Nuclear Proliferation: Has Iran won?

Did the American intelligence report let out Iran way too easily. No. After the miscalculations in Iraq was very important for America and UN to work on concrete evidences (though elusive in world affairs) than on political considerations. In last one year, America's push for tougher measures against Iran was taking the shape of another politically motivated unwanted war. Now with this new revelation there is nothing to fear. In fact US will receive more support now for diplomatic measures against Iran's nuclear policies.

Does Iran require nuclear power for civilian purposes? Wonder why? With hydrocarbon reserves this is not the first thing that should be there on the Government's mind. Rather they should look towards the Sheikhs of UAE who are stimulating economic activity in their region by attracting talent and businesses with their extra petro dollars. Iran, which in the past has a better record in developing local human capital should try not to get distracted in showmanship and power politics.

The ayatollahs have wriggled off the nuclear hook, but there is a way to put them on again

WHO would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies? But Iran is doing just that. And it is doing so largely because of an extraordinary own goal by America's spies, the team behind the duff intelligence that brought you the Iraq war.

It doesn't take a fevered brain to assume that if Iran's ayatollahs get their hands on the bomb, the world could be in for some nasty surprises. Iran's claim that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful is widely disbelieved. That is why Russia and China joined America, Britain, France and Germany at the UN Security Council to try to stop Iran enriching uranium. Until two months ago they seemed ready to support a third and tougher sanctions resolution against Iran. But then America's spies spoke out, and since then five painstaking years of diplomacy have abruptly unravelled (see article).

The intelligence debacle over Iraq has made spies anxious about how their findings are used. That may be why they and the White House felt it right to admit, in a National Intelligence Estimate in December, that they now think Iran halted clandestine work on nuclear warheads five years ago. As it happens, this belief is not yet shared by Israel or some of America's European allies, who see the same data. But no matter: the headline was enough to pull the rug from under the diplomacy. In Berlin last month, the Russians and Chinese made it clear that if there is a third resolution, it will be a mild slap on the wrist, not another turn of the economic screw.

At the same time, Iran is finding an ally in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Its director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, is a Nobel peace-prize winner who is crusading to confound those he calls “the crazies” in Washington by helping Iran to set its nuclear house in order, receive a clean bill of health and so avert the possibility of another disastrous war.

Honest spies, a peace-loving nuclear watchdog. What can be wrong with that? Nothing: unless the honesty of the spies is deliberately misconstrued and the watchdog fails to do its actual job of sniffing out the details of Iran's nuclear activities.

Thanks for letting us off

Beaming like cats at the cream, a posse of Iranians went to January's World Economic Forum in Davos claiming a double vindication. Had not America itself now said that Iran had no weapons programme? Was not Iran about to give the IAEA the answers it needed to “close” its file? In circumstances like these, purred Iran's foreign minister, there was no case for new sanctions, not even the light slap Russia and China prefer.

Yet Iran's argument is a travesty. Although the National Intelligence Estimate does say that Iran probably stopped work on a nuclear warhead in 2003, it also says that Iran was indeed doing such work until then, and nobody knows how far it got. The UN sanctions are anyway aimed not at any warhead Iran may or may not be building in secret, but at what it is doing in full daylight, in defiance of UN resolutions, to enrich uranium and produce plutonium. We need this for electricity, says Iran. But it could fuel a bomb. And once a country can produce such fuel, putting it in a warhead is relatively easy.

Some countries, it is true, are allowed to enrich uranium without any fuss. The reason for depriving Iran of what it calls this “right” is a history of deception that led the IAEA to declare it out of compliance with its nuclear safeguards. So it is essential that Mr ElBaradei's desire to end this confrontation does not now tempt him to gloss over the many unanswered questions. With a lame duck in the White House and sanctions unravelling, Iran really would be home free then.

Would it be so tragic if a tricky Iran were to slip the net of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? North Korea quit the treaty and carried out a bomb test in 2006. Israel never joined, saying coyly only that it won't be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons into the region—but won't be the second either. India and Pakistan, two other outsiders, have already strutted their stuff. Why should one more gate-crasher spoil the party?

One obvious danger is that a nuclear-armed Iran, or one suspected of being able to weaponise at will, could set off a chain reaction that turns Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, even Turkey rapidly nuclear too. America and the Soviet Union, with mostly only their own cold war to worry about, had plenty of brushes with catastrophe. Multiplying Middle Eastern nuclear rivalries would drive up exponentially the risk that someone could miscalculate—with dreadful consequences.

Time for Plan B

For some this threat alone justifies hitting Iran's nuclear sites before it can build the bomb they fear it is after. But if Iran is bent on having a bomb, deterrence is better. Mr Bush has already said that America will keep Israel from harm. By extending its security umbrella to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, America might stifle further rivalry before the region goes critical.

