the american nuclear empire and iran

8/7/2019 The American Nuclear Empire and Iran

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Commentary: Tim Collins

The Al11ericanNuclear El11pireand IranAt a midmorning White House press conference on Wednesday 17October 2007, President Bush raised the stakes in the rhetoricalconflict between the United States an d Iran. Responding to aquestion about Iran's nuclear intentions, the President intoned, 'Wegot a leader in Iran wh o has announced that he wants to destroyIsrael. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoidingWorld War III, it seems like yo u ought to be interested inpreventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make anuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weaponvery seriously'.l Yet according to a December 2007 report in TheWashington Post, the President's dire warning was issued 'a t least amonth or two after he had first been told about fresh indicationsthat Iran ha d actually halted its nuclear weapons program'.2

The information the president was allegedly familiar with onthat October morning was later made public in the November 2007National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iran: Nuclear Intentions andCapabilities.3 But despi te the estimate's key judgements that Iranhalted its nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003, that itha d not imported enough enriched uranium for a weapon, and thatit 'will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessinge no ug h p lu to n iu m for a weapon before about 2015', the Bush1. Press conference by President BliSh, 17 October 2007, nvnilnble nt .2. P. Bnrker nnd R. Wright, 'A 13I0w to Blish's Tehmn Policy', ' fi le Wnsilillgloll Pos/, 4 December

2007, nvnilnble nt < www.wnshingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/nrtide/2007>.3. Nntionnl Intelligence Estimnte, ' Imn: Nudenr Intentions nnd Cnpnbilities' , nvnilnble nt

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12 Tim Collins

administration showed no signs of changing tack. In an interviewbroadcast on Israeli television just days before his January 2008 tripto the Middle East, President Bush referred again to his Iraniancounterpart's threat by saying, 'I f I were an Israeli, I would take thewords of the Iranian president seriously, and as president of theUnited States I tClke them seriously'.4So while the punditry entertained theories of political payback,

and meditated on the politicisation of the bureaucracy followingthe estimate's release, the White House, by and large, played itcool. The President's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley,acknowledged that the estimate offered some positive news, butcautioned that the potentiality of a nuclear-armed Iran remained avery serious problem. He also stressed 'that the President has theright strategy: intensified international pressure along with awill ingness to negot ia te a solution that serves Iranian interestswhile ensuring that the world will never have to face a nucleararmed Iran'.5 In fact, the NIE endorsed one key aspect of theadministration's strategy. It judged with 'high confidence' that

Tehran's announcement of its decision to suspend itsdeclared uranium enr ichment program and sign anAdditional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation TreatySafeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in responseto increasing international scrutiny and pressure resultingfrom exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclearwork.6

The Iranian response to the NIE was mixed. While PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed it a victory for Iran, ForeignMinister Manouchehr Mottak went on the offensive, asserting thatthe allegations about the existence of a nuclear weapons programwere wrong, and that the estimate contained both 'facts and lies'?The Foreign Minister responded by send ing a formal letter ofprotest to the United States in which he accused it of spying andespionClge.And so it goes. Almost six years after Iran's clandestine nuclear

4. 'Bush: We'd defend Ismel in event of Iranian strike' , Reulers, Haaretz.com, 6 January 2008,available at .

5. White House Press Brief ing by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, 3 December2007, available at .6. NIE, 'Iran', available at .7. 'Iran protests over US "espionage"', BBe News, H December 2007, ava il able at

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program was outed by a domestic opposition group, Iran continuesto defy the international community, and the rhetorical hostilitiesbetween the United States and Iran continue. The question is: whyis the Iran issue so intractable?

