Reading the future in Tehran

Pakistan is suspected to have proliferated nuclear technology not only to Iran, Libya and North Korea but to a fourth Arab state as well. All logic points to the possibility of that unidentified state being Saudi Arabia. Riyadh financed Pakistan’s nuclear programme over the years. It acquired long-range CSS-2 missiles from China in 1986-87 even as Pakistan was assembling its nuclear weapons with Chinese assistance and the US looking away. The Saudi defence minister is the only foreign dignitary (other than the Chinese and perhaps North Koreans) allowed to visit Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Therefore the Iranians have every reason to worry about a Sunni nuclear threat. According to Dr A.Q. Khan’s confession, confirmed by General Aslam Beg, General Zia permitted Khan to help Iran with nuclear enrichment technology up to a point. That was at a time when Iran was compelled to accept a ceasefire with Saddam — an act equated by Ayatollah Khomeini to drinking poison. It would appear that Khan has been milking the Iranians of a lot of money even as he transferred technology in a trickle to Iran. Compare the speed with which North Koreans got their uranium enrichment technology from Pakistan and were able to reach full enrichment capability with the slow drip of similar technology transfer to Iran. It is also possible that enrichment technology transfer to Iran resulted in Tehran keeping quiet about Pakistan’s proliferation to other Arab countries.

Under these circumstances, will the Iranians totally abjure their nuclear option, especially when the US and the West are not even willing to disclose to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the rest of the world full details of Pakistani proliferation and Pakistan’s links with the Western European firms dealing in nuclear black-market transactions? The US not only shielded Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran, but also Chinese supply of M-9 and M-11 missiles to Pakistan from 1993 to 2000. And till today it has not sought an explanation from Saudi Arabia for its acquisition of CSS-2 missiles. While the Israelis highlight the Iranian nuclear threat, they never refer to the Pakistani-Saudi threat. That would indicate that in their assessment the Saudi-Pakistan nuclear-missile capability is intended mainly to deter the rise of Shia autonomy in West Asia.

A remarkable aspect of the debate on the Iranian nuclear threat in the US and Europe is the near silence of most of the media and academia on the Iranian threat perception, and on the history of Pakistani proliferation. While President Bush repeatedly refers to Iran as part of the axis of evil, he is silent on the nation which holds the record on nuclear proliferation and on whose proliferation activities the US Congress is demanding reports from the CIA. The longer the Iranians hold out, the greater the possibility of Pakistani-Saudi nuclear threats to the Shia regions in the Middle East getting exposed. During the recent confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked about the possibility of Pakistani WMDs (nuclear weapons) falling into wrong hands. She replied there were contingency plans to deal with such situations and they could be discussed only in closed executive sessions. Yet the American executive, academia and media do not discuss the Pakistani nuclear threat to the western world or Iran. The nuclear flashpoint is not Kashmir as ill-informed western academics and mediapersons often claim. It is the Persian Gulf area which saw the longest and most intensive war in the developing world with the use of WMDs by Saddam, with full support of the West. Unfortunately, caught in the clutches of blackmail of the Sunni Pakistan-Saudi Arabian axis, the US is unwittingly lending itself to stoking the fires of a 12-centuries-old animosity. Both Wahabi Saudi Arabia and Sunni Pakistan have a vital interest in getting Iran stripped of its nuclear capability even as they manage to preserve theirs. The longer the US conflict with Iran continues, the more the US will need bases and facilities in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It would also help the two authoritarian Muslim states to preserve their regimes longer as the US gets entangled in Iran.

Iran is not Iraq and the Iranian regime has a lot more legitimacy than Saddam’s had — and if Iran is attacked it would be in a position to destabilise the entire Shia world. That may suit the interests of Saudi Arabian and Pakistani regimes. It is often overlooked the only Middle Eastern Muslim states which hold reasonably fair and free elections are Iran and Lebanon, both Shia states. Now the Shia majority Iraq is joining them. No doubt their constitutions are not based on liberal-democratic principles. While these states accept the principles of representative government, Sunni Islam is resistant to that principle. The US appears to ignore that there are greater chances of earlier and easier democratisation of countries which accept representative government than states which maintain that representative rule is un-Islamic.