The issue of Iran's nuclear program is evolving to become a serious crisis. Unless innovative ideas are found, two possible scenarios, both extremely dangerous, are looming.
The first scenario is the acceptance, for sure accompanied by political and moral censure and also by economic sanctions, of Iran getting access to nuclear weapons.
First of all, there is to stress how utterly risky it is to apply to Iran the argument of a stabilizing effect of nuclear deterrence as we experienced in the framework of the USA-USSR confrontation during the cold war. In reality, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran would increase, not reduce, that country's vulnerability in the face of the two nuclear States that Tehran feels are possible foes, i.e. the USA and Israel, as it is ill-founded to believe that Iran has the technical and economic resources to develop an effective second-shot nuclear capability in the short run. The acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons would therefore make more likely a pre-emptive missile or aerial attack against its nuclear installations and plants.
There is also to keep in mind that Iran, besides having an authoritarian regime with strong fundamentalist tendencies (that have been strengthened under the new President Ahmadinejad, who has even made statements on the elimination of Israel from the Middle East maps), is an unstable State (a similar thing can be said of Afghanistan), where there may be a serious risk of the weapons passing into terrorists' hands, against whom deterrence cannot possibly work, as they do not possess a home territory that can act as hostage for retaliation. If it is not possible to rely on the stabilizing effect of deterrence, it is nevertheless certain that Iran becoming a nuclear power would trigger a domino effect in the entire Middle East, as many Arab States - with Saudi Arabia and Egypt first among them - would be inexorably pushed to start their own nuclear programs. This would make the state of regional security much less secure for Tehran and for all the other States in the area, with evident, very serious implications for the global situation.
The alternative to accepting Iran as a nuclear power is the possibility of a pre-emptive attack by the USA or Israel to destroy the Iranian plants before they get to the stage of producing nuclear weapons. This too would be a nightmare scenario. The already extremely critical situation in the Middle East would erupt with almost uncontrollable consequences for energy supplies (and hence for world economic development), terrorism, and migratory waves. Moreover, the already difficult relationship between Western countries and the developing world, particularly the Islamic states, would suffer serious repercussions. The discriminating attitude that accepts in the Middle East Israel's nuclear armament and fiercely opposes Iran's would be perceived as an intolerable act of arrogance by the West and could only reinforce the tendency towards a clash of civilizations.
As the dangers of Iran's nuclear program become clear, there is an urgent need to formulate a political plan to avert Iran's nuclear armament and then to take concrete steps to put this plan decisively into effect without resorting to the risky option of a pre-emptive attack. For such a policy to be sound, it must be capable of meeting both Iran's objective security requirements, and those of its economic development. It must be stressed that only if those requirements are met will progress towards a peaceful evolution from the present authoritarian, theocratic regime in Tehran towards democracy and modernization be possible. It must also be stressed that in putting a sound and efficient policy towards Iran into effect the European Union's role will be indispensable.
Let us discuss these statements in more detail. First, we have to acknowledge that Iran has genuine concerns about its security and that these are unrelated to its present regime's authoritarian and theocratic nature, so much so that the vast majority of Iranians support the nuclear program and consider the pressures on Iran to renounce its nuclear rights as a signatory State of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to be illegal. Among the challenges to Iran's security we can mention in particular the historical experience of two invasions (in 1941 by Great Britain and the USSR, and in 1980 by Iraq), and of the coup d'état contrived by Churchill and the CIA in 1953 which put an end to the democratic regime of Mossadeq, who advocated nationalizing the oil industry, and returned Reza Pahlavi to the throne. In addition, we must be aware of the chronic instability in the Middle East region, whose central problems are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the overwhelming military might (both conventional and nuclear) of the Israeli State, the US policy aiming at the control of the oil resources in the Middle East and, in this context, pursuing a changeover of non-friendly regimes by force, as happened in Iraq; and the fact that, looking ahead to the eventual depletion of its oil fields, the matter of establishing alternative energy resources - among which nuclear power occupies a central place - is of vital importance.
For the reasons mentioned above, the nuclear military option is a fallacious response to such challenges, yet in the absence of a convincing alternative it seems destined to prevail. Such an alternative will only be possible if Iran's renunciation of the military aspects of its nuclear program (with all possible checks) forms part of a comprehensive regional security agreement, which must include sound guarantees with respect both to Israel's overwhelming power, and to America's policy of changing - by force if necessary - any regime it regards as unfriendly. The agreement should also mark the beginning of a general process of stabilization in the Middle East region. In short, a Conference for the Security and Cooperation in the Middle East should be convened, on the model of the European CSCE, in which a regional system of confidence-building that includes Iran would be agreed, together with a credible control and progressive reduction of armaments, resumption of the dialogue concerning a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, and promoting cooperation in economic and technological fields and on human rights.
