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Tehran teeters on the path to war
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

The United Nations Security Council's new resolution on Iran gives Tehran until the end of August to suspend all uranium-enrichment-related activities or face the prospect of international sanctions, an ultimatum instantly denounced by Iran as illegal and unjustified. This means that Iran now faces a double crisis, given Israel's military onslaught against its strategic ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Thus, contrary to what has become an article of faith in the Western media, about Iran somehow gaining influence due to the war in Lebanon, the exact opposite may be in the works, particularly if Israel's latest claim of destroying most of Hezbollah's rockets turns out to be true.

For the moment, the fog of war disallows anything more than a
provisional conclusion with respect to how this war impacts Iran, its external relations and nets of alliances in the region and beyond.

The uncertainties of war, ie, whether or not it will culminate in a quagmire or decisive Israeli victory subsequently bolstered by an international buffer force that would prevent Hezbollah's future role as a deterrent shield for Iran in the event of a foreign attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, give rise to different scenarios, each of which contains a certain plus and minus for Iran.

One scenario, hoped for by Iran, is that a ceasefire will be put in place whereby Hezbollah can claim victory, after having withstood the ferocious bombardments and the ground attacks (which it has defended against rather admirably so far).

But given Israel's unwillingness to halt the war even for 48 hours, after the massacre of civilians in Qana giving rise to the United States' premature statement that Israel had consented to the temporary halt, clearly shows Israel's determination to prevent even a tiny yet tangible step toward this scenario. It is pushing instead for a clear and unambiguous victory aimed at Hezbollah's military disintegration.

While most likely Israel will not get its ultimate wish granted, and will ultimately have to settle with a much-diminished Hezbollah at the end of the military campaign, nonetheless its current efforts are dealing a huge blow to an important edifice of Iran's deterrent strategy.

Only by resorting to an inverse logic can we possibly consider as a gain what is clearly a net loss for Iran, seeing how Iran will be prevented in the future from counting on Hezbollah to strike back at Israel in the aftermath of a showdown with either Israel or the United States.

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that there are strong voices of concern within Iran's ruling establishment, some claiming the war in Lebanon as a victory for Israel, with serious negative ramifications for Iran's "national security and even her territorial sovereignty", to quote Ali Montaseri, an Iranian penning in Baztab.com, a website closely linked to President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Another commentator, Seyed Salaman Safavi, has similarly written, "If Israel triumphs in this battle, not only the nuclear dossier, but also the territorial integrity of Iran will be jeopardized."
Increasingly, the military leaders of Iran, particularly in the Revolutionary Guard, can be heard warning of Iran's direct entanglement in the conflict. Led by the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they have denounced the United States' call for Hezbollah's disarmament and any North Atlantic Treaty Organization role in Lebanon, calling instead for an immediate ceasefire, return of refugees and exchange of prisoners.

At the same time, Iran is not blind to the strategic setback caused by the asymmetrical war in Lebanon, vesting its hopes on Hezbollah's ability to deter the invading Israeli army or, at a minimum, to drag the enemy into a protracted guerrilla warfare reminiscent of the 1982-2000 campaign that culminated in Israel's departure - the "day of infamy" in Israel's history, per an editorial in the Jerusalem Post back then.

Meanwhile, the question of Syria, and the current US efforts to wrest Damascus away from Tehran, is also disquieting Tehran, dampened at the same time both by the United States' and Israel's inability to offer anything seriously tangible on the table to Syria; as well as by Syria's own security concerns reinforcing its alliance with Tehran.

Thus so many of Iran's moves and counter-moves are linked to developments in the Lebanese theater of conflict, and here fears and opportunities go hand-in-hand.

Whereas a stalemate or even quagmire may benefit Iran's position with respect to the nuclear crisis, the obverse possibility of Hezbollah's substantial weakening, not to mention the squeeze on Damascus, will translate into a more vulnerable Iran confronted with the distinct possibility that Phase 1 of a multi-stage conflict with the US and Israel has already started in Lebanon and Gaza.

On a related note, historian Immanuel Wallerstein has predicted that Israel's military gambit in Lebanon will prove to be a "catastrophic blunder" paralleling the United States' predicament in Iraq. This is a distinct possibility, if the net of Israel's ground invasion expands, as it has almost on a daily basis, one that Iran is banking on to happen. But the chances are reasonably high that Israel, learning from the past, will ultimately frustrate Tehran's hopes by making it a limited war followed by an international buffer that would tie the hands of whatever fighting was left in Hezbollah.

What is to be done?
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made a last-ditch attempt to forestall the Security Council resolution on Iran's nuclear program by threatening that the international package of incentives currently under consideration would no longer be considered if the said resolution were adopted.

Faced with the grim prospect of UN sanctions in the months ahead, Iran is now grappling with one of the most important decisions of its post-revolutionary government.

The package contains several "positive aspects", per the admission of Iran's chief negotiator, Ali Larijani, and Iran may blame itself in the future if things turn for the worse and the opportunity to seize on the package of incentives, such as the offer of nuclear assistance, entry to the World Trade Organization, and the like, is lost. Certainly, Iran's economy would benefit enormously if the incentives were fully implemented.

But where will the road lead if Iran rejects the proposal and the UN's ultimatum? Most likely to a new round of Iran's global isolation, something dreaded by nearly all of its top politicians. Can it be avoided? Can Iran somehow come up with a middle answer that would reflect a new flexible response? In terms of this it would agree to a "voluntary and non-legally binding" suspension of its sensitive nuclear activities short of appeasing the other side entirely.

And if so, what would this middle path look like and, more important, would it be enough?

As the debate rages on inside Iran, which had until now leaned more and more in favor of rejecting the US-led demand to give up its budding nuclear fuel cycle, the discussions have now focused on national-security interests and concerns, in light of the conflict in Lebanon.

In fact, privately some Iranian politicians consider a near-future attack on Iran all but a foregone conclusion, and are trying to determine what the appropriate (preemptive) response should be.

Their growing security anxiety is partly fed by the realization that the Western governments and media have succeeded to some extent in pinning the conflict in Lebanon on Iran, by accusing it of masterminding Hezbollah's "reckless adventure" of July 11, when its fighters crossed the blue line and attacked an Israeli patrol.

Yet given the lethal weight of Israel's massive and disproportionate response, Iran cannot afford to risk its national interests by following a hardline policy that would pave the way to the nightmare military-confrontation scenario.

The voices of moderation are currently heard in tandem with the hawkish voices, calling for Iran's exit from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and direct military involvement against Israel in the region, and it is too soon to tell which voices will prevail.

What is certain, however, is that there is no magic solution to the double crisis, and every scenario has pros and cons, which are hard to pre-calculate in the midst of a regional conflict clearly not yet even half over.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review. He is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

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