You do no t need to be an international security expert to havenoticed the profound differences between the maImer in which thecase of nuclear proliferation in Iran is being handled by the UnitedStates and the way the Iraqi, North Korean, Libyan and CentralAsian cases were handled; or, for that matter, the way thealtogether more immediate nuclear threatwas managed during theCold War. Two principal factors have led to the current stalemate.One is the perceptible shift in US policy over the last fifteen yearsin terms of the nuclear 'order'. The second is the legacy of the US-Iranian imperial entanglement, which was never really severed,despite the mutual ostracizing of the post-revolution years.Nuclear 'Order' and IranThe US nuclear empire today lies in tatters, less able and inclinedto influence the global nuclear environment than it ever was duringthe ColdWar, primarily because it reneged on its part of the nuclearbargain, ceasing to provide the one public good it did during theCold War: order. The net effect has been the bankrupting of theformer nuclear order, making the prospect of 'containing' Ir ansignificantly more problematic than it otherwise might have been.

The United States' retreat from the order it helped fashionamplified the injustices that were inherent in it. The ordersymbolized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) wasnever really just, seeing as it formalized the existence of fivenuclear weapons states (NWS): the United States, the Soviet Union,the United Kingdom, France and China. But the NPT was thelinchpin of a carefully constructed o r d e l ~ which as William Walkernoted, was based on 'a managed system of deterrence, and a managedsystem ofabstinence'.8 Yet the prevalence of the systems of deterrenceand abstinence, in addit ion to the consensus that nukes were toodangerous to ever use, d id not render the former order immune tothe forces of what Richard B u t l e l ~ former Executive Chair of theUnited Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), hasreferred to as the axiom of proliferation.8. W. Walker, 'Nuclear Order and Disorder', JIIICI'IIIl/illllnl Af{tlirs, vol. 76. no. 4, 2000, p. 703.ARENA jOlll'l1al no. 29/30,2008


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Butler discussed this idea in his 2002 Templeton lecture, 'Science,Weapons, Politics: The Ethics, The Hard Choices', at the Universityof Sydney.9 The former diplomat argued that the axiom ofproliferation - which says that as long as a state possesses a nuclearweapons capability, another will seek to acquire one - is inseparablefrom the concept of justice. Attempts by the nuclear 'haves' tojustify the necessity of nuclear weapons for their national securityto the nuclear 'have-nots', whilst simultaneously denying the havenots the same level of security, were as transparently hypocritical inthe halcyon days of the former nuclear order as they are today.

H o w e v e l ~ by moving away from constitutional ordering whereby the United States shaped the order by actively supportingtreaties, international agreements and inspections regimes - tohegemonic ordering in the mid-1990s, the United Statessignificantly altered the nuclear playing field. The new mood in USsecurity thinking corresponded with the failure of the StrategicArms Reduction Treaty (START) II, signed in 1993 by PresidentsGeorge H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin, to come into force. Six yearslater, the Republican-controlled Senate's rejection on 13 October1999 of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) foreshadowedthe emergent US position. Then in 1999, the passage into law of theNational Missile Defense Act, which mandated the deployment ofthe once controversial missile defence system, confirmed theUnited States' abandonment of the former order. Commenting ondevelopments up to the year 2000, William Walker assessed theirsignificance in the following terms:

Taken together, these developments threatened injury to thesystem of deterrence, by implying that the US had lostconfidence in it; injury to the system of abstinence byimplying that the US had diminishing regard for theinstitutions of multilateral arms control; and injury to theproject of marginalization, by implying that the US was notinterested in its own technological and strategic restraint. Asa consequence, US actions called into quest ion the entireorder that the US itself had so painstakingly constructed.10

A survey of more recent US behaviour leads one to conclude thatWalker's systems of deterrence and abstinence have not so much9. R. Butler, 'Science, Weapons, Politics:The Ethics, The Hard Choices', The Templeton Lecture,

The University of Sydney, 2002, available at .10. Walker, 'Nuclear Order and Disorder', p. 713.

