The Daily Telegraph wrote on Monday Nov. 5: one of the many tragic consequences of the Iraq war is that it has made it harder to act against Iran. The geographical and alphabetical proximity of the two countries tempts us into false comparisons.
I opposed the invasion of Iraq, because I didn’t believe that Iraq had a weapons programme. When it comes to Iran, though, there can be no doubt that the regime is developing a nuclear capability, and that it has the delivery mechanism: Shahhab-3 missiles, with a range of 1,500 miles (2414 Km)…
It’s the Buenos Aires bomb that I find most interesting. What possible strategic interest can the mullahs have had in Argentina? The answer, surely, is that the very remoteness of the target made it attractive: Teheran was flaunting its ability to strike wherever it wanted. That is what makes an Iranian bomb so frightening: we are not dealing, as we were in the COLD WAR, with a regime pursuing rational aims. The ayatollahs play by different rules.
Yet our response – and by “our”, I mean the EU’s – has been to pursue a policy of “constructive engagement” in the hope of jollying the mullahs out of their nuclear ambitions. To his credit, even Jack Straw, who was the most visible agent of that policy, and who for a while seemed to be in Teheran every other week, now accepts that it has failed.
What, though, is the alternative? Well, in between the current policy of passing UN resolutions, and the option of direct military action, there are several escalating steps. First, there is economic isolation.
By that, I don’t mean the withholding of investment by a few Western firms, something which is already happening; I mean proper sanctions. The EU is easily Iran’s largest trade partner and, as Malcolm Rifkind has pointed out, much of that trade is underwritten by export credit guarantees. Proper sanctions should include the seizure of assets, the freezing of accounts and travel embargoes.
Then there is the option of sponsoring internal dissent: something the Iranians are quite happy to do in other countries.
One of the sillier concessions we made to the ayatollahs during our “constructive engagement” phase was to decide that the military arm of the main OPPOSITION group, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, was a terrorist organisation. Removing that tag from this group – the People’s Mujahideen of Iran – and hanging it instead on the ayatollahs might indicate that we mean business. We could be doing far more to back democratic OPPOSITION groups… And as a last resort, if nothing else works, we could apply the kind of armed siege, complete with no-fly zone and targeted air strikes…
Before you complain about escalation, consider the consequences of further non-escalation. The Iranians were implicated in terrorist attacks against Western interests.
Until now they got away with it…