A very challenging piece by Paul Kelly in this morning’s Australian 30.8.06. He challenges specifically the clergy (and others) for their lack of moral voice.

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Iran’s defiance over nuclear weapons is alarming the international community, writes Editor-at-large Paul Kelly

30 August 2006

WITH an ominous sense of deja vu, the US and the UN are on the brink of decisions about Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear activities. The political chemistry is unmistakable. Iran is emboldened by nationalistic mission and religious conviction. It can smell weakness and disunity within the UN and the West and it knows that the US is a wounded giant, humbled by its Iraqi blunder, its moral standing diminished.

By contrast, Iran operates from an inflated strength. It enjoys high oil prices, along with the option of cutting off supply to the West if subjected to any military attack. It is a multiple strategic winner from the Iraq invasion – Iran’s influence in Shia-dominated Iraq has escalated. It uses that influence to keep Iraq weak and divided. It sees the US military bogged down in Iraq, thereby reducing America’s military option against Iran itself. Note the final irony: while there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq, the Iranians have pressed ahead with their own nuclear program.

With each passing year the magnitude of the US strategic blunder in Iraq only deepens, its scale hard to comprehend. The US has upset the balance of power in the region in favour of Iran, the nation it now sees asthe most destabilising force in global politics. This is an epic tragedy.

Shadow foreign minister Kevin Rudd correctly argues that: “The core and discomforting reality for the US, the UK and Australia is that the decision to invade Iraq has not had the effect of intimidating Iran. This plainly was the intention behind Iran’s inclusion as a member of the so-called ‘axis ofevil’.”

The UN Security Council is short of options. This follows Iran’s refusal to acquiesce before the main US demand, to suspend its uranium enrichment programs as a prelude to talks over the generous European Union-US offer to provide Iran with sophisticated civil nuclear technology.

Once the August 31 deadline passes, the US will seek sanctions against Iran under UN provisions that also could lead to the use of force. It will be another test of the Security Council, with Russia and China expected to oppose punitive economic measures.

Iran’s attitude is utterly uncompromising. But its tactics are to split the UN by holding out the prospect of “serious negotiations”. The Iranians know the depth of resistance within global opinion to a military strike against them.

This magnifies their ability to play for diplomatic delay while sticking unwaveringly by their strategic goal of a nuclear weapons capability. With Iran now exercising moral command of the Shia street, the consequences of any US military strike against Tehran will be severe in terms ofinflamed Islamic opinion and Iran’s ability to launch terrorist attacks against US assets and citizens.

America’s unresolvable dilemma is the wide political support within Iran for the nuclear option and the apparent win-win stance of its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The point is that if the US retreats then Iran gets its weapons; but if the US goes for confrontation it confirms Ahmadinejad’s claim to the Islamic world that America is the great satan ready to tolerate other nations with nuclear weapons, but not Iran.

In truth, it is highly doubtful whether any US military option is viable. If so, George W. Bush will be forced to rely upon sanctions and diplomacy and, if they fail, then the US will fall back on deterrence against a nuclear Iran – the precise fate Bush’s axis of evil speech was designed to avoid.

But Ahmadinejad’s pathology about Israel’s elimination raises strategic and moral issues for Western polity. This is addressed in The National Interest (2006) by Ray Takeyh, from the US Council on Foreign Relations, who says that Ahmadinejad rejects the Holocaust (as a myth) and warns that “anybody who takes a step towards Israel will burn in the fires of the Islamic nations’ fury”.

The significance of this stance, as Takeyh says, is the implication that Iran, on behalf of the Islamic world, will deny any treaty between Israel and the Palestinians in the cause of inflaming regional opinion and maximising Iran’s influence.

At a meeting of the human rights subcommittee of federal parliament’s joint standing commmittee on foreign affairs on June 22, the Iranian ambassador to Australia said in response to this precise question that Tehran would not recognise “under the current circumstances” any referendum carried by the Palestinian people in favour of a two-state solution.

The symmetry of Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust and proposing the eradication of the Israeli state maximises alarm about Iran’s nuclear weapons capability. The evidence suggests this is beyond a mere presidential ritual. The Iranian embassy in Canberra in a letter dated August 4, at the height of the war in Lebanon, sent the following letter to federal parliamentarians (not all got it) from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamemei, under the heading of “Allah, The Merciful, the Compassionate”.

“How long should the Islamic world tolerate existence of the scheming and evil Zionist regime?” the letter asked. “How long should the Islamic government allow aggressive and arrogant America to have a free hand in this sensitive part of the world? The American regime must expect a hard slap on the face and the crushing fist of Muslim Ummah because of its support for the crimes and the Zionist criminals … The Islamic world and the Muslim youth should also realise that the only way to stand against the savage wolf of Zionism and the aggressions of the great satan is by dedicated resistance.”

This is an official communication from Iran in this country. It is a racist, hate-filled diatribe in the name of God that abuses the idea of God. It is a reminder that Iran as a member of the UN opposes the existence of another member of the UN. That should be a clear-cut moral issue for our moral champions in this country among the clergy, the lawyers and the human rights specialists.

But, somehow, it isn’t. One suspects that the moral issue raised by Iran is not addressed because that would concede a legitimacy to the security concerns held by Israel and by the US about Israel’s future. For the record, Iran’s one-state policy is hostile to everything that successive Australian governments, Labor and Liberal, have advocated, namely a two-state solution, an Israeli state and a Palestinian state.

It is unlikely that Iran’s nuclear ambitions can be stopped. If realised, they will provoke a weapons race in the Middle East with unpredictable consequences. But the moral dimensions of Iran’s stand should be confronted and the local debate has failed to do this.