Going Nuclear in the Middle East - In search of an European Middle East Policy
Jean FRANCOIS-PONCET, Senator and Co-author of the Foreign Relations and Defence Committee's report on the situation in the Middle East - Let us now move along and start with the first roundtable session, which has to do with Iran. At our table, this so-called roundtable, we have people who are very knowledgeable in these various areas.
Ms Ladan Boroumand is a historian from Iran, Specialist in Human Rights Matters who studied in Washington and also did a doctoral dissertation in History in France. She keeps abreast of changes in the situation in Iran. It is often difficult for us to keep track of these changes in Iran.
Next we have Mr Anthony H. Cordesman who works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is probably one of the most important think tanks in Washington. He has done a great deal of studies on US strategy, both in their defence and more general policy. He has also looked into China's military power and modern warfare. He was one of the Directors of Intelligence at the US National Defence Ministry. I apologise to him for not being able to go through his entire resume in detail. I just wanted to give you an idea of his background and the breadth of his knowledge.
Then we have Professor Bernard Hourcade who has a Doctorate in Geography. He is Professor of Geography and a Senior Research Fellow at the CNRS. He has marvellous knowledge of this region, both in terms of politics and of civilisation issues.
Next we have Dr Mustafa Alani. He is Director of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai. He has studied in many different places. He was at the Royal United Service Institute for Defence and Security Studies in Whitehall, London.
That is all so we are going to begin. I will be giving the speakers the floor. After the round table session, we will organise a debate among them and then of course, we will open up to Q&A from the room.
Ladan BOROUMAND - Research Director, Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Human Rights and Democracy in Iran - Thank you for the honour of this invitation and the opportunity to speak. By inviting me, you do not know what risk you are taking. Human rights defenders are not accustomed to talking in a diplomatic and politically correct fashion.
A retired US Diplomat who has been working for years for rapprochement between his government and the Islamic Republic said to me a few weeks after the major demonstrations against the presidential election results that he was going to be meeting with Iranians in New York. Somewhat maliciously, I asked him if these were dissidents who had recently arrived from Iran. He looked at me apologetically and said, «No, I will been meeting with Jaferi Sarif, Ambassador for the Islamic Republic to the UN» He added «I will meet the real people.» That type of frankness for a diplomat speaking to a human rights defender is unusual. Nevertheless considering the people in power or near power as being the only people who count is a widely held view. My presence is odd today at this round table session since we are talking about discussing nuclear weapons and negotiations with «the real people.»
What kind of contribution can I make to the debate? I am a political historian who has been interested in the French Revolution to better understand the Iranian Revolution. My work has been to carefully monitor and track the human rights situation in Iran. Today we are trying to explore the likelihood of success for dialogue. But the interlocutors are the leaders of a repressive state whose victims have been the people trying to defend human rights. The question is if we can make this dialogue with the victims more intelligible and if that can help improve the effectiveness of diplomatic dialogue with the state that is oppressing these people.
When we are talking about international relations, any fruitful dialogue requires in-depth knowledge of the political entity represented by the negotiators. We are talking about, first and foremost, evaluating whether this entity is compatible with liberal democracies. In other words, we have to find out if our interlocutors are partner countries or adversaries. We have to do this appraisal and then design the dialogue accordingly. Having a dialogue with Swiss diplomats about the safety of the Swiss Confederation in Europe is not the same as evoking the safety of the Soviet Union with Stalin in 1945, as it required imposition of the Soviet political model and ideology on half of Europe. By the same token, we must make the point regarding the safety of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime says that its legitimacy comes from God and it declares openly in its Constitution its international calling and its objective of imposing an Islamic government on the world. This is a regime that officially states that human rights and the principles of Western liberal democracy constitute a major threat that they now have to cope with. This is a regime that tortures its citizens so that they might confess that their minds were corrupted by the theories of liberal democracy. Lastly, it is a regime that says it needs a nuclear weapon for its security - in other words, to win out over human rights and liberal democracy.
We cannot predict or know what the reactions will be or what the Iranian partners will say if we continue to see the Islamic Republic as a nation-state like any other nation-state. Like the Iranians, we could be pleased when we see a convergence of interest in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iranians will tell anyone that the stability and security of the two countries are as important to them as to the Western countries. However, we must not then accuse them of duplicity because Iranian manufactured bombs, or bombs paid for by Iran, explode in Iraqi cities. What constitutes security and stability for Western democracies represents chaos and a threat to the Iranian regime. The idea of order for some people is the same thing as chaos for others. In other words, they will not have the same definition of security or the same meaning and there is no real convergence of interest. It is just an optical illusion.
It is semantic trickery and this is something that is carefully cultivated by the spokespeople of the Islamic regime. This causes confusion in Western foreign affairs offices. The Committee's report alludes to the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 and the figures produced by the Interior Ministry of Iran are taken without reserve. This also suggests that the right to nuclear technology is the subject of national consensus that brings together all the factions of the oligarchy that is in power, as well as the people.
According to this report, Iran feels entitled to have a nuclear weapon as a guarantee of national independence because, among other reasons, in 1953 they were victims of a coup, which had been caused by foreign powers. This was the coup organised by the secret services of the United States and the UK, which led to the fall of the government of Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalised the oil industry in Iran.
On these points and due to these distorted concepts used by Iranian diplomats, as a historian and human rights defender I can try to make some clarifications.
