On a policy of hope and red lines around Iran

MOSCOW. (Pyotr Goncharov for RIA Novosti)

Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee, asked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton what would happen if Iran refused to abandon nuclear activities that the West believes are part of a weapons program.

Mr Berman asked the question on April 22, when Secretary Clinton went to Capitol Hill to give a progress report on U.S. diplomacy.

Judging by Mrs Clinton's evasive answer, there are no deadlines for the U.S. efforts in Iran.

Washington has invited Iran to resume the talks, and has also advanced a number of conditions, although not as crippling as the ones George W. Bush had set. Now, President Obama has stressed the need for Iran to review its relations with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories.

When President Bush was in the White House, the United States' red line around the Iranian nuclear program implied a ban on the development of uranium enrichment technology. What does Barack Obama's offer imply?

Greg Thielmann, senior fellow at the U.S. Arms Control Association (ACA), who attended the recent Moscow meeting of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, said that a military operation against Iran, if it refused to curtail its uranium enrichment program, would be the most ill-advised scenario.

Mr Thielmann said that Iran first violated the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1990s, but the international community became aware of the violations only in 2003. Therefore, a return to the 2003 situation would be the ideal solution for President Obama and the U.S. as a whole.

The intelligence analyst was referring to Iran's relations with the international community under liberal President Khatami, and to the technical standards of Iran's nuclear program whose enrichment capability was limited to 164 centrifuges in 2003.

As for Obama's red line around Iran, Mr Thielmann said it should be drawn when the Iranian nuclear program becomes a real threat to nuclear non-proliferation.

However, Washington hopes that its negative attitude to Iran's uranium enrichment program would contain Tehran's ambitions and preclude a military operation. If Israel opts for attacking Iran, this would dramatically worsen U.S.-Israeli relations, Mr Thielmann said.

In short, Mr Thielmann is wary of a possible U.S. military operation against Iran and views the potential Israeli attack as completely unadvisable.

Iran's nuclear program is becoming a standalone factor in the international efforts to maintain the NPT regime and promote disarmament. For example, the United States says it needs missile defense systems in Europe to protect it from the Iranian nuclear missile threat.

The negative influence of the North Korean nuclear program on the NPT regime - even if we assume that North Korea has created a nuclear bomb - is incomparably smaller than the threat of the Iranian nuclear program. If Iran creates the full nuclear cycle, it will be the last nail into the NPT coffin.

This would not just fatally disrupt the volatile balance of political and military forces in the Middle East, but will explode it, with unpredictable consequences for everyone, but above all Israel.

This is why we should ask ourselves if a military scenario could be avoided. A confrontation between Iran and Israel is possible, and Israel is unlikely to look up at Washington if it decides to go the whole hog.

The United States should have pressed the reset button on its relations with Iran and launched a direct dialogue with it long ago. However, this should not affect the international community's concerns over the Iranian nuclear program underlying the IAEA policy and the concept of the Iranian Six.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.