While Europe continues to be rocked by a crisis that unfolds like a slow-motion movie, and while the rest of the currents of global power are mesmerized by the strange spectacle of its officials endlessly trying to save the euro (and therefore the international financial system), the clouds of war are once again gathering over Iran.
Iran has been simultaneously developing a nuclear program and building long-range missiles for years, which can only mean one thing: its officials want to produce nuclear weapons or, at the very least, reach a technological threshold where they will only need one political decision to do so.
This latter option would allow Iran to continue to operate within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which it is a signatory. However, there is no reasonable doubt about the intentions of the Iranian leadership. Otherwise, Iran's nuclear program and missiles would become nothing more than a financial absurdity, because Iran has no need for uranium enrichment technology. The country has only one civilian nuclear reactor, for which fuel is imported from Russia, and Iranian technology at this stage of development cannot be used for it.
However, enriching uranium makes sense if you want to make nuclear weapons; that goal is unachievable without enriched uranium. In addition, Iran is currently constructing a heavy water reactor, ostensibly for research purposes, but which is also necessary to make a plutonium bomb.
Iran has covered up essential aspects of its program and in doing so has completely violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Also, the country spent millions of dollars to illegally purchase nuclear weapons enrichment technology from Pakistani nuclear researcher AK Khan, who is considered the "maker of the Pakistani bomb." Iran tried to camouflage these transactions for years, until they were discovered by Libya, when it began cooperating with the West and reported Khan's network.
An Iran that possesses nuclear weapons (that is, it is one step away from a political decision to possess them) will radically change the strategic balance in the Middle East. In the best case scenario, the nuclear arms race will endanger even such an unstable region, which will threaten the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and cause major consequences at the global level.
In the worst case, nuclear weapons will serve Iran's "revolutionary" foreign policy in the region, which has been led by Iranian officials since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The combination of a policy opposed to the status quo and nuclear weapons and missiles would be a real nightmare not only for Israel, which has the capacity to defend itself, but also for its non-nuclear Arab neighbors and Turkey.
That is why the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, consider Iran to be a greater threat than Israel. The European security framework will have to change significantly if Iran possesses nuclear warheads and long-range missiles.
All attempts to negotiate failed. Iran continues to enrich uranium and refine its nuclear technology. Sanctions, although useful, will bear fruit only in the long term, and a change in the internal balance between different currents in the country will not be possible immediately. Thus, it is only a matter of time, and not a long time, when Iran's neighbors and the international community will face a fatal choice: accept Iran as a nuclear power or admit that this option will lead to war according to its specification.
President Barack Obama has already clearly stated that the US will not recognize Iran as a nuclear power under any conditions. This is how Israel and its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf reacted.
The next year looks set to be decisive. The Israeli government has almost declared that Iran could reach the nuclear threshold in nine months, and the issue of Iran may be a heavy burden in the long election race for the US president in November 2012. However, it is difficult to imagine the current Israeli government standing by while Iran becomes a nuclear power (or almost nuclear power).
On the other hand, talks about military intervention, which in this case could only be air, will not be enough. There are serious doubts that it is possible to stop Iran's nuclear program from the air. Essentially, in a situation where the majority of the world would most likely condemn any attack, military intervention would open the diplomatic door to the race for an Iranian nuke.
Better not to dwell on what the Middle East would look like after a conflict of that kind. Iranian opposition forces would likely be the first casualty of Western military action, and the Arab Spring in other countries would be lost under a huge wave of anti-Western solidarity with Iran. The entire region would plunge back into violence and terror, instead of continuing the path of positive transformation. The impact on the global economy is no less important, not to mention the humanitarian consequences.
The last diplomatic solution does not seem likely as long as the issue of nuclear weapons plays a crucial role in the conflicts of different currents within the Iranian regime and in which whoever insists on a compromise will lose the battle. At the same time, Iranian statesmen seem to believe that the country is too big and strong to be subdued by sanctions or airstrikes.
Historically, the road to failure has often been paved with good intentions and serious mistakes, which may prove to be true in 2012. Miscalculations on either side could either lead to war, or turn Iran into a nuclear power, or, more likely, both. The further development of the situation in the Middle East will sooner or later end with those last possibilities, unless a diplomatic solution is found (or at least until diplomacy succeeds in gaining time).
Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen in the next year. In the absence of any solid dialogue between the US and Iran, the onus falls on Europe to organize and manage these highly sensitive negotiations. European officials, on the other hand, as Iran well knows, are now occupied with something else.
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