem of Iran itself, and its obsession with the image of the enemy.)
The Iranians complain - not exactly unreasonably - against unfairness on the part of the international community. They recall the Iranian-Iraqi war when everyone - the USSR and the United States alike - were helping Iraq and never even said a word when the latter deployed chemical warfare means.
The problem is, nobody wants Iran possessing nuclear weapons - neither countries of the region, nor world powers and first and foremost Russia which is close to Iran and certainly within reach of its potential delivery means.
Appearance of nuclear weapons in Iranian arsenals will apparently provoke Saudi Arabia and Egypt into aspiring for these weapons too. Strategic stability the "old" nuclear powers reached after balancing on the verge of total extinction of man on at least several occasions will become history. Chances of a nuclear exchange with unpredictable consequences will increase enormously. Nobody will be able to predict behavior of a nuclear Iran. Indeed, what if the elements that even now demand elimination of some other countries, come to power in Tehran and order the Persian Gulf closed? The Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty will be made obsolete overnight. The risk of preventive strikes will be enormous, and that is something nobody - not even the Americans - want to resort to now, while Iran is without nuclear weapons yet, because everyone is aware of their limited military expediency and unlimited political harm.
The situation being what it is Moscow did not have the moral right to continue to resist the calls for transfer of the Iranian nuclear folder to the UN Security Council. Interests of national security compelled Moscow to side up with the West on the matter. All world powers agree with the necessity of having the IAEA update the UN Security Council on February 2. The UN Security Council may take the matter up only in another month, after the IAEA's final report. Tehran owes this "opportunity" to Moscow. Even afterwards, however, there will be some time before sanctions are invoked.
It is up to Tehran now. Its spokesmen say that transfer of the matter to the level of the UN Security Council makes negotiations impossible. It is a wrong assumption. Others claim that neither the parliament of Iran nor the people will put up with it. It is hard to believe. What with the very "controllable democracy" and tame media outlets, advocates of this idea should come up with more valid arguments.
Iran is facing a historic challenge, and it does not have a lot of time for response. It has two choices. It may abandon its potential nuclear weapons (say, by accepting the Russian offer) and barter it for withdrawal from international isolation and acknowledgement as one of the major and responsible players in the world. It will earn Iran foreign investments, ensure its rapid economic development, and boost its prestige and weight in international affairs.
Or Tehran may continue its nuclear program that looks suspiciously like a military program. It will earn it sanctions, a thoroughly unfriendly neighborhood, restriction of its ability to count on external resources and technologies, economic slowdown, and eventual lag. In addition, the constant fear of preventive strikes at the objects of its nuclear or even perhaps economic infrastructure.
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SENATOR MCCAIN CALLS ON THE WEST TO BOYCOTT THE G8 SUMMIT IN ST. PETERSBURGAmerican senator John McCain of the Republican Party representing Arizona and known for his harsh statements against Russian authorities called on leaders of Western countries to boycott the G8 summit planned to be held in July of 2006, in St. Petersburg.
In his speech at the conference in Munich dedicated to security policy senator McCain said that President Putin finally stopped reforms in Russia and did not share democratic values practiced by the US and European Countries. According to the senator, Putin's Russia is neither democratically nor economically developed countries, which provides serious reasons for consideration of expedience of the visit of G8 leaders to the summit in St. Petersburg.
According to McCain, Russia could really help the US and Europe in the process of world arrangement after the cold war. However, instead of this the Kremlin keeps pursuing domestic and foreign policy contradicting democratic values and interests of Western countries.
As an example McCain mentioned the attitude of Russia to the Iranian problem. Even after Iran interrupted negotiations and restarted its nuclear program Russia hinted that it kept considering a possibility to sell short-range missiles worth $1 billion to it. The senator also accused Russia of pressurizing Georgia and Ukraine through raising prices of energy resources whereas Russia kept supplying gas at low prices to Lukashenko's regime in Minsk.
According to McCain, Russia also does its best to support dictatorship regimes in Central Asia. Finally, it continues the war in Chechnya that has already cost lives of 200,000 civilians and thus pushing the Moslem population towards radical Islamic fundamentalists. The senator cracked down on policy of Russian authorities towards civil liberties. McCain stated that Putin practically deprived mass media, parliament, governors and judges of independence.
<ref>lenta.ru, February 05, 2006
RVR
