The controversy over Iran’s nuclear activities has at least as much to do with the future of international order as it does with nonproliferation. For this reason, all of the BRICS countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] have much at stake in how the Iranian nuclear issue is handled.

Conflict over Iran’s nuclear program is driven by two different approaches to interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty(NPT); these approaches, in turn, are rooted in different conceptions of international order.

Which interpretation of the NPT ultimately prevails on the Iranian nuclear issue will go a long way to determine whether a rules-based view of international order gains ascendancy over a policy-oriented approach in which the goals of international policy are defined mainly by America and its partners.

And that will go a long way to determine whether rising non-Western states emerge as true power centers in a multipolar world, or whether they continue, in important ways, to be subordinated to hegemonic preferences of the West — and especially the United States.

The NPT is appropriately understood as a set of three bargains among signatories: non-weapons states commit not to obtain nuclear weapons; countries recognized as weapons states (America, Russia, Britain, France, and China) commit to nuclear disarmament; and all parties agree that signatories have an “inalienable right” to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. One approach to interpreting the NPT gives these bargains equal standing; the other holds that the goal of nonproliferation trumps the other two.

There have long been strains between weapons states and non-weapons states over nuclear powers’ poor compliance with their commitment to disarm. Today, though, disputes about NPT interpretation are particularly acute over perceived tensions between blocking nuclear proliferation and enabling peaceful use of nuclear technology.

This is especially so for fuel-cycle technology, the ultimate “dual use” capability — for the same material that fuels power, medical and research reactors can, at higher levels of fissile isotope concentration, be used in nuclear bombs. The dispute is engaged most immediately over whether Iran, as a non-weapons party to the NPT, has a right to enrich uranium under international safeguards.

For those holding that the NPT’s three bargains have equal standing, Tehran’s right to enrich is clear — from the NPT itself, its negotiating history and decades of state practice, with at least a dozen states having developed safeguarded fuel cycle infrastructures potentially able to support a weapons program. On this basis, the diplomatic solution is also clear: Western recognition of Iran’s nuclear rights in return for greater transparency through more intrusive verification and monitoring.

Those recognizing Iran’s nuclear rights take what international lawyers call a “positivist” view of global order, whereby the rules of international relations are created through the consent of independent sovereign states and are to be interpreted narrowly. Such a rules-based approach is strongly favored by non-Western states, including BRICS — for it is the only way international rules might constrain established powers as well as rising powers and the less powerful.

Those who believe nonproliferation trumps the NPT’s other goals claim that there is no treaty-based “right” to enrich, and that weapons states and others with nuclear industries should decide which non-weapons states can possess fuel-cycle technologies.

From these premises, the George W. Bush administration sought a worldwide ban on transferring fuel-cycle technologies to countries not already possessing them. Since this effort failed, Washington has pushed the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group to make such transfers conditional on recipients’ acceptance of the Additional Protocol to the NPT — an instrument devised at U.S. instigation in the 1990s to enable more intrusive and proactive inspections in non-weapons states.

America has pressed the UN Security Council to adopt resolutions telling Tehran to suspend enrichment, even though it is part of Iran’s “inalienable right” to peaceful use of nuclear technology; such resolutions violate UN Charter provisions that the Council act “in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations” and “with the present charter.”

The Obama administration has also defined its preferred diplomatic outcome and, with Britain and France, imposed it on the P5+1: Iran must promptly stop enriching at the near 20 percent level to fuel its sole (and safeguarded) research reactor; it must then comply with Security Council calls to cease all enrichment.

U.S. officials say Iran might be “allowed” a circumscribed enrichment program, after suspending for a decade or more, but London and Paris insist that “zero enrichment” is the only acceptable long-term outcome.

Those asserting that Iran has no right to enrich — America, Britain, France and Israel — take a policy- or results-oriented view of international order. In this view, what matters in responding to international challenges are the goals motivating states to create particular rules in the first place — not the rules themselves, but the goals underlying them.

This approach also ascribes a special role in interpreting rules to the most powerful states — those with the resources and willingness to act in order to enforce the rules. Unsurprisingly, this approach is favored by established Western powers — above all, by the United States.

All of the BRICS have, in various ways, pushed back against a de facto unilateral rewriting of the NPT by America and its European partners. Since abandoning nuclear-weapons programs during democratization and joining the NPT, Brazil and South Africa have staunchly defended non-weapons states’ right to peaceful use of nuclear technology, including enrichment.

With Argentina, they resisted U.S. efforts to make transfers of fuel-cycle technology contingent on accepting the Additional Protocol (which Brazil has refused to sign), ultimately forcing Washington to compromise. With Turkey, Brazil brokered the Tehran Declaration in May 2010, whereby Iran accepted U.S. terms that it swap most of its then stockpile of enriched uranium for new fuel for its research reactor. But the Declaration openly recognized Iran’s right to enrich; for this reason, the Obama administration rejected it.

The recently concluded 5th BRICS Summit in Durban saw a joint declaration that referred to the official BRICS position on Iran: “We believe there is no alternative to a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. We recognize Iran’s right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy consistent with its international obligations, and support resolution of the issues involved through political and diplomatic means and dialogue.”

At the same time, the BRICS have all, to varying degrees, accommodated Washington on the Iranian issue. Russian and Chinese officials acknowledge there will be no diplomatic solution absent Western recognition of Tehran’s nuclear rights. Yet China and Russia endorsed all six Security Council resolutions requiring Iran to suspend enrichment.

Beijing and Moscow did so partly to keep America in the Council with the issue, where they can exert ongoing influence — and restraint — over Washington; at their insistence, the resolutions state explicitly that none of them can be construed as authorizing the use of force against Iran. Still, they acquiesced to resolutions that make a diplomatic settlement harder and that contradict a truly rules-based model of international order.

Russia, China and the other BRICS have also accommodated Washington’s increasing reliance on the threatened imposition of “secondary” sanctions against third-country entities doing business with the Islamic Republic. Such measures violate U.S. commitments under the World Trade Organization, which allows members to cut trade with states they deem national security threats but not to sanction other members over lawful business with third countries.

If challenged on this in the WTO’s Dispute Resolution Mechanism, America would surely lose; for this reason, U.S. administrations have been reluctant actually to impose secondary sanctions on non-U.S. entities transacting with Iran.

Nevertheless, companies, banks, and even governments in all of the BRICS have cut back on their Iranian transactions — feeding American elites’ sense that, notwithstanding their illegality, secondary sanctions help leverage non-Western states’ compliance with Washington’s policy preferences and vision of (U.S.-dominated) world order.

If the BRICS want to move decisively from a still relatively unipolar world to a genuinely multipolar world, they will, at some point, have to call Washington’s bluff on Iran-related secondary sanctions. They will also have to accelerate the development of alternatives to U.S.-dominated mechanisms for conducting and settling international transactions — a project to which the proposed new BRICS bank could contribute significantly.

Finally, they will need to be more willing to oppose, openly, America’s efforts to unilaterally rewrite international law and hijack international institutions for its own hegemonic purposes. By doing so, they will underscore that the United States ultimately isolates itself by acting as a flailing — and failing — imperial power.  

— Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the NSC expert on Iran and – from 2001 to 2003 – was one of only a few U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq. They are authors of the new book, Going to Tehran.