The old lovers' nuclear tango

[tocqueville]

Commentary by Pepe Escobar

The already frail nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was bombed to oblivion last week by US President George W Bush - immolated On the altar of a strategic relationship with India to counteract the emergence of China. Meanwhile, the US threatens to punish Iran because the Islamic Republic is a full member of the NPT. This is the (surrealist) way geopolitics works.

Bush in India imperiously buried all international norms - enshrined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the NPT and the United Nations. He proclaimed himself as the nuclear emperor - the only one who decides who has the right to nuclear power and who doesn't.

Defending the Indian deal, Bush said that nuclear power was a renewable energy source (which it's not) and that the deal would help to alleviate global demand for crude oil. The Iranian leadership also argues it needs nuclear power to alleviate its own dependence on crude oil. This is the way geopolitical enemies coincide.

It takes a world-weary aristocrat to put things in perspective. In the remarkable Blood & Oil (Random House), exiled Prince Manucher Farmanfarmaian of the Qajar royal family (which ruled Persia for 140 years before the Pahlavi dynasty) writes that the long, lurid drama between the United States and Iran "is a tango between two old lovers who now only know how to face each other with knives in their teeth". The knives are out and may soon reach the UN Security Council.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC08Ak02.html