Gül lets the cat out of the bag on Iran

SEMİH İDİZ
Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

President Abdullah Gül may have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag on Iran’s nuclear program. He was quoted recently by Forbes commentator Claudia Rosett uttering remarks that have not been heard before from any Islamic leader.

The fact that the Presidency issued a statement later denying that President Gül had given an interview to anyone from Forbes magazine showed just how riled the president was upon reading Rosett’s piece. It was nevertheless interesting that the Presidency’s statement did not deny the remarks attributed to Gül, but merely said that he had not given an interview to Forbes.

One can assume, as most people are doing, that Gül actually uttered the remarks attributed to him, but failed to tell the group of visiting Americans that included Rosett that he was speaking off the record. From Rosett’s point of view, and indeed the point of view of any journalist, if it is not said that something is off the record, it is on the record.

Therefore, there is no point in criticizing her, unless what she wrote is being denied, and this does not appear to be the case. Carrying the title “Turkey tilts toward Iran,” Rosett’s article reflects clear annoyance at the change in direction in Ankara’s foreign policy, especially on issues of great importance to Washington.

No doubt it was because of this that she characterized the recent talk her group had with Gül at the Presidential Palace in Ankara as “disturbing.” The basic argument in Rosett’s article is that Ankara is not toeing the U.S. line on Iran. It is instead pursuing a “zero problems with neighbors” policy, but has no concrete formula for convincing Tehran by diplomatic means to give up on its nuclear-weapons program.

For us, neither Rosett’s displeasure here nor Gül’s pushing for the diplomatic track, as opposed to sanctions or a military strike against Iran, is surprising. The former is highly predictable and the later contains nothing new. It has become Ankara’s standard position.

What does matter, however, are other remarks attributed to President Gül by Rosett.

According to her, Gül said he has no doubts that Iran wants a nuclear bomb. “This is an Iranian aspiration dating back to the previous regime, [to] the days of the Shah,” Gül is reported as saying. As for the current regime in Iran, the Turkish president apparently believes its final aspiration is also “to have a nuclear weapon in the end.”

This claim, which many Turkish diplomats and military planners also believe to be true, is, of course, in stark contrast with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approach to the whole issue. Acting as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s advocate, Erdoğan has said in the past that suspicions that Tehran is after a nuclear weapon are just “gossip.”

Erdoğan has also established a link between Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Israel’s nuclear arsenal, suggesting in so many words that instead of putting pressure on Tehran, the West should first force Israel to get rid of its own arsenal. Many in the Islamic world have read Erdoğan’s approach as a suggestion that as long as Israel has these weapons, then Iran can have them too.

But the real “nuclear remark” said to have been uttered by Gül was not the claim that Iran is after nuclear weapons. He apparently also said that if Iran gets the bomb, it will not use it. At first appearance, this may appear a naïve remark, but what the president was quoted as saying after this puts the whole issue in a stone-cold realistic perspective.

The following is straight from Rosett’s piece:

“Gül says Israel need not worry. However irrational Iran’s leaders might become, he is sure they will remain rational enough to refrain from devastating Israel – lest, by doing so, they should harm the Palestinians or the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (which he says would then create problems for Iran ‘with all the Muslims of the Gulf and the surrounding regions’).”

These words no doubt had a devastating effect on Iranian officials who are closely following Turkey’s position on their country’s nuclear program. Gül’s remarks must have confirmed to them that not everyone in Ankara is as pro-Iranian as Prime Minister Erdoğan on the issue of nuclear weapons.

But much more devastatingly, Gül’s remarks show that Iran is not in a position to use nuclear weapons against Israel unless it wants to run the risk of destroying and contaminating lands and edifices considered sacred by Muslims. Put another way, unless Tehran gains a highly selective “first strike” capability, as well as finely tuned air-interception abilities for counter defense, its nuclear-weapons program is useless against Israel.

That leaves Tehran with the need to establish new targets for its nuclear weapons. No doubt those will be in the West, but how Iranian capabilities will be able to acquire first-strike and counter-defense abilities in that case is again a wide-open question.

In this sense, it is clear that President Gül, in remarks attributed to him but not denied by him, has indeed let the cat out of the bag, putting forward a proposition that all Muslims will have to think about seriously.

But Israel is also put in a spot by virtue of the same token as a result of President Gül’s remarks. If there is little chance that any Islamic country in the region can use nuclear weapons against Israel, for the reasons cited by Gül, then what is the point in Israel’s having a nuclear arsenal, which merely fuels a pointless arms race in the region?

We should therefore be happy that President Gül has let this cat out of the bag, even if he may not be too happy about it himself. The remarks attributed by Rosett to Gül show there is a need for more rational thinking on this score, and less politicking according to one’s own national interests.

Nuclear weapons are no joke and should not be used in this way, unless one is prepared to court disaster.