Iran's Push to Bring Legitimacy to its Nuclear Program

Iran announced today that it is working on a nuclear fusion program.

Frankly, this is probably more posturing than anything. Iran is not going to be able to seriously compete with joint Western efforts in France to develop viable fusion technology. If it starts pouring money into this endeavour, it will be a waste.

The announcement probably comes for two reasons:
1) To try to bring a sense of legitimacy to its nuclear program, and paint Iran as a brave martyr/victim of Western anti-Islamic prejudices. If it's being sanctioned for a noble and honest energy development program, then it certainly does appear the victim. This will help Ahmedinijad's popularity.

2) To make Iran look like it's modernizing. Again, this is mostly a domestic ploy. If Iran is able to appear to be modernizing and pressing forward technologically, it can alleviate some of the pain of the sanctions, which are felt by consumers. It's much easier to "sacrifice" for the state if progress is being seen.

For the West, careful PR will be the game, to try to keep the Iranian people disgruntled with their own leadership, rather than the Western Devil.

Iran's Revisionist Signalling

Most realist theories of war agree that states that are satisfied or otherwise bought-into the international system are unlikely to start conflict or take extreme risks--where those that are unsatisfied are likely to take risks to change the world order. When we look at rising or powerful countries with respect to our security, we ask: are they revisionist? If the answer is clearly no, we get countries like the UK, France, Japan--not a threat, despite being very powerful. With countries like China, Russia, there is serious debate over their love of the status quo.

Great Powers create the international order--the UK, France, Britain, Russia, and China are the 5 permanent members of the security council. The WTO, WHO, the IAEA (keep this one in mind) and dozens of other international organizations were made either by the US or by the EU with US support.

No Great Power (or rising Great Power) has decided that it is no longer a status-quo power since the end of the Cold War. Iran is certainly not a Great Power, but it is a rather powerful regional power, and has spent a great deal of time and effort trying to spread its influence to Iraq, win a power struggle in Lebanon, and boot Israel from the map. In the last few years, the Great Powers have used a combination of coercive and rewarding diplomacy (sticks and carrots) to try and turn Iran to toe the status quo line.

Today, Ahmadinejad has shown that he's not interested. He claimed that the entire global system is "unjust," which is a bad sign--it means he is not terribly interested in trying to use the global system to address his grievances.

His grievances, by brief summary of his speech:
1) The US is "bullying" governments in Iraq and Lebanon into being pro-western, because that would definitely not otherwise be possible.
2) Israel is not yet wiped off the map.
3) The IAEA is still pressuring Iran.
4) The IAEA is not pressuring the US/France/Britain/China/Russia.

The IAEA won't pressure the Great Powers to disarm--it is a construct of the Great Powers. For the same reasons, it won't let up on Iran. Israel is not going away. And whatever bullying the US is now doing that ticks Iran off, it isn't going to stop.

Earlier murmurings that the Iranians might be reaching a deal on Iraq and the nuclear issue seem to have been overly-optimistic. It looks like Iran is taking a stance that dooms it to confrontation.

Singh-Bush's Bittersweet Victory

Indian Prime Minister Singh and US President Bush have worked together so long on a nuclear power deal that it seemed as silly as Israeli-Palestinian peace. But recent breakthroughs--a deal that is ready for the IAEA--have shaken things up.

A confidence vote came to parliament (which could have ousted the Prime Minister and forced a new parliamentary coalition to form) when the Communist party left the coalition over the US deal (citing something about imperialism on their way out the door), and Singh's future--as well as the deal itself--hung in the balance.

Congress won by a small margin. But accusations of bribery are rampant, opened flamboyantly by a BJH (opposition party) march into the well of parliament, literally waving money that they claimed had been given to them as bribes... only 2 hours before the vote. Sick and imprisoned members of the ruling coalition were pulled out for the vote, and some members of the opposition abstained or failed to arrive at all. The vote was certainly fishy, and Indian papers are very displeased. Indian politics has gotten ugly, even if the vote victory has given Singh the go-ahead on the nuclear deal. Parliamentary elections happen in May, which means he has but 9 months to recover from this PR mess and try to rally the country behind the Congress party, lest a strong socialist opposition take over and derail his economic growth plans for India.

From here, the deal has only a few months to be approved by the IAEA and the US Congress, before Bush leaves office. The move would be a jab in the opposite direction of the US' typical anti-proliferation strategy. India's development of a nuclear bomb made it--according to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty--a nuclear rogue state (along with Pakistan, maybe Israel), and the US has not required India to give up its weapons program for help in its peacful nuclear program. Surprisingly, Europe is not making a great fuss about this--possibly because Europe's diplomatic leadership are Brown and Sarkozy, and possibly because Europe wants to see a strong India counter a strong China. If Bush keeps Europe's support, the deal is likely to sqeak through before he leaves office.

But the bitterness left in the throats of Indians will not be forgotten quickly. The Opposition will try to use bribery allegations as a sign that the US is trying to use India as a pawn. If the Indian public takes these allegations to heart, the US is going to struggle keeping India along as an ally in the near future.

That said, the way the world is taking a liking to Mr. Obama, they may quickly change their mind if he becomes president.

The Enigmatic Syrian Reactor

In September 2007, rumors and scant pictures appeared of an Israeli bombing of a Syrian nuclear facility. Israel bombed a facility in Syrian soil, probably killing Syrian citizens, and Syria didn't say a word. Israel apparently had good evidence that the Syrians were building a nuclear facility, and didn't say a thing--at least publicly--to the IAEA, the US, or any media source.

The above image is a before-and-after of the facility; Syria quietly razed the site after it had been bombed, and has not put up a fuss. In fact, the first acknowledgment that the site could be nuclear comes from the US Intelligence Community, which claims to have video evidence (to be shown to Senate tomorrow) of North Korean officials assisting Syria in constructing the plant, which appeared to be capable of refining small amounts of plutonium to weapons-grade. Why the wait, the secrecy?

Sadly, there's no clear answer. This is certainly curious; Syria has a tendency to overstate Israeli wrongdoings, but stayed quiet here. Syria was probably simply trying to prevent too much public attention from bearing down on it for its building of the facility. But why did Israel insist on staying quiet, especially when it became increasingly apparent that the Israelis indeed carried out the attack? I simply don't know. Perhaps a deal with the Syrians had been made. Indeed, the Israelis have just recently leaked that they might be willing to return the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a peace agreement.

And on another funny timing note, Iran has recently agreed to give a detailed report to the IAEA about its nuclear program, and whether or not Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons (hint: the Iranians are going to say "no" to that). All this after Dick Cheney and Robert Gates both visited Oman--a friend of Iran--a few weeks ago, and after the US Navy parked the USS Cole back in the Persian Gulf coastal waters. Most interestingly, six-nation talks aimed at disarming North Korea's nuclear program just restarted. There's not enough out there to be sure of what all the timing means. Hopefully, the US decision to out the Syrians and North Koreans on their nuclear dealings comes as part of a greater political maneuver, but the timing is good enough that I would be genuinely surprised if it wasn't. Maybe the US is trying to pressure North Korea into disarming, or pressure the UN and the six-nations into bargaining harder. Maybe it is trying to pressure Iran by proxy, in particular as the US publicly blames Iran for supporting troublesome armed groups in Iraq (though Iran's official stance is supportive of disarming them). Maybe this is a golden opportunity to pressure both, and try to achieve a wrap-up of two of Bush's biggest foreign policy challenges in the last 8 years: Iraq and North Korea.

But we won't know for some time.