Annan faces tough Tehran tasks
By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent

For the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan all roads now lead to Tehran.

Iran is after all a central player in two of the continuing dramas in the Middle East - the crisis in Lebanon and the continuing war of wills over Tehran's own nuclear programme.

Iran is also a minor player in the crisis afflicting the Palestinians.

But more significantly Iran is the inspiration behind a rising tide of Shia self-confidence in the region.

And as a would-be regional power in its own right, Tehran clearly believes that its moment has come.

This is the broader context for the secretary general's trip.

Ideological support

There is a certain irony that in both cases on Mr Annan's agenda, Lebanon and Iran's nuclear programme, UN Security Council resolutions are involved.

His goal is to encourage the Iranians to back Resolution 1701 on Lebanon and to try to chart some way forward in the long-running crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions, in the wake of Tehran's refusal to accede to the council's demands that it halt its uranium enrichment activities by the end of August.

Iran played a key role in founding Hezbollah back in the early 1980s.

Units from Iran's Revolutionary Guards were instrumental in training and organising the initial Hezbollah cadres.

Since then Iran has been Hezbollah's chief ideological backer and supplier of much of its weaponry.

Syria too has supplied Hezbollah with arms. It was to try to close off this conduit that Kofi Annan travelled to Damascus. Many of the Iranian-supplied missiles pass to Hezbollah via Syrian soil.

But the Iranian role in influencing Hezbollah is critical.

Their relationship is neither simple nor easily defined. Hezbollah is much more than just the agent of Tehran and its activities stem from its own tactical judgements.

But it nonetheless figures prominently in Iran's strategic thinking as one of the outposts of the Iranian-inspired Shia revival that extends now in an arc from Iran itself, through southern Iraq and into Lebanon.

It is hard to see Kofi Annan winning over the Iranians on this issue.

For them Hezbollah is both a national liberation movement and a strategic asset; a lever that can be used to cause disruption should the US administration of George W Bush consider military options against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Much though depends upon Iran's own interpretation of the outcome of the recent Lebanon fighting.

It may well believe that a period of calm is in order, not least to enable Hezbollah to re-equip and reorganise its forces.

EU deal

On the nuclear front the challenge facing Mr Annan is equally great.

Iran, while insisting that it has no desire to have nuclear weapons, has bluntly refused to heed the call of the Security Council that it halt its uranium enrichment programme.

Mr Annan arrives armed with the latest report from the UN's nuclear watchdog - the International Atomic Energy Agency - making clear that Iran's research activities are continuing.

Mr Annan will want to impress upon the Iranians the need for compliance and he will no doubt urge them to grasp the European Union's proposed deal that would offer Iran a range of inducements, including talks involving the United States.

But in this particular dispute Mr Annan, to be fair, is not the main player.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is to meet senior Iranian officials in Berlin next week.

Political directors from the key countries involved - the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany are also due to meet next week - to discuss the next steps in this crisis.

Given the continuing divisions within the international community - with Russia and China unwilling to see punitive sanctions against Iran - the stage is being set for a drawn-out diplomatic war of manoeuvre.

Iran's technical progress is seen by many experts as being less than might have been anticipated.

Is this a deliberate attempt by Iran to refrain from pushing this crisis to the point of no return or simply a reflection of the technical difficulties besetting the Iranian programme?

Either way Mr Annan has much to talk about, but definitive answers are likely to be few and far between.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5307904.stm

Published: 2006/09/02 08:11:09 GMT

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