जवळजवळ दोन वर्षांच्या वाटाघाटी आणि ३५ वर्षांच्या शत्रुत्वानंतर युनायटेड स्टेट्स आणि इराणमध्ये व्हिएन्ना येथे करार झाला याचा मला आनंद आहे. सध्याच्या राजकीय परिस्थितीत असे करण्यात अयशस्वी झाल्यास निश्चितपणे अनपेक्षितपणे वाईट परिणामांसह तीव्र संघर्ष निर्माण झाला असेल. आणि अशा दूरगामी कराराची यशस्वी वाटाघाटी ज्यामध्ये दोन्ही बाजूंनी महत्त्वपूर्ण सवलती दिल्या, त्यामुळे युनायटेड स्टेट्समध्ये वर्षानुवर्षे निर्माण होत असलेली टोकाची शत्रुता कमी होण्यास मदत झाली पाहिजे.
But my enthusiasm for the agreement is tempered by the fact that the US political process surrounding the Congressional consideration of the agreement is going to have the opposite effect. And a big part of the problem is that the Obama administration is not going to do anything to refute the extremist view of Iran as determined to get nuclear weapons. Instead the administration is integrating the idea of Iran as rogue nuclear state into its messaging on the agreement.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday makes the administration’s political strategy very clear. In two sentences, Kerry managed to combine the images of Iranian-supported terrorism and sectarian violence across the entire region and Iranian determination to get nuclear weapons. He told the Committee about the administrations plans to “push back against Iran’s other activities – against terrorism support, its contribution to sectarian violence in the Middle East,” which he called “unacceptable”. Then he added: “But pushing back against an Iran with nuclear weapons is very different from pushing back against Iran without one.”
The administration’s determination to be just as alarmist about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions as its opponents creates a US political discourse on the Iran nuclear issue built around two dueling narratives that disagree about the effect of the agreement but have one politically crucial common denominator: they both hold it as beyond debate that Iran cannot be trusted because it wants nuclear weapons; and the only question is whether and for how long that Iranian quest for nuclear weapons can be held off without war.
इस्रायली ओळ अशी आहे की हा करार केवळ तात्पुरता शांतता आहे आणि कराराची दहा वर्षे संपल्यानंतर इराणला बॉम्बची योजना करण्यास प्रोत्साहन देईल. परंतु प्रशासनाच्या कठोर मनाच्या मुत्सद्दी प्रयत्नांमुळे, इराणने अण्वस्त्रे मिळविण्याच्या दिशेने प्रगती केली असती आणि कराराचा एकमेव पर्याय म्हणजे इराणशी युद्ध.
The common assumption about Iran’s nuclear policy is never debated or even discussed because it is so firmly entrenched in the political discourse by now that there is no need to discuss it. The choice between two hardline views of Iran is hardly coincidental. The Obama administration accepted from day one the narrative about the Iranian nuclear program that the Israelis and their American allies had crafted during the Bush administration.
The Bush administration’s narrative, adopted after the invasion of Iraq, described a covert nuclear program run by Iran for two decades, the main purpose of which was to serve as a cover for a secret nuclear weapons program. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney, who were managing the policy, cleverly used leaks to the न्यू यॉर्क टाइम्स आणि वॉल स्ट्रीट जर्नल 2005 मध्ये देशांतर्गत राजकीय चर्चेचा परिचय करून देण्यासाठी तत्कालीन अज्ञात पुराव्याच्या दस्तऐवजांच्या संग्रहातून कथित पुरावे सादर केले की इराणने 2001 ते 2003 पर्यंत गुप्त अण्वस्त्र संशोधन कार्यक्रम केला होता.
2005 मध्ये प्रशासनाने आंतरराष्ट्रीय अणुऊर्जा एजन्सी (IAEA) कडे दस्तऐवज पास केले, बुश धोरणाचा एक भाग म्हणून इराणला अप्रसार कराराच्या वचनबद्धतेचे उल्लंघन केल्याच्या आरोपाखाली संयुक्त राष्ट्र सुरक्षा परिषदेत नेण्याचे उद्दिष्ट ठेवले. इराण त्याच्या आण्विक कार्यक्रमाच्या आडून अण्वस्त्रांवर काम करत आहे या कल्पनेवर आधारित इराणमधील सत्ताबदलाचे औचित्य निर्माण करण्यासाठी बोल्टन आणि चेनी इस्रायलसोबत काम करत होते.