Much better, however, to avoid a nuclear Iran altogether. Mr Bush says diplomacy can still do this. It is hard to see how. But he does have one card up his sleeve: the offer of a grand bargain to address the gamut of differences between America and Iran, from the future of Iraq to the Middle East peace process. So far Iran's leaders have brushed aside America's offer of talks “anytime, anywhere” and about “anything” by pointing to the condition attached: that Iran first suspend its uranium enrichment. Strangely enough, the best way to put pressure on Iran's rulers now is for America to drop that rider.

There would need to be a time limit or Iran could simply enrich on regardless, with what looked like the world's blessing. Similarly Russia and China would need to agree to much tougher sanctions to help concentrate minds. Iran's leaders may still say no. But the ayatollahs would have to explain to ordinary Iranians why they should pay such a high price in prosperity forgone for making a fetish out of not talking, and out of technologies that aren't even needed to keep the lights on. If Iran's leaders cannot be persuaded any other way, perhaps they can be embarrassed out of their bomb plans.

The new wars of religion

An old menace has returned, but in very different forms

after a long time ...an unbiased of religion and conflicts

EARLIER this year Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to his country's parliament, posed two questions: “Who are our enemies?” and “Why do they hate us?” He described an axis of evil, with Iran's enemies being “all the wicked men of the world, whether abroad or at home”. The root cause of their hatred was religious—a loathing of “whomsoever should serve the glory of God”. Having described George Bush's atrocities, he told the cheering MPs, “Truly, your great enemy is the American—through that enmity that is in him against all that is of God in you.” Fortunately, Iran would not fight alone: it had the support of Muslims around the world. Be bold, he advised, and “you will find that you act for a very great many people that are God's own.”

The Bridgeman Art LibraryOliver's army

For Mr Ahmadinejad, read Oliver Cromwell; for Iran, England; and for America, Catholic Spain. The quotes above come from a speech made by Cromwell to the English Parliament in 1656. Parliament then passed an oath of loyalty in which English Catholics were asked to disown the pope and most of the canons of Catholic belief, or face losing two-thirds of their worldly goods. Shortly afterwards Cromwell invaded Ireland.

“Faith is a source of conflict,” reads a sign at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in the City of London—adding that it can also be “a resource to transform conflict”. Appropriately, the centre was built in a church blown up in 1993 by Irish terrorists, brought up, no doubt, with tales of Cromwell's atrocities.

Conflict, of course, does not necessarily equate to war. But there are some depressing echoes of Cromwell's time.

•Faith is once again prolonging conflict. Religion is seldom the casus belli: indeed, in many struggles, notably the Middle East in modern times, it is amazing how long it took for religion to become a big part of the argument. But once there, it makes conflicts harder to resolve. A squabble over land (which can be divided) or power (which can be shared) or rules (that can be fudged) becomes a dispute over non-negotiable absolutes. If you believe that God granted you the West Bank, or that any form of abortion is murder, compromise is not really possible.

•Once again, politicians are stirring up religious passion. Mr Ahmadinejad may not have told Muslims that the Israeli “has an interest in your bowels” (as Cromwell did of Spaniards), but he has called for Israel's removal and denied the Holocaust. Osama bin Laden rages that Islam is under sustained attack: any Muslim who “collaborates” with the West is an apostate.

American leaders have been more careful, but many use religious imagery. In his new book, “God and Gold” (see article), Walter Russell Mead compares Ronald Reagan's denunciation of the Godless Soviet Union (the “Evil Empire”) to Cromwell's speech. Franklin Graham spoke for many on the religious right when he denounced Islam as a “very evil and wicked religion”. American conservatives seem undecided on whether the battle against “Islamofascism” is the third world war (Newt Gingrich) or the fourth (Norman Podhoretz).

•Once again, outsiders are rushing to defend their religions: religious scraps attract money and soldiers. Just as Guy Fawkes, Britain's most famous religious terrorist, hardened his radical beliefs when fighting for Catholicism in the Netherlands, European Muslims have gone to defend their faith in Kashmir, Chechnya and Iraq. Some of the most fervent supporters of India's Hindutva movement come from the diaspora. Many migrants define themselves by their faith, not their new home.

•One of the world's great religions, Christianity, split into Catholic and Protestant in the 16th century. Now Islam is having to contend with a sharpening split between Sunni and Shia. Once again nation states are weak: most Middle Eastern countries are recent creations. And there is a ring of instability on Islam's southern frontier, which runs roughly along the 10th parallel from West Africa to the Philippines.

•Terrorist outrages are once again presumed to have religious connections, as they would have done in Cromwell's time. In the 1970s terrorism seemed to be the preserve of Maoist guerrillas, middle-class Germans and Italians or the then very secular (and partly Christian-led) Palestine Liberation Organisation. Now three out of the four most likely flashpoints for nuclear conflict—Pakistan-India, Iran and Israel—have a strong religious element. The only exception is North Korea.