I might first of all say something about the 1953 coup. Iranian diplomacy uses this often to its end to bring up the bad conscience of Westerners as colonizers. It would be appropriate to ask the Iranian diplomats what Ayatollah Khomeini was doing in August of 1953, and see how embarrassed they would be to answer that question. The Ayatollah was over 50 years old at the time and he did nothing whatsoever. His future partisans were involved in the coup alongside the CIA and the British government. The ideological movement of Khomeini was opposed to liberal democracy and has always felt Mossadegh and his supporters were an enemy. To make further problems for the Islamic detractors of the 1953 coup, we could ask them what has become of the political formation founded by Mossadegh and his activists since the arrival of the Islamic Republic. His formation was banned. Many of his militants were arrested and some of them were executed. Of the three people who were leaders in 1978, one of them ended up dying in exile, another one, Shapour Bakhtiar, was assassinated in Paris in 1991 and the third one, Dariush Forouhar, was stabbed along with his wife at his home in Tehran in 1998 by agents from the Information Ministry. The Islamic regime did not just keep them out, but actually annihilated them.
We are talking about an Orwellian universe created by a totalitarian machine. In this context, we have to take everything with a grain of salt, whether we are talking about claims of support for people or the results of elections. Elections in Iran do not serve the same function or have the same meaning as in a liberal democracies. The Iranian Constitution actually turns around the function of elections from the way they are in liberal democracies. It is the opposite actually. Elections in liberal democracies make it possible to manifest the sovereign will of the people, whereas in Iran sovereignty comes from God who designates the supreme leader who is not elected but recognised by an oligarchy of experts. The only sovereign in the political body, the supreme leader delegates political power to an oligarchy that is renewed through cooptation. This is why candidates for election are all carefully selected and appointed by the oligarchy for choice by the people. The voters do choose but they choose a candidate that is not their candidate, so they are approving the legitimacy of this system where God's elected officials select the candidates. By casting your vote, you are approving the negation of your own sovereignty. It is not an exercise of people's sovereignty. These elections are turned into a type of approval of the divine sovereignty of leaders. This regime is using a democratic mechanism, i.e. elections to then pervert this mechanism and turn it into an anti-democratic mechanism. It is an excellent strategy, which has made it possible for 30 years for the regime to do two things at the same time, i.e. force the voters to act as an accomplice to the violation of their own sovereignty and make the international community believe that they enjoy popular legitimacy.
It is true that the spontaneous anger we saw from the voters due to the massive fraud during the elections of June 2009 shows the limits in the totalitarian State's ability to make a travesty of democratic institution at least in the mind of voters and in a world where information flows freely. The current crisis shows us that there are two peoples in Iran. There are the imagined people by the totalitarian leaders, which I would call the «people-orthodoxy». Then there are the people that we saw would go out into the street to try to cast their vote. Which of these two peoples is in favour of acquiring the nuclear weapon? What do the «real people» think about this? For the time being, no one has been asked by the real people to give their real view of this. Anyone who tries to do so does something foolish, whether it is a journalist or politician or expert. That would be a lack of caution on their part.
Nevertheless, we can say that among the dissidents and human rights defenders, many of them are concerned at this possibility for two reasons. The first is ecological due to a total lack of faith in the regime's ability to manage nuclear power plants in a responsible fashion. Another reason is political because once they have a nuclear weapon and felt they were no longer vulnerable, the regime may well increase repression.
Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner, has always asked the Iranian government to find a way of agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Another Iranian dissident and former guardian of the revolution, Akbar Ganji, calls for the denuclearization of the entire Middle East including Iran. Lastly, the Islamic student associations are in favour of democracy in Iran and support proposals by the European Union on settling the nuclear issue. This is to say that there is not consensus in Iranian public opinion regarding the nuclear question.
The totalitarian fiction is strength for tyranny. They try to make this fiction accepted as truth by the citizens and the international community. The totalitarian regime is trying to make everyone their accomplice. Refusing to become an accomplice by accepting totalitarian propaganda is the only way you can have successful dialogue with Iran. To do this, we need to be more attentive to the voices of Iranian civil society that are manifesting the democratic beliefs courageously and with perseverance, and are showing themselves to be an important part in this difficult dialogue that must continue on the nuclear question. Currently, the government is beginning bloody repression of civil society. This morning two young people who were arrested before the elections and were, under torture, forced to say that they implemented protests against electoral fraud on behalf of political organisations located abroad, Ali Zamani and Aresh Rahmanipour, were executed in Iran. These murders were designed to intimidate the population that will be demonstrating again on 11 February.
Human rights defenders have always feared that the nuclear question would be used by the regime to hijack international attention and stop it from focusing on human rights. It is my opportunity today to be heard here by the «real people» and to use this opportunity to speak as a French citizen to my representatives. I look at officials and ask them to clearly react to these executions. Thank you.
Jean FRANCOIS-PONCET , Senator and Co-author of the Foreign Relations and Defence Committee's report on the situation in the Middle East - Thank you very much. That was very much a committed presentation but no less interesting for that. You told us very interested things about the regime and how the elections work.
Anthony H. CORDESMAN, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC - Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. The title of this panel is «What are the Chances of a Successful Dialogue with Iran? » The question, as always, is which dialogue about what subject, and what the definition of success is. Let me focus on the military side, and more broadly than on the prospects of a nuclear bomb, which are often discussed out of context.
First, we need to remember that Iran's programmes began under the Shah. Iran's nuclear efforts are not new, they are not regimes specific efforts, and there is nothing new about Iran's ambitions in the Gulf. It was the Shah who seized Aba Musa and the Tumb Islands. The Shah made claims to Bahrain, and Iran's process of lying about the nature of its nuclear efforts has more than a 30-year history. When I was an Assistant to Ambassador Helms in Iran, I remember meeting with Iranian officials who flatly denied that they had illegally imported weapons related technologies, even though we had photographs and actual, physical knowledge of where the equipment was. While people have forgotten this, the US went to the point in the mid-70s of having the CIA put out an unclassified white paper describing some of these nuclear programmes.
