Those who had expected that President Ahmedinejad would be less than a fully fired-up patriotic leader of Iran during his visit to the United Nations this week, were hugely disappointed. Of course, nothing was spared to browbeat him, right from his arrival to the time he departed from the United States.
Be it his arrival at the JFK or his address at the Columbia University or his press conference, intelligence agents hounded his entourage, the scholarly hosts poured scorn on him and the Israeli lobbyists infiltrated his media encounter at the UN headquarters. But he neither lost his cool nor his argument on his country's nuclear programme. Speaking a few hours after President Bush, the Iranian leader confirmed to the General Assembly that his government would persevere in its nuclear programme as it is Iran's inalienable right to exploit nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
As for the UN Security Council, he said, he had enough of it. Dominated as it is by "arrogant powers", he considered the dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme "closed" for the Security Council. He said from now on Iran would consider the nuclear issue a "technical" matter to be decided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) instead of it being a "political" issue fit for the Security Council deliberations. "I officially announce that in our opinion the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary Agency matter". He was, in fact, referring to the "work plan" his government has signed up with the IAEA under which Iran would inform the agency of all its open and hidden projects within the next three months.
IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei trusts the Iranian commitment, but anti-Iran lobbies have charged the agency of undermining the Security Council attempts at securing the third batch of sanctions against Tehran. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad also had a few words for President Bush who in his speech from the same podium had repeated his call for regime change in Iran.
By setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without due process, tapping of telephones, intercepting mail and frequent summons to police and security centres "certain powers are extensively violating human rights," he said. Keeping up pressure on Tehran, the United States last month declared Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist outfit, echoing the growing sentiment among the Israel-led sections of western political circles and think-tanks that are itching for a war on Iran.
France, so far a reluctant supporter of the United States in coercing the Security Council into imposing draconian sanctions against Washington's adversaries, has also climbed up the war-mongers' bandwagon. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner recently warned "we have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war". How soon that war should come, the United States does not seem to be in a hurry, given its hands are already full with involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of course, the neocons in the US government would like to develop Iran's nuclear programme as an election issue but saner elements are still licking the wounds the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq has inflicted on American society. But the influential Israeli lobby on the Capitol Hill is working overtime to trigger a surprise attack on Iran's nuclear installations, flaunting the success of its attack on Iraqi nuclear plant as the model, though it is doubtful if Israel has the aerial capability to strike Iranian nuclear installations which are spread far and wide and also beyond the combat radius of Israeli aircraft.
But there is the much-held belief in Israel that willing or unwilling once war begins with Iran the United States will have to join it. How soon Israel would launch the so-called secret raid on Iranian nuclear facilities is anybody's guess: one estimate says it could be in next three months because Tel Aviv is convinced that beyond 2007 Iranian will have weaponised, creating risk of retaliation with nuclear weapons.
While there is an open debate now on the possibility of direct or Israel-inspired US strike on Iranian nuclear installations, not much is heard about the horrendous consequences of such an adventurism. Being in close proximity to the flashpoint one would say that an aerial strike, howsoever intense, cannot wipe out the Iranian nuclear programme; it is widely scattered all over the country and is fully protected. And, there is no question of US or any other troops landing on the Iranian soil, much less winning a war against Iran.
The strike may slow down the progress but determination to keep up nuclear programme would be strengthened many times. The danger is that this gamble would destabilise the entire region. Politically, it would weaken the monarchies in the Gulf, fire up the anti-Israel forces like Hamas and Hezbollah and raise the anger among the populations of Muslim countries against the United States. Since the war in the Gulf would negatively affect the supply of oil, the most serious fallout would be on the world economic situation.
Iran would naturally stop supply of its three and half million bpd, but almost eight to nine million bpd coming out through the Gulf would also stop. The alternative to war is not, however, very complicated provided it is accepted that Iran too has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Whatever the sentiment underscoring deliberations of the Security Council, it must draw inspiration from the UN General Assembly, which, in turn, should look afresh on the wider question of using nuclear technology for energy production, which is the cheapest and the cleanest.