Word games with Iranians

By Ilana Bet-El

Date: 04/05/06

The nuclear stand-off with Iran has highlighted the international system's ability to confuse process and fact and risks and threats.

Iran is dominant in both the Middle East and central Asia and has declared it is pursuing a path of uranium enrichment. These are really all the hard facts we know. In the area of clear interpretation, Iran has declared that the enrichment is for peaceful purposes and that, therefore, its activities are within the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the EU and the US declare the claim of legitimacy to be dubious in that the probable aim of the enrichment is to produce nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council is yet to present an official position on the matter, though the issue has now been referred to it.

Much of the rest remains murky - from the reasons why Iran has embarked on this track to the realistic options open to the rest of the world. We need to keep in mind the intelligence mistakes in the lead-up to the US and coalition invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Assumptions and risk analyses cannot be enough to decide policy: there has to be a clear threat. But for a threat one needs facts, which, as noted, are thin on the ground.

To replace facts there has been process: the IAEA has sent and withdrawn officers to Iran; reports have been written and deadlines set; the matter has been referred to the UN Security Council. All this is good in that it allows for situations to be approached within the framework of collective security. But it is also bad in that it creates an alternative reality in which a risk becomes a threat. For, while the problem at stake is that Iran is probably threatening regional and possibly global peace, this process has created an alternative problem: non-compliance with the international process.

For those seeking action of some kind against Iran this is a positive option, but for the rest it reflects a deeply worrying trend: we have made the assumption that the refusal to comply with the process indicates a threat. And if there is a threat, then it may be justifiably countered, in a manner including military action.

There have been many statements, especially from the US, as to the malicious intent and meaning of the Iranian leadership and its nuclear pursuits. Such statements have also often been coupled with threats of military action. The EU has also made many statements, decidedly less belligerent, on the situation - and pursued a policy of engagement, which has now been broken off since Iran has not fulfilled its obligations. Equally, the EU has remained ambiguous, even though it has not totally rejected a military option, mainly for ideological reasons. But, pragmatically speaking, the EU does not really have an independent military option with regard to Iran.

At root, therefore, it appears that confusion rules the day with regard to the stand-off with Iran. And if this is the case, and the outcome desired is a non-nuclear Iran, it is important that clarity - above all of the facts of the situation rather than the process - be established as an immediate priority. For what is at stake is world security: surely a matter worthy of meticulous clarity.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

Major commentary feature in which the author suggests that the dispute with Iran over its nuclear enrichment programme has highlighted the international system's ability to confuse process and fact and risks and threats. She argues that assumptions and risk analyses, as in this case could not be enough to decide policy and that facts, proving a real threat were needed to comply with the international process.