Introduction
The ability of a nation to use force against an adversary nation falls within the constraints of the availability of various resources such as better weaponry in relation to the rival nation. This claim suggests that a nation needs to develop a better military capability long before attacks or getting any news of likely attacks. This issue has been the concern of Iran in its effort to develop nuclear power, which the US and Israel oppose. With the international community eyes being wide open on how the whole idea of developing nuclear arms in Iran unfolds, Iran encounters dilemmas on how to enhance its security.
It endeavors to get out of seclusion in the Gulf regional security circles while also being surrounded by militarily powerful nations such as Pakistan, the US, and Israel, which are potential adversaries. Saudi Arabia faces a similar security dilemma, specifically in terms of matters of internal security. This paper offers an in-depth discussion of the security dilemma facing both Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Security Dilemma for Iran
Following the toppling of Shah Reza, the longstanding economic sanctions facing Iran, and the predominantly conservative Sharia Islam law, arresting of internal security situations in Iran requires complex approaches. Apart from the concerns of internal security, Iran also experiences the challenge of external aggression from other nations. As Ervan proposes, one of the surest ways of enhancing both internal security and security against external aggression is by enhancing military capability of a nation. This strategy perhaps reveals why Iran desperately needs to explore a nuclear weaponry program.
However, according to Pasri, the interest of the US and Israel on the Iran nuclear program has amplified the security threat that Iranians face1. While attempting to bring back Iran’s control over gulf area, Iran encounters the challenge emanating from the West together with other powerful and high-ranking local royal leaders as Brumberg reveals2. Consequently, the nation still faces a dilemma on how to ensure security both within and outside its borders. Should Iran seek gaining nuclear power or resort to exploring diplomatic relations with its equally armed adversary nations including the US, Israel, and Pakistan?
A nation has to assure citizens unprejudiced security. Unfortunately, Iran has not managed to deliver this mandate in the extent that it has not managed to curtail the threats posed to its citizens by both the US and Israel. The surest way to achieve this goal is through giving up on its nuclear weapon exploration program. Unfortunately, Iran seems not prepared to do exactly that, as the authoritative leadership of Iran believes that the surest way to enhance a long-term security of its people is by rising to a ‘superpower status’.
As Moore confirms, arresting the security of Iran is a call for protection of territorial integrity of the nation3. This role is dedicated to the Iran’s armed forces. Following the end of an Iraqi-Iran war that lasted for 8 years, the military capability of Iran was adversely affected. Consequently, as Iran continued to rebuild its military infrastructures, several security tensions have continued to influence some of its regions. Such tensions include hostilities in its neighbors since Iraq poses ethnic tensions in the east and north of Pakistan.
Security systems of Iran have not managed to proactively curtail all potential threats in its borders. This claim is evidenced by constant efforts of Iran to use its security machineries including the military to enhance the internal security and/or to prevent nationalistic uprisings from rising among the ethnic and religious minorities of Iran. There have also been repeated military measures to ensure that the accessibility of the US to Iran is limited to the gulf region. Such measures include the deployment of anti-ship missiles among them being the Chinese Silkworm system in Hormuz Strait.
These measures indicate that Iran remains in a dilemma in terms of its ability to secure its citizens. Should Iran glare at the US and Israel as they dictate whether it should rise to a super power status by arming itself with nuclear weapons? What can happen if it develops the nuclear weaponry program against the wishes of the US, Israel, and the international community? Will its security be improved or made worse?
The path leading towards the nuclear program in Iran was not a one-day decision. This means that it is characterized by historical chronology. The program was initiated in the 1950s, with the European governments and the US taking central roles. It was part of the program of atoms for peace. The involvement of these two parties did not proceed for long since it was terminated in 1979 when the Iranian revolution toppled the Shah of Iran. In the mid 1980s, Khomeini regime brought up again the idea of a nuclear program in secret.
The plan also encompassed making preparations for acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons that were initiated during the Shah reign. Many political scholars immensely believe that this move was initiated by the Iran’s devastation that was inflicted by Iraq due to the moves of Iraq to deploy chemical weapons in the war between the two nations.
In 1990, Iran endeavored to develop its own nuclear power for the mining of uranium and its processing. Part of this energy was also scheduled for utilization in the production of large amounts of water in the production of plutonium. Still in the same year, Iran also began its secret missions of buying of uranium centrifuges made by A.Q khan. Testing of the centrifuges began in 2000. Even though this process was done secretly, the cycle of activities got public in 2002 thus prompting the interventions of France, Britain, IAEA, and Germany. Although inspection conducted on Iran by these nations revealed that Iran had brought its nuclear weapons program to a halt, the presence of the US military in its borders between 2003 and 2004 prompted reconsideration of the development of Iran’s nuclear capability.
