The Craven Heffer

I don't, as a rule, indulge in fisking - I think it's a slightly dubious piece of blogospheric tradition, perhaps the online equivalent of fox-hunting - but this Simon Heffer screed in the Telegraph is hard to miss. The appliance, Nurse, and 50 ccs of snark!

Doing nothing in Iran is not an option
By Simon Heffer
(Filed: 18/01/2006)

As we survey, with appropriate unease and foreboding, the events now unfolding in Iran, we might like to reflect on one of Enoch Powell's less well-known, but most universal, obiter dicta. "The supreme function of statesmanship," he once wrote, "is to provide against preventable evils."

We seem to have fallen somewhat short of this ideal both for ourselves and in terms of something called "the international community". True, we could hardly have prevented the Iranians electing what, by most objective standards, is a raving madman to run their country.

Well, shall we take a moment to enjoy the pomposity? "As we survey, with appropriate unease and foreboding.." Christ. Rather than being published online with minor inconvenience to several zillion electrons, this ought to be carved in stone or engraved on an elegant pendant with a light gold chain, like Valery Giscard d'Estaing had for the French Air Force's nuclear release codes. More seriously, the Enoch Powell quote is of course both obvious and trivial. After all, whatever your view of "statemanship", it's fairly certain that its function isn't not to provide against evils, and nobody provides against goods, and you can't provide against unpreventable evils by definition. The real function of this quote is to say - Look at me! I quote Enoch Powell! I'm absurdly rightwing and proud of it! It contains no lexical meaning whatsoever.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes in the coming of the Mahdi and something approximating to what Christians term the apocalypse. He also sincerely believes that Israel should be wiped off the map and that the Nazis did not murder six million Jews. I think we can agree that such a man ought not to have a nuclear weapon and, if we can't, then those who dissent should urgently seek psychiatric help.

Well, he's clearly barking mad. How sincerely he believes these things is a matter for serious debate, though, and I would query whether the hammer of communism, Heffer, should really advocate political psychiatry if he wants to be either humane or consistent. In fact, there are perfectly sensible arguments for letting Iran have The Bomb. I don't agree with them, but they exist. Ironically, they are the same arguments Mr. Heffer would likely deploy to defend British nuclear weapons - it's a dangerous world, many other powers, some of them not terribly stable, have them too, and we need a credible deterrent capability. Iran has nuclear Pakistan to its east, nuclear Russia to its north, nuclear Israel to its south-west, nuclear NATO to its north-west, and even Saudi Arabia has been talking about nukes.

The awesome stature of this problem can be gauged from the fact that the United Nations Security Council's major powers and Germany all agreed on Monday that Iran should suspend any nuclear development activities that could result in it making a bomb. Two significant difficulties remain, however.

The first is that these great nations cannot now agree on the tactics by which Iran should be brought to heel. The second is that Mr Ahmadinejad holds the considerable trump card of having a psychology completely immune to temporal pressure and, what is more, knows continuing events in Iraq do not allow America the luxury of moving in on Iran - not that that necessarily would have been a good idea even had Iraq never, as it were, happened.

The European powers - Britain, France and Germany - are calling for an emergency session of the International Atomic Energy Agency on February 2 and 3, with the aim of its reporting Iran to the Security Council. This could lead to sanctions on Iran. However, China, which has just done a multi-billion-dollar trade deal with Teheran, is unwilling to do this.

So. "Continuing events" do not allow America to attack Iran - not that that (ouch! bad style!) would have been a good idea even had Iraq never happened. To disentangle his tortured syntax, he seems to say that attacking Iran would not necessarily be a good idea, even if it wasn't for the Iraq fiasco. But, you will remember, anyone who doesn't agree that something should be done should seek psychiatric treatment. A cry for help, perhaps?

