Rouhani’s 3-part strategy to beguile the world & buy enough time to build a nuclear arsenal.

joelcrosenberg

13 years ago

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(Washington, D.C.) — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is working hard to convince the world his government only desires peace and security and in the Middle East. He’s also working hard to make Israel look and feel more isolated than ever before.

To beguile the world and buy enough time to build Iran’s nuclear weapons arsenal, Rouhani is employing a three-part strategy:

First, Rouhani is calling for a lightning round of nuclear negotiations, telling the Washington Post he wants to wrap up a deal with the West to lift the sanctions within three months — this makes him looks reasonable and eager for a deal.
Second, Rouhani is trying to turn the tables by demanding Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty “without delay” to create a “nuclear free zone” in the Middle East — this is designed to shift the attention from all the UN Security Council resolutions Iran is defying on the nuclear issue to focusing international attention and pressure on Israel to disclose and dismantle its (alleged) nuclear warhead arsenal, even though Israel has never threatened to wipe Iran “off the map.” (It’s also a strategy ripped right out of my novel, The Ezekiel Option, in which Iran and Russia create an international coalition at the UN to force Israel to disclose and destroy its nuclear weapons or face an international military operation to force Israel to comply).
Third, Rouhani is trying to be careful not to look or sound like his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — he is not talking about the coming of the Shia Islamic messiah, the “Twelfth Imam”; he did not pray during his UN speech; he is working hard to make himself and his regime sound friendly, moderate, reasonable, rational.

So far, the Iranian president’s strategy is working like a charm.

Here’s the latest on his new attempt to turn the tables on Israel:

“Iranian President Hassan Rouhani denounced the proliferation, use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons on Thursday, in his first extensive speech on nuclear arms since assuming office,” reported the Jerusalem Post. “Calling for a ‘nuclear-free zone’ in the Middle East, Rouhani said that Israel was the only country in the region that had not yet signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and requested that it do so ‘without delay.'”

“The developed world focuses on preventing states without nuclear weapons from acquiring them, Rouhani said, but the international community should also focus on disarming countries that have stockpiled hundreds or thousands of them since Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” the Post noted. “‘Nonproliferation derives its legitimacy from the larger objective of nuclear disarmament,’ he said, calling for a ‘high-level’ conference within five years geared toward the ‘complete elimination’ of the greatest weapons. In a veiled reference to a Russian-brokered deal that will rid Syria of its massive chemical weapons stockpile, Rouhani said ‘all weapons of mass destruction’ should be eliminated in the Middle East.”

Excerpts from the article:

Addressing the General Assembly in his capacity as the head of the Non-Aligned Movement, Rouhani commended the “valuable contribution” of nuclear weapon-free zones to international peace and security. “A peaceful and secure world remains a shared ideal for us all,” he said. “We have an architecture of treaties and norms that aim to achieve this agreed goal, yet thousands of these weapons continue to pose the greatest threat to peace.
“Almost four decades of international efforts to establish nuclear weapon-free zones have regrettably failed,” he said. “Urgent, practical steps toward the establishment of such a zone are necessary. The international community has to redouble efforts in support of the establishment of this zone.”
Rouhani further said that taking steps to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world “is no substitute for destruction.”
“Nuclear weapon states have the primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament,” he said. “Threatening non-nuclear states with nuclear weapons should end. The modernization of these weapons undercuts efforts for their total abolition.”

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>> Track the latest developments and analysis on Twitter — @JoelCRosenberg.

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