TEHRAN - As expected, two rounds of
talks between Iran and the European Union Big Three
(EU-3) - France, Germany and Britain - have failed to
resolve the growing dispute over Iran's quest to produce
low-enriched uranium. In response to the EU-3's demand
that Tehran halt enrichment activities, Iran's spiritual
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week denounced what
he called an "oppressive and unreasonable request" and
warned that Iran may terminate nuclear dialogue if the
other side persists in asking Iran to forego its
"inherent right".
The European negotiators in
Vienna, including a representative from the EU,
refrained from calling the talks a failure, however,
and, seeking to salvage a seemingly sinking ship of
diplomacy, expressed hope for a more fruitful result in
the next round, reportedly scheduled on November 5 in
Paris, just a couple of weeks before the United Nations'
nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), meets in late November to review the
growing storm over Iran's program. The EU has warned
Iran it will back United States calls for Iran to be
reported to the UN Security Council for possible
sanctions at the November 25 IAEA meeting if enrichment
suspension is not verifiably in place by then.
From Iran's vantage point, in light of some 15
visits by the IAEA inspectors in the past couple of
years, the 23-member IAEA board of governors should
"close the file" on Iran - or face the prospects of Iran
withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But at
the same time, not every aspect of the EU-3's "package
offer" has been appraised negatively by Tehran.
On the contrary, Iranian officials tried to put
a positive spin on the offer, which included promises
from the EU that it would help Iran acquire nuclear fuel
"at market prices" and also support its light water
facility, as well as Iran's bid to join the World Trade
Organization if Iran agrees to suspend its nuclear
enrichment program pending a "long term agreement". A
spokesman for Iran's Supreme National Security Council
interpreted this as a step forward from the previous,
US-led demand that Iran suspend its enrichment activity
"indefinitely". On the eve of the second Vienna talks,
Iran's top negotiator articulated a sentiment widespread
among Iranian officials for a European deal that "would
be thicker on the positive and thinner on the negative".
Meanwhile, the United States and Israel, playing
anxious observers, made a concerted effort to up the
ante, with an Arabic paper in London circulating a
"reliable rumor from Washington" regarding an impending
strike by US forces against various Iranian facilities
"including certain mosques", and Israel's Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon airing his fear of "Iran's existential
threat to Israel".
Concerning the latter, there
are reasons to take such fears with a grain of salt. For
one thing, it was Iran under Cyrus the Great who freed
the Jews enslaved by the Babylonians and issued a decree
allowing them to return to their homeland. Even in
today's Islamic Republic, with a population steeped in
ancient history, it is hard to see how Iran would ever
venture to drop nuclear bombs on Israel, killing not
only the Jews but also the Muslim Arabs inhabiting
Israel. Israel is widely regarded as an "out of area"
country by most Iranian foreign policy makers, and while
Iran remains ethically committed to the struggle of
Palestinian people for their right to
self-determination, this does not, and for the most part
has not, translated into any Iranian "over commitment"
to the Palestinian people.
Nor is the situation
of Lebanese Shi'ites, led by militant group Hezbollah,
any different, substantively speaking. Iran no doubt
enjoys its hard-earned sphere of influence in Lebanon,
after 23 years of military and financial investment, and
has encouraged the Hezbollah to take the parliamentary
road to power. Thus, Israel's paranoia about an Iranian
bomb in Hezbollah's hands imperiling Israel's existence
is a tissue of an unrealistic nightmare scenario built
around a caricature of the Muslim "other" as irrational
zealots, when in fact, a cursory glance at Iran's
foreign policy indicates the rule of sober national
interests over ideology.
From the Persian Gulf, where Iran
has entered into low-security agreements with Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait, as well as shared energy projects
with nearly all the oil states of the Gulf, to Central
Asia-Caucasus, where Iran has promoted regional
cooperation through the Economic Cooperation
Organization, and, in addition, has acted as a crisis
manager (eg, in Tajkistan and Nagorno-Karabakh), Iran's
foreign policy has been widely praised by its neighbors,
including Russia, as constructive, pragmatic, and
peace-oriented.
