Transatlantic Politics

The Iranian Cultural Center in Sarajevo is a busy place. As I wrote the other day, the story in Bosnia is far from over. Among many other problems, Iran's continued presence in the region is a destabilizing influence that may undermine both local politics and European security.

When the Bosnian conflict heated up in the early 1990s, a geopolitical vacuum formed as the EU and US rushed to bury their heads in the sand. While the international community debated the merits of intervention, Bosnian Muslims faced a well armed and organized Serbian militia — a disadvantage further exacerbated by the UN arms embargo. But other countries were in the market for friends and were happy to pay in guns. Iran in particular was more than willing to help the Bosnians even the odds.

Iran's arm shipments first arrived in Croatia, which was also outmatched by Serbian hardware. For instance, in 1992, the CIA reported a Iranian Air 747 at the Zagreb airport, which was loaded with small arms, ammunition, anti-tank weapons and other military supplies. After the truce between Croatia and Bosnia, Iran used Croatia as a middleman to pass weapons on to the ABiH — with Zagreb skimming 30% to 50% in the process.

A number of countries were uncomfortable with situation, perhaps most importantly Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had been applying pressure on the Clinton administration to both intervene on the Muslims behalf and squeeze Tehran out of the region.

On the domestic front, Congress was not happy that the Clinton administration had allowed Iran to play a free hand. The House of Representatives International Relations Committee hearing on the matter kicked off with Chairman Gilman asking the Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, to "…please explain to the committee why the administration did not inform the American people, the Congress, even our allies of its decision to permit Iran, the world's leading terrorist state, a rogue state, to ship arms to Bosnia and thus gain a major foothold in the Balkans."

The combination of the foreign and domestic pressure eventually led the US to supply weapons directly to Bosnia through nighttime air-drops. The wisdom of this approach was questionable because it didn't address the Bosnians lack of military organization and merely fueled weapons trafficking after the conflict. Furthermore, the US supplied arms had negligible impact on the war's outcome and were too late to abrogate Iranian influence.

In the end, the reaction to Bosnia was an absolute transatlantic foreign policy debacle, that by some miracle, did not end in total disaster — though not for lack of trying.

*A lot of the background info in this post comes from Cees Wiebes book, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992-1995 .

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German Defense minister Franz Josef Jung pleaded for the US anti-missile defense shield Poland and the Czech Republic agreed to place on their territory, This decision caused sharp criticism from Russia and subsequently made the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, to propose "debating" and maybe limiting the national sovereignty of member states in this regard. But Jung expressed the view that facing new threats form "rogue states" (without naming them), the EU should act preventively, thus justifying the setting up of this defense shield: 

Mr Jung also alluded to Iran's announcement that it can develop uranium on an industrial scale. "Precisely these latest developments also confirm that such protection makes sense",Mr Jung said this week.

"Timely precautions must be taken against the foreseeable increase of the range of offensive missiles of certain problem states, even if it concerns long-term developments," he added.

Jung stressed the fact that the only way to "soothe" Russia's "worries" is to have a common voice within NATO and to back the argument that the shield is meant to PROTECT, not to ATTACK:

"I think it is good that in NATO, as with the NATO-Russia council, we are working together to assuage possible doubts".

Although Jung has voiced support for the US scheme, it is not a view that is universally backed within the German cabinet.

But he did insist it was important for the West "to work on a partnership basis with Russia" on the matter, he added.

Russia should be convinced of the argument so as "to reach an agreement for the protection of populations, for European populations in particular," he said.

Jung also told the European deputies that every possible diplomatic effort should be made "to prevent Iran from equipping itself with nuclear arms".

He added: "It is vital for world peace. The United States, Russia, Europe and China must work together."

President Putin had been very clear on one point, he continued. "It is also in Russia's interests that Iran does not possess atomic weapons."

On April 19, at NATO's Brussels headquarters, the 26 NATO allies — including 21 EU member states — will discuss the anti-missile system in the North Atlantic Council and then with Russia at a NATO-Russia meeting.

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Hmm…remember France? and all the jokes about their consistency and courage during wartime? This is not a joke. This is for real.

Speaking to the New York Times, IHT and Nouvel Observateur journalists, monsieur Chirac said this: “Having one [atomic bomb], maybe a second one a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous. Where will [Iran] drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground.” His aides quickly realized their man had committed the gaffe of saying what everyone thought he really believed, and so left out those passages from an official interview transcript. The journalists also got a return call from the president on Tuesday, in which he noted that “I should have paid better attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2007, page A18.

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