The west views the nuclear program of the Iraq as a means of developing the capacity to mass-destroy people and for seeking the power to control the world. Since the Second World War, peace has been the main superiority of many nations all over the world. Therefore, super power nations have a noble responsibility to ensure all nations uphold the peace accord. Thus, the west seeks the world to view Iran’s missions to establish nuclear power capability as an attempt to threaten the lives of not only the nationalities of the west, but also all people across the globe. However, the nuclear weapon program is necessary upon considering its role in raising Iran to a super power position and preventing it from being secluded in playing roles in fostering gulf regional security. However, in terms of security, the implication of the development of the program constitutes a dilemma that Iran continues to face.
A solution to the above dilemma rests on how Iran views its internal and external security situation. Saddam Hussein presented a major challenge to the security of Iran. Later, the Taliban government in Afghanistan together with Sunni Islamic extremists replaced Iraq in terms of presenting external security challenges to Iran. A claim on why Iran should consider developing powerful military weaponry is to mitigate threats of external aggression across its borders. However, Taliban and Iraq threats were eliminated by the US. Consequently, perhaps Iran should feel more secure and do away with its intention to pursue nuclear weaponry program. Unfortunately, this strategy is part of the big aspect of the security dilemma for Iran.
Iranian people see issues surrounding the security of a nation from a different perspective. As Perkovich observes, ‘Instead of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iran now confronts on its western and eastern borders the most powerful military in the history of the world’4. Such powerful nations have interests in toppling regimes such as the Iranian authoritative regime. This suggests that the continued presence of the US military in nations bordering Iran such as Afghanistan and Iraq does little to resolve the security dilemma facing Iran. The military only increases security fear in Iran.
Thus, Iran desperately requires nuclear weapon capability to confront powerful enemies such as the US in comparison with Iraq, which used chemical weapons on Iran without a blow of any whistle from the international community just like in the case of Syria today.
From the above expositions, the main dilemma, which shapes the Iran approaches to security, both internally and from external aggression, involves how to deal with world powerful nations in a case of any aggression. Perhaps the best solution is to prevent the occurrence of an aggression from such nations such as the US and Israel. However, according to Perkovich, the two nations can only be fully satisfied that Iran presents no international threat when regime change occurs5.
The interrogative that remains is whether this can happen through democratic elections. The answer is no since ‘the unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamene’I, as well as the judiciary and security apparatus he controls, prevents the elected president and parliament from directing the state’ (Perkovich 2007, p.82). These unelected people make the last decision on whether Iran needs to pursue the nuclear weaponry program, engage in terrorism, or even recognize that Israel has a right to exist without external aggression across its borders. Should Iran then consider changing its governance and administration structures to enhance its security? This question is yet another dilemma although indications are such that a change may not happen soon.
Security Dilemma for Saudi Arabia
While Iran faces the dilemma on how to enhance its internal security due to external inversions by its neighboring nations and western nations and their allies, Saudi Arabia faces the dilemma of how to enhance its internal security due to criminal and terrorism elements operating within the nation and near its borders such as the border with Yemen. Consistent with this challenge, on February 11, 2014, the US issued travel advice to its citizens who are currently working or wishing to travel to Saudi Arabia. This advisory followed an attack on January 13, 2014 on German nationals in Awamiyah Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province. In the travel advisory, the US department of state stated that the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border remained volatile with possibilities of criminal gangs affiliated to al-Qaida, which may target westerners based on their operations from there.
The US travel advice to its citizens only reopens the wound of the security dilemma in Saudi Arabia that has persisted since 2003. In December 2004, Saud al-Faisal, the then foreign affairs minister for Saudi Arabia, reiterated in Bahrain the importance of establishing a framework for a regional security. According to the minister, the framework needed to encompass four main pillars. The first pillar, as Russell confirms was to ensure ‘strong, vibrant Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which the members are integrated economically, politically, and militarily’6. The other pillars were Yemen and Iran inclusion and ensuring stabilization together with unification of Iraq.
This concern emphasized the Saudi Arabian dilemma on enhancing its territorial integrity by reducing the degree of porosity of its border to allow external threats, something prompting the US to issue travel advice to its citizens in fear of terror attacks.
External threats to a nation translate into exposing citizens to danger. With the comments of Saud al-Faisal in 2004 in place, one wonders how Saudi Arabia would enhance its security from threats acerbated by its neighboring states and elsewhere in the future. MacAskill and Traynor suggested three main alternatives for Saudi Arabia7. The nation could seek a declaration for ‘armaments of mass obliteration free zone’ from its neighbors such as Iran and Pakistan. Alternatively, it could consider acquiring similar weapons or ‘aligning itself with an existing nuclear power and placing itself under their nuclear umbrella’8.