Wars can be Godless too

It is possible that these similarities could escalate into something horrifying. A confrontation between nuclear Iran on one side and Israel and America on the other would reverberate around the globe. But the idea that the world is reverting to a former age is too simplistic.

Most obviously, humanity can find plenty of reasons for genocide and suffering without troubling God. “The 20th century was the most secular and the most bloody in human history,” argues George Weigel, a leading American conservative. What he calls “the Godless religions of Nazism and communism” killed tens of millions of people. Each had its theory of salvation, its rites, its prophets, its sacred places and its distinctive idea of morality; but communists and Nazis did not use God to stir up passions. The Cambodian genocide was similarly secular.

Where it does exist, religious conflict is now far less of a top-down affair. No government officially approves of killing people solely because of their religion, and no significant religious leader sanctifies that killing by blessing armadas or preaching crusades. Last year the pope took issue with Islam in a speech at Regensburg, but he also opposed the Iraq war. Most Islamic authorities preach non-violence. Ayatollah Sistani, the most revered Shia on the planet, has often urged restraint in Iraq.

Of course, this does not prevent individual clerics from committing appalling acts of brutality: Catholic priests helped torture people in Argentina, Buddhist monks have led murderous attacks in Sri Lanka and imams have encouraged suicide-bombing in Israel. But every zealot interviewed for this special report, including those with blood near their hands, insisted that his religion was peaceful.

Meanwhile, the power of governments to control religious politics has declined. The wars of religion took place in an age of “cuius regio, eius religio”, where the monarch dictated the religion. England once turned to Protestantism because Henry VIII found the Catholic church's rules on matrimony irksome. Nowadays, nobody is trying to improve America's relations with the Middle East by marrying off the Bush twins to Arab princes.

The new battles

With national armies no longer marching under religious banners, grievances have reappeared in several guises. None of them is easy for the West to deal with.

The one that gets most attention is terrorism—especially Islamic terrorism. States are certainly actors in this: Iran may not openly wage religious war, but it has been happy to back Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. But then neither Hamas nor Hizbullah is a purely sectarian organisation. Like the IRA in Ireland, they both have political-territorial objectives.

Most of the main jihadist terrorist organisations are bottom-up affairs. Mr bin Laden would no doubt like to control another state (as he once did from Afghanistan). But his organisation has been able to mount attacks and recruit volunteers without help from a government.

The second way in which religion thrusts itself into politics is inter-communal violence. Once again, other forces are often at work, such as tribalism in Nigeria or nationalism in India. But religion supplies the underlying viciousness. Sectarian violence has been responsible for most of the killing in Iraq in the aftermath of the war. Some 68,000 Sri Lankans have died since 1983. Other, lower-level conflicts, such as Catholics and Protestants attacking each other in Mexico's Chiapas, occasionally flare up. Outside parties can play a role in stoking up such struggles (and supplying arms), as Iran has done in Iraq and Syria has done in Lebanon. But most of these fights have a local, tit-for-tat feel. The violence is often set off by events such as marches, feast days or elections.

Third, there is state-based repression, where religion is either the target or the motivation. In the Muslim world the repression is sometimes by theocracies (like Iran or Saudi Arabia), against irreligious sorts, such as adulterers, heretics and homosexuals. But it also goes the other way, with secular states (Syria, Egypt, much of North Africa) discriminating against religious dissidents. In the most bizarre example, China recently banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. The religious-affairs agency explained that this was “an important move to institutionalise management of reincarnation”. The real purpose is to prevent the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, from being succeeded by someone from outside China.

Yet the foremost way in which religion has expressed itself around the world has been more peaceful: the ballot box. Religious people have either formed religious parties (such as India's BJP) or converted secular ones into more faith-driven outfits (such as America's Republican Party). In places where religion was frowned upon by the state, such as Mexico or Turkey, greater freedom has allowed the pious to form parties, such as the Catholic-oriented PAN party or the Islamic AK Party.

And it has not just been a case of democracy helping religion. Timothy Shah of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that it can go the other way too. By his calculation, more than 30 of the 80 or so countries that became freer in 1972-2000 owed some of the improvement to religion. Sometimes established churches helped to push for democracy (eg, the Catholic church in Poland), but more often it was pressure from the grassroots: religious people usually look for a degree of freedom (if only to pursue their faith).

All this means that the modern wars of religion are mercifully less violent and all-consuming than their predecessors; but also that tackling the politics of religion is more awkward than it used to be. Culture wars are now global (a subject to which this special report will return).

This complicates foreign policy enormously. Should America focus on the tiny number of angry Muslims with guns, or the millions who have voted for Islamic parties in Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Algeria and Palestine? If most religious fanatics were bent on conquest and terror rather than democracy, their causes would be easier to discredit. And if religion were the sole cause of the conflicts, it would be easier to work out “why they hate us”.