peaceful nuclear program, Iran’s enrichment capacity, enrichment level and stockpile will be limited for specific durations, and there will be no other enrichment facility than Natanz. Iran’s research and development on centrifuges will be carried out on a scope and schedule to be mutually agreed.”
There are specific outlines regarding the conversion of Fordow from an enrichment site to that of a “nuclear, physics and technology centre.” Fissile material will be prohibited at Fordow, while Iran will be assisted in “redesigning and rebuilding a modernised Heavy Water Research Reactor in Arak that will not produce weapons grade plutonium.”
The ultimate issue lurking in the background is persistent anxiety and terror. The nuclear weapon, horrifying as it is, is a grotesquery that has been normalised. The use of atomic weapons signalled normalisation – the distortion, rather, has come from the preventive measures of powers who have obtained treasures they would rather others did not have. The gap is supplied by a wilful cultural myopia: some are better to have it than others. The very existence of the nuclear weapon obliterates such distinctions – it is either possessed, or not.
The nuclear exception, however, makes it imperative that a state like Iran must give undertakings that “enrichment and all nuclear-related technologies are only aimed at Iran’s development and will not be used against any other countries” while other nuclear states, including those not within the NNPT regime, are entitled to ignore such otherwise pie-in-sky assertions. They know that once the weapon is obtained, it will not be relinquished.
The language of nuclear diplomacy is also constraining. Agreements may well be reached, but selling them like decent products with a viable historical warranty is something else. “This is very complicated,” claimed an unnamed senior Obama administration official to Politico. “A lot of this is hard to talk about to the American people.” There are senators in Congress in open opposition, promising every stonewalling trick in the book.
Senior Israeli journalist Ari Shavit has gotten on the cataclysmic bandwagon, viewing the deal as an error “as big” as George W Bush’s disastrous gambit in Iraq. He sees the normalisation of Iran’s ambitions as triggering a potential “multi-player nuclear arena” in the Middle East.
This form of calculation has a certain crude merit to it, though it allows Israel to remain the default nuclear state in a sea of Muslim state contenders, the grand non-Muslim balancing act against other perceived fanaticisms. The nub of the matter here is one that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists upon with fanatical consistency: you can’t let the Mullahs get the bomb.
The Iranian establishment will also have to be doing their local sell, convincing citizens that their government hasn’t been doing just that little bit of a sell-out. The hard-liners, quiet through the negotiations, may see a chance to strengthen their hold. On the surface, this remains a ‘nuclear program’.
In practice, it is also a concession to the dictating agendas of other powers – the dangerous game being played in the powder keg playground of the world. “No matter how we try to sugar coat it,” argues economist Saeed Laylaz, who has ties with the Rouhani government, “this means we no longer will have an industrial-scale enrichment program. This is the price we have to pay for earlier mistakes.”
Excerpted from: ‘Doing the Nuclear Dance’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org