Iran cannot be allowed to win this game of nuclear blackmail
Nuclear proliferation is often cited by world leaders as one of the greatest threats to our planet’s continued survival.
Short of a cataclysmic environmental disaster, it is difficult to conceptualise an event that could cause more damage to global prospects than the detonation of a nuclear device.
Yet despite the general abhorrence, this has neither led to universal nuclear disarmament, nor any diminution in the desire of new entrants to the market to become members of the nuclear weapons club.
This paradox is an obvious one. The goal of “Global Zero” is a pipedream – nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented. Established nuclear powers are unlikely to surrender a weapon that gives them a qualitative edge against potential opponents, or at the very least provides the deterrence of mutually assured destruction.
Likewise, aspirant powers crave the security offered by nuclear weapons for their often authoritarian regimes, as well as the protective umbrella they provide for any offensive activities. Such countries usually hide their programmes in the hope that they can achieve nuclear breakout before the world notices.
A case in point is the most recent nuclear entrant: North Korea. Over a period of years, North Korea initiated a clandestine nuclear programme that, when discovered, led to an attempt by the global community to achieve disarmament through negotiations.
The Kim regime played along for just enough time to develop its nuclear capabilities to the point of testing a viable bomb. As a consequence of its trickery, North Korea can today act with impunity towards its neighbours, because any punishment risks a nuclear response.
It might be thought that the North Korean example would make the world think twice about the dangers of allowing further proliferation. But on Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran had breached the limit on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium imposed by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) designed to restrain its nuclear activities.
Iran has boldly stated that it may follow by enriching uranium beyond the purity required for civilian nuclear power towards the higher level needed for weapons-grade material, and halt a redesign of its Arak heavy water reactor that would have prevented it from producing the plutonium that is an alternative route to nuclear capability.
Taken together, such moves would not only destroy the JCPOA framework, but also raise the very real spectre of an Iran heading for nuclear weapons breakout.
Iran’s defence for its actions is specious. It claims that it is only responding to the US abandonment of the JCPOA in 2018 and is looking to pressure European signatories to the agreement to help it overcome the effects of American sanctions.
But this game of nuclear blackmail cannot be allowed to play out. The JCPOA was not set up in response to US infractions of nuclear policy, but Iranian ones.
It was Iran which established a covert nuclear programme in breach of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it was Iran which – when this was discovered – spent years developing its nuclear capacities in breach of UN Security Council Resolutions.
The JCPOA was signed in haste by an Obama administration determined to secure an Iran deal at any price in order to secure its legacy. The Trump administration had every right to withdraw from it on the grounds that the JCPOA merely kicked the Iranian nuclear can down the road for a limited period of time, owing to its sunset clauses.
Without offering a blanket ban on nuclear weapon-related activities like the testing of ballistic missiles, the JCPOA denied a permanent solution to obviate the long-term threat posed by a clerical regime with a proven desire to try and dominate its strategic neighbourhood.
We are now living with the consequences. The US has imposed a policy of “maximum pressure” through an ever-tightening sanctions programme designed to return Tehran to the negotiating table and patch the holes in the JCPOA.
Iran has responded with a campaign of subversive activity in the Gulf, encompassing the sabotaging of oil fields and tankers. Its recent attack on a US drone highlights that we are only ever one misstep from the break-out of active hostilities.
It is now up to the UK, France and Germany to show whose side we are on.
Are we to surrender to Iranian demands and allow Tehran to play fast and loose with the terms of a treaty that we have fought hard to keep alive, but which is now fundamentally breached?
Or will we stand firm with our US ally and snap back our own sanctions to show Iran that our commitment to non-proliferation is an enduring one?
The solution is surely not to give in to Iranian pressure, but instead to remind Iran that if it has peaceful intentions, it should welcome the opportunity to end sanctions in exchange for a permanent dimming of its nuclear weapons potential.
The European choice will be a decisive one. On it rests not just the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme, but also that of the international community’s resistance to this most deadly of global threats.