Iran’s Nuclear Doctrine: A New Narrative
After a long, serious engagement, Iran finally struck a historical deal in Vienna with the P 5+1 over its controversial nuclear program. The Nuclear Iran Deal lifts oil and financial sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
The deal, however, has alarmed the rise of Iran as a new regional hegemone; a tectonic shift that the US seems to recognize it. The uproaring Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has been warning that a nuclear armed Iran would be the worst possible outcome of the current standoff. Claiming that the Iran’s Nuclear Program is a hidden military one, he has unsuccessfully made an unprecedented effort to convince Obama to keep putting pressure on Iran. After the Iran Nuclear Deal, it seems that Obama is North Pole, and Netanyahu is South Pole. By the same token, the Persian Gulf Arab states felt slighted by the deal. For these states, which see Tehran as a regional troublemaker, the deal means their demands of “cutting off the head of the snake” fell in deaf ears. Now, they think that Iran is sitting at the high table, but they are left with the leftovers. In short, both Israeli and Arabs thinks that the rugs have been brutally pulled out from underneath them.
However, there are some ambiguous issues that can put the implication of the deal on jeopardy. The chief among them is the two sides’ opposite narratives of ‘Security’. Despite the US disagreement with both Israelis and Arab sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf, all share the same point of view towards security. Mainstream argument on Iranian Nuclear program looms large on a physical view of state security and its center, namely ‘survival’. Such a physical view neglects all types of non-material issues, like honor, dignity, and awe, and actually excluded them from the ‘rationality’ of world politics.
While the West, Israel, and the Arab sheikhdoms have portrayed a realist, zero-sum attitude towards security issues related to Iran’s Nuclear Program, Iran’s narrative of security highly predicates on a non-realist perspective of security, namely Ontological Security, with a focus on Iran’s identity. Ontological security is “a sense of continuity and order in events”, arguing that insecurity refers to situations whereby “individuals are uncomfortable with who they are”; consequently, “ontological security, as opposed to security as survival, is security as being”.
On this reading, the fulfillment of Iran’s ontological security affirms Iran’s identity; it affirms not only its physical existence but primarily how Iran sees itself and how it wants to be seen by others. In fact, the main target of crippling sanctions was not Iran’s physical, but its ontological security. The Iranian Nuclear Program has not provided any deterrence for the country since 2001. Rather, it has endangered the physicality of Iran’s security and its survival at least for the last decade. In spite of this existential threat, Iran has been keeping its program, showing that its feeling insecure does not necessarily mean having its own survival at stake. This fact shows that what lurks beneath Iran’s quest for the Nuclear energy is related to the question of identity.
From this perspective, nuclear capacity provides an important normative symbol of Iran’s identity. That is why keeping the enrichment program active has been a rational pursuit to fulfill the drive for Iran’s security. And that is why the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei views the country's ability to make nuclear fuel as a source of national pride. Phrased differently, one cannot understand the origin, dynamics, and trajectory of Iran’s nuclear program without getting knowledge of indelible ties between Iran’s ontological security and non-material issues, i.e., honor, dignity, and awe. “To us, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world”, President Rouhani said in his article published in Washington Post in 19th September 2013, “Without comprehending the role of identity, many issues we all face will remain unresolved.”
Identity driven issues also bring up the significance of not only geopolitical forces, but also geo-cultural forces in the security complex of the Middle East. The significance of ideological-cultural domain highlights the geo-cultural forces, leading to superiority of “soft”, not hard, power in the Middle East. Interestingly, the Islamic Republic’s power in the region has been predicated on soft power from its very inception. That is why the only theological regime on the globe has been somehow successful in expanding the milieu of its leverage and conquering the heart of the “Arab Streets”. This leverage has been less based on the Iranian economic success or its military progress. On the contrary way, its influence stems from the Islamic republic’s discourse that has framed around a nodal point: “Independence”.
The Islamic Revolution, 1979, opened a space for the ‘revival of Islam,’ led to the establishment of the only theological regime on the globe. Apart from its partial inability to form an ideally ‘Free’ society, the Islamic Republic has inflexibly kept its word on ‘Independence’. Iran’s decision since the Islamic Revolution to be a third voice critical of both superpowers, to be both anti-U.S. imperialism and anti-communist and not party to the Cold War, has shaped the embodiment of ‘Independence’. On this reading, the Iranian Nuclear Program is the most significant manifestation of the “independence”.
The Iran’s nuclear deal is not the final word on its position in the geopolitics of the Middle East and its relation with the West, and especially the USA. What is crucial now is that the West needs to understand the position of the Iranian Nuclear Program at the heart of Iran’s identity. As history has proved, negotiation on identity issues is difficult since it belongs to an adversarial model constructed around an ‘us vs. them’ mentality. To keep this hope, the US politicians needed to empathize with Iranians, as a way that Obama did: “And then I think the last thing that … even with your enemies, even with your adversaries, I do think that you have to have the capacity to put yourself occasionally in their shoes, and if you look at Iranian history, the fact is that we had some involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime [Mossadeq’s nationalist regime] in Iran. We have had in the past supported Saddam Hussein when we know he used chemical weapons in the war between Iran and Iraq, and so, as a consequence, they have their own security concerns, their own narrative. It may not be one we agree with”. In short, without accurate understanding of the role of the Iranian Nuclear Program and its enrichment for Iran, the West cannot understand Iran’s attitudes towards the nuclear program.
Looking around the Middle East, it is not easy to be an optimist. Fires are raging everywhere, from Syria and Iraq to Turkey and Yemen. Now the dust has settled following the historical deal in Vienna, hopes are exceptionally soaring among Iranians; a mysterious hope that may contain a message to Western leaders to purge their images before Iranians: “This is the last chance”.