Natutuwa akong naabot ng United States at Iran ang isang kasunduan sa Vienna pagkatapos ng halos dalawang taon ng negosasyon at 35 taon ng awayan. Ang kabiguan na gawin ito sa ilalim ng kasalukuyang mga kondisyong pampulitika ay tiyak na mag-iiwan ng nagpupunas na salungatan na may hindi inaasahang masamang kahihinatnan. At ang matagumpay na negosasyon ng tulad ng isang napakalawak na kasunduan kung saan ang magkabilang panig ay gumawa ng makabuluhang mga konsesyon ay dapat makatulong upang i-moderate ang matinding poot na nabubuo sa Estados Unidos sa mga nakaraang taon.
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.
Ang linya ng Israeli ay na ang kasunduan ay pansamantalang tahimik lamang, at ito ay magpapalakas lamang sa Iran na magplano para sa isang bomba sa sandaling ang kasunduan ay mag-expire sampung taon mula ngayon. Ngunit para sa matigas na pag-iisip na diplomatikong pagsisikap ng administrasyon, ang Iran ay patuloy na sumusulong patungo sa pagkuha ng isang sandatang nuklear, at ang tanging alternatibo sa kasunduan ay ang digmaan sa Iran.
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 New York Times at Wall Street Journal noong 2005 upang ipakilala sa lokal na talakayang pampulitika ang pinaghihinalaang ebidensya mula sa isang koleksyon ng mga dokumento ng hindi kilalang pinagmulan noon na ang Iran ay may lihim na programa sa pagsasaliksik ng mga sandatang nuklear mula 2001 hanggang 2003.
Ipinasa din ng administrasyon ang mga dokumento sa International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) noong 2005, bilang bahagi ng isang diskarte ni Bush na naglalayong dalhin ang Iran sa United Nations Security Council sa paratang ng paglabag sa mga pangako nito sa Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nakikipagtulungan sina Bolton at Cheney sa Israel upang lumikha ng katwiran para sa pagbabago ng rehimen sa Iran batay sa ideya na ang Iran ay nagtatrabaho sa mga sandatang nuklear sa ilalim ng pabalat ng programang nuklear nito.
Ang buong salaysay ng Bush-Israeli ay mali, gayunpaman. Binalewala o pinigilan nito ang mga pangunahing makasaysayang katotohanan na sumasalungat dito tulad ng natuklasan ng manunulat na ito mula sa mas malalim na pananaliksik sa isyu:
- 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.
Dumating si Barack Obama sa White House na may lubos na kritikal na pagtingin sa patakaran ni Bush patungo sa parehong Iran at Iraq at pampublikong nakatuon sa diplomatikong pakikipag-ugnayan sa Iran. Ngunit ang pagtanggap ng kanyang administrasyon sa linya ng Bush na ang Iran ay isang nuclear outlaw ay maaaring ipaliwanag sa pamamagitan ng pagpapatuloy ng patakaran na karaniwang pinananatili ng pambansang burukrasya ng seguridad sa paglipat mula sa isang administrasyon patungo sa isa pa, na may mga bihirang eksepsiyon.
Ang mga burukrasya ay gumagawa ng "mga katotohanan" tungkol sa anumang partikular na isyu na sumusuporta sa kanilang mga interes. Ang pagtukoy sa banta ng nuklear ng Iran bilang isang banta sa paglaganap ay malinaw na nasa interes ng mga tanggapan ng kontra-proliferation sa White House, Departamento ng Estado, at CIA, na may malakas na impluwensya sa isyu sa loob ng kani-kanilang mga institusyon.
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.
Si Gareth Porter ay isang independiyenteng investigative journalist at nagwagi ng 2012 Gellhorn Prize para sa journalism. Siya ang may-akda ng bagong publish Manufactured Crisis: Ang Untold Story ng Iran Nuclear Scare.
Ang ZNetwork ay pinondohan lamang sa pamamagitan ng kabutihang-loob ng mga mambabasa nito.
mag-abuloy