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been injured by the Bush administration over the intervening yearsas they have been left for dead. In 2001, President Bush allowed theCTBT that had earlier been rejected by the Senate to languish thereonce more without ratification. That December, the presidentunilaterally withdrew the United States from the 1972Anti-BallisticMissile (ABM) Treaty. Having left for dead the nuclear order thatkept us alive during the tense moments of the ColdWar, the UnitedStates then set about creat ing a new order for itself, and a state ofdisorder for everyone else.On new year's eve 2001, the Nuclear Posture Review was

submitted to Congress. It elevated the status of nukes by calling fora 'New Triad' of n u c l e a l ~ non-nuclear and defensive capabilities. l lThen, in 2002, the president unveiled the piece de resistance of thenew order - the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of MassDestruction.12 Under the pretext of protecting Americans from'rogue states' and terrorists, the administration significantly alteredUS policy, granting nuclear weapons a utility they had notpossessed since prior to the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Consequently, the nuclear taboo that prevailed during the ColdWar was summarily abolished. As Kurt Campbell wrote at the time,the devaluation of the nuclear taboo 'may serve to remove one ofthe most impor tant factors deter ring a country's ent ry into thenuclear club'.l3 A dangerous precedent had been set.Given the advent of the new order, itwas not at all surprising to

learn of Iran's clandestine nuclear research and uraniumenrichment facilities. That the Iranian facilities were developedsurreptit iously over a period of two decades, and concealed fromthe International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), i llustrates thedangerous consequences of the United States' desire for nuclearhegemony.The subsequent discovery by the IAEA of weapons-grade

uranium at the Kalay-e Electric Company plant in west Tehran inSeptember 2003, and at the Natanz plant in central Iran, led to theinternational demand, articulated in United Nations SecurityCouncil (UNSC) Resolution 1737: that Iran 'suspend all uranium

11. Nuclear Posture Review Report, United States Department of Defense, 2001, available at.

12. National Strategy to Combat Weapons o f Mass Des truc tion , 2002, ava il ab le at.

13. K. M. Campbell, 'Nuclear Proliferation beyond Rogues', Tile WllsilillSlll1l QlIllr/erly, vol. 26,no.1, Winter 2002-2003, p. 10.ARENA joumnl no. 29/30, 2008


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16 Tim Collinsenrichment-related and reprocessing activities'.14 Resolution 1737was augmented on 24 March 2007 with the passing of resolution1747, which focused on l imiti ng I ranian arms exports andstrengthening the existing economic sanctions,15

Predictably enough, the Iranians rebuked the UN sanctions. Onthe day Resolution 1737 was adopted, Iran's PermanentRepresentative to the United Nations, Dr M. Javad Zarif, used hisaddress to the Security Council to lament the state of nucleardisorder.

Today is a sad day for the non-proliferation regime ... Thesame Governments, which have pushed this Council to takegroundles s punit ive measures against Iran's peacefulnuclear program, have systematically prevented it fromtaking any action to nudge the Israeli regime towardssubmitting itself to the rules governing the nuclear nonproliferation regime. By so doing, they have provided it withwide latitude and even encouragement to indulge freely inthe clandestine development and unlawful possession ofnuclear weapons ... 16

Therefore, irrespective of Iran's proven guilt on the counts ofdeveloping nuclear weapons-grade uranium, and their subsequentrefusals to halt enrichment-related activities, Dr Zarif 's charges ofSecurity Council hypocrisy were irrefutable.

For his part, President Ahmadinejad was not content pointingout the absurd injustice of the si tuation. In February 2007, twomonths after the passing of Resolution 1737, the Iranian presidentprotested that Iran would work to achieve its right to nucleartechnology in the shortest possible time, and claimed thatforegoing other policies would be worth it.17 Indicating his grasp ofthe prestige still associated with nuclear weapons, PresidentAhmadinejad reasoned, 'the enemies want us to surrender so thatIran won't have anyth ing to say in the world'.18 Echoing14. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1737 (2006), available at .15. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747 (2007), available at .16. Statcment by 1-1. E. Dr M. Javad Zarif, Pcrmanent Reprcscntativc of thc Islamic Republic ofIran beforc the Security Council, 23 December 2006, available at .17. 'Iran "swiftly sceks nuclear goal''', BBC News, 21 Fcbruary 2007, availablc at

