Iran’s difficult choice : Pride and Pain or Surrender and Joy!

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— N R Mohanty —

I happened to watch a TV discussion on the Middle East crisis yesterday. The topic was: who won the 12-day war? Interestingly, vocal, hyperbolic representatives of all the three concerned parties — the US, Israel and Iran — were there to discuss the issue. It was not surprising that each of them claimed victory.

It seemed almost like the aftermath of the 4-day India-Pakistan conflict in May this year when both the contending parties came out with their own victory narratives.

But the Middle East crisis is a little more complicated than what happened between the two South Asia neighbours: the former was not just confined to being a war between Israel and Iran; the US — the world’s most powerful country militarily — was an open co-belligerent on the side of Israel.

In the discussion, the American echoed the Trumpian line: ‘we have completely obliterated the Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran’s dream of making nuclear weapons have been set back by years, rather by a complete generation’

The Israeli spokesman held out an open threat: ‘Iran has got just the first taste of defeat. If it turns to the misadventure of making bomb again, it would invite the danger of being wiped out of earth’

The Iranian spokesman was relatively defensive: ‘We have survived the combined attack of the US and Israel; we have succeeded in inflicting miseries on the otherwise usually protected Israelis in their own territory. With our missiles hitting the US base in Qatar, we have sent out a loud message to the US as well that their attack on a sovereign country would not go unchallenged.’

The truth is: Iran has been badly bruised; its air defence mechanism was completely decimated by the surprise Israeli attack on June 13 itself; its top generals and scientists were also assassinated by the Mossad-led special operation on the first-day of the war; Iran’s nuclear sites have been bombed repeatedly causing possibly irreversible damage. Iran’s economy, already hobbled by the Western sanctions, is in tatters today.

Well, Israel has also been hit by Iranian counter-offensive but only comparatively marginally as Israeli air defence was able to intercept almost 90% of the incoming missiles. Moreover, the US, the economic powerhouse of the world, is there to bankroll Israel. So Israelis can sit pretty.

But Iran is in an unenviable position; it has no benefactor. Both Russia and China chose to remain on the sidelines even as the US got involved in the war. So it’s Iran’s own battle all the way.

Iran faces a difficult choice: will it follow the footsteps of Egypt, normalise relations with the US and Israel, blink at Israel’s gradual annexation of Palestinian territory, and live happily? Or, will it continue to challenge the Israeli hegemony in the region and remain a pain in the neck for the US and its satellite states in the Middle East? That would mean continued economic sanctions by the West and prolonged miseries for the Iranians.

It’s a hard choice; but Iran stands today at the proverbial fork in the road. It has to take that difficult call.

My hunch is that soloing as Iran is governed by a theological institution, it would not accept the Zionist supremacy. In that case, the only way Iran can obviate its existential threat is by developing its own nuclear weapon programme. Though much of Iran’s nuclear capacity has been destroyed by the Israeli and US bombing last month, the world knows that the scientific knowledge of the nuclear know-how cannot be bombed away.

If Iran makes up its mind, it can resume its nuclear programme afresh. But that would invite severe reprisals from the US and Israel. That’s the big dilemma: until it has nuclear bombs, Iran will continue to be blackmailed by both Israel and the US. But it cannot make the nuclear bomb as both Israel and the US are snapping at its heels threatening to strike Iran again if it resumes its nuclear programme.

It seems, Iran will not be cowed down, but it will not be openly defiant, as North Korea was in 2003, as the situations are different. It will, willy nilly, take baby steps in that direction. The first sign came when Iran, post-ceasefire, announced that it would not co-operate with the UN-approved IAEA supervisors monitoring its nuclear sites. There was a handy pretext: reports have appeared that some of these supervisors secretly provided Israel the exact locations of its nuclear enrichment programme leading to precise aerial bombing by the enemy country.

That Iran will agree to hold talks with the US ostensibly to come to terms with a humiliating nuclear deal but, in reality, to buy time for its secret nuclear weapon programme is also in the realm of possibility. But then how far this deception will succeed is an open question.

Overall, Iran is in an unenviable position; it stands alone and it stands pitted against a genocidal state like Israel which is backed by the most powerful economic and military force in the world. The easy way for Iran is to swallow pride and join the ranks of the bootlickers of the US in the Middle East; but the Iranian leadership has chosen the difficult path to stand up for its sovereign right. In the short run, it is bound to entail a lot of pain for the Iranians. Time will tell if this daredevilry will bring good luck — peace, prosperity and security — to Iranians in the long run.

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