I have now been meeting with people from Iran - with both from the opposition and the government -- and talking about these programmes for more than 20 years. Some of this second track dialogue has been useful. Much of it has just consisted of listening to almost professional apologists. Sometimes, outside the meetings, I have actually learnt something. On many occasions, I have been at the meetings, and learnt nothing. The reason is many of these Iranian's who come to talk at such dialogues know little or nothing about their country's military programmes, and nothing about nuclear weapons. They are policy people and policy people in a very broad meaning sense.
When I have met Iranian diplomats on a number of occasions, I have often had considerable technical evidence to show they were not being frank. It also has not always been a pleasant experience. When I was invited back to Iran under the Khatami regime, I was also invited out of Iran by members of the Majlis who attacked me for having served in the country under the Shah. In other cases, I have spent several hours or days either being lied to or hearing that progress is impossible without one-sided concessions that simply are not practical. Dialogue is a very mixed bag on occasion.
Mention has already been made of regime change. I hope it happens. I hope the Iranians accomplish it. Let me say, however, that this is one of those areas where people who have never done it, or have never been involved in it, are often very quick to make very positive proposals about doing it, either peacefully or covertly. Most of the time, meaningful efforts at regime change are far harder to even begin than you would think and then do not work.
To focus of the military side of dialogue, it is important to remember that far more is involved than Iran's nuclear programs. Iran's nuclear programs do not operate in a vacuum, and they have already triggered the beginning of a nuclear arms race in the region. It is obvious that some of Israel's submarine-related programmes include now include long-range cruise missile programmes. They are almost certainly related to extending nuclear strike capabilities against Iran. Israel was able to improve the range of its missile boosters long ago, and they can almost certainly reach Iran. The two countries are already focusing on targeting each other, potentially with nuclear weapons. At the same time, you have countries in the Gulf already buying missile defences to deal with this duel. You have the United States considering not simply conventional strike options but the option of extended deterrents.
Iran understands this, and we need to understand in any dialog that it is a skilful and well-informed player. Iran is not passive in strategic planning and in surveying outside strategic literature. From what I saw in Iran, their knowledge of strategy and study of what other countries are doing is actually quite good. This knowledge is also reflected in both their classified and unclassified literature. Let us remember that any meaningful form of dialogue on this issue is not an exercise in arms control alone. It is an exercise in military power. We already have elements of a nuclear arms race in place.
When we talk about official dialogue, we also need to remember that the key dialogue is not dialogue between diplomats and NGOs and scholars alone. The primary military planning in Iran is done under the Iranian National Security Council and not done by diplomats. Most of them are totally excluded from it. Most diplomats are not fully briefed on the nuclear programmes, and indeed Iran has sent people around claiming to be Iranian experts who cannot even locate the Iranian facilities properly when they talk in open dialogues or meetings.
The key decision makers in any dialogues in this area will be people in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, people around the Supreme Leader, and people around the President. They will often be people who have been involved in these programmes since the mid-90s and some will have been involved since Iran brought its nuclear programs back after being under chemical attack by Iraq. Moreover, these people shape Iran's military forces broadly, and integrate the nuclear efforts with the missile efforts, with Iran's conventional force developments, and with its steadily growing capabilities for asymmetric warfare.
Since I have ten minutes, let me note that I have put an analysis of the overall trends in Iran's forces and the regional balance on the Internet site for the conference. It shows that Iran's nuclear efforts have to be discussed in terms related to their missile programmes. At this point in time Iran's longer-range missile programmes make no sense unless their warhead is a weapon of mass destruction. The missiles are not lethal or accurate enough to serve a purpose at long ranges without those capabilities. Yet, these missiles are one of the highest investment areas in Iranian forces.
Iran's nuclear programs also affect all aspects of the military balance. Once you acquire some kind of nuclear capability, it can compensate for weaknesses in conventional forces. And Iran's forces do have serious weaknesses. A lot of Iran's conventional equipment dates back to the time of the Shah and Iran has fallen far behind its neighbours and the US.
Over the last decade, the Gulf Cooperation Council alone, ignoring the United States, France and Britain in the Gulf, spent 13 times as much on arms imports and more than eight times as much on defence as Iran did. Iran has been pushed into asymmetric warfare and into different types of combat. One way to give these types of capability credence is to either have a bomb or the threat of having a bomb hidden away. This deters conventional options and conventional strikes on Iran.
This has clear implications for dialogue. It would be very, very much better for all of us if the people who talked about the Iranian nuclear program talked about it in terms of how it relates to all of Iran's military programs and strategic objectives. Most of what I read about dialogue now is all politics. It is all policy. It has nothing to do with the details.
Moreover, there is far too little attention to the technical details of what Iran is known to be doing. If editors would actually insist that reports read the entire IAEA Report rather than the summary, it would also help journalism a great deal. It would help if editors occasionally did fact checking. Remember the United States «invaded» or «attacked» Iran at least three times according to the London Times and Telegraph, but each story proved to be wrong in almost every respect.
We also need to realize we are dealing with a country that knows we are no longer debating peaceful enrichment for nuclear power purposes. First that is not being denied to them. Second if anything there have been strong incentives that would cut the cost of enrichment to a power programme. Third they already have the centrifuge capabilities they need. If they really wanted to bargain seriously for peaceful purposes, they have ample opportunity to do so.
Moreover, if you look at the long series of IAEA Reports on Iran's nuclear programs, we know physically that they have been involved in research in every area related to the production of a nuclear weapon.
Now they have found various explanations for this. They can always claim that every new IAEA discovery is a peaceful research programme. Yet, they were machining fissile material, which they were not supposed to do, and they hid this. They were developing polonium, which is one key element of the nuclear initiator in a nuclear bomb, and they may have developed another. They have experimented with highly explosive lens technology, and are acquiring high-speed trigger devices. There is simply no key element of a weapons design that we cannot physically document and which the UN has not found.
