Iran's secret weapon

In a widely disseminated speech made on August 28, President George W. Bush raised the spectre of a growing Iranian threat to regional and global peace.

His leading diplomats including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have continued to work for harsher sanctions against Iran. Reflecting a basic shift in their policy, Bush and the Foreign Minister of France Bernard Kouchner have sounded even more uncompromising insofar as the Iranian nuclear programme is concerned.

And yet when Bush addressed the 62nd UN General Assembly, he side-stepped the language of fire and brimstone that he normally uses for Iran.

It is unlikely that Dick Cheney could have withdrawn his insistence that Bush redeems his presidency by destroying the Iranian nuclear sites and other strategic assets to pave the way for a regime change in Tehran.

Nor would Israel have downgraded its threat assessment from the Iranian nuclear programme which can now enrich uranium to a low level of five per cent. What may well be happening in Washington is the sharpening of the internal debate about the pros and cons of using force against Iran.

The intensity of this debate may provide at least a partial clue to the strange happenings around Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's current visit to the United Nations.

It was an important opportunity for him to project his country's foreign policy, especially its case for a renewed nuclear dialogue within the IAEA framework free of the threat of sanctions and attacks against numerous sensitive targets in his country.

But then came an intriguing invitation from Columbia University to address it. The invitation triggered off great outbursts of condemnation in the media and the academic world.

Partly because of this media pressure and partly out of his own conviction, the President of the University, Lee Bollinger, made an extremely hostile introduction of the guest which Ahmadinejad countered by reminding his audience that this was not the way guests were received in the land and the civilisation that he came from.

Same theme

The same theme has been picked up and amplified by the chancellors of six Iranian universities in a letter of protest to Bollinger. They have posed ten questions that range from the CIA plot to overthrow Mossadegh to American support for Saddam Hussain and now for the Iraq-based Mujahideen Khalq.

Inevitably Palestine and the invasion of Iraq figure prominently in the letter. There is not much invocation of Islamic principles; instead the Americans are reminded of Iran's great civilisation and history spanning 7,000 years.

The Columbia speech, the address to the United Nations and the letter of the six distinguished chancellors signify to me the transition that Iran has made from a revolutionary religious state to a state adept at realpolitik.

I have a vivid recollection of many conversations with the original leaders of the Iranian revolution, many of whom are no longer in this world. Speaking to our very small Pakistani delegation soon after the revolution, they did not even hint at a sectarian provenance of their mission.

They saw the security of Iran in a gradual acceptance of the dynamism that they had brought back to the interpretation of Islam in modern times. The millenarian content of this interpretation would bring national security as well.

A perpetual state of siege has made Iran look for security in a more traditional way. President Mohammad Khatami sought it in diplomacy that would establish cordial and mutually reassuring ties with Muslim neighbours - the Gulf States, Pakistan, Syria and Turkey.

Opinions differ on the degree of success particularly as the Iranian quest for nuclear knowledge entered the equation.

But then came the great opportunity provided by the American invasion of Iraq and by the short-sighted decisions taken by the occupation authorities in the first flush of victory.

Threatened, along with Syria, with serial invasions, Iran returned to the accumulated strategic experience of its 2,500-year old imperial history. It had the Supreme Council for the liberation of Iraq on its soil which was backed by the highly motivated Badr militia. They went back and filled the vacuum created by indiscriminate de-Ba'athification.

Evidence is piling up as to how the trained cadres of the Supreme Council and the Badr fighters found important places in the new Iraqi system being set up by the occupation army.

The introduction of the sectarian element encouraged another rival force, the Mahdi militia. Iran under a Western attack now can count on effective counter-moves.

The recent claim made by an Iranian military officer, General Rahim Yahya Safavi, that Iran has mapped out targets for retaliation is not empty rhetoric. This capability and not the nuclear programme may well be Iran's secret weapon.

The Muslim mind has a deep-seated reluctance to visualise strategic situations in sectarian terms. But in the West there is pervasive concern that American policies have created a formidable "Shiite power" that extends to the borders of Kuwait, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and, in a manner of speaking Bahrain.

According to these sectarian-minded analysts up to two-third of the energy resources of the region now depend on Iranian goodwill. One does not have to subscribe to such a stark sectarian differentiation but the fact remains that Iran is emerging with greatly enhanced strategic salience in the region.

The region does not need another war. It needs to read the new dynamics at work, including an entente between Iran and a future government in Baghdad, and go back to the drawing board to plan a new regional order that recognises Iran's legitimate interests.

Within this framework, it may be easier to assess Iran's real nuclear intentions and negotiate a viable modus vivendi. Ahmadinejad's charm offensive which he did not abandon in the face of provocations at the Columbia University should be given a chance.

From time to time Iran has indicated its willingness to hold a comprehensive dialogue with the West. Perhaps time has come to let it develop into something meaningful for the region and the world at large.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassadorof Pakistan.