While the Iranian regime has been debating whether to respond positively to the proposal from the P5+1 nations (China, Russia,America, Britain, France and Germany) to send its enriched uranium to Russia and France for further refining,America and Israel have been engaged in provocative high profile and large military exercises. Codenamed Juniper Cobra, the military exercise involves 2,000 military personnel from the US and Israel with this years exercise taking placing with specific threats from Iran in mind, one that seeks to counter via anti-missile defence any retaliation from Iran after an Israeli first strike.As Com Carl Meuser of the US Navy destroyer Higgins stated “We’re here for some very specific reasons, some specific threats that the Israelis are interested in, that we’re interested in.And that’s as far as I want to go down that road.”And Israeli chief of staff General Gabi Ashkenazi said:“This is a very important exercise dealing with the growing threat to the citizens of the State of Israel from the development of missiles in our region.”

Six years after the war in Iraq, there is yet another crisis in the Middle East; a tyrannical Muslim country is again accused of breaking international agreements regarding alleged nuclear weapons. Newly discovered covert WMD sites are alleged, with western commentators once again making sensational claims, intrusive international inspections are again

sought and denials are repeated. Like a new storyline in a bad soap opera it has some new characters (Brown, Obama, Merkel), but the plot is all too familiar. All we are waiting for is the British Government to issue another dodgy dossier and George Bush to emerge from his ranch in Texas and the storyline will almost be complete.Yet ignoring the caricatures, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that we may witness another violent conflict in the Persian Gulf; this time in Iran.

The current proposal of asking Iran to ship at least 85% of its stock of low enriched uranium (LEU) to France and Russia for it to be further enriched to 20% and sent back to Iran for medical uses is dumb. Iran would be foolish to trust nations like Russia or France, countries that cannot be trusted one inch when it comes to international relations. Sovereignty over ones critical natural resources are key and giving these to other countries who have been at best duplicitous and at worst outright hostile does not make sense in any strategic scenario.

It has become accepted wisdom in the West that coaxing Iran away from its nuclear fixation would help to promote regional peace and stability and bolster the integrity of international agreements. However few people in the Muslim world share these sentiments. They view America and Israel as the real aggressors in the Middle East occupying Muslim lands and in Israel’s case frequently invading its neighbours while persecuting the Palestinian people with an apartheid system the South Africans in the 1970’s would have been proud off. People also cite what they see as hypocritical double standards and an aggressive Western foreign policy doctrine, which seeks to maintain a de facto nuclear monopoly.

The Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was established by the nuclear nations primarily to stop nuclear weapons from becoming freely available. However, to ensure there was an incentive for Non Nuclear Weapons States (NNWS) to sign the treaty, the NPT contained an important bargain. It aimed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons by brokering a deal between the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) and the NNWS, with the former agreeing to eventual disarmament and an end to the nuclear arms race, while the latter would agree not to embark upon nuclear weapons programmes.Yet the 5 main nuclear states (America, Russia, China, France and the UK) have made little or no progress on reducing their weapons (in fact the UK is modernising its Trident capability), and in fact continue to build the use of such weapons into their strategic security doctrines going forward.

Some western commentators argue that there is no moral equivalence between their actions and those of Iran. Other experts in the field consider that this view serves to dent the authority of the NPT. Richard Butler, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, told a seminar in Australia in 2002 that Americans do not appreciate the level of resentment that WMD apartheid has built.“My attempts to have Americans enter into discussions about double standards have been an abject failure even with highly educated and engaged people” Mr Butler said. He went on to say that,“I sometimes felt I was speaking to them in Martian, so deep is their inability to understand.”

Iranian nuclear weapons: a threat to global peace or a legitimate deterrent?

In January 2002 in his State of the Union address, President Bush described Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an Axis of Evil. In March 2003, one member of the Axis was invaded and nearly six years later almost 140,000 US troops continue to occupy Iraq and nearly 100,000 NATO troops reside in Afghanistan with more expected to follow in 2010. Following this spectacle, one could argue that one rational response from Iran or North Korea would be to accelerate their nuclear weapons programmes, not for offensive intentions but rather to discourage America from future aggression.

Indeed the contrasting approaches that the US has taken towards Iraq, a country whose nuclear status was known to be non existent, and North Korea, which has admitted possessing them, is revealing.While the former was invaded, the latter has been party to countless rounds of multilateral talks and offers of aid and other carrots.This is despite the fact that the North

Koreans could provide at any moment the necessary nuclear material to any non-state actor with a grudge against the United States, or assuming they have the delivery capability, to launch a nuclear missile against the west coast of the United States themselves. So why has the US not taken a military approach to Pyongyang? The answer presumably is because of fear of a North Korean nuclear reprisal, which even if the US was excluded could still target South Korea, Japan or the plethora of US bases which house nearly 100,000 US troops in the region. All are within range of North Korea’s nuclear weaponry.

