The 28th of April marked the deadline of the ultimatum which the International Agency for Atomic Energy, the organised body of the United Nations which watches over the application of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has imposed on Iran for suspension of uranium enrichment. The government of Teheran has already let it be known that it will not stop its nuclear programme and that it will react, blow for blow, to any attempt to deny its right to civilian nuclear power.  
 

Conflicting threats. “We desire peace in the world and we will never attack anyone but, if the United States dared to attack us, we would react by damaging their interests with a power twice theirs”. This is yesterday’s statement from the supreme guide Ali Khamenei, the man who took the place of Ayatollah Khomeini upon his death and the man who, according to many observers, represents the real power in Iran, even if he leaves the pulpit of the television channels to Ahmadinejad. “To understand who is really in charge in Iran, one example suffices: as soon as Ahmadinejad wanted to nominate the minister for Oil, the conservative Parliament blocked the first three candidates. A great oil power such as Iran has remained, for months and months, without a minister and, finally, the choice fell on the vice – minister of the previous legislature. In fact, thus, it has managed to change nothing”. This is the opinion of Farian Sabahi, lecturer on contemporary Iranian History at the University of Geneva, and author of a greatly appreciated History of Iran, of which the new edition is expected for the beginning of next June. “The real motive for which Ahmadinejad concentrates his attacks on nuclear power or on Israel is to distract Iranian public opinion”, sustains the university lecturer, “in reality he won the elections by promising a crackdown on political corruption in Iran but, not having the real power to change things, prefers to concentrate Iranians’ attention on other themes”.
 
Cut and thrust. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei appear harsh, the United States government is not to be outdone. «When the Security Council of the United Nations meets, there will have to be consequences for this deed, for this challenge, and we will examine all the options which the Council avails of”, commented the Secretary of State for the USA Condoleeza Rice last 14 April, with regard to the possible suspension of uranium enrichment by Teheran, not excluding, de facto, recourse to Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, that which authorises the use of force in certain conditions. “I feel that it can be excluded”, concludes professor Sabahi, “Iran has always been a country-nation, it is not one of those theoretical states created around the table by colonial powers. Despite being extremely variegated on its interior, it maintains a strong sense of identity. The identity element will always prevail and this will make the invasion of the country absolutely counter-productive.
I do not believe that anyone may find this hypothesis opportune”.
 
Dialectic diplomacy. In short, it seems that the game is to be played on the table of bombastic declarations, but the level obtained in a few months by this conflict can not fail to surprise. The Iranian nuclear programme, always and in any case presented as a civilian programme, hence not necessarily linked to the production of the atomic bomb, has existed for years in that it was initiated by the previous president Khatami, without particular turmoil. Ahmadinejad, in September 2005, announced that he has resumed uranium enrichment and, as this had not happened before, for the IAEA he violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, despite the government of Teheran’s assurances that the nuclear programme had only civilian purposes. Negotiations began between Iran and the IAEA, but the situation remained blocked, in spite of the attempts at mediation made by Russia, Germany and Great Britain. In January 2006, tired of waiting for a signal, the government of Ahmadinejad broke the seals of the IAEA and resumed their nuclear programme, enriching uranium in the research facilities in Natanz. In February 2006 the punishment arrived for Teheran’s decision: Iran was reported to the Security Council of the United Nations and, at the end, we arrive at today’s ultimatum.
The feeling, however, is that the UN, the IAEA and the mediators are merely extras in a play which has as its protagonists the United States and Iran who, not on direct speaking terms since 1979, communicate to each other through newspapers and international diplomacy. Each side yells at the other, but if Iran does so to distract internal pubic opinion from other problems, why does the United States do so?
 
The Oil exchange. The response, according to some, is the oil exchange inaugurated in Teheran at the beginning of April 2006. “In reality Iran has been accepting payment in Euros for oil for some years already”, responds professor Sabahi, “up to now the principal markets for oil transactions were two, London and New York, and both of them operated in dollars. The idea itself has revolutionary value, also because history supplies a not-very-encouraging example in this sense: when Saddam Hussein announced that he would sell Iraqi oil only in Euros, Iraq was invaded just a few months later. In this sense it could seem as if the United States is worried about a choice of this nature by a country such as Iran. The element to keep under control is not so much whether oil is sold in Euros or in dollars, but in which market the petrodollars or petrol euros are invested. It is a fact that major finance interests direct international relations. Let us take, for example, China, which has the world’s second largest reserves of American currency and, very often, invests the capitals directly in American finance markets. A negative element in this sense is that, after the 11 September 2001, the United States began to clamp down on the Arab world, in particular for restrictions on access to the American university world to students. Many Saudis and citizens of other Gulf States preferred to take the money from their American current accounts and put it into other markets. The problem, hence, more than the exchange, is that the US government has set aside, and continues to set aside, enormous funds to support the Iranian opposition. This is a signal which should not be underestimated”.
 
Conflicting elements. In this sense, events in the Iranian region of Khuzestan are interesting. This is the only region in the country to have a Sunnite majority, and it lies around the city of Ahwaz, near the border with Iraq. Khuzestan is the region richest in oil and, for some years now, has become a powder keg: no less than two attacks in the last year and an official visit cancelled by Ahmadinejad. Teheran has always accused the United States and Great Britain of infiltrating the region to stir up an anti – government revolt. “It could be so”, responds professor Sabahi, “but they are Iranians like me and it can not work. Iran is not a theoretical state founded around a negotiating table, even if it cannot be denied that there is a problem in the region, in that the resources deriving from the sale of oil from those regions are amassed by central government and not by the local population, which has also paid a high price in the Iran – Iraq war”.
Signals in one sense and in the other, hence. Elements which seem to give credit to the nuclear question as an umbrella hiding unpresentable objectives and elements which contradict this thesis.
But the hypothesis of an armed attack does not seem so far fetched. Seymour Hersh, the great American journalist, in a report in the New Yorker, quotes US government sources and retains that invasion is highly probable, as would seem demonstrated by the joint exercise of the British and American armies of some months ago, that was only revealed in recent days, which simulated precisely a march on Teheran. With the price of a barrel of oil at over 72 dollars in London and 71 dollars in New York, the hypothesis of an attack on Iran for control of the market does not seem so far-fetched. It was already spoken of back in 1996, when Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, two neo-cons, theorised the necessity to control the energy resources in the Middle East. Also for the attack on Saddam weapons of mass destruction were spoken of, but never revealed. We all know how that finished and Iraqi oil was mentioned in the document in 1996.