Perspective

US President Barack Obama’s 47-nation nuclear security summit may have been the biggest diplomatic gathering of global leaders hosted by an American president since the 1945 San Francisco conference that founded the United Nations. The summit attempted to give an idea about of “what a US-led world order should look like”. Reality, though, is much more prosaic or dangerous or both.
Some argue that no concrete mechanism has been designed to deal with nuclear terrorism. The summit has not solved any important problem. Targeting to achieve US’ nuclear objectives, Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit generated more heat than light.
On the other hand, a nuclear disarmament conference took place in Tehran bringing together delegations from 56 countries. The participants passed a final declaration on the importance of complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and urged the world community to acknowledge the right of all states to nuclear research for peaceful purposes. All signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In some cases, however, the international community becomes suspicious as to whether a certain number of signatories pursue the purely peaceful agenda. This was the case with the nuclear program of Iran. Western countries led by the US distrust Tehran and insist that it stop its nuclear research.
Ayatollah Khamenei said in a message read out at the conference: “Only the US government has committed an atomic crime in the history of mankind. Iran’s Supreme Leader has labeled the US an “atomic criminal”. He also told the conference that the use of nuclear weapons was “haram” – prohibited under Islam.
Obama’s nuclear security summit was basically to gather global support for a tougher round of sanctions on Iran. Obama wants new sanctions in place by June.
In addition, the Obama administration is maneuvering “strong sanctions” imposed by the United States and other countries to convince Iran to alter its perceived course toward a nuclear weapons capability.
In April 2010 Russia has made a small step towards the West in the issue of Iranian nuclear problem, having admitted a possibility of introducing of new sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Therefore, the deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Ryabkov claimed that Moscow cannot agree, for example, a fuel embargo imposed on Iran, because such a sanction would shock the whole Iranian society.
Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao talked for 90 minutes about it at the summit. The impeccably laconic Hu came out of it basically saying he would be prepared to discuss it – but promised absolutely nothing.

China, while historically averse to tough sanctions and uneasy about potential damage to its trade relationship with Tehran, may indeed be coming on board with Obama. Two other permanent UN Security Council members, France, and Britain, have been pressing for sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt a key part of its nuclear programme. China is most likely to pursue a delay-and-weaken strategy with regard to the sanctions the West says are needed to bring Iran into serious negotiations on its controversial nuclear program. While China has stated that it supports a “nuclear-free” Middle East, it does not want to sacrifice its deepening economic ties with Tehran, especially in oil.
In addition to its need for energy, China’s relationship with Tehran is shaped by broader foreign and domestic policy calculations. Strong bilateral ties strengthen Beijing’s position in the Middle East and Central Asia, China’s “Grand Periphery” which has become a priority focus of its geo-strategy. China and Iran share a sense of suspicion towards the West – reinforced by common experience of being the target of sanctions and a similar perception of U.S. interference in their internal politics. In China’s eyes, Iran’s regional power will expand in future, meaning that good relations could serve its interests for years to come.
At the start of the Washington summit, both Brazil and Turkey – currently non-permanent members of the UN Security Council – duly announced, once again, they are against sanctions, and especially against what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists should be “crippling sanctions”.
The new sanctions under discussion, according to experts, would be directed at companies linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who control business at home and abroad. But no one should believe that tighter sanctions will, in the near future, have any impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The United States, perhaps, is much less optimistic. The US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has sent a message to President Obama warning him that Washington’s policy of nuclear deterrent on Iran is ineffective. In the words of the Pentagon chief, the White House has no emergency plans should Iran choose to build a nuclear bomb, after all. Under the US nuclear doctrine published on April 6th, the US may deliver a nuclear strike at Iran in case of nuclear threat from it. Apparently, Mr.Gates should think again where to draw the line between a nuclear threat and suspected intention of developing a nuclear bomb.
Six years ago more stern steps against Iran might have worked, but today they are an idea whose time has come and gone. Their inadequacy stems from several causes.
First, Iran will continue to assert its right under Article IV the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue a peaceful nuclear energy program. Article IV refers to the “inalienable right” of states to nuclear energy. The parties to the treaty are promised assistance from more technologically advanced countries in pursuing this right. While this may be considered an untenable stipulation in the treaty, it is, nonetheless, the way the law stands. In accord with the treaty, in exchange for pursuing this right, Iran must agree to inspections of its nuclear facilities to assure that there has been no diversion of nuclear materials for making weapons. In fairness, if this aspect of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is to be altered, it must be done for all states, not singling out Iran for special punitive treatment. Currently, uranium enrichment plants are operating in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. Of these, Germany and Japan are non-nuclear weapons states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and thus have a similar relationship to the treaty as does Iran.
Second, Iran will question the unequal treatment that it is receiving as compared to another Middle Eastern country, Israel, which is thought to possess some 200 nuclear weapons. Iran will note that there is not only a double standard between nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” but also a double standard between Israel and other countries in the Middle East. It will rightly point out that there have long been calls for a Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone, including at the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, which have been largely ignored by Israel and the Western countries.
Third, Iran is hardly standing idly by while sanctions that target its refined petroleum products are debated by the U.S. and other countries. Tehran’s leaders are acutely aware of their vulnerability and are moving to address it. Iran, with extensive Chinese involvement, has already begun building new refineries and expanding existing facilities with the aim of approximately doubling domestic capacity by 2012. This will more than compensate for its current refining shortfall. Whether Iran can complete these projects on schedule remains to be seen, but the level of effort is intense and serious.
For Washington, the question should not be whether “strict sanctions” will cause some economic harm despite Iran’s multifarious, accelerating efforts to mitigate them. Instead, we must ask whether that harm will be sufficient to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. Objectively, there is no reason to believe that it will.
Some scholars conclude that sanctions work about half the time. They are most effective when applied over a long period of time on small countries that are dependent on the outside world. Iran is a big country with oil, and it can build centrifuges faster than the international community can impose sanctions. The Islamic Republic is also a proud country, the kind for which sanctions are as likely to elicit defiance, as they are cooperation. Indeed, the Islamic Republic has been under one kind of sanction or another since its founding 30 years ago. Any objective assessment would have to conclude that sanctions have completely failed to alter Iran’s nuclear policy.
So, what the sanctions will cause harm to Iran? It will sell its oil and pistachio thru Turkey. It will buy its hardware from China and East European countries. The business in Pakistan will boom for rendering the freight services. The Islamic countries unanimously will help Iran to combat any shortages of vaccine and medicines for the infants. They will not let a single Iranian child die of this sanction.
And much more the Iranians will be united again against the west. The differences between the Shiite and Sunni Muslim will be sunk also without any delay, just with the announcement of sanction.
As Iran suffered for United States foreign policy incompetence before the First Gulf War, so it has prospered as a direct result of the same incompetence since. It seems to me sanctions would be a continuation of that incompetence. Sanctions seem to favor the criminal, harm the innocent. That has been their history. It’s only the people who are victimized by the sanctions not the regime!
The only safe number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero. The only way to reach this number is for the nuclear weapons states to become serious about the “unequivocal undertaking” to eliminate their nuclear arsenals that they made at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Until they do so, the prospects are high of countries like Iran following North Korea’s example of withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursuing nuclear weapons programs.
Sanctions Can’t Be the Centerpiece While diplomacy should be a long shot in civilized world. The proponents of sanctions have an even more difficult task. Unlike diplomacy, sanctions have a clear, decades-long track record of failure. Change we can believe in cannot be a ratcheting up of sanctions the world community doesn’t believe in.

(The writer can be reached at:
mduddinbd@gmail.com)