The debate, the extent it exists, is whether they have an overt nuclear weapons programme. Here we need to understand the limits of what dialog and negotiations can accomplish. Even if we had a full Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) inspection and we had the advanced protocol, we could not stop Iran under either of them from going ahead into far more advanced centrifuges, which would be far easier to disperse and conceal.
There are no unclassified lists of Iranian nuclear facilities. Most of the literature that you read focuses on only three or four. There is enough other literature however to indicate that they have over 80 nuclear related buildings. Some of their production facilities for the centrifuge, for example, are in Mashhad, the far north-west part of the country, which is the area furthest away from Israel. We know they have two types of more advanced centrifuges actively being tested. We have seen two additional types, and the President of Iran has posed in front of them. These are not areas of controversy or uncertainty.
Once Iran gets truly advanced centrifuge capabilities, which can have anywhere from 10 to 15 times the output of the current centrifuge, creating small dispersed facilities becomes radically different. It also may require much less fissile material than many studies indicate. It is important to understand that many arms controllers use nominal data for how much fissile material that is needed for weapons that is now 35 years old and was never accurate when it was issued. Countries like France have demonstrated quite conclusively that you can produce nuclear weapons with far less material than the arms control thresholds that are often used for the calculations per weapon.
The difficulty in actually producing a weapon that requires all of this technology is how well you can integrate it. How quickly can you integrate it? How reliable is it? What yield do you get? Can you go on to boosted or thermonuclear weapons? The answers keep changing as Iran improves its technology. Iran also has the ability to use passive testing methods. Iran does not require an actual weapons test to do much of this simulation and modelling. It can do a great deal of actual physical testing, including missile warhead testing without actually exploding a device.
Now to be blunt, anyone who discusses proliferation and does not make this kind technical discussion as part of their policy analysis, does not know what they are talking about. If you have read the literature, you may have an unfortunate familiarity with the degree to which people who are political scientists attempt to make conclusions about nuclear weapons that are technically absurd.
We also need to understand in any dialogue or negotiation that we cannot stop the flow of technology and Iran's research and development. We can certainly slow them down somewhat. We can detect overt deployment of a weapon, and we may limit covert deployment through negotiations but Iran can then use its ongoing nuclear potential to make threats and to support its military options with nuclear intimidation as well as carry out arms control efforts, frankly in ten minutes.
I could go through a great many more options that Iran will have even if it accepts the current terms it is offered, and the IAEA was allowed to fully resume inspections, if I had the time. However, the key message is that Iran's nuclear programs cannot end or be safely limited with one negotiation. It will not end even if Iran ever fully accepts the advanced protocol or the NNPT. If Iran does accept our terms, we still face an indefinite period of potential nuclear competition and uncertainty.
Let me also note that nuclear weapons are not the only such problem we face. We are headed towards a future five to ten years from now where most of the countries in the world will be capable of producing advanced genetically engineered biological weapons. We are talking about futures where countries like Iran can in five to ten years probably have warheads that are terminally homing conventional warheads. Now that does not sound too much when it is a 2 000 pound conventional weapon but if it hits something like a desalination plant, you have to remember that it is not just the size of the bomb; it is the critical nature of the target such as desalination plants, energy facilities and so on.
Let me close with the point that several hundred years ago, Europe and a Unified Catholic Church attempted to ban the crossbow. The crossbow was eventually virtually eliminated. It was only eliminated, however, when the musket and the rifle replaced it as far more accurate killing mechanisms.
I think we have to be much more frank about the prospects for the future, and putting real world limits on weapons of mass destruction. As long as you have regimes that wish to pursue this course, there will not be some simple, black and white arms control answer to either dialog or arms control negotiations. This is an enduring technological and a powered duel, which will goes on indefinitely into the future in ways which will constantly change and mutate. It is a duel which we may be able to limit and accommodate but that can never be totally halt. Thank you.
Jean FRANCOIS-PONCET, Senator and Co-author of the Foreign Relations and Defence Committee's report on the situation in the Middle East - Thank you very much. That was especially interesting because really gave a practical analysis of the means and resources that Iran has. It is quite clearly one of the areas where analyses are somewhat lacking.
Mustafa ALANI, Senior Advisor Director, Gulf Research Center, Dubai - Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. You heard the view from the United States and some views from France. I think you need to hear from the people who live next to Iran and the people who are going to be the first victims of not necessarily the Iranian bomb but Iranian intimidation of a nuclear era.
I am here hoping to reflect the views from the Gulf region and in particular our assessment on whether or not dialogue with Iran could produce any result for a peaceful settlement of the dispute. The problem we face in the region is that we do not know the reality about Iran's nuclear programme, the objectives or the nature of the programme.
We in the Gulf region consider ourselves as a partner in the process of solving the problem. We feel that our views and our national interests must be taken into consideration in any future settlement of this issue. When Mr Obama asked for all options on the table to deal with Iran, we discovered after a year that that means there is no option on the table. I am sorry to say this but from our contact with America, especially in the Gulf Research Center where we represent the interests of the six GCC states we have a number of American delegations coming to us and we have discovered so far that there is absolutely no policy. The administration is still searching for a policy.
It is wrong to talk about the Arab perception towards Iran; there is no «Arab» perception towards Iran. We are living just across the water from Iran and the UAE has different perceptions from an Arab who lives in Morocco or Mauritania. We have completely different perceptions. I heard so many times from Algerians or Moroccans that we should let Iran become a nuclear power. For the Gulf States, it is completely different. For us, it is a nightmare scenario for a number of reasons. In the Gulf region, we have had long engagement in Iran. Most of it has been negative engagement. For us, Iran emerging as a nuclear power is completely different from the Egyptian or Moroccan perception. In the Arab world, we have a common view regarding the Palestinian issue. Yes, every Arab has a more or less unified view towards the Palestinian issue. However, when it comes to Iran, we have completely different views.
