Iranians Unite Behind Nation’s Nuclear Plans

From this country’s divided political sphere to its disaffected streets, one thing binds Iranians of all ideologies: a fervent belief in the Islamic Republic’s right to its nuclear program.

Even Iranians who oppose weapons development, including some members of the government, insist that the nation has a right to the technology. In a country that still tends to think of itself as a superpower, nuclear capabilities represent progress and modernity to a people hypersensitive to any perceived inequities.

“Iran has paid dearly, really dearly, to prove its independence internationally,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency. “Maybe we made mistakes in the past, but we want to decide our own destiny. We don’t want others to decide for us.”

While Iran’s nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany dragged on at the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters in recent weeks, student organizations and hard-line political parties staged angry pro-nuclear demonstrations on the streets of Tehran. Conservative newspapers ran menacing editorials warning negotiators against caving in to Western demands.

“Depriving Iran of a nuclear fuel cycle,” warned an editorial in the Kayhan newspaper, “is not a forgivable sin.” The message to negotiators was plain: Iran was in no mood to relinquish its nuclear research. Any Iranian agreement to relinquish nuclear research or uranium enrichment would spark political uproar at home, analysts here say.

“None of the political groups can dare to say that we don’t need nuclear technology,” said Sayed Mustafa Taj-Zadeh, an advisor to Mohammad Khatami, the country’s mostly sidelined reformist president.

Iran insists that its nuclear work is meant only for energy, but the U.S. accuses it of secretly working to build weapons.

In Iran, the nuclear debate has become the defining issue in the heated struggles between reform and conservatism, and engagement with the West or continued isolation. The bloodshed in Iraq has made Iranians more confident that the U.S. can’t afford to back up its threats with military force, and strengthened the case for taking a hard stand against Western demands.

In the compromise reached last week between Iran and negotiators for the three European nations, the Islamic Republic agreed to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment, which can produce either nuclear fuel or material for atomic warheads. But symptoms of Iran’s internal struggle over the nation’s nuclear future were plain during the European talks. The negotiations were delayed by Tehran’s flip-flopping on key issues, greeted with outrage by Iran’s hard-liners and marked by Iranian rhetorical shifts over what, exactly, had been agreed.

The nuclear standoff with the West comes at a time when Iran’s conservative mullahs have consolidated power and are running the country virtually unopposed. The brief spell of reformist fever and whispers of a cultural and international opening that swept the country in the late 1990s and early in this decade have been smothered, analysts say.

Iran’s hard-line Guardian Council, which answers to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned reformist candidates from running for parliament in February, ensuring that its conservative allies would sweep the elections. President Khatami will remain in office until spring but has proved a relatively weak politician who has been in effect neutralized by his rivals’ overwhelming force.

Power, however, hasn’t created consensus among Iran’s conservatives. They remain sharply divided among themselves, especially on the question of nuclear weapons.

In a country sandwiched between two nations that have been invaded by U.S.-led troops, religious conservatives believe that a nuclear arsenal is a crucial tool to solidify the Islamic Republic’s power in the region and create a defense against attack. Hard-liners in Iran’s parliament already have threatened to force the government to resume uranium enrichment.

But other conservatives now advocate an easing of Iran’s defiance in favor of a more diplomatic approach that would, they hope, lead to a warming of trade ties with the West. Known as the “neoconservatives,” they advocate a crackdown within Iranian society coupled with an opening to the outside world. They contend that Iran can benefit from the economic and trade incentives offered by Europeans in exchange for a nuclear deal.

Many Iranian leaders now argue -- at least in public -- that nuclear weapons are a liability that would only invite attack from abroad. Iranian politicians and clerics have repeatedly said that nuclear weapons violate the nation’s religious convictions, and the Foreign Ministry says Khamenei has issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against them.

“There are two schools of thought about nuclear weapons,” said Taj-Zadeh, the presidential advisor. “Some people think they will threaten our security. But others think that with nuclear weapons we can defend ourselves before Israel or even the United States. They think if we have the weapons, the United States won’t attack us like Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The latter perspective has been taken up enthusiastically on the street. Many ordinary Iranians unabashedly support the development of nuclear weapons, which are seen by many as symbols of international status. Others simply believe that Iran should have the most potent weapons available, particularly when neighbors such as Russia, Pakistan, India and archrival Israel have nuclear arsenals.

“If Israel is going to threaten our country, it’s our right to have nuclear weapons to defend ourselves,” said Bahar Daeihagh, 21, a student in Tehran who was at a downtown shopping center Sunday. “Nuclear technology has gone global, and everybody has it. Iran should also have it.”

Even when politicians and analysts here frame the nuclear question as one of national sovereignty and technological evolution, questions of weapons and defense strategy lurk just beneath the surface. Built into the nationalistic rhetoric is the oft-repeated position that Iran won’t compromise on questions of national security.

Long months of violence in Iraq have also left their mark on Iran’s political psyche. The U.S. invasion of Iraq may have sowed fear among other governments in the region, but Iran’s hard-liners have since grown more confident. Spirits in Tehran have been lifted by the conviction that America can’t handle its troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan and would be disinclined to open a third front by confronting Iran.

“When Iraq was attacked, most of the fundamentalists were frightened, but slowly, little by little, both the people and the authoritarian elite saw that the Americans couldn’t deal with Iraq,” said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, an Iranian sociologist and prominent reformist. “And then the authoritarians got very cocky, and said, ‘Look, nobody can change us.’ ”

The swelling confidence has been reflected in the recent threats by Iranian hawks.

Iran’s defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, said last month that the Islamic Republic had become capable of mass-producing a missile, known as “shooting star” in Persian, with a range long enough to strike Israel. That announcement came on the tail of Shamkhani’s threat to follow the U.S. example of preemptive strikes.

“We will not sit with arms folded to wait for what others will do to us,” Shamkhani told the Arabic-language Al Jazeera satellite TV channel. “Some military commanders are convinced that the preventive operations which the Americans discuss are not their monopoly.”

Pragmatic Iranians, however, insist that the government can’t afford to defy U.S. demands.

Britain, France and Germany have offered to sell nuclear fuel to Iran and to extend trade deals in exchange for the permanent suspension of enrichment.

The incentives, coupled with an opportunity to improve ties with the U.S. by cooperating in Iraq and Afghanistan, present Iran with a rare chance to improve its international status. It remains to be seen whether hard-liners will hold sway.