NEW DELHI – Thirty-three years
ago, then-US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke of an “arc of
crisis” coursing through the Middle East and into Central
Asia. Today, events in Syria
and Pakistan,
as well as the recent bombings in Bangkok
and New Delhi, which some are
linking to Iran,
suggest that Brzezinski’s arc is more salient than ever.
Among the many dangers lurking along it today, the most ominous concerns the
response of Israel
and the United States
to the question of when Iran’s
nuclear facilities will become impregnable, creating, in Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak’s phrase, a “zone of immunity.” Some think that this point
has already been reached, with Iran placing its enriched uranium underground,
near the holy city of Qom, beneath many layers of granite – and thus beyond the
destructive power of anything short of a nuclear bomb.
Israeli hawks argue that the time to strike is now, before Iran
is able to make a fully operational nuclear weapon. Not so fast, warns the US:
sanctions may still achieve their aim. Such differences are real, with US
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta expressing concern that Israel
might launch an attack on Iran
in the spring.Moving eastward along the arc, Pakistan is descending ever deeper into domestic turmoil. Its government convened a tripartite meeting in Islamabad with Iran and Afghanistan this February to discuss “peace and security” in the region. But the country’s internal disarray precludes the government’s ability to influence events positively. For now, Pakistan seems consigned to the role of destructive spoiler, particularly in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Haqqani network are free to launch attacks from Pakistani territory.
To the west, the situation in Syria
deteriorates by the day. Foreign support for the Syrian rebels is not only
based on horror at the Assad regime’s tactics, but also appears to be aimed at
disabling the Assad regime’s patron, Iran.
Efraim Halevy, a former director-general of Mossad,
Israel’s intelligence
service, put this goal succinctly: evicting Iran
from its “regional hub in Damascus
would cut off Iran’s
access to its proxies” (Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in Gaza).Across the arc, security risks are serious and interconnected. For example, the threat posed by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, which many fear could fall into the hands of terrorists, dovetails with Iran’s quest – elevated to a national priority – to develop such weapons of its own. Indeed, Iran bought the centrifuge technology that it is using to develop its nuclear capacity from A.Q. Khan, the “father” of the Pakistani bomb and one-time head of Pakistan’s nuclear program.
To the nuclear danger must be added Islamist extremism and the terrorism
that sometimes results from it, as well as ideological militias like the Taliban
and Hezbollah. Each has contributed to transforming the region into the
epicenter of global uncertainty. And it is this very complexity that calls to
mind another of Brzezinski’s insights: “stability in Asia
can no longer be imposed by….direct application of US
military force.”If the challenge is to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program, “Why not also Israel?” ask others in the region. The answer, from the perspective of the US and the West, is that Iran simply cannot be trusted to use its enrichment program for “peaceful purposes.” But it is clear even to the US that no Iranian leader could accept the humiliation of surrendering the right to civilian nuclear power recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran acceded when it was ruled by the Shah.
It requires little imagination to conclude that some existential imperative
is driving Western policy on Iran.
Of course, a nuclear-armed Iran
would vastly complicate security across the entire region, potentially
triggering an arms race with Turkey,
Saudi Arabia,
and Egypt (once
its government begins to look outward again). But the danger is that the stakes
are being raised so high that the smallest misstep could escalate into a
conflict of unforeseeable dimensions. Iran
has already vowed that, if pushed, it will close the Strait of
Hormuz (through which one-sixth of the world’s oil supply passes),
and it is threatening to preempt oil-export sanctions by refusing to sell to
selected European countries.Iran also has direct security and social concerns in neighboring Afghanistan, where the Taliban, upon assuming power in 1996, carried out selective killings of Shia, including a massacre of more than 5,000 in Bamyan province. But Iran’s lack of diplomatic relations with the US means that it is not involved in trying to structure a viable peace accord to stabilize Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Western troops. It also has many grievances against Pakistan, which harbors anti-Iran militants and routinely abuses its Shia minority.
Instead of seeking means to defuse these complex crises, the US
and other world powers are actually multiplying them. Pakistan
is ridden with anxiety about post-withdrawal Afghanistan,
and about the secret talks that the US
has now begun with the Afghan Taliban in Qatar.
Iran is shown a
stick to dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, but is offered no carrot
in the form of increased trade and investment or the possibility of an end to
the sanctions that have crippled its economy. Syria’s
agony looks like it can end only in sectarian slaughter.In a region of such complexity, hair-trigger sensitivities, and atavistic attitudes, just one inadvertent slip could spark a conflagration, turning the arc of crisis into a ring of fire.
Jaswant Singh, a former Indian finance minister, foreign
minister, and defense minister, is the author of Jinnah: India – Partition
– Independence and presently Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha.