Iran’s nuclear defiance

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Iran’s tough stance on its nuclear program got a little tougher today. Iran’s President said today his country will not agree to talks on the issue if the UN Security Council imposes new sanctions. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also warned that a nuclear fuel deal that Turkey and Brazil brokered was a one-time opportunity that it would not be repeated. Stephen Kinzer was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times for many years. His latest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future. Marco Werman talks with him. Download MP3

• BBC coverage
• Stephen Kinzer on Iran, Turkey and the U.S. (Feb)
• book info

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  Iran’s tough stance on its nuclear program got tougher today.  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country won’t agree to talks on the issue if the U.N. Security Council imposes new sanctions.  Then, the Council announced it will vote on fresh sanctions tomorrow.  They’d include tighter financial restrictions and the expansion of a limited arms embargo.  Stephen Kinzer was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times for many years.  His latest book is “Reset:  Iran, Turkey and America’s Future”.  Mr. Kinzer joins us in our studio.  Do you think that there’s a risk that there’s maybe too much attention paid to what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says.  Sometimes it feels like this is just pro forma trash talk like in game three or four of the Lakers-Celtics series.

STEPHEN KINZER:  You’re exactly and I’d even go a step further.  I think that Ahmadinejad is very aware that many Iranians don’t like him and that he’s unpopular in the Middle East as well.  He knows that there is one thing that could make him a hero to all Iranians, and that would be to be attacked by Israel or the United States.  That would then turn him into the ultimate martyr.  And I think he’s calculating what I can do, what can I say to be as outrageous as possible and see if I can provoke someone to bomb me.  That’s the way the entire nation of Iran will gather behind me.  There’s no other way.  And I think Ahmadinejad is calculating this very carefully.  We are playing into his hands by reporting every wink of his eyebrows and trying to play him up as this ultimate demon and I think in the long run Iran’s strategic interests actually coincide more with America’s than they conflict with America’s.  And in addition, Iranian society, which is very vibrant and very open and democratic, has much more in common with American society than the societies of any of the countries with which we are now aligned.

WERMAN: What’s the primary way you think Iran’s interests coincide with American’s interests?

KINZER: The most important goal for Iran is a stable neighborhood.  That should also be the most important goal for Israel.  These are two countries, that in that sense are parallel and they are also parallel in the sense that they have a lot of enemies in the neighborhood and a lot of enemies in the world.  Nonetheless, it’s wrong to push these countries into a corner and stigmatize them and make them feel friendless and angry.  Somehow they need to be brought in to a kind of new regional security architecture in which stability in the region, which is the ultimate goal both of those countries in the United States, could possibly be assured.

WERMAN: Well one area where the world seemed to kind of pump helium into Ahmadinejad was just after last year’s contested Presidential election in Iran.  When you were in Iran recently, Stephen Kinzer, did you get a sense that the day of this anniversary, this coming Saturday, is going to be marked by protest?

KINZER: I think there will be protests, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the momentum of the green movement, as the protests were called, has definitely slowed down.  I talked to dozens of ordinary Iranians on the street and the sense I got from all of them was, we tried something last year, it didn’t work, and now we’re just going to go on with our lives.  There’s no point in us getting arrested and beaten, that’s what’s going to happen if we go out and protest.  There will be change, but it’s not going to come soon.  Now in a country with 25 centuries of history, which is ten times more than the United States has, that’s a very understandable attitude.  Nonetheless, in a way it kind of conflicts with the American attitude.  We have the sense that everything has to happen right away.  We also have a sense in America that all problems ultimately have a solution, even if they’re complex.  You just break them down into pieces and you can find a way out.  Iranians have a different approach to life.  They would say that many problems don’t have quick solutions and some problems have no solutions at all.  So there’s a psychological as well as a political gap here.

WERMAN: Now Iran may have a role in the latest crisis with the flotilla of activists headed for Gaza, this boat that Israel took over last week killing nine activists.  The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said this past weekend that Iran could use its Navy to send humanitarian assistance to Gaza.  What do you make of that?

KINZER: I don’t take it too seriously.  I think right now the Egyptians have opened up their own crossing into Gaza.  They are allowing a lot of relief supplies in.  That takes some of the pressure off and therefore the theater of flotillas trying to land in occupied Gaza has diminished in the impact and importance that it has.  I think the flotilla incident, I think it really was a reaction what was happening particularly in Gaza.  When you’re sitting in that part of the world, and you are watching on television every single day, as we in the west do not, what is going on in Gaza?  And every episode is replayed a hundred times in your mind and on your TV screens, naturally anger builds up and that was what was behind Prime Minister Erdogan’s blow up in Davos earlier this year.  That friction between Turkey and Israel has been largely focused on Gaza. So I don’t think this is necessarily a problem that’s afflicting the entire policy apparatus in that region.  I think it’s more about Gaza and if the Gaza situation can somehow be eased, I think some of this tension we’re seeing in recent weeks will also ease.

WERMAN: Stephen Kinzer’s latest books is “Rest: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future”.  Stephen thanks so much for coming in.

KINZER: Great to be with you.

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