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Ahmadinejad's defiant tone, Vice President of I ran's Atom-icEnergy Organization, Reza Aqazadeh, declared in May 2007 thatIran's enrichment program was proceeding appropriately and thatthe installation and opera tion of 50,000 centrifuges was Iran' sgoal.19 If the Americans were counting on bludgeoning Iran intoobedience, they had clearly forgotten what a formidable opponentIran could be.The United States' Persian PrerogativeThe United States first became involved in Iran's internal affairs inthe late nineteenth century, and over the course of the ensuingentanglement repeatedly transgressed Iran's sovereignty. Theclimax of US imperiali sm in Iran came in 1953 when the US-ledOperation Ajax ousted the democratically elected nationalist primeminister DrMohamedMosaddeq. That disastrous example ofMidEast meddling led eventually to the tumultuous revolution of 1979and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, the subsequent US hostagecrisis, and the period of hostile estrangement that persists today.However, the absence of relations between the Islamic Republic

and the United States did not lead to the resignation of the UnitedStates' Persian prerogative. On the contrary, a number of USmeasures have been adopted in recent years with the expresspurpose of controlling Iranian behaviour. The Iran-Libya SanctionsAct (ILSA) of 1996 - amended in 2006 to the Iran Sanctions Act(ISA) - was and remains the linchpin of the United States'containment strategy. Even before ILSA, President Clinton issuedExecutive Orders 12957 and 12959 in 1995 banning US investmentin Iran's energy sector and US trade with and investment in I rangenerally. The current Bush administration went even further,implementing a potentially more debilitating strategy known as' in ternational outreach' . The outreach policy is being led by theTreasury Department's Stuart Levey, who is charged with makingit difficult for Iran to use the international financial system to fundpotentially illicit activities.2o By dissuading investors and potentialinvestors from trading with Iran, the hope was that Iran wouldreconsider its need for nukes.19. 'Iraninn Of(jcinl: We're I l" ll iking good prugress on nuc!cnr progrnm', Associnted Press,

I-Innrclz.colll, 20 Mny 2007, nvnilnble nt .20. M. Gregory , 'Al llcr icn' s F innncini Wnr on Irnn: BBC Ncws, B June 201J7, nvnilnble nl

.

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This does not appear to have happened, nor does it seem that itis the only goal of US policy. Undeniably, the United States haswell-founded concerns about Iran's nuclear program. They includethe demonstrated 'administrative interconnectedness' betweenIran's weaponization and nuclear experts.21 Yet the US response toIran's intransigence suggests that there is more to this dispute thanthe prospect of a rogue state going nuclear. Conveniently, however,for the United States, it has been able rely on both opportunecircumstances and well-established myths to justify themaintenance of its foundering Persian prerogative.

Consider the way that, in the absence of real intelligence onIran's nuclear program, the Bush administration took to soundingoff about the Iranian-manufactured Improvised Explosive Devices(IEDs) that were turning up in Iraq. Last August, Time's Robert Baerreported a White House official as saying 'IRGC lED's are a casusbelli for this Administration. There will be an attack on Iran'.22 Theconsensus tha t Iran is a dangerous threat to stability allowed theadministration to shift the emphasis from Iranian nukes to IranianIEDs as i t bui lt its case for war and regime change in Iran.

Likewise, in-built prejudices in the US political cul ture haveaided the Bush administration's concerted effort to vilify Iran. Ofcourse, The United States has long considered Iran a terrorist state.President Clinton favoured the term 'state of concern', while'rogue' became the preferred adjective under President Bush.23 Butwhat we have seen, at least since the time of the revolution and thesubsequent hostage crisis, is the purported irrationality of Iraniansbecome conventional wisdom in US political culture. At the time ofthe hostage crisis, adhering to the irrationality myth, Secretary ofState Edmund Muskie described the Iranians with whom PresidentCarter and the StateDepartment were negotiating as not only 'verystubborn' but, crucially, 'irrational'.24 But the process by which thismyth became ingrained in the political culture has been somewhatless conspicious. The late Edward Said illustrated how it was ableto enter the blood stream of US politics without so much as an2'1. A, Cordeslllon, 'Iron's Devdoping Nudeor and Missile I'mgrollls', Centre for Strotegic ond

Internolionol Studies, r,'vised 'IS Februory 2007, p. 17, ol'oilob"-' 01 .