The selection of any one of these alternatives poses a major dilemma to Saudi Arabia in the plight of consideration of the international community concerns over the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. It also means establishing and measuring gains against losses in sacrificing its relationship with the US on fostering security within the Gulf region.
The alternative that involves seeking a declaration for ‘armaments of mass annihilation free zone’ from its neighbors perhaps well aligns with the interest of the US. However, a major question remains on whether such a declaration would be accompanied by commitment especially in case of Iran, which believes that developing nuclear capability encompasses the only way to arise from seclusion in involvement in Gulf regional security. Although Saudi Arabia was aware that even if Iran developed its nuclear weapon capability, it would not target it but its rivals such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia would not have any means of defense for its territorial integrity when such conflicts penetrated across its borders as Iran sought to control the Gulf region nations.
This concern could only make Saudi Arabia align itself and establish a relationship with nations having high power capability in the region such as Pakistan. Unfortunately, this situation is a major tragedy for the security of Saudi Arabia due to the claims of Pakistani government’s open support to Terror groups such as al-Qaida and Taliban.
The US and Afghanistan accuse Pakistan of housing Taliban insurgents through the provision of safe havens for them to thrive. On the other hand, Pakistan claimed that it was principally used by the US as an excuse for the failure to succeed in striking peace treaty with Taliban. However, at one point, Pakistan declared Taliban a group that fosters oppression especially of women while the international community at some other point voices its concerns on the likely rigid attachments of Pakistan with Taliban.
A mention of terror and insurgency groups such as al-Qaida and Taliban in the context of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s security relationship only increases internal security threats for Saudi Arabia in the fear of nations waging war against terror. In fact, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan share an enormous history in the process of development and growth of Taliban, which is an insurgency group supported by al-Qaeda in the Gulf region than any other region in the world.
Taliban is an Islamic group that controlled enormous parts of Afghanistan from September 1996 to October 2001. The group was diplomatically supported by United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia as Bennett confirms9. During Taliban regime, the extreme interpretation of Muslim law was experienced in Afghanistan. This made even the strict Muslims get skeptical, thus criticizing the group’s Muslim law interpretation approaches. Indeed, Skaine reveals how the group was immensely influenced by fundamentalisms of Deobadi and Pashtunwani10. These influences supported the perpetration of magnificent repression and oppression to women.
The military and Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan shares the blame for the claims of having contributed magnificently to bringing Taliban into power. As Bennett asserts, Al-Qaida is also believed to have helped Taliban with ‘regiments of imported fighters from Arab countries and Central Asia’11. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia gave a helping hand in terms of finance to support the Taliban’s operations.
Today, the group operates in Northwestern part of Pakistan and Afghanistan with its Pakistani headquarters located near Quetta. Recognizing the dangers of the Taliban ideologies, Pakistan however realized the threats that the group poses not only to the security of Afghanistan, but also Pakistan. South Asian Observer observes, in 2009, General Petraeus was quoted in a foreign radio12 channel claiming, ‘The four major elements of Pakistani society, the government, the opposition, the military and the civilians, realize that Pakistan must oppose and confront the Taliban’13. Consequently, he indicated that Pakistan people’s opinions had largely shifted and realized that Taliban ideologies only acted to foster oppression.
Together with its associates, Taliban executed mass destruction against officers while heralding grocery supplies that were donated by the UN to about 160,000 malnourished officers together with destruction of many quarters that belonged to Afghanistan officers. Consequently, Nojumi informs, ‘Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee to United Front-controlled territory, Pakistan and Iran’14. Today, many international people accused Pakistan of supporting Taliban, a fact that it extensively denies claiming that it curtailed its support to Taliban as from September 2011. Nevertheless, Taliban remnants still operate from northern Pakistan even today.
Can Saudi Arabia focus on enhancing its security by collaborating with Pakistan? What can one say about the threat posed to the international community while on the Saudi Arabian soil by terror groups whose establishment was fostered by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
Apart from the dilemma on its security raised above, in the last three years, Saudi Arabia faced more troubles on its internal security than before following uprisings in the Islamic nations such as Syria and Egypt among others seeking a regime change. Three days after initiation of protests in Bahrain on 14 February 2011, Eastern province in Saudi Arabia experienced similar protests that were staged by Shiite as Matthiesen confirms15. Saudi Arabia’s state machineries interpreted these remonstrations as threats to the nation’s internal security and pledged to defeat them using an ‘iron fist’. The regime initiated heavy campaign against the protests combined with the whole of Shiite community. While this strategy working well over the summer, in October 2011, the protests re-emerged, but having a higher number of protestors than before. Security forces responded repressively with even more force16.
