LE FIGARO INTERNATIONAL: It must be acknowledged that in connection with the Iranian nuclear question a single line is now taking shape, and it is that of confrontation. It is as though two crazy trains were rushing headlong towards each other on the same track, without anyone being able to halt them or divert them onto a different track. The engineer on the US train is called Dick Cheney (the conservative vice president who orchestrated the disastrous attack on Iraq in 2003,) and the engineer on the Iranian train is called Mahmud Ahmadinezhad (the highly nationalistic and religious president of the Islamic Republic.) In English, this is what is known as a collision course.
Why is the US train still racing towards disaster (a bombardment of Iran, which would immediately bring about a blaze throughout the Persian Gulf, as a pasdaran general has just warned?) Three factors in Washington could explain it. The first is that George W. Bush, convinced by Cheney, does not want to go down in history as the US president that allowed Iran to become a nuclear military power. The second is that the policy of steadfastness with Tehran enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress. The third is that the two foreign lobbies that exert the strongest influence on Bush (the Israeli and the Saudi lobbies) are agreed on the principle of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Israelis, because they do not believe that the rationale of deterrence would work with such an «enlightened» leader as Ahmadinezhad. And the Saudis, because they cannot bear the idea of Iranian hegemony over the Gulf.
The Iranian train is also racing inexorably towards a collision. Ali Larijani’s resignation, announced Saturday morning, from his post as secretary general of the Iranian Security Council, points to a radicalization of the regime and a concentration of power in Ahmadinezhad’s hands. Having hitherto been Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Larijani, a refined, cultivated, and thoughtful man, advocated finding a compromise solution with the West. Neither the United States nor the radicals in his own country gave him the time to devise one and establish it. By adhering to its precondition for a start to direct negotiations (Iran’s suspension of its uranium enrichment programme,) the United States has destroyed any prospect of negotiations. Indeed, Iran believed that if it suspended its enrichment activities (which were declared to have an exclusively civilian purpose,) it would no longer have anything left to negotiate. >>
Mark Alexander
