Disarming the Middle East

TEL AVIV – Israel’s desperate plea that the world act to curtail what its intelligence service describes as Iran’s “gallop toward a nuclear bomb” has not gotten the positive response that Israel expected. With the United Nations sanctions regime now having proven to be utterly ineffective, and with international diplomacy apparently futile in preventing the Iranians from mastering the technology for enriching uranium, Israel is being boxed into a corner. What was supposed to be a major international effort at mediation is deteriorating into an apocalyptic Israeli-Iranian showdown.

This is an intriguing anomaly, for, notwithstanding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vile anti-Semitic rhetoric, the implications of Iran’s emerging power extend far beyond the Jewish state. Indeed, it affects the entire Arab world, particularly the vulnerable Gulf countries, and even Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States, as a major Middle East power, and Europe also have an interest in stemming the tide of nuclear proliferation that now threatens the Middle East. For a nuclear Iran would open the gates to an uncontrolled rush for the bomb across the region.

The international system’s failure to address effectively the nuclear issue in the Middle East stems mostly from the Russia-US divide, to which wrongheaded American strategy has contributed mightily. Russia cannot want a nuclear Iran. But in its quest for leverage against what it perceives as hostile American policies, and as way to bargain for a more acceptable security framework with the West, the Russians refuse to join America’s leadership in international efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Russia holds the key not only to Iran’s diplomatic isolation, but also – through the weapons transfers that it has already pledged to Iran – to the Iranian government’s capacity to protect its nuclear installations. In October 2007, Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader since Leonid Brezhnev to visit Iran, bringing along five leaders of the Caspian Sea states. Since then, Putin has sought to expose the bankruptcy of America’s policy of isolating Iran. Russia probably can tame the Iranian regime, but it will do so only in exchange for America’s respect for its interests in the former Soviet Republics, and possibly also a revision of post-Cold War strategic agreements.

But, even if abandoned by the Russians, it is highly unlikely that Iran will give up its nuclear ambitions unless its regional concerns are addressed. Iran’s nuclear drive reflects a broad national consensus, the result of a deep-seated sense of vulnerability and betrayal. The Iranians remember how the international community remained indifferent when Saddam Hussein attacked with chemical weapons in the 1980’s. Nor is the presence of America’s formidable might in today’s Iraq comforting to them. Iran believes that it is the victim of an international double standard – acceptance of Pakistan’s and India’s nuclear status, not to mention Israel’s – which only fuels its sense of discrimination and its resolve to pursue its ambitions.

By exposing the inadequacy of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran, a signatory, has signaled to Israel that the regional order can no longer be based on Israel’s nuclear monopoly as a non-NPT member. Hence, the solution lies not only in forcing NPT members like Iran and Syria to comply with their commitments, but in creating a broader regional security and cooperation architecture in the Middle East. But it is highly unlikely that the Arabs will agree to such a system so long as Israel refuses to address her own nuclear capabilities.

Any regional security architecture will have to be premised on the Middle East becoming a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The Middle East retains the infamous distinction of being the only region in the world to have used such weapons since the end of World War II.

Indeed, Arab states have both developed and used chemical and biological weapons – not against Israel, so far, but against others in the region. Iraq used them against Iran, Egypt in its war in Yemen of the 1970’s, and Iraq against its own Kurds. In 1993, Israel signed the international treaty banning chemical weapons, but did not ratify it because of the Arab states’ refusal to follow suit as long as Israel maintained its nuclear advantage.

The international community must recognize that the Middle East security equation is not a simple linear one involving Israel versus the Arab world. The proliferation of nuclear weapons in a region that has seen fit to use weapons of mass destruction before threatens everyone.

So a concerted effort is needed by outside powers such as the US and Russia, not to act as spoilers of each other’s policies in the region, but to create a WMD-free zone. Such a regional system cannot be built in a political vacuum. A major effort to assist in the solution of the region’s major political disputes is a vital prerequisite. The nuclear clock is ticking.