Then there is the question about what we want in the region. The Iranians claim to have a right for a nuclear program because the Israelis have nuclear arms, this is a non-starter for us and for a very simple reason. Iran signed the NPT willingly and voluntarily. Iran placed itself under legal obligation. It was a contract between Iran and the international community not to develop nuclear military power. Neither Israel nor India nor Pakistan can be compared with Iran. These countries from the beginning decided to go nuclear and they decided not to be part of this deal. Iran signed this deal. Iran signed the additional protocol in 2003. It has not yet been ratified, but the fact that the Islamic Republic's government signed the additional protocol has been an act of recognizing the principle.
For us in the region, the policy must not be more armament to solve the Israeli problem. Disarmament must be our focus. We must focus on disarming the existing power and basically not encouraging other powers to go nuclear.
Before trying to answer the main question of this meeting, I wish to give you a quick outline of the basic component, which shape and influence our position on the issue under discussion in the Gulf region.
The first one is that the Gulf region seriously, wishes and hopes that discussions over the Iranian nuclear programme could be settled by dialogue and negotiation. This is not because we love Iran but because we love ourselves. This region has suffered enough with wars and instability since the Iraq/Iran War. We do not really wish to see another military conflict, which would undermine our stability, our economic development and could even destroy the minimum level of regional harmony which exists today between us and Iran.
However, dealing with Iran's assumed nuclear ambition must be the international community's responsibility. It is not our responsibility. NPT is not a regional contract; it is international. There is no doubt we could play our part within this framework. For us the outcome of this issue will be a decisive factor, not the question of how the balance of power is going to be developed in the region.
I can tell you here about the discussion now in the region. The discussion in the region now is very simple. If the international community is not successful in stopping Iran from emerging as a nuclear power, we have no obligation - legal or moral - towards NPT. This is the end of NPT and this must be very clear. This must be very clear.
The talk now is of what the value of NPT is for us. Iran is a signatory of the NPT from day one and a signatory of additional protocols. All of us can suddenly emerge as a nuclear power.
The discussion here is not whether Iran is going to emerge as nuclear power or whether the NPT is going to survive or not, but whether the nuclear regime is going to survive. I think this is the way we look at it in the region. This is one of the reasons why we have started to accept the principle or introduce the principle of nuclear power in the region.
We understand all our programmes now are civilian but you have to remember that no programme starts as military. We need the know how. We need to prepare for the day when we are going to be left behind and the international community is not going to do its job. We have to consider the nuclear option if this happens.
The Gulf States are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that Iran was and probably still is working and aiming to acquire a nuclear bomb or possibly not a nuclear bomb but a nuclear capability. For us, whether a nuclear bomb or a nuclear capability, there is not much difference between the two concepts. A development like this requires serious action on our part to redress the delicate balance of power in the region. The loss of Iraq as a counterbalance and buffer zone between Iran and the GCC was a major, major development for the GCC states. They are not ready to accept a new reality again with Iran emerging as a nuclear power. We have already suffered from this. We already have no answer to redress the balance which we lost by the loss of Iraq but again there is a question now. What are we going to do?
The Gulf States recognise and accept Iran's right to develop a civilian, peaceful nuclear programme. We have absolutely no problem with that. We ourselves are now adopting this strategy so we cannot deny the right of Iran for this sort of technology. Having said that, our relationship with Iran is dictated by the facts of geography and history, religion and culture and other links. You have to remember that we cannot de-select Iran as a neighbour. This is a reality of geography and a reality imposed on us whether we like it or not. We can deal with Iran as an enemy or as a friend. This is our option. We cannot change geography here.
For this reason, we have to be very careful in the frontline of confronting Iran when we have no trust in United States policy or even EU policy. We might come in the first line to confront Iran but we are going to be abandoned halfway and left alone to be cut to pieces. We are very careful. All the leaders in the Gulf States are very careful not to regionalise the problem. It is an international problem. We can play our part but we do not like anyone asking us why we do not pressurise Iran. We will pressurise Iran within the framework of the international community.
The question is whether negotiation with Iran is going to be fruitful or not. I can give you our experience with Iran. Because we are neighbours, we have long experience of negotiations with Iran. I can give you a very simple example of our negotiation or attempt to negotiate over the occupation by Iran of the three UAE islands in 1971. Now after nearly 40 years, we are still knocking on the door of Iran for negotiations without any success.
If you go by the Iranian official statements, they do not call it occupation. They call it misunderstanding. Even over misunderstanding, they refuse to negotiate. Take the Iran/Iraq War. There were eight years of bloody war. The Iranians refused to negotiate for seven years. Eventually they accepted the terms offered to them in 1981; they accepted them in 1988. We are talking about a country that is very difficult to negotiate with. This is our experience.
I will just try to answer the question of how likely successful dialogue with Iran is.
First, the Iranians will show interest in any invitation for talks as they will be keen to display their interest in a diplomatic settlement. There is no doubt about it. They believe that no invitation for talks should be rejected as this could negatively reflect on their image. Iran wishes to appear as a party that seeks a diplomatic solution to the nuclear programme.
Secondly, the Iranians will be ready to talk to the EU and other nations or international organisations but their real interest rests with the United States, not with the EU, and establishing direct talks with the United States. They believe that talks with the US will be the key for changing the international community's attitude towards Iran. They believe that any negotiations without direct involvement of the United States will not bring any necessary outcome.