23. M. Curlov, SIIJ1crI'Oll'('1' 011 Crllf;odc: TIll' Hush Doc/rilll' ill LIS Forl'igll J)olicy, Bnuldt'l", Lynnl'RienneI' Publishers Inc., 2006, p. 137.24. See E. Mognusson, 'She Wore a Ydlow Ribbon', Tilll


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The American Nuclear Empire and Iran 19utterance of the word 'irrational'. Referring to a confidential cablesent from Charge d'Affaires Bruce Laingden to Secretary of StateCyrus Vance, in which Laingden endeavours to penetrate 'thePersian psyche', Said wrote:

Laingden's message is no t a scientific account of 'the Persianpsyche' he discusses, despite the author's pretense to claimobectivity and to expert knowledge of the culture. The text israther an ideological statement designed, I think, to turn'Persia' into a t imeless acutely disturbing essence, therebyenhancing the superior morality and national san ity of theAmerican half of the negotiations. Thus each assertion about'Persia' adds damaging evidence to the profile whileshielding 'America' from scrutiny and analysis. 25

Today, the myth of the irrational Iranian - or the witty, alliteratedvar iant , t he 'mad mullah' - is so commonplace that peoplescarcely notice its Orientalist and racist foundations. Evidence forits popularity as a journalistic conceit may routinely be found inreporting that demands that Iranian foreign policy and behaviourbe interpreted through the prism of 'rationality'. Then there is thealtogether more sinister approach described by Said, whereby eachassertion about the I ranian regime, Tehran, Ahmadinejad, or theubiquitous mullahs, is used to disparage Iran.

A March 2007 column in Tile Austrnlinn by Greg Sheridanprovides a particularly unapologetic example of this kind of smear.Beneath the tabloid-worthy t it le 'Terrorist State has a History ofInsanity',26 Sheridan expressed his dismay that the kidnapping offifteen British sailors ' has not yet become a huge global issue'. Forall the author's talk of the Iranians' 'madness' he does entertain thepossibility that the kidnapping was a 'tactical move'. M o r e o v e J ~ theauthor cites previous Iranian successes in extracting concessionsfrom the West. Thus it appears that the uncontested nature of themyth frees its adherents from the constraints of logic. Instead, themyth allows them to plug the latest Iranian high crime,misdemeanour, or indiscretion into a reCldy-made template andarrive at the desired conclusion: Iranians are insane, irrational, madand by no means civilized.

25. E. Snid, CilvL'I"illS Is/nlll. /-Imil III.. M ..dill 1111.1 1/11' EX!'/"y/0.2tlHh7.2.1464413-25?77.t)0.htl11l>.ARENA journal no. 29/::10, 2008


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20 Tim Collins

The exploitation of the conventional wisdom has been a crucialingredient in the United States' Iran policy over the past nearlythirty years, and today it plays an important role in the ongoingnuclear dispute. The prospect of irrational Iranians with a nucleararsenal fitted in nicely with the abandonment of the systems ofdeterrence and abstinence, and the contemporaneousreconsideration of the virtue of US nuclear weapons. Theirrationality myth also meshed well with that other ready-madetemplate: the conflation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)and terrorist threats.

