Iran is not the only danger – Isil is still a terror force
The uncovering of Tehran’s nuclear secrets must not let us believe rogue states are the sole threat to peace
Iran’s decades-long insistence that its nuclear intentions are entirely peaceful is starting to wear a bit thin following the daring raid by Israeli agents that resulted in them stealing the crown jewels of Tehran’s nuclear programme. For those of us who have followed the Iran nuclear brief closely over many years, the dramatic revelations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have an all-too-familiar ring of truth about them.
The essence of Mr Netanyahu’s case is that, soon after signing the 2015 nuclear deal, the Iranians collected all the relevant paperwork relating to its clandestine nuclear weapons programme and stored it in a top-secret location in the Shorabad district of Tehran. Only a very small number of Iranians knew the precise whereabouts of the storage facility, but this did not prevent Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency from discovering its location. Then, in the course of a single night, the Israelis succeeded in removing half a tonne of documents, a feat hailed by Mr Netanyahu as one of his country’s “biggest ever intelligence achievements”.
Of course the naysayers, like our own Foreign Office, who want to preserve the flawed deal at all costs, are already trying to play down the significance of the Israeli discovery, claiming it is nothing more than a stunt by Mr Netanyahu to persuade the Trump administration to end Washington’s support for the nuclear agreement when it comes up for renewal on May 12. Leading the charge, somewhat predictably, was Federica Mogherini, the EU’S foreign affairs chief, who said the Israeli claims did “not put into question” Tehran’s compliance with the deal.
And yet, what no one seems to be challenging is the claim that the Iranians did have this cache of top-secret material squirrelled away in a nondescript suburb of Tehran.
Moreover, such conduct on the part of the Iranians is entirely in keeping with the obsessive secrecy that has defined their approach ever since they first began work on developing nuclear weapons, which most intelligence specialists agree was some time after the end of the Iran-iraq war in the Nineties.
How else do you explain the construction of the underground Natanz uranium enrichment plant that Iran built in total secrecy in the Nineties until its existence was eventually exposed by opposition activists?
Behaviour like this explains why doubts have been raised about Tehran’s commitment to the nuclear deal, concerns that are likely to deepen in the wake of the latest Israeli revelations.
If, as seems increasingly likely, the Trump administration does decide to walk away from the deal next week, a number of other factors, quite apart from Iran’s failure to make a full and unequivocal disclosure on its nuclear activities, will inform the decision.
The Trump administration makes no secret of its assessment that Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, a view that has hardened following the dramatic expansion of Tehran’s military involvement in Arab countries such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria. In particular, Iran’s multi-billion dollar investment in the Assad regime has allowed it to build a network of military bases in Syria equipped with thousands of missiles, a development that has generated a great deal of alarm in neighbouring Israel.
Iran’s military take-over of Syria, moreover, will allow Tehran to increase its support for terrorist organisations like Hizbollah, which controls most of southern Lebanon, a development that Western leaders should view with alarm.
Since the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) at the end of last year, there has been a growing tendency to regard Islamist terrorism as a fading threat, with rogue states like Russia, North Korea and Iran seen as being likely sources of future conflict. But while it is important that we prepare ourselves for the possibility of state-on-state confrontation, it would also be foolhardy to discount completely the threat posed by Islamist terror cells.
The devastating series of Isilsponsored terror attacks in Afghanistan this week graphically demonstrates that, while Isil may have been defeated on the battlefield, it has lost none of its appetite for committing acts of carnage. The same goes for other, like-minded Islamist groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas, which have, for years, been the beneficiaries of Iranian largesse.
Islamist terror groups are always on the look-out for new opportunities to target their enemies, and a decision by the Trump administration to cut its ties with the nuclear deal might prompt them to launch a new wave of terror attacks against the West and countries viewed as its allies in the region, such as Israel.
It is unlikely, though, that Mr Trump will be swayed by concerns that ending the nuclear deal will spark an escalation in Iranian-sponsored terrorism. On the contrary, Washington will view this threat as further evidence that it is high time Tehran is held to account for its actions, whether it is building nuclear weapons or sponsoring terrorism.