Naval blockade may lead to war

Dubai: A draft resolution calling for a naval blockade on Iran has been tabled in the US congress, in a move many analysts fear will be, if passed, a prelude to a military confrontation in the Gulf.

Officials in Tehran, meanwhile, have recently made more than one rapprochement gesture towards both the US and Israel to decrease the possibilities of a military conflict in the strategic Gulf region, Iranian analysts said. The possibility of war seems less today than it did a month ago, they added.

Yet, chances of war have not entirely diminished, and daily developments are still taking conflicting directions.

While Americans are busy with Presidential election campaigns, five former Secretaries of State on Tuesday urged the new US administration to open talks with Iran.

On the same day, the Iranian leadership announced that it had put the Revolutionary Guards in charge of defending the country's Gulf waters, in what has appeared a hardening of its stance in the vital oil route.

And once again, tension between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rose on Monday after the International agency announced that Iran is stalling the UN investigation into its nuclear programme and defying international demands to suspend uranium enrichment despite UN Security Council demands.

"If the US wants to implement the (draft) resolution, it would have to go for naval blockade," Tripta Parsi, head of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, said.

"And the naval blockade, according to the International Law, is an act of war. So, it is a way to start a war without doing it with missiles and other means the American public are sensitive to," Parsi added in an interview with Gulf News in reference to the tabled draft resolution number 362. So far, it has attracted the co-sponsorship of nearly half of the 430-member House of Representatives.

The draft resolution calls on the President to stop all shipments of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran. It also "demands" that the President impose "stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran".

The fate of the draft, which was introduced last May, is expected to be decided in the coming few weeks before Congress finishes its legislative session.

Several legislators and some groups, including the Iranian-American Council, are lobbying to block it.

Apart from the house draft resolution, a sister draft resolution number 580 has been proposed in the 100-member Senate and attracted 50 cosponsors.

"Unless the US and Iran negotiate directly," Parsi said, "The two countries are going to gravitate towards a conflict."

Voices on street

Meanwhile, the Iranian public do want their government to talk with the US about specific issues and they are ready to support a deal on nuclear weapons, but not on Uranium enrichment, polls show.

The results of one poll show that, despite the "very negative perceptions that each public has of the other country's leadership, the Iranian and US publics want their governments to talk to each other about certain issues, such as Iraq," said a joint poll by two public opinion centres: Terror Free Tomorrow and WorldpublicOpinon.org.

Altogether 69 per cent of Iranians approve of Iran having talks with the US, while 21 per cent disapprove. A similar majority of Americans, 73 per cent, approve of US talks with Iran and 22 per cent disapprove.

The same poll shows that Iranians were willing to make concessions to the US on several issues in return for normal relations with the US.

These concessions would include an end to Iranian support for armed groups inside Iraq and recognising both Israel and Palestine as independent states in return for the normalisation of relations with the US.

Another poll, also released recently, concluded that Iranians are ready to support a deal committing the Iranian government to the renouncement of the development of nuclear weapons and allowing full inspections. Iranians don't perceive their position as a contradiction, noted experts.

Iranians, analysts explained, feel that by not allowing them to develop a nuclear programme according to the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), they have been discriminated against, as with all the Muslim nations, while Israel was allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

The Indian and Pakistani cases are also other examples given to explain the Iranian public opinion.

The US initially voiced strong opposition to the two Asian countries' nuclear abilities, but gradually came to accept them. Today, Washington has a special nuclear agreement with India, they added.

The Iranians believe the "US should basically come to accept them as a major regional power with a capacity to develop a nuclear weapons programme, (but) not an actuality (nuclear weapons)," Steven Kull, Director of WorldpublicOpnion, told Gulf News.

Simultaneously, Iranians are making gestures towards the Americans and Israelis.

Tehran, Iranian analysts believe, is attempting to change the negative atmosphere in the region created by the crisis over its nuclear program. "For the first time in three decades," said the prominent Iranian analyst Seed Laylaz, "President Ahmadinejad announced recently that if the US wants to open a consulate in Iran, it would be fine."

Fighting talk

Opening a US interest section in Tehran is an option under discussion among American politicians, noted experts. Moreover, Iran's Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, who is also a close aide to Ahmadinejad, said Iranians are "friends with Israelis".

But his remarks were seen as overstepping the mark.

They have sparked fury among conservatives in Iran, and more than 200 MPs urged the president to take action against his aide.

Iran's gestures have apparently had some success in reducing the tension. The most obvious sign is the fall in oil prices from unprecedented levels a few months back, analysts believe.

Currently, a barrel of oil is trading around $90 (Dh330), well below the level $147.50 (Dh542) recorded on July 11.

However, Iranian analysts believe that the Israeli government wants to make Ahmadinejad "as weak as possible".

They consider recent threats of kidnapping him as merely for "local consumption during elections time in Israel".

Ahmadinejad has threaten to "wipe out" Israel, a statement that has united many Western leaders against him.

"The situation is not worse than before," Laylaz said. "But the war possibilities (at present) seem less than before."