Tensions persist in West Asia and the Gulf. Hostilities between Israel and Iran threaten to spill over. The return of Donald Trump as U.S. President has added an element of uncertainty to the prevailing situation in the region. Why? Because it was Trump who pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Iran Nuclear deal. But Trump did not stop at that. He imposed sanctions on Iran. And, in January 2020, an Iranian General, Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike inside Iraq. The assassination took place on Trump’s watch. Soleimani was no ordinary General. He was the commander of the Quds Force, which is a part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The I.R.G.C. reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
So, Iran has an axe to grind with Trump. But what makes it worse for Tehran is that Trump is an avowed supporter of Israel in general and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular. It was Trump who recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the U.A.E. and Israel and Bahrain. Afterwards, Israel signed a similar agreement with Sudan and Morocco. The Abraham Accords were path-breaking: They “normalised” the relations between Israel and these countries in the Arab world and northern Africa. In October, when Trump was on the campaign trail, he said that he would not want to start a war with Iran, but, he went on to say that Israel should hit Iranian nuclear facilities first and worry about the rest later. He was replying to a question about how Israel should respond to the 1 October Iranian attack on Israel.
The fear in some world capitals is that Trump’s return might make Iran go nuclear. Iran might see nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Western attempts at regime change. The country is already reeling from the after-effects of Israel’s attacks on its proxies in the region, namely, Hamas in Gaza, and, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Also, Israel has carried out spectacular attacks inside Iran in the past. For instance, it killed at least six Iranian nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. And, most recently, it killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of Tehran; all of which would have multiplied Tehran’s anxieties.
So what is holding Tehran back? Strangely, it’s not Israel or the U.S. It’s also not the fear of reprisals from the West or the harm that more economic sanctions will cause to the Iranian economy. It’s actually its own Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In 2003, Khamenei issued a Fatwa, or religious diktat, against nuclear weapons. He re-iterated his position in 2019, when he said that building and stockpiling nuclear bombs is wrong, and, that using such a weapon is Haram in Islam. Haram means anything that’s forbidden by Islamic law.
Will Khamenei change his stand? One does not know. At least not yet. But, his public utterances have become strident of late, especially in the wake of the Israel – Gaza and Israel – Lebanon conflicts. Sample this: On 2 November, Khamenei vowed a tooth-breaking response against Israel and the U.S. for what they are doing against Iran and its proxies. Just a day earlier, on 1 November, Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Khamenei, said that if an existential threat arises, Iran will modify its Nuclear Doctrine. He said Iran has the capability to build nuclear weapons. He was speaking to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen T.V. channel. Iran continues to produce near-military-grade uranium but its Nuclear Doctrine is expressly focussed solely on civilian applications of nuclear energy. The Lebanese T.V. channel quoted Kharrazi as saying that the only thing currently prohibiting a change in Iran’s approach is Khamenei’s Fatwa.
So how close is Iran to getting a nuclear bomb? It depends on who you speak to. Various reports and studies have given different estimates and timelines. If one goes by what U.S. spy agency C.I.A. chief William Burns said in October, Iran could have enough fissile material for an atomic bomb within a week should it choose to go down that path. Burns was quick to add though that the U.S. had no evidence that Iran has indeed decided to build a nuclear weapon. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make its first nuclear bomb in just one or two weeks. A U.S. publication, Foreign Policy, says that Iran could build a nuclear weapon sooner than you think. Iran can have up to four nuclear weapons within a week and another six in eight more weeks. Also, Tehran could complete and deploy a missile-deliverable warhead in a matter of months. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence of the U.S. is of the opinion that Iran is in a better position than before to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.
In March, Trump told an Israeli newspaper in an interview that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in 35 days. But some others say that Tehran would need up to one year to develop a working weapon and a year or two to build a missile-deliverable warhead. The spokesperson of the U.S. State Department said recently that the U.S. intelligence community continues to assess that Khamenei has not made a decision to resume Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Both the U.S. and Israel have made it clear on a number of occasions that they would not let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon. Trump said at an election rally that he wanted Iran to be a very successful country but it can’t have nuclear weapons. For his part, Netanyahu has said that the supreme goal he has given his military is to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon.
Such threats might only end up provoking Tehran into accelerating its strategic nuclear programme. An article published by The Atlantic magazine of the U.S. says that Israel’s actions could be changing Iran’s nuclear calculus and that Netanyahu’s threat to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities could impel Tehran to make a bomb quickly. According to a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran produces highly enriched uranium, up to 60% in purity — a material with minimal civilian use but significant military application — close to the roughly 90% required for an atom bomb. It has enough higher-enriched uranium to produce about four nuclear bombs, if refined further, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Iranians fear that Trump would back Netanyahu to strike Iranian nuclear sites and re-impose his policy of applying maximum pressure on Tehran by way of sanctions on the country’s economy. An article published by the Washington, D.C.-based think-tank, Council on Foreign Relations, says that Israel has attacked nuclear reactor sites in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 but similar attacks on Iran might not be effective. A U.S. online publication, The National Interest, says that Ian’s nuclear programme can’t be bombed away because Iran has likely dispersed its nuclear sites across the country to make targeting more difficult and some of them could be buried so deep underground that even U.S. airstrikes would not be able to destroy them. In other words, detecting and destroying Iranian nuclear capabilities could prove to be challenging for Israel and the U.S.
Iranians, like many around the world, are divided on what Trump’s next presidency will bring. Some foresee an all-out war between Tehran and Washington, D.C. Others hold out hope that the 47th President of the U.S. might engage in unexpected diplomacy as he did with North Korea. But, nearly all believe something will change in the U.S.-Iran relationship.
Ramesh Ramachandran (Senior Consulting Editor, DDIndia)