Consequently, one doesn’t have to be an expert in international relations to understand why Iran surrounded by western forces and a target of an attack by a nuclear Israel, might want to join the WMD premier league. Contrary to the claims of many in the West, this would not be to intimidate or actually attack states in the region and beyond, but as a reasonable defence and deterrent against future US and Israeli aggression or nuclear blackmail, countries that both have militaristic track records and who would have no qualms about attacking Iran. Use of the deterrence card would therefore be upon the same rationale that was used to justify NATO possession of nuclear weapons in the Cold War when faced with the threat of the Soviet Union, despite some, such as the UK Labour Party who were then calling for Britain to unilaterally disarm.The irony is that those who today support multilateral disarmament as a nuclear doctrine today want countries like Iran to not even develop a nuclear capability, a policy they have comprehensively rejected for themselves.

Is it only democracies that can be trusted with nuclear weapons?

The position towards countries like Iran is often justified with the argument that, whatever the faults and double standards involved in nuclear proliferation issues, there is no moral equivalence between tin pot third world dictatorships and first world democracies. It is claimed that in democracies the rule of law, political accountability, a healthy civil society and a free media provide the necessary checks and balances to prevent irrational policies.The famous phrase of “democracies don’t fight other democracies” is often repeated when it comes to Iran.This doctrine is more or less along the lines that ‘no democracy equals no nukes’; a reiteration of the standard argument that a full and functioning democracy should be a pre-condition for getting the bomb. However it is hard to see how these standards apply to the regimes in Beijing and Moscow; the first is not a full democracy and the other is barely functioning.

While it is the case that western democracies do not fight wars against each other any more, they have and do engage in brutal military campaigns. Democracy wasn’t able to prevent mass killing in Vietnam,Algeria and Iraq, where the use of force was disproportionate and at times involved the use of WMD.With economic interests as their philosophical heartbeat, the value that democracies place on human life is often prone to fluctuation and commercial considerations. Being a democracy does not guarantee you have leaders who are any saner than those in dictatorships. Remember the clique that surrounded George Bush? Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, I rest my case.

The standoff between Iran and the international community has once again brought into sharp perspective the nature of western foreign policy in the Middle East. For many in the west the narrative is straightforward. For them Iran is engaged in a covert game of trying to gain a nuclear weapons capability, another example of that nation‘s rogue status. Predictable statements denouncing Iran’s actions come from the P5+1, the self-declared guardians of everything that is moral and pure.Yet as is the norm with such matters, most of the reporting to date has presented the story through a western security prism, in this world everything is black and white and Manichean all over.Yet the world is a bit more complicated than a John Wayne movie, in the real world numerous other factors are at play.

The stand off with Iran over what to do with its current stock of LEU and the newly discovered facility at Qom is serious and destabilising for the whole region. Nor can the current stand off be divorced from the escalating rhetoric aimed at Tehran from Washington, London and Tel Aviv over recent months. Of course many point to Ahmadinejad’s own vitriolic statements on Israel yet statements from western governments have been just as incendiary. Even if we put to one side Bush’s infamous 2002 ‘axis of evil’ speech, Israeli government ministers have made constant threats against Iran, including the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. Indeed Shimon Peres the President of Israel known in some quarters as a “dove” stated that “the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.” And it is Israel today that constantly threatens Tehran despite its own arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The other argument that Iran’s nuclear capability would encourage a nuclear arms race in the region is bogus, if Israel a country who has pretty much fought all the other countries in the region didn’t start an arms race with her acquisition of nuclear weapons, why would Iran’s. Nor is it likely that Iran would use nuclear weapons on Israel as a first strike as western commentators recite constantly. Launching such a bomb would not only wipe 5 million Jews of the map, but 5 million Palestinians would also be incinerated, a nuclear strike on Israel would also knock out the third holiest shrine in Islam, Masjid Al Aqsa in Jerusalem a site revered by all Muslims, as well as spreading radiation and cancer to millions of Muslims living in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and other neighbouring countries.

In addition Iran since 1979 has failed to demonstrate leadership on pan Islamic issues preferring to follow a narrower sectarian and nationalistic agenda. Though it engages in rhetorical flourishes, it has nailed its mast to a pro western foreign policy on every major issue. In the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, it stayed neutral while Iraq burned, when Israel bombed Lebanon and Gaza back to the stone age it confined itself to criticising other Muslim leaders for impotency, for which it was also guilty.When America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Iranians actually helped logistically and politically to defeat the Taliban.Yet today Europe and Israel queue up to demand Iran provide more and more and threaten it if she does not comply.

Western foreign policy since 2001 has not achieved its goal of making the world a safer place.Yet despite this, there remains a fundamental myopia at the heart of the American and British government’s strategy. In terms of execution they have not realised that they are seriously ill equipped to win the battle of ideas.Winning the battle of ideas requires sincere leadership, honesty, deep-rooted principles and the ability to win over your opponent through the power of thought, not via the barrel of a gun or through imposing double standards on the Muslim world. The War on Terror has already gone the same way as the War on drugs and the War on poverty in its failure to achieve its objectives, the residue of failure will have far reaching effects on the future political paradigm especially in the Islamic world, this ironically may be its lasting legacy.The more the west shows its true colours over Iran while continuing to support Israel to the hilt, the more the drive for fundamental change through the establishment of the Islamic Khilafah in the Muslim world grows.