‘It would be a disaster’ to attack Iran
As European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes) would never have been able to speak as frankly as he does in an interview with Kathimerini. He said that the West’s handling of Iran is «not sensible,» US Vice President Dick Cheney «has a lot of explaining to do» and the anti-missile system the US is installing in Europe is «a colossal waste of money.» Patten, who was secretary of the British Conservatives, is optimistic about the future of his party but not about the British economy’s prospects. Do you think there will be an attack against Iran? No, but I say that with my fingers crossed. I think it would be a disaster to do so. It would wreck what’s left of America’s reputation in the world. It would undoubtedly lead to a huge increase in oil prices, with the economic effects one would expect, and it would raise not just tension but conflict, right across the region and perhaps beyond. That does not mean I don’t understand the seriousness of nuclear non-proliferation. I don’t think we’re handling the Iran issue sensibly. I think we should be drawing the line between civil use and military use. I think it would be very difficult stopping the Iranians, much as I would like it to happen, from completing the nuclear fuel cycle. But I suspect that we would be better served by putting in place a system of transparency, by insisting on a more intrusive monitoring system and by getting international agreement to drawing the line in a very different place. But I think military action would be crazy. I base that partly on the fact that most intelligent Americans don’t regard Iraq to have been a very spectacular success and will be reluctant to pursue another neoconservative agenda. And secondly, because I think the State Department must understand what the consequences would be of a military adventure in Iran, and I think they’ve explained that to the Israelis as well. Still, the US administration, the neocons and Vice President Dick Cheney have done things that weren’t very wise in the past. I totally accept that. But the neocons are in retreat. And I doubt that the vice president’s influence is as great as it was. I certainly think the vice president has helped make the world more dangerous for my children and their children to grow up in. He has a lot of explaining to do. What has been preventing a full negotiation with Iran all these years? It’s partly the Iranians, of course.You can’t argue that they are blameless. It’s partly America and an attitude that is still infused by the humiliation of the hostage crisis. But if you go back a little in Iranian-American history, Persia was a great friend of America’s for over a century and that all ended with the overthrow of the Mossadeq government in 1953 by the Americans and, to our shame, the British. The CIA talk about blowback, about the consequences down the road which you don’t foresee. I think the subsequent relation with Iran has been a very good example of blowback. The overthrow of the Shah, the arrival of Homeini,the installation in power of the radical mullahs – I think this all has its roots in 1953. What could be the blowback from the current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s interesting isn’t it? Iran was of course a foe of Iraq at a time the West was supporting Iraq. Iran was very helpful to the West during the overthrow of the Taliban, for very good local reasons. Iran was of course close to America during the Iran-Contra episode, in which arms were provided to Iran via Israel, so this is a very complicated issue. What I don’t believe is that you can have a policy on the Middle East which involves not talking to Iran, Syria, Hamas or Hezbollah. You can’t have a diplomacy which is based on the proposition that you will only talk to people if they agree with you first. President Reagan described the Soviet Union as an evil empire. He still talked to the secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and you know what happened. We have to be more creative about our diplomacy and we have to show greater knowledge of history. Is the anti-missile system about to be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic helping the stability of the European continent? To be honest, I don’t think it makes much difference. The Russians use it as a pretext for creating trouble. The Russians have a very different attitude to their neighborhood than we have. We want stable, strong, independent democracies around our borders. I don’t think the Russians want that. I think they want a Tsarist sphere of influence and I think they’ll use any issue they can to try and open up divisions in the EU or in order to push back on the EU and NATO. I don’t think Mr Putin seriously believes Star Wars technology is directed against Russia. Who is it directed against? Who knows? I think it’s an extraordinary strategic choice, because we know from the development of modern threats that they don’t come from intercontinental ballistic missiles but from people with suitcases. I’m not sure who the Americans would regard the enemy. It’s a technology which is unproven, which assumes a threat which in my view doesn’t exist any more. The threat to America’s vulnerability is what happened on September 11. I’ve always thought that it was a colossal waste of money, but it’s up to the Americans to decide where they waste their money. It’s the tenth year of Labour in Britain and the governing party is still way ahead in the polls. Why is that? Any chance of this changing? Yes, there is. The new Conservative leader is intelligent and likeable, charismatic, and he’s trying to drag the Conservative Party onto the middle of the pitch so that it has broader political appeal. I think that’s entirely the right thing to do. The real question with all political parties is how much they want to win. And in order to win they have to make it clear that they’re more interested in who runs the country than who runs the party. They have to bury their hatchets, not in one another’s backs, but in the ground. Winston Churchill once said that the problem with committing political suicide is that you live to regret it. I think the Conservative Party should by now have lived to regret that we’ve spent a decade fighting one another over Europe and the result is a decade of Mr Blair. Was Europe the only reason? The main reason, yes. Ever since we tumbled out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. I think it is the biggest reason. But I think Mr Cameron has a pretty good chance now. The real question is what the economy is going to look like next year. I don’t think Mr Brown will hold an early election and I think the economy is going to look a lot weaker, partly because of the housing crash in the US, partly because of the extent to which British growth has been based on borrowing and debt. So it’s all to play for in Britain.