तथापि, संपूर्ण बुश-इस्त्रायली कथा खोटी होती. या लेखकाने या मुद्द्यावरील सखोल संशोधनातून शोधून काढलेल्या मूलभूत ऐतिहासिक तथ्यांकडे दुर्लक्ष किंवा दडपशाही केली आहे:
- Iran was the one state in the entire world that had a history of abjuring weapons of mass destruction on religious grounds. During the Iran-Iraq war the military leadership had asked Ayatollah Khomeini to approve the manufacture of chemical weapons to retaliate against repeated chemical attacks by Iraqi forces. But Khomeini forbade their possession or use forbidden by the Shia interpretation of the Quran and Shia jurisprudence.
- Iran had begun to pursue uranium enrichment in the mid-1980s only after the Reagan administration had declared publicly that it would prevent Iran from relying on an international consortium in France to provide nuclear fuel for the Bushehr reactor.
- Iran did not inform the IAEA about its acquisition of enrichment technology, its experiments with centrifuges and laser enrichment or its first enrichment facility because of the continued US attempt to suppress the Iranian nuclear program. Releasing such information would have made it easier for the United States to prevent continued procurement of necessary parts and material and to pressure China to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran.
- The US intelligence community found no hard evidence, either from human intelligence or other forms of intelligence, of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. US national intelligence estimates during the Bush administration concluding that Iran had run such a program, including the most famous estimate issued in November 2007, were based on inference, not on hard intelligence. That fact stood in sharp contrast to the very unambiguous human and electronic intelligence the CIA had been able to obtain on covert nuclear weapons programs in Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa and South Korea.
बराक ओबामा इराण आणि इराक या दोन्हींबाबत बुशच्या धोरणावर अत्यंत टीकात्मक दृष्टिकोन घेऊन व्हाईट हाऊसमध्ये आले आणि इराणशी राजनैतिक प्रतिबद्धता जाहीरपणे वचनबद्ध होते. परंतु इराण हा आण्विक कायदा होता या बुशच्या ओळीचा त्याच्या प्रशासनाने स्वीकार केल्याचे स्पष्टीकरण क्वचित अपवाद वगळता राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा नोकरशाही सामान्यत: एका प्रशासनाकडून दुसऱ्या प्रशासनात बदली करताना धोरणाच्या सातत्य द्वारे स्पष्ट केले जाऊ शकते.
नोकरशाही त्यांच्या हितसंबंधांना समर्थन देणाऱ्या कोणत्याही विशिष्ट समस्येबद्दल "तथ्य" तयार करतात. इराणी आण्विक धोक्याचा प्रसार होण्याचा धोका म्हणून परिभाषित करणे हे स्पष्टपणे व्हाईट हाऊस, स्टेट डिपार्टमेंट आणि सीआयए मधील विरोधी प्रसार कार्यालयांच्या हितासाठी होते, ज्यांनी त्यांच्या संबंधित संस्थांमध्ये या विषयावर जोरदार प्रभाव पाडला.
The senior officials on Obama’s transition team and his initial national security team, moreover, had been closely associated with different versions of the policy of treating Iran as nuclear rogue state in previous administrations. As Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, Robert M. Gates had catered to the interests of the Congressional-military-industrial alliance behind a missile defense program in the United States, which had required an alarmist definition of threat from Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.
Tom Donilon and Wendy Sherman, who had presided over Obama’s State Department transition, were both protégés of the Clinton administration’s Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, who was an ardent proponent of demonizing Iran. It should be of no surprise that Donilon said in 2011 that Iran had “a record of deceit and deception,” and that Sherman declared in Congressional testimony in 2013 that Iran couldn’t be trusted because “We know that deception is part of the DNA.”
Secretary Kerry and other Obama administration officials may have moderated their views of the Iran’s nuclear program over the course of negotiations, but the external and domestic pressures for an even tougher line toward Iran have clearly outweighed any such learning process on the issue. If it isn’t changed dramatically from Kerry’s testimony, the administration’s choice of political strategy will certainly contribute to a domestic political atmosphere in which even the most limited steps toward greater cooperation with Iran are all but impossible for years to come.
गॅरेथ पोर्टर एक स्वतंत्र शोध पत्रकार आणि पत्रकारितेसाठी 2012 मधील गेल्हॉर्न पारितोषिक विजेते आहेत. ते नव्याने प्रकाशित झालेले लेखक आहेत निर्मित संकट: इराणच्या परमाणु घाबरणाची अनोखे कथा.
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