Read Editorial with D2G Ep – LV

In Read Editorial With D2G
January 19, 2016

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EPISODE – LV
TOPIC: The end of sanctions against Iran: hope for a new start
BLOG: The Guardian
WRITER: Editorial
GENRE: Editorial

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MEANINGS are given in BOLD and ITALIC

One of the first acts of the Iranian revolutionaries after they took power in 1979 was to cancel the country’s nuclear programme. Although the programme was formally a civil and scientific one, the shah had some years before openly said that Iran would have nuclear weapons, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think”.

The country’s new masters initially did not share this ambition, but the war with Iraq changed their minds. The Iranians had successfully repelled the Iraqi forces that had invaded their territory in 1980 and could have had a peace deal very much on their terms, but they wanted to take the war to Baghdad and bring down Saddam Hussein. Now it was their turn to be repelled. As wave after wave of young Iranians were mown down (mow someone or something down to cut, knock, or shoot someone or something down) in increasingly futile (pointless) offensives against the Iraqi positions, it dawned on Tehran that the war might be a long one, that it might even be lost, and definitely would be lost if Saddam got an atomic bomb before Iran did.

The programme was hurriedly reconstituted, the scientists and engineers brought back together, and the search for supplies of enriched uranium and advanced equipment which would eventually (finally) make it possible to produce nuclear weapons began.

This is the long and dangerous chapter in Iran’s recent history which, we may hope, came to an end this weekend, when the International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran had complied with the terms of the nuclear deal reached in July last year. Its enriched uranium has been shipped out, most of its centrifuges put into store and the core of its heavy water reactor has been removed.

Iran could of course still make nuclear weapons, if it really wanted to. But whereas until now some calculations have suggested it could have enough material for a bomb within a matter of weeks, now it would take a year. But more than just time would stand in the way of nuclear weapons status. Such a regression (When people or things regress, they return to an earlier and less advanced stage of development) would have a high cost. The nuclear sanctions which were removed yesterday have had a crippling effect on the Iranian economy at a time when its growing population wants to see more jobs, more goods and more contact with the outside world. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who has staked a great deal on the success of the deal, presented it in a budget address to parliament today as the key to the country’s future prosperity. The hope is that investors will return in a big way, financial and other constraints on trade will end and oil exports will perhaps double. The expectations of ordinary Iranians are high. That would all be thrown away if Iran reneged (If someone reneges on a promise or an agreement, they do not do what they have promised or agreed to do) or was found to be cheating.

The most salient change since 1982, when its soldiers were falling in such horrifying numbers at the front and the regime felt it faced an existential challenge, is that Iraq is no longer an enemy to be feared but a dependency to be managed, while Iran and America are in a relationship which combines continuing hostility with some common purposes. A confident Iran feels it can have good economic relations with Europe and America and at the same time pursue its ambitions in the Middle East without a nuclear shield. Those ambitions remain very problematic, and the cause, although not the only one, of much conflict and suffering in the region. This rapprochement brings no solution to that, but it might in time help open the way towards one.

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