Supposing for a moment that nuclear deterrence had not fallenout of vogue in the United States, it is very hard to conceive of apolitical landscape where deterrence theory could be applied topresent-day Iran. A 2006 Cato Institute report detailing four policyoptions for dealing with Iran's nuclear program listed option four,ergo the least attractive, as 'Acceptance and Deterrence'. The reportconcedes

the presence of Ahmadinejad makes the deterrence optionmore nerve-wracking than it would be otherwise. Havingsuch an emotionally volatile and hate-filled individual asIran's head of state understandably makes people wonderwhether deterrence would work in this case.27

Likewise, the three panelists who spoke on nuclear deterrence atthe Washington Insti tu te for Near East Pol icy' s 2007 SorefSymposium reiterated the belief that, under the current nuclearorder, deterrence may not app ly a t all, and certainly not to Iran,which might be inclined to use nuc lear weapon withoutprovocation.28

In terms of the WMD-terror threat conflation, a Pentagonadviser on the War on Terror articulated the administration's logicwhen he told the journalist Seymour Hersh, 'allowing Iran to havethe bomb is no t on the table. We cannot have nukes being sentdownstream to a terror network. It's just too dangerous'.29 The

27. T. Galen Carpenter, 'Iran's Nuclear Program: America's Policy Options', Policy II/wlysis, TheCato Institute, no. 578, 20 September 2006, available at < www.ca!o.org/pubs/pas/pa578.pdf>.28 'Iran's "Unacceptable" Bomb: Deterrence and Prevention in theAge o( Terror', Pwceedingso( the 2007 SorefSymposium, 9-lJ May 2007, The Washington Institute (or Near East Policy,pp. 3\1-41, available at .2\1. S. Hersh, 'The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to War to Stop Tehran (rom Getting theBomb?' Til" N"lI' York"r, 17 April 2006, p. 5, available at .ARENA jOIl1'1lnl no. 29/30, 2008


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underlying assumption is that the irrational Iranians would investthe money and effort in a nuclear weapon only to then pass it on toa third party for use against the United States or one of its allies.Clearly, the prospect of another nuclerweapons state, whichever

one that happened to be, is a major concern for the United States.But it is not the only, nor even necessarily the most important USconcern. Back in 2005, Cyrus Safdari argued persuasively in LeMonde Diplomatique that the real target of the Bush administrat ionwas no t Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, but theeconomies of developing countries.30 After all, the discovery of vastpetroleum reserves in the Persian Gulf at the beginning of thetwentieth century established producer-consumer relationshipsthat will likely be reversed in the nuclear era. As an establishednuclear power, the US empire would surely not want its position inthe elite nuclear energy-producing monopoly compromised by anaspirational Persian Gulf power. Safdari offered this compellingassessment of US logic:

Under the guise of non-proliferation, the EU and the US arenot only undermining the grand bargain between nucleararmed and non-nuclear armed states that is the NPT; theyalso want to create an underclass of nuclear energy havenots, concentrating what could become the world's solemajor source of energy in the hands of the few nat ions thathave granted themselves the right to it.3]

In other words, the sense of puissance oblige that drives the UnitedStates' Persian prerogative lies at the heart of current US efforts toprevent the emergence of a nuclear-powered Iran as we near thepost-petroleum era. US frustration at being incapable of preventingIran's emergence from this underclass could be heard when UnderSecretary of State for Political Affairs, R. Nicholas Burns, bemoanedIran 'thumbing its nose at the international community'.32 (For hispart, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has disproved Safdari'sargument insofar as it appl ied to France, by recently promotingnuclear technology in the Middle East precisely in order to avoid

30. C. Safardi, 'Irnn Needs Nuclear Energy, Not Weapons', Lc MOl/dc dip/olllo/iql/c, November200S, available at .

3]. C. Safardi, ' Iran Needs NlIclcnr Energy, Not Weapons'.32. H. Cooper and D. E. Sanger, 'U.s., Annoyed by U.N. Report on Irnn and Urnnilll11, Hopesto Use It to Widen Sanctions' , M'w York T i l l l c ~ , 24 May 2007, available at m /2007/OS/24/washington / 24d iplo.html?_1'= 1&oref=slogi n&pagewan ted=print>.

