Iran nuke revelation won’t change anything
The biggest news from last week’s United Nations and G-20 meetings was the revelation of a second gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility under construction on a military base near Qom, Iran. Although the Iranian government denies that its failure to disclose the construction of this facility to the IAEA constitutes a breach of Iran’s obligations under the NPT, the U.S., British, and French governments disagree.
President Obama and his advisers hope that last week’s dramatic disclosure will finally create the diplomatic leverage over Iran the West has heretofore lacked. They are hoping that one more case of Iran’s cheating will be enough to convince Russia and China to support tougher economic and financial sanctions against Iran, sanctions that will be stern enough to change Iranian behavior. This is very unlikely to happen.
Russia and China have established their policies on Iran and the disclosure of the Qom facility does not add any information to the calculations that led to those policies. Certain elements of the Russian and Chinese industrial bureaucracies see Iran as an important export market. China sees Iran as an important future energy supplier. The foreign policy establishments in Russia and China have always resisted the idea of using the UN Security Council as a tool to inflict punishment on a country. They especially don’t want to support such an effort that is organized by the U.S. and western Europe. For these reasons (and more) the Qom revelation isn’t likely to change Russian and Chinese policy toward Iran. And if Russia and China don’t agree to tougher sanctions against Iran, Iran will not suffer from tougher sanctions. And this means that sanctions won’t be a route to changing Iranian behavior.
Should Russia and China worry about a nuclear-armed Iran? And should Russia and China worry about what their non-cooperation on Iranian sanctions will do to their relations with the U.S. and Europe?
Russian and Chinese policymakers are likely counting on the following end-state for the Iranian nuclear program: they likely believe Iran will become an undeclared but assumed nuclear weapons state, similar to Israel’s status. They also appear to be unconcerned about Iran becoming a future nuclear proliferator, either to terrorists or to other states. Russian and Chinese leaders likely assume that the U.S. will have to expend great energy providing protection to Israel and the GCC countries, establishing a balance of power in the region against Iran. They are counting on America’s risk aversion to prevent a major war against Iran from breaking out. Meanwhile, if the U.S. ends up distracted by expanded Iranian-backed subversions, insurgencies, and proxy wars, so much the better for Russia and China.
As for Russian and Chinese relations with the West, Russian and Chinese leaders calculate that those relations will be governed by other permanent interests and not by a dispute over how to handle Iran.
This is my guess as to how the Russian and Chinese governments view the Iranian problem. Obama, Gordon Brown, and Nicholas Sarkozy will find out (if they haven’t already) that international economic sanctions will not be a solution for the Iran situation.
The next question for Western policymakers is whether they can arrange without war a stable and geo-strategically acceptable end-state with a nuclear-armed Iran. And if not, what risks and costs should the West be —to take?