For US and Israeli officials -
and their media mouthpieces - to overlook this and,
instead, attribute an out-of-control, purely ideological
orientation to Iran's foreign policy, begs the question
of objectivity on their part; their virulent
Iran-bashing actually serves as a self-fulfilling
prophecy, since by causing the further wrath of Iranians
by their pre-scripted policy of sanctions and isolation
of Iran, Tehran's hardliners turn out to be the major
beneficiaries, much to the detriment of Iran's
liberalist reformers.
This aside, it is
important, particularly for Europe, to consider the fact
that Iran is still leaving the door open for the
extension of Iran's voluntary suspension of the fuel
cycle. Hence, the glass may actually be half full, and
the EU-3 should ultimately embrace this opportunity to
seal an agreement with Iran, even though it may be short
of their hoped-for maximum objective. To do so, however,
the EU-3's leadership must recognize that Iran is not
another Iraq, and that with its strong military and a
population twice the size of the rest of Persian Gulf
combined, Iran must be treated with a great deal more
deference than Iraq.
After all, Iran is a main source of
energy for Europe, both now and more so in the future,
and any UN sanctions on Iran's oil industry will
instantly translate into higher prices at the European
gas pumps, hardly a pleasant prospect for the EU as a
whole. Not only that, some EU countries, such as Norway,
Spain, Greece, and Italy, are likely to oppose the
EU-3's hard diplomacy toward Tehran in light of their
cordial economic and trade ties with Iran. This means
that the collateral damage of a failure of EU-3's Iran
diplomacy may be a lot more widespread than hitherto
thought; that is, it may introduce policy fractures
inside the European Union itself.
With the
stakes so high, a prudent European approach to the
Iranian nuclear stalemate might be explored along the
following lines: A balanced package whereby Iran would
agree to a temporary, six months to a year's halt in its
enrichment activities as part of a "confidence building"
measure, in exchange for which Iran would implement its
declared policy of "full transparency" and allow
unfettered access of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear
facilities in Natanz, Isfahan, and elsewhere in Iran,
per the terms of the IAEA's Additional Protocol.
Such an agreement may not allay Europe's fear of
Iran going nuclear altogether, but at least it provides
institutional mechanisms for close monitoring of Iran's
nuclear programs, which in turn, minimizes the risks or
threats of Iran telescoping these programs to
weaponization. If combined with parallel initiatives,
such as an Iran-EU security dialogue, this initiative
would likely be effective in terms of the long-term
process of dissuading Iran from the path of acquiring
nuclear weapons, a path that in the current milieu of a
sole Western superpower acting like a "wild elephant",
to quote an Iranian official, is theoretically conducive
to the idea of Iranian nuclear deterrence. Historically,
rising insecurity has been a prime motive force for
nuclear weapons, and Iran may turn out to be no
exception, in the long haul, if the US and Israel fail
to address Iran's security worries.
For the
moment, such theoretical concerns do not appear to have
influenced the drift of actual Iranian policies,
notwithstanding the repeated public pledges of Iran's
leader to refrain from pursuing nuclear weapons
considered "amoral". Yet, the dictates of national
security interests may dictate otherwise in the future,
all the more reason to consider the issue of Iran's
nuclear program within the larger framework of regional
and global security, instead of apart from it.
Unfortunately, the US and some European
officials often overlook that other countries too may
have legitimate national security worries, a serious
oversight caused by their consistent Euro-centrism and
US-centrism. As long as a clean break from such arcane,
underlying security conceptualizations, or a cognitive
map, has not materialized, it is hard to see how the two
sides in this stalemated negotiation can achieve a
healthy, mutually satisfactory, breakthrough.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author
of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign
Policy (Westview Press) and Iran's Foreign Policy
Since 9/11,
Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with
former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003.
He teaches political science at Tehran
University.
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