by
Patrick Cockburn
The
trove of Iranian documents about its nuclear programme presented by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as proof of Tehran’s
duplicity contain nothing of substance that was not known before.
Though
the disclosure was made in order to justify President Donald Trump
torpedoing the Iran nuclear deal on 12 May, Mr Netanyahu was unable
to find any evidence that Iran has breached the agreement signed in
2015.
The vast
cache of files presented by Mr Trump are largely historical and
relate to the period before 2003. Mr Netanyahu’s purpose was to
pillory Iran for lying about a nuclear weapons programme 15 years ago
and before.
The
White House has had some difficulty in adjusting its rhetoric to the
historical nature of the disclosures, saying at first that they were
proof that “Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons
program”, but later changing “has” to “had”.
At issue
is not the information in the archive, in which items introduced by
Mr Netanyahu as revelatory turn out to have been published by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a report in 2011.
More
important is the political effect of their publication. Mr
Netanyahu’s performance appears geared to provide justification for
Mr Trump bringing an end to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), which is the lumbering official title of the Iran nuclear
agreement.
By
highlighting Iran’s past ambitions to construct a nuclear device.
Mr Netanyahu unintentionally demonstrated – as several architects
of the 2015 deal have commented – the need for the JCPOA, which
made it impossible for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.
All the
signatories of the agreement – US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and
China – agree that it is working well.
What
remains unclear is what the US and Israel will do after 12 May. The
reimposition of US sanctions on Iran will be damaging to its economy,
but they are not going to lead to regime change in Tehran.
It is
unlikely that Iranian leaders would agree to a new JCPOA which would
be tilted further against them than the present deal. A successful
counter-offensive against Iranian influence in the northern tier of
the Middle East – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – is unlikely
simply because of the strength of Iran’s position there.
The
policy objectives of the Trump administration towards Iran could only
be achieved by a prolonged war, but the administration may not
realise this.
The new
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and the National Security Adviser,
John Bolton, appear to take the advice of Iranian exile groups
seriously, seeing the Iranian regime as more fragile than it is.
What
makes the US withdrawal from the JCPOA so dangerous is that it is
accompanied by an escalating military confrontation between Israel
and Iran in Syria.
This is
likely to get more serious, provoking Iran and Russia to retaliate
against Israel. In fact, Mr Trump is stepping into the Syrian swamp
in exactly the same way as previous US administrations have done in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
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