The international community viewed the issues raised by the Shiites as legitimate. In their view, reforms are necessary in Saudi Arabia to enhance the inclusion of Shiites in governance. The Eastern province, where the protests were experienced in Saudi Arabia, acts as the home to 1.5 to 2 million Shiites. This finding accounts for about 10 percent of the entire population of Saudi Arabia. The US subsidized Sunni Islam’s Wahhabi dogma, which developed immense aggression against Shiite demonstrators and Shiites in general. In the eyes of political scholars advocating for governments’ inclusion of all citizens to foster collective development in a nation, the above concerns appear obviously legitimate and not warranting state machinery responses similar to the ones experienced towards the end of 2011 in Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps the best way to enhance inclusion of Shiite in governance is by voting for a regime change. Can 10 percent of the total vote from Shiite enhance regime change or is an external aid necessary? Bearing in mind the history of the emergence and growth of insurgent groups such as Taliban, which later can transform into terror groups, can the Shiite seek aid from global reformers such as the US to fight for their rights? To ensure that this situation does not happen, how should Saudi Arabia respond without Sunnis loosing the power of control? This dilemma remains relevant to Saudi Arabia even today.
Conclusion
Fostering internal security and enhancing freedom from external inversion presents many challenges to any nation. Resolution of such challenges may involve several options including seeking diplomatic understandings with nations likely to pose security threats or even engage in military confrontations. The former approach is the most preferred. It does not involve excessive expenditure of state resources together with the loss of lives.
However, even if nations remain open to engaging in diplomatic understandings, they cannot hesitate to engage in military confrontations with enemies in case of attacks. In fact, the UN charter makes provisions for nations to use force in such a situation. Considering the issues of the security dilemma in Iran offered in the paper, an important question arose on the extent to which a nation can empower itself to use force when attacked externally. Security dilemma in Saudi Arabia raises the question on the effectiveness of the available options for enhancing security in a nation while the freedom to make such choices is limited with reference to the responses from other international security actors.
Reference List
Bennett, A 2005, Reconstructing Afghanistan, International Monetary Fund, London. Web.
Brumberg, D 2001, Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Web.
Ervan, A 2008, History of Modern Iran, Columbia University Press, Columbia. Web.
MacAskill, E & Traynor, I 2003, ‘Saudis Consider Nuclear Bomb’, The Guardian, 18 September, pp. 17-19. Web.
Matthiesen, T 2012, Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Problem. Web.
Moore, J 2004, ‘An Assessment of the Iranian Military Rearmament Program’, Comparative Strategy, vol. 13 no. 2, pp. 373-379. Web.
Nojumi, N 2002, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War and the Future of the Region, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY. Web.
Pasri, T 2007, Treacherous Alliance: the secret dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States, Yale University Press, Yale. Web.
Perkovich, G 2007, ‘Iran’s security dilemma’, Iran-Pulse, vol. 45 no. 25, pp. 72-87. Web.
Russell, J 2005, ‘Saudi Arabia in the 21st Century: A New Security Dilemma’, Middle East Policy, vol. 12 no. 3, pp. 64-77. Web.
Skaine, R 2009, Women of Afghanistan in the Post-Taliban Era: How Lives Have Changed and Where They Stand Today, McFarland, New York, NY. Web.
South Asian Observer 2012, Pakistan realizes threat posed by Taliban: General Petraeus. Web.
Footnotes
1 T Pasri, 2007, Treacherous Alliance: the secret dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States (Yale University Press, Yale), p. 132. Web.
2 D Brumberg, 2001, Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (University of Chicago Press, Chicago), p. 153. Web.
3 J Moore, 2004, ‘An Assessment of the Iranian Military Rearmament Program’, Comparative Strategy, vol. 13 no. 2, p. 373. Web.
4 G Perkovich, 2007, ‘Iran’s security dilemma’, Iran-Pulse, vol. 45 no. 25, p. 79. Web.
5 Perkovich, p. 78
6 J Russell, 2005, ‘Saudi Arabia in the 21st Century: A New Security Dilemma’, Middle East Policy, vol. 12, no. 3, p. 65. Web.
7 E MacAskill and I Traynor, 2003, ‘Saudis Consider Nuclear Bomb’, The Guardian, 18 September, p. 17. Web.
8 MacAskill and Traynor, p. 18
9 A Bennett, 2005, Reconstructing Afghanistan (International Monetary Fund, London), p. 16. Web.
10 R Skaine, 2009, Women of Afghanistan in the Post-Taliban Era: How Lives Have Changed and Where They Stand Today (McFarland, New York, NY). Web.
11 Bennett, p. 35
12 South Asian Observer 2012, Pakistan realizes threat posed by Taliban: General Petraeus, Para. 2. Web.
13 Ibid, Para. 2
14 N Nojumi, 2002, The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War and the Future of the Region (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY), p. 123. Web.
15 T Matthiesen, 2012, Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Problem, Para. 3. Web.
16 Ibid, Para. 4