Even among the Western powers, there is a fear that sanctions could push up the price of oil, with the usual malign effects on economic growth, pressure on the money supplies of the nations affected, and public and political unrest. Russia, another with strong trading links to Iran, had initially signified that it was prepared to make sacrifices in the interests of preventing the manufacture of the "Islamic bomb"; now, though, it is in retreat on that idea. As was seen during the crisis leading up to the second Gulf war in 2003, getting the eventual agreement of the Security Council to take firm action against transgressors, or indeed implementing any resolutions that might be passed, is a wild and wacky process.

Indeed. Do I detect a degree of weakening on the Heffer part? I'm not at all sure what he means by Russia making "sacrifices". The Russians have offered to do the uranium enrichment themselves; a profitable undertaking and one that would further their political power. Sacrifice? And in what way is getting UNSC action a "wild and wacky process"? Conservatives, such as Heffer, believe that national states should pursue their exclusive interests. So, if France or China don't want to get involved in some bizarre adventure in the Middle East, they are quite right to veto it. And I thought we had established, earlier in the piece, that Iraq was a mistake and best avoided with hindsight?

This brings us back to statesmanship. Following Iraq, America's international credit on questions such as these is not especially high, which is a problem when one recalls that the US remains, even after overstretch and near-humiliation, the world's only superpower. The three European powers have read Iran wrongly for years. Their policy of diplomatic negotiation has achieved precisely nothing.

It looked pretty hopeless in the era before Mr Ahmadinejad, when our Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, went to ingratiate himself with people who were merely extremists rather than psychotics. Now there can be no meeting of minds; there is considerably more chance of the Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams each conceding that the other has a point.

An attempt by European foreign ministers to persuade Iran to forego its "right" to make a nuclear weapon is, in the present circumstances, likely to become 21st-century diplomacy's equivalent of the Bodyline series: there might be two sides out there, but only one will be playing cricket.

So then Iraq was a mistake, but saying so at the time is a wild and wacky process? Whatever may be said about the Europeans' "policy of diplomatic negotiation", it may have delayed the process of nuclear proliferation, and at worst it has at least done no harm, unlike - say - invading Iraq. It is quite antic to describe Mohammed Khatami of glorious memory as an extremist, and has Heffer missed the fact Paisley and Adams have agreed in principle to serve in government together?

Perhaps the Security Council can be made to agree to speak sternly to Iran. China could, perhaps, be propitiated by being persuaded to join the G8 (after all, it is far more qualified to be in that grouping than Russia). If Russia won't play, then a reminder to the capricious President Vladimir Putin about a nuclear-armed Iran's potential to ally itself with the Islamic states of the former Soviet Union that are strung along his country's southern border might be used to stiffen his resolve. But what is Iran's response to a Security Council warning likely to be? "Get lost." And so what do we do then?

There have been various mock-terrifying suggestions about forcing Iran to withdraw from soccer's World Cup (for which it has qualified for the first time), or of preventing high Iranian potentates from going abroad on jollies. That this grave matter can be treated in such a fashion suggests that its gravity continues to escape some of the world's senior politicians and their officials. Of course, it is painful for the diplomatic community to have to admit that sanctions will not work, any more than they did in Iraq. But some other, tougher means will now have to be considered.

Other, tougher means than sanctions? More serious action than the abject pipsqueak Ancram's football diplomacy? What might that be? Oh, the Security Council might agree to speak sternly to Iran. Now, now, that won't do at all! Wag goes the Hefferite finger.But what is Iran's response to a Security Council warning likely to be? "Get lost." You're damn tootin'! What does he think Vladimir Putin's answer to such an absurd scare story will be - after all, he is busy flogging Iran SA10 missiles?

The Americans talk of trying to encourage revolution in Iran. Sadly, the only revolution likely to succeed there is one that ushers in someone who makes Mr Ahmadinejad look reasonable. In a police state as oppressive as Iran, the scope for the people to rise up and remove the tyrants who lead them is, to say the least, limited. To rely on such a method to remove the threat is, like sanctions of all descriptions, the equivalent of doing nothing.

