Courage in our convictions - help prevent an attack on Iran.

reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2007/09/courage_in_our_convictions.html

Courage in our convictions

We will need to develop better arguments than last time if we are to help prevent an attack on Iran.

Conor Foley

September 19, 2007 5:00 PM

As the drumbeat towards an attack on Iran grows ever louder, the European left rush to positions which seem doomed to ensure that history will repeat itself as tragedy and farce. Bernard Kouchner has already offered himself as the new champion of Tony Blair's "muscular liberalism" while the Stop the War Coalition marks out their "it's all about the oil stupid " territory. Unless the multilateralist left stakes out an alternative soon, these two views are likely to define the terms of the subsequent debate again.

Despite the largest ever popular demonstration on the streets of Britain in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the revolt against the war inside the parliamentary Labour party collapsed. Its two leading opponents, Clare Short and Robin Cook, failed to coordinate their activities and Short fatally damaged the campaign with her disastrous flip-flopping on the eve of the vote.

One of the factors inhibiting both Cook and Short was that they still supported the "liberal interventionist" arguments advanced to justify Nato's intervention in Kosovo without a UN mandate. Short also accepted the legal reasoning of the attorney general at face value. Her claim that the war was "unequivocally legal" showed an unwillingness to engage with the most basic concepts of international law, or familiarise herself with what actually what happened in Kosovo. Sadly, she was far from the only one and this allowed both arguments to go by default.

Kouchner may prove an even more credible advocate of flouting the UN charter's provisions on the use of force in the coming months - since he has already been doing it - and there will doubtless be many more criticisms to come of human rights violations by the reactionary and repressive Iranian regime.

However, these are not best dealt with by dismissing all the evidence against this government as Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop the War coalition, seems to believe. Clearly

there are grounds for thinking that the Iranians may actually be seeking nuclear weapons and destabilising their immediate neighbours. While the evidence is not conclusive, these are real issues and ignoring them is not only unconvincing, it is tactically inept. It is plainly not "all about the oil"

and failing to even acknowledge this is an abdication from the more serious discussions.

A military attack on Iran would be a catastrophe, which would make the world a much more dangerous place.

However, as Stephen Kinzer rightly points out, the sheer insanity of the plan may not be enough to stop it. Many of the same arguments also applied to Iraq, after all, so how can we be more convincing next time around?

This will be the first major foreign policy test of Brown's new government and the next few weeks could be crucial. The political conferences have already started and parliament is about to return.

Opponents of an attack need to advance a clear, credible position that builds an alliance strong enough to withstand the pressure it is likely to come under. The central point must surely be respect for international law, as laid out in the UN charter, and for a diplomatic resolution to be achieved through the UN's structures.

That will not necessarily rule out the use of force, but

members of parliament should demand that this must be explicitly authorised by a UN security council resolution. Any unilateral military action outside of this framework should be recognised as illegal acts of aggression.

This probably reflects the view of most senior UN officials and chimes with the advice that Brown may be receiving from one of his new foreign ministers, Mark Malloch Brown. Model resolutions, petitions and early day motions can help to stake out the ground - which would mark a significant break from the failures of the recent past.

Brown's first foreign policy success was to get an agreed UN resolution for the deployment of an international peace-keeping force to Darfur. The previous sabre-rattling of Bush and Blair was plainly ineffective, since no one seriously believed that the west was actually contemplating military action there, but, by taking its "responsibility to protect" seriously on this occasion, the UN helped to restore its credibility as an effective multinational institution

. The British government should again publicly state that the UN security council will be given the last word on the use of force.

This is a different position to those, like Andrew Murray, who appear to believe that

Tehran should be defended against any military action at all costs

, so it is probably a good idea to establish this difference clearly at an early stage. Although the Stop the War coalition frequently refers to the invasion of Iraq as being illegal, it rarely refers to the fact that the UN did authorise military action in Afghanistan and has given a mandate to the post-war administration of both countries. If the arguments about international legality are not a central part of this campaign's political case then it should stop making them. If they are it needs to stop displaying such selective political amnesia.

The liberal left also need to nail their colours more firmly to the mast. We always seems to be at our weakest when thinking about foreign policy issues and all too often allow ourselves to be seduced by easy cliches and simplistic notions. This is part of the reason why we are so often impatient with diplomacy and multilateral institutions during crises such as Darfur. But defending these also now represents the best chance there is for ensuring a peaceful end to impasse. This needs to be stated more loudly in the days ahead.