Such a framework would establish the conditions for pursuing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along the lines of the agreement signed in Geneva on December 1st, 2003, by Israeli and Palestinian delegations headed respectively by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo; and also for the stabilization of Iraq by replacing imperial American management by multilateral management, implying a decisive role for the UN. Progress in those two fields will, in turn, be a decisive factor in strengthening the regional agreement on security.
Besides the security guarantees provided by the Conference for the Security and Cooperation in the Middle East, compensation for Iran's renunciation of military nuclear capability should consist of action to meet the needs of its economic development. To this end, the following is to be considered: economic and technological cooperation between the countries participating in the regional security agreement, which should eventually be translated into forms of a genuine economic regional integration; Iran's entry in the WTO; an end to the US sanctions enacted by the ILSA (the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, approved by the US Congress in 1996 and renewed in 2001 for another five years); and a comprehensive trading agreement with the European Union.
This said, an essential precondition for putting such a policy in place concerns the NPT. That treaty not only guarantees the non-nuclear-weapon signatory countries "the inalienable right ... to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination", but also the commitment by the nuclear powers "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control".
The significance of this commitment lies in the need to overcome the permanent discrimination between countries possessing nuclear weapons and those which do not. To be lawful, the demand that Iran should renounce nuclear weapons, together with the policy of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in general must therefore be accompanied by real progress towards fulfilling that commitment. This means that the Baruch Plan on the elimination of nuclear weapons should be re-launched and updated. It should, among other things, cover weapons of mass destruction of all kinds, and should also include countries outside the NPT such as India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea which withdrew in 2003. It requires a decisive strengthening of the UN too.
We certainly have to acknowledge that the actions listed above for impeding Iran's nuclear program are difficult to put into practice. Not only is there a need to overcome opposition from the authoritarian, nationalist, obscurantist tendencies that thrive in the Middle East's instability and backwardness. There is also another significant obstacle in the American inclination to deal with world problems with an hegemonic, imperial attitude based on systematic unilateralism, on pre-emptive wars and unrestrained free-market ideology, for all of which the doctrine of spreading democracy acts as an ideological mask. On the other hand, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, world poverty, transnational terrorism, serious instability in entire regions of the world - not to mention the need to govern economic globalization and ecological issues - are fundamental challenges which affect all our planet's varied peoples and their political classes. This fact alone underlines the necessity of formulating a policy aimed at creating a more equitable and peaceful world whose pillars should be stronger international organizations with policies aimed at integration and regional stabilization.
In this context, our vital interest lies in achieving the stabilization of the Middle East and for obvious reasons the EU therefore is expected to play a role of primary importance. Solana's document A safe Europe in a better world shows how the EU, having launched an historical process of supranational pacification, now has a duty to initiate a process aimed at global pacification.
While, with specific regard to the Middle East, initiatives such as the Barcelona process and the EU-3 (France, Great Britain and Germany) trying to persuade Iran to renounce military nuclear power are already underway, the question remains of how to increase the coherence and efficiency of the European Union's actions. Its policy towards Tehran, for example, should be part of a comprehensive project of regional stabilization of the kind outlined above. A clear and resolute proposal should therefore be made to this effect. It must be emphasized that unless the pressures on Tehran are contained within a framework of talks proposing a regional security agreement as a convincing alternative to Iran's nuclear arms program, they could unwittingly be instrumental in leading to an American-Israeli policy of launching a pre-emptive attack against Iranian installations, in the same way as the weakness of Europe's position on Iraq contributed to America's war against Saddam.
To arrive at establishing a Conference for the Security and Cooperation in the Middle East it is not sufficient that the EU proposes it, although the mere fact of launching such an initiative would have a significant impact. The EU must also be able to convince the main political actors in the Middle East, and above all the United States, which implies that it must be capable of acting on the international plane: in short, of giving birth to a real USA-EU partnership as an indispensable means of overcoming American hegemonic and imperial attitudes. Such a policy is however hampered by the EU's present institutional system, characterized by national rights of veto in the fields of foreign policy, security and defense, and by meager financial resources. Therefore, the vital necessity of a sound European policy towards Iran, and generally in the Middle East, is one of the main reasons for calling urgently for the full federalization of the European Union.