Doing nothing, however, is not an option. Aside from the obvious outcome of allowing Iran under Mr Ahmadinejad to have a nuclear weapon, it would also have a demoralising and highly dangerous effect on the whole world order. It would provide the final proof that the United Nations is largely pointless (interim proof came in the run-up to the 2003 Gulf war, when it resolutely refused to enforce its many resolutions against Iraq). It would also put the ball into Israel's court. Before his coma, Ariel Sharon said Israel simply would not allow a nuclear Iran. Given Mr Ahmadinejad's foreign policy aim of obliterating Israel, it is far from likely that whoever succeeds Mr Sharon after the March elections will feel it is politically wise to take a different view.

One can foresee all too easily a situation in which the rest of the world, unable to agree how to proceed against this menace, leaves Israel, as the stated target, feeling vulnerable. And anyone who thinks that Israel is going to allow another avowedly hostile state to build a nuclear arsenal to use against it has not been paying attention these past few decades.

So sanctions and diplomacy are useless, political warfare worse than useless...and doing nothing is not an option. But (as discussed above) war is also inadvisable. I think yer man is torn between the will to wound and the fear to strike. I think, to borrow a Tory worship-phrase, he is "frit". And in what way did the UN "resolutely refuse to enforce its many resolutions"? When the UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn, they had to break off from crushing Al-Samoud II rockets under a bulldozer!

So, war is foolish and everything else useless. But doing nothing is not an option. Why? Ah, Israel, of course. We ought to bomb the Iranians because otherwise the Israelis will do! Well, I'm glad that's been cleared up. There is of course no mention of the fact that the Israelis possess some 200 nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them by air, cruise missile, artillery, and ballistic missiles, from both land and submarine bases. Even if Mr. Ahmadinejad really is entirely happy to be vapourised several times over, does that apply to the powerbrokers behind him? Rafsanjani? The politicians who forced him to ditch his candidates for the Ministry of Oil because they were ignorant religious nuts? Perhaps he isn't immune to temporal pressure after all?

Any military action against Iran, whatever it is and whoever takes it, is likely to be provocative to the wider Islamic community - but none is likely to be quite so internationally combustible as a unilateral decision by Israel to bomb - by conventional or possibly other means - Iran. This seems to leave only one feasible option, which is for a United Nations-endorsed series of air strikes on suspected nuclear installations in Iran, made after due and reasonable warning and only as a last resort. All that must be made clear - but it must also be made clear, by the united powers of the United Nations, that any insistence by Mr Ahmadinejad on pursuing his present policy will be met with such a response.

You betcha, Sime. Provocative? You know, and I know, that in the event of military action against Iran by anyone, the logistical tail of the US Army in Iraq will vanish. The British Army will have to fight like hell to get anything up the road and will suffer major casualties. The oil price will go over $100, and perhaps worse if the Straits are mined or Ras Tanura hit. So, Heff ups the ante. We've got to attack Iran to save the Iranians from "other means", which I take to mean those 200 Israeli nukes. And we'll need UN authorisation , despite the UN being pointless, wild, and wacky.

Whether this happy diplomatic state can be achieved looks, for the moment, unlikely. Our own Foreign Secretary has a distinct record of failure in this specific matter. With Tony Blair imminently preparing a reshuffle, he should ask whether Mr Straw is up to the intensely difficult job that now awaits him. The scope for British leadership on this question, given America's perceived problems in the Middle East, ought to be considerable. However, for the moment we are punching below our weight.

Indeed, the present impasse with Iran is in no small part the consequence of misguided policy by the Foreign Office, in concert with other European powers, over the past four or five years. Britain is, to all intents and purposes, at the mercy of world events, but it can still choose whether to be a spectator, or a player.

And who is to mount this laudable humanitarian campaign? Why, Britain, of course. It's our fault we didn't bomb Iran four years ago, in order to save them from the Israelis, so we'd better get bombing now! Load up the GR4s and let's roll! Gentlemen, your target for tonight is...Suez!