In any negotiation with Iran, Iran will aim at securing a grand bargain. They will not accept a discussion on the Iranian nuclear issue separate from other issues. They demand all the cards on the table. The aim of this policy for us is that our feeling is that Iran wants to emerge as a super regional power. This is the Iranian objective and the nuclear problem must fit within this jigsaw. Iran has no need for a nuclear arm to defend itself if it needs the nuclear capability to emerge as a superpower. This is what they want from the United States and the EU. They want to be recognised as a super regional power. For us, this is absolutely not acceptable. We lived through this problem with the Nixon administration and with the appointment of the Shah of Iran as a policeman of the region. They asked us to knock on the door of Tehran whenever we make a strategic decision. We are a mature state now. I do not think we will accept this again.
Thirdly, the Iranians are well known for tactics of involving their opponents in prolonged and endless negotiations with limited outcome. This is not a secret. I am not revealing secrets. This is the reality. These tactics include the bringing up of multiple issues and not just one issue, shifting of priorities, making linkages between issues and, in general, having an unfocused approach to the negotiations.
Fourthly, the Iranian negotiation style is based on the strategy of offering concessions in instalments. A major breakthrough in the negotiations cannot be obtained in one session. Fifthly, the Iranian strategy of agreeing to a dialogue might have other objectives apart from a genuine desire to seek a negotiated settlement for the nuclear issue.
Negotiation tactics here could be used for one of the following reasons. First, it could win time to allow their national nuclear programme to progress towards establishing a new reality on the ground. In any military nuclear programme, time is a major factor here. We are talking about time as a major factor. My engineers need time to work on their projects. As a politician, it is my policy to give them time as much as possible to progress and to reach the threshold where the nature of the negotiation is going to be changed completely. Any technical advance will have an impact on the manner of the negotiation and the objective of the negotiation.
Secondly, negotiation tactics could be used to show the Iranian public that the government is doing everything possible to defuse the conflict and avoid confrontation. The responsibility of the failure to achieve a diplomatic solution will be placed at the door of the Western countries or the enemies of Iran.
Thirdly, negotiation tactics could be used to test and explore the other parties' options, especially the credibility and seriousness of the threat of a military action. Yes, negotiation with Iran is possible but we have doubts about successful negotiations. I will stop here. Thank you very much.
Bernard HOURCADE, Senior Research Fellow at CNRS (Paris) - I will start by saying that we all heard very clearly what Ms Boroumand said about the situation in Iran. It has lasted over 30 years and it is getting worse every day. As an academic, we are very affected by the fact that Clotilde Weiss, a student who went to Iran to learn Farsi, finds herself still under house arrest after six months. The problem is not what is happening but how we can change it and finally take Iran seriously.
I also listened to what Robert Malley said. He talked about nuclear capabilities, and the title of the conference, not really being the relevant issue. Of course it is very important, but it is no more topical given what happened last June. I think the emergence of a new democratic phenomenon, this is to say street demonstrations, has completely changed the situation when you are talking about Iran.
We must also realise that, on the one hand, international nuclear policy has failed because it has been said Iran has an obvious nuclear capability. If one day the Iranian government wants a nuclear weapon whatever her government might be, it will have it. On the other hand, there has also never been a tougher Iranian regime than today. The international sanctions and embargos that we have had for the last 30 years have failed miserably.
On a number of occasions, the French, the Europeans and the Americans looked to coordinated their actions, but we must remember that in 2003 the Iranians accepted for the first time to step back and that they would clarify their nuclear policy. That was about avoiding nuclear proliferation and the US did not like that because they did not have the same aim.
Europe wanted to fight against nuclear weapons and proliferation of them. We wanted to avoid a proliferation that would apply to Iran and then to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Brazil, Argentina and many other countries in the world.
However, for the US government, it was about regime change. If that is the precondition, it means of course there was no attempt to solve the crisis. The Bush government showed their support for a confrontation with Iran that first required getting rid of the Islamic government. The result is that we have today a stronger Islamic regime, which is more repressive than before, and a nuclear weapon, if it is planned, is closer than ever.
Iran does not really epitomize the nuclear problem, but is connected to it. This very serious issue is focused on Iran, but we are wrong to ignore the fact that today the nuclear problem is not only that of Iran, but also of Brazil, Argentina, Algeria and many other emerging countries. Iran is just one example. If we focus on it, we are blind to the rest.
The Iranian issue today is raised by the Iranians themselves. I have been analysing Iran for the last 40 years from the bottom up and not from the top down. As with all researchers in social sciences I have found that over the last 30 to 40 years, there has been a profound change in Iranian society, quite apart from the government. This change is neither because of the Islamic Republic nor is it against it.
We all know the essential role of Iranian women. There are in a majority at universities. Iranian society, open to the 21 st century, has had successes where other neighbouring countries have not. The problem is moving between the sociological and the political. It is quite clear that Iranians do not agree with their government. Eighty percent of the people who voted for Ahmadinejad are critical of his policies but they could not, or would not, make a vote of change in the June 2009 elections because the repression was already in effect and, as Ms Boroumand said, the elections served only as pretext. Since then, things have changed because Iranian society had the courage to become political. In some areas of Iran, notably in Tehran, people were strong enough and brave enough to take to the streets in protest.
The second important thing is the speech of President Obama to the Iranian people. Certainly, people are a little disappointed: «You said ` yes we can' but you have not actually done much in a year». But, concerning his Norouz (the Iranian New Year) speech, what other country in the world merited a speech from the President of the United States? Only Iran. This is a major event. He recognized the «Islamic Republic» twice. It implies the end of the embargo and of the desire for regime change in order to bring back the Shah's son or some other political officer. For the first time, Iran was taken seriously by the United States and it changed things considerably. In other words for the first time, Iranian elections last June actually had something at stake.