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22 Tim Collins

the maintenance of the class s tructure seemingly desired by theUnited States.)33Where to Now?If a confrontation between the United States and Iran over theirrapidly maturing nuclear program is to be avoided, a number offactors and US behaviours need to be altered.Firstly, the United States needs to reverse the dangerous state of

nuclear disorder it alone has been responsible for creating over thepast fifteen years. If it truly considers the increasingly likelyprol iferation of nuclear weapons in I ran and the broader MiddleEast, and the possible acquisition of them by terroristorganizations , to be a serious problem, then it should reconsiderthe example it is currently setting. H o w e v e l ~ a return to thepainstakingly managed order of the Cold War would not suffice.

The only sustainable solution was put forward recently in TheWall Street Journal. Entitled 'Toward a Nuclear-Free World', it wasnot conceived by some idealistic pacifist.34 A bi-partisan cadre ofhighly experienced former US government officials - GeorgeSchultz , Will iam Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn authored it. They list a number of practical measures that should beimplemented as part of our progression towards a nuclear-freeworld, bu t the crucial point is art iculated in the penultimateparagraph:

Progress must be facilitated by a clear statement of ourultimate goal. Indeed, this is the only way to build the kindof international trust and broad cooperation that will berequired to effectively address today's threats. Without thevision of moving toward zero, we will not find the essentialcooperation required to stop our downward spiraJ.35

To pu t it another way, the practical measures outlined in this articlewill amount to very little unless the United States and the othernuclear powers state their posi tion clearly and unequivocally.Without the sort of leadership that the United States provided

33. Sel' M.Moorl'. 'S"rkozy Pushes Nude"r Energy in Midl'aSI', Till' 1 o Y 1 1 , l l i l : ~ f " " I ' " , " 20 J"nll"ry200!;, available nl .

34. G. P. Schullz, W. J. Perry, 1-1. /\. Kissinger nnd S. Nunn, 'Townrd n Nlidenr-Frl'l ' World', TIl,'1oY,,1I 5/1'1"'/ }ollrlll1/, '15 Jnnunry 200R, nvnilnble nl

35. Schultz l'i nl, 'Townrd n Nuclenr-Frl'l' World'./\ REN/\ jOIl rna} no. 29/30, 2008


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during the Cold War, other s tates - particularly the non-nuclearstates - are most unlikely to get behind a movement perceived asinsincere or half-hearted.

In terms of Iran, the United States needs to urgently reconsiderthe perpetration of its ineffective an d destabilis ing P ers ianprerogative. Stronger sanctions an d greater isolation are unlikely tobring about the desired en d in Iran, and are, in fact, more likely toalienate those Iranians wh o are amenable to the US position.Alternatively, were Iran to be brought into the fold, and convincedof the nuclear powers' genuine commitment to a n ew a nd equitablenuclear order - where access to nuclear energy was guaranteedan d s ec ur it y a ga in st a nn ih il at io n assured - we might seesignificant shifts in Iranian behaviour. Until that happens there isno incentive whatsoever for Iran no t to go nuclear. To paraphraseRichard Butler, as long as Israel possesses nuclear weapons, it isaxiomatic that Iran an d its Arab neighbours will see no alternativefor the provision of their security than the nuclear one.

Finally, ou r societies need to recognise both the lessons of historya n d o u r c ha ng ed circumstances. The recent Wall Street JOllrnal pieceinevitably copped flak for being written by a bunch of 'Cold WarWarriors' wh o are ou t of touch with today's realities. A letter to theJot/mal echoed this sentiment, a rgu ing that it is no t nuclearweapons pe r se that are dangerous, bu t rather that nukes in thehands of certain 'authoritarian' s tates such as Iran are dangerousbecause they are 'unstable'. However, for true stability to berealized we need to overcome the ethnocentric thinking thatconsiders 'them' more dangerous than 'us', as well as the deeplyentrenched political culture that has hitherto prohibited the nuclearpowers from taking the first s tep towards ending the dangerousstate of disorder we find ourselves in today. Certainly, Iran hasshown itself to be a belligerent an d a more than willing contributorto Middle East instability, bu t so has the United States. Until suchtime as the United States recognizes this most basic fact, the entirecommunity of nations will face only greater levels of insecurity an ddisorder.

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the american nuclear empire and iran

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