International Relations

Canada’s interests are served by a nuclear-armed Iran    

While Canadians realize our officials can’t say it out loud, nothing is stopping our diplomats from quietly conveying support to Russia and China as they resist US pressure to force Iran to stop nuclear developments    

by Kevin Potvin  

Last weekend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presided over the ceremonial opening of a nuclear energy facility south of Tehran. Though the heavy water plant is capable of producing plutonium that can be refined into a nuclear weapons grade warhead, Ahmadinejad declared only peaceful intentions.

Naturally, though, that declaration was met with grave suspicion in Western capitals. On the 31st of this month, Iran is scheduled to reply to a demand put to it by the Security Council of the United Nations to cease moves toward developing its own nuclear bombs, or face the risk of economic sanctions. Ahmadinejad’s declaration on the weekend was viewed as a preparation for an announcement on the 31st that Iran would not comply with these Security Council demands, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States.

These latest developments only appear to be alarming since the situation is apparently slipping inexorably toward conflict, a conflict that quite possibly could involve nuclear weapons. It is certainly bad news for the United States to see the results of its utterly failed foreign policy under the Bush administration so rapidly evolving into seriously negative consequences. Most bills these days don’t have to be paid for 90 days, but Bush’s credit has been severely shortened.

It appears to be bad news also for Western European and Canadian policy-makers who, to a greater or lesser extent, followed the US lead in its confrontation with Iran over the nuclear issue. But while the American goose certainly looks cooked, Western Europe’s and Canada’s geese can still get back in formation in the sky again.

It is not proven that Iran is interested in developing nuclear weapons, but even if it were, it is not necessarily counter to Canada’s interests to see Iran join the nuclear club. It is certainly true that Canadians would like no one to possess nuclear weapons, but the unalterable reality today is that there are eight countries that definitely possess nuclear arsenals and another seven that may possess them or are well-advanced in the process of acquiring them, one of those being Iran. And while Iran certainly has reason to be defensive in this world, having for neighbours such rowdies as Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, it has engaged in precious few wars in the modern era—only one, with Iraq, and it has never spoken of acquiring or using nuclear weapons.

By comparison, the United States, with only compliant Canada and Mexico for neighbours, and with the world’s oldest, biggest, and most menacing nuclear arsenal, has launched at least eight major unprovoked wars around the world since 1945, and almost daily speaks of using nuclear weapons against nuclear and non-nuclear powers alike, and has in fact brandished them on more than three occasions in the post-war period.

Those American wars have proven terribly costly to Canadian interests, and in each case, from Korea through Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Iraq, Canadian interests would unarguably have been better served had the United States not launched them. It is revealing that though the United States has over time made enemies of many nuclear and non-nuclear powers alike, it has never launched war on a nuclear-armed opponent.

If Korea in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s, or Iraq in the 1990s or in 2003 had a nuclear defence capability, as awful as that prospect is to imagine, it must be conceded that the US probably would not have launched the hugely destructive and useless wars it did launch on those countries. Given that in each of these countries, their historical behaviour has been to mostly stay within their borders and represent no offensive threat to neighbours, however rough their neighbourhood, it is possible to conclude that none of them, even armed with nuclear capabilities, would have become an offensive threat to anyone around them. The only sure difference their possession of nuclear weapons would have made to history is that the US would probably not have launched war on them.

Since it is in Canada’s national interest to see that there are no offensive, unprovoked wars launched by any nation on any other nation in the world, it therefore stands to reason that it is in Canada’s interest to see those nations that are today threatened with unprovoked war become nuclear-armed in order to deter that threat. The calculus does not change just because the nation that represents a threat of unprovoked war upon them happens to be our neighbour to the south.

Russia and China, two of the five key members of the UN Security Council, have made largely the same calculation and are wavering on whether to counter US demands for sanctions on Iran come the 31st of this month. While it would it be too much to expect Canadian officials to openly back Iranian acquisition of a nuclear defence to deter an almost certain unprovoked US attack, it remains possible for Canadian diplomats to quietly encourage Russia and China to maintain their opposition to US demands that Iran cease all nuclear activity.

The alternative, to see the US undeterred in its march to war with Iran, is by far the worst scenario (and not just for Canada, Europe, and the world, but for the United States as well). Unlike the Ba’athist regime in Baghdad, the Revolutionary regime in Tehran, even without nuclear weapons, is capable of fighting back. And unlike Baghdad, Tehran has throngs of fans in virtually every Arab nation, most of them Shi’ites oppressed forever under the rule of Sunnis, and just waiting for a reason to rebel. Hezbollah, recent victors over the much-vaunted Israeli Defence Force, is just the tip of that iceberg.

Read more by this author on this subject:

Canadian big business chooses regional war in the Middle East : August 3 2006 • No 144

One fact sits unmolested in the centre of the Middle East storm: August 3 2006 • No 144

Thank goodness for nuclear proliferation : March 16 2006 • No 135

Canada should rethink its global alliances : February 2 2006 • No 131