Usually, it is said, elections in Iran serve nothing but to legitimize the winner. But this time, for the first time, there was something at stake. Barack Obama destroyed one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic: he destroyed the dogma of opposition to the United States, which is the founding pillar of the Islamic Republic. He peacefully destroyed it. This led to panic in the Iranian political class. Slogans such as «down with the US» did not mean anything anymore. Thus, the elections were really about something this time because the winner was going to be able to virtually shake the hand of the American president and therein to obtain the lasting recognition of the Islamic Republic. It explained internal rivalries between Rezai, a former commander of the Pasdars, Mousavi, a former Prime Minister of Khomeini, Karoubi, who belonged to all governments, and Ahmadinejad. They were all fighting for the electoral pie because there was, for the first time, a real pie to be shared: the international opening of the country. This is why there was a coup by Ahmadinejad and a countercoup from the Iranian society. The question is not really what happened but what we do today. What is the balance of power now ?
On the one hand, you have the more conservative elements saying that the Islamic Republic is in danger. Today the western countries are absent from Iran. Perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 westerners reside there. If you open the frontiers and symbolically shake the Americans - and, to that extent, the Europeans, the Australians and all others' - hands, in a few years you would have 200,000 or 300,000 foreigners coming to work in Iran. The most conservative Iranians consider this peaceful and insignificant potentiality as a foreign economic and cultural invasion to which the Islamic Republic could not withstand. Therefore, they are against all talks with the US.
Ahmadinejad came up with a second solution, which notes that a compromise must be found. It is a China-esque solution: internal repression showing that the Islamic Republic will be eternal. You lock up, kill, and massively repress, all while maintaining a few exit doors. Then, very tactically, you open one of the doors thanks to a few agreements with the United States, perhaps on the nuclear question, which is no longer a major issue. Nuclear weapons are not really a strategic issue for Iran: their army is numerous and strong, there are 75 million inhabitants, and the strength of Iran - as was previously noted - is a geographical one. Even if it does not have the nuclear bomb, for the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain or Qatar, Iran remains a political, economic and cultural monster. Nuclear capability is, therefore, not a priority. Ahmadinejad thus proposed, in Vienna last October 7 th , a technical agreement on the research reactor in Tehran. It was all about a friendly deal to reduce the pressure and open limited negotiation with the US. Like the Chinese model, they are closed on the inside and open themselves, in a controlled fashion, to the outside, in order to assure the survival of the Islamic regime.
In the Western camp, some people say that is not acceptable because Iranians no longer accept this political system after 30 years of the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, in the United States and in Europe, we will not be satisfied with any halfway house solution.
This new balance of power led to the rise of a third power: an opposition. It is not the green wave - that is very brave and needs to be supported, but who is harshly repressed because of organisation and strategy - but it is the opposition of the inside men, that of the Revolutionary Guards. Now this might shock you but it is perhaps necessary. As Robert Malley said, the vast network of Revolutionary Guards is not without similarity, structurally and not in terms of values, to the French Resistance in 1945. You have many Iranians coming to the revolutionary movement just like in 1945 you had French people who came out of the resistance. It is a simple historical fact. All the Revolutionary Guards fought to defend their homeland and the third-world revolution they made, but the heterogeneity of Guard veterans is extremely large, even if all are more or less tied to terrorist acts. They planted bombs on rue de Rennes here in Paris, they assassinated Ghassemlou in Vienna and Charaf Kandi in Berlin among others. But among these people there are some who want a «normal» Iran, open to the 20 th century while staying loyal to the Islamic Republic. These veterans of the Iran-Iraq War are staying, for the moment, discreet. Despite their unity, some former Pasdars are in exile, others support the Reformists, the green movement, while others still are ready to defend the Islamic regime using any means necessary.
In the current deadlock, we should not worry about the rise to power of the Revolutionary Guards. However, we have to ask who these men are and we have to realize that today the Islamic regime has never been so divided because the power is in their hands. As in all the countries of the world, after 30 years in government together, rivalries and feuds are at their height. The core of the Islamic Republic is divided and ready to explode. Ahmadinejad is confronted by the opposition in the street and subjected to pressure from America and especially within his own camp, where some do not want him to shake, even figuratively, the hand of Barack Obama.
We assist, then, with the implementation of a radically new system of power relations. How can we help the Iranians while defending out interests and international security threatened by the incertitude of the Iranian nuclear programme? How can we help them get out of this deadlock? The analyses and strategies of the Western camp do not seem to have taken into account the changes occurring in Iran when we consider the continuation of sanction policies. When we see high-level diplomats and ministers of the six world powers get together to see what new sanctions can be dreamt up against Iran, it seems that they have not considered that sanctions are helping Ahmadinejad and making the nuclear bomb come closer, if it is to exist. Although the United States has changed its strategy, keeping an outstretched hand despite everything, even if they do not receive a response because does not want, nor know how, to respond.
What is the fear of the regime? It is not sanctions, which reinforce the regime and affect only the living standards of Iranians. It is not an Israeli bombing that would only revive nationalist sentiment around President Ahmadinejad and show that international Zionism supports the «green wave». What is the real fear of the regime's most radical factions? The worst sanction against Iran would be to lift the sanctions.
Iran will not stay for eternity under a regime of sanctions, and in all hypotheses, it is not useless to imagine the effects of a post-crisis agenda. We have to think of the day when oil companies can invest in Iran, contrary to the D'Amato bill of 1996. It takes five years before a new oil well is profitable, so the Ahmadinejad government would not benefit from it. If the embargo on civilian planes and scientific works - know that Iranian universities have not been able to freely purchase foreign scientific publications for the last 30 years - were lifted, in other words if we were to open Iran, if we were to take at their word the government's request for economic relations and if we were to respond to the demand of the Iranian people who want to live normally in the 21 st century rather than follow what Ahmadinejad and his fellows are doing: things would change. The balance of power would change. This sanctioning through opening is, without doubt, academic naiveté.
The difference, compared with 30 years ago, is that on June 15 last year a large part of the Iranian population crossed a political threshold. This movement will be without a future if the international community continues to support the isolation of Tehran. If, however, diplomats and European and American politicians can change their mindset and peacefully «invade» Iran, for the sake of lasting cooperation, things will change. The type of regime in Tehran is an Iranian problem; it is not our role to choose. In this strategy, which is not anything new, Europe - who has long attempted a «critical dialogue» - could have played a go-between role. But alas, she is not there, we'll talk about that later.
We must take Iran seriously and not give it intentions, a force, or a role that it does not have. Iran is not a regional power, capable of promoting a regional consensus, and she never will be because the Persians are isolated in a region populated by Arabs and Turks. With its population, its size, its society and its riches, Iran knows that it will be feared, but it will never be a strong enough country to lead and be respected by its neighbours. Despite its renewal, Shi'ism is a minority in the Muslim world. Iran is not an Islamic power. Iran failed clearly at being the leader of the Islamic world. What has happened with Hezbollah, Lebanese political party and a radical Shi'ite group, is the proof. Iran is, rather, an emerging power like Brazil or Indonesia or so many others that today have between 50 and 100 million inhabitants, have a new middle class and a new political culture.
Let us look at Iran and its people differently. Just take a different perspective. If we want this to be a country of human rights and international rules, all while conserving its identity, there is a way to act differently and to support the Iranians in respecting their diversity not by sending naive messages via the Internet but by creating a lasting businesses presence on the ground in Iran. Thank you.
Jean FRANCOIS-PONCET, Senator and Co-author of the Foreign Relations and Defence Committee's report on the situation in the Middle East - We have heard from the various speakers. We certainly have got elements for dialogue with the audience. However, we do not have much time for that dialogue now since we were supposed to have finished 15 minutes ago.
I would like to ask a question to Mr Cordesman. Does Israel have the capacity to destroy the Iranian nuclear sites, through an air attack or submarines launched missiles?
Secondly, do you think this hypothesis is plausible or not as it is often bantered about?
Anthony H. CORDESMAN, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC - I do not think anyone in Israel believes that they can destroy Iran's technology base for nuclear systems. What Israel is talking about is slowing Iran down by several years. Part of the reason for the Israeli debate is whether you believe that slowing them down for several years a) works and b) does not end in actually provoking them to a much more open deployment on a much larger scale of effort.
The closest to any unclassified discussion that I have seen of Iran's technology base in targets is on the Web from something called the Nuclear Threat Initiative. I say that because none of the governments that have discussed this issue have ever provided any useful information whatsoever on the technology base or targeting. I think that the Nuclear Threat Initiative is probably correct in point out well over 50 sites. We know that quite a number of these are confirmed. What it also points out is we have no way to characterise those sites precisely. How well Israel or the United States or anyone else can locate what is in an individual site here is critical because to conceal key technology and manufacturing quality, much of which is mobile and easy to disperse, is absolutely critical. It is a game.
The fundamental difference from Israel and a power like the United States is that Israel could probably only launch one strike as a major strike against a limited number of targets. The United States could go in, hit once, destroy the air defences and conduct a series of strikes. Now that is a theory because it would require political support from the Gulf and it would not use carriers. Something that I find extraordinarily irritating is when you see a journalist referring to carriers being used as the primary weapon for these strikes you know the article is ridiculous. It is simply not the proper platform.
Again can I tell you how quickly any of these countries would recover? At this point in time, Iran still has problems with the P1 centrifuge. We know it has a P1 improved. We know it has a P2 and a P3. We have seen images that indicate it has a P4. If Israel hit today's facilities and it went ahead and successfully built those centrifuges and dispersed them, we would be talking about very significant nuclear weapons production capability. However, we do not know when and we do not know how much material they would use.
Let me just say when you say knockout capability, it is not just having one bomb that weighs a couple of thousand pounds. You need a nuclear missile warhead or a bomb in a device that weighs well under 1,000 kilograms. These are the real issues here. Again it is a 10/15/20 year time horizon and not next week's negotiations.
Jean FRANCOIS-PONCET, Senator and Co-author of the Foreign Relations and Defence Committee's report on the situation in the Middle East - Thank you. Shall we have one question from the floor? We will not be able to field more than one question but we have accepted the principle of the Q&A session.
From the Floor - I have a question for Mr Cordesman. Considering the difficulty in having a clear, readable US policy at any given time regarding Iran, what is his view when we look at the different movements? Does he see a change in the US policy towards greater firmness or change towards greater flexibility? Thank you very much.
Anthony H. CORDESMAN, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC - I think the answer is really very simple. United States' policy is responding in many ways for the lack of an Iranian response. Part of that may have been dictated by the election crisis but the administration has made a number of overt and covert efforts. It has done it not simply individually but has worked through Europe and other initiatives to try to do this.
I think Mr Alani raised the issue that so far we simply have not had the response where we have been easily able to pursue any new option. Secretary Clinton has made that quite clear. I think if you look through what she has said, the problem has been the initiatives the administration tried to begin with, which were low level informal contacts, have simply gone the same path as those that occurred when Secretary Albright made similar attempts. We have not been able to pursue it. Do we have a policy that is still essentially the one which is the Six or, if you will, the Quartet. I always have trouble with how we are defining numbers nowadays. Evidently in France, four equals six where in the US, six equals four. Those are the policies but will they move forward under this government? If they will, we have no indication.