Iran's Faustian nuclear bargain
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
TEHRAN -
One year after Iran's declared adherence to the
Additional Protocol of the United Nations' nuclear
watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
culminating in several intrusive inspections, IAEA chief
Mohamed ElBaradei has submitted his latest report
confirming both steady progress in Iran-IAEA cooperation
and the absence of any evidence supporting
Washington-initiated allegations that Iran is using its
"dual purpose" nuclear technology for weaponization.
Simultaneously, Iranian negotiators on Sunday
struck an agreement with their European Union so-called
"Big Three" (EU-3) counterparts - France, Britain and
Germany - whereby in exchange for firm guarantees of
nuclear, economic and security cooperation by Europe,
Iran has agreed to cease all enrichment activities,
including the "testing and operation of gas centrifuges"
and "all tests or production at any uranium conversation
installation" pending "negotiations on a long-term
agreement".
Per the terms of this agreement, the
suspension will commence this month prior to the IAEA
board meeting and, once it has been "verified", the
European Union will support the "director general
reporting to the IAEA board as he considers appropriate
in the framework of the implementation of Iran's
Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol", and will
also "resume negotiations with the EU on a trade and
cooperation agreement" as well as "actively support the
opening of Iranian accession negotiations at the WTO
[World Trade Organization]".
From Iran's vantage
point, perhaps the most important aspect of the
agreement is that the "E3/EU recognize Iran's rights
under the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] exercised in
conformity with its obligations under the treaty,
without discrimination". According to Dr Hassan Rouhani,
Iran's top nuclear negotiator and secretary of the
Supreme National Security Council, this means that the
EU has not only acknowledged Iran's NPT rights, but has
also acknowledged the "implementation" of this right by
the Islamic republic, which can also be inferred from
the agreement's other statement that "the E3/EU
recognize that this suspension is a voluntary
confidence-building measure and not a legal obligation".
But Iranian negotiators should have omitted the
conditional clause "in conformity with its obligation
under the treaty", in which case the EU would have been
obligated to a categorical imperative, ie, Iran's NPT
rights, which is not the case now that a large room for
maneuvering has been afforded the other side with the
aforementioned conditional clause.
Also, since the agreement explicitly invokes "Article II of
the NPT" dealing with member states' pledges not
to acquire nuclear weapons - a sort of nuclear tit-for-tat - it
should have also invoked Article IV, which deals with
the right to peaceful nuclear technology and the
obligation of NPT member states to provide assistance to
those members seeking such assistance. While the absence
of a reference to Article IV is not grievously
injurious, nonetheless its inclusion would have
strengthened the hands of Iran in subsequent
negotiations referenced in the agreement.
These negotiations are to proceed through "working
groups on political and security issues,
technology and cooperation, and nuclear issues". Commencing
their work next month, these working groups will give
their reports to a "steering committee", which will then
"move ahead with projects and/or measures that can
be implemented in advance of an overall agreement".
This last sentence is particularly opaque and
indeterminate, suddenly referring to "projects" and/or "measures" as
a prelude to the final "long-term agreement". In
other words, well after the three months, ie in March or
April, we must anticipate an intermediate phase or period
prior to the "overall agreement", without providing the
slightest clue as to either the duration of this middle
period or their nature and content.
Yet we may
logically deduce the latter from what has been stated in
the agreement about the "mutually acceptable agreement
on a long-term arrangements". First, here the word
"arrangements" (in plural) has been used interchangeably
with "[long-term] agreement" (in singular) used in the
previous sentence. Yet the entire text leaves no doubt
that what is agreed on here is one agreement on several
subjects, such as security, economic and nuclear issues.
This in turn gives rise to the question of issue
linkages permeating the text. Implicit in the text,
however, is the presumption that (a) concurrent progress
can be made on all these fronts, and (b) they must form
the subsets of an overall agreement. But why? Why
should, for instance, economic and technical cooperation
be so explicitly linked to nuclear issues?
This,
in fact, is the nub of the problem with the Paris
agreement receiving Iran's consent to Europe's so-called
"linkage diplomacy" whereby the resumption of trade
talks and support for Iran's WTO membership quest are
linked to the verification of "suspension". What is
manifest here is not so much the carrot of economic soft
power, but the implicit hard power of economic sanctions
and isolation threatened in veiled language.
Indeed, why is it that the agreement provides
for "determination to combat terrorism" by both sides
"irrespective of progress on the nuclear issue" when in
the other sections similar cooperation on "security" is
hinged on precisely such progress? After all, isn't
terrorism a security issue?
On the whole, the
Paris agreement contains one major contradiction: while
it reaffirms Iran's NPT rights, on the other hand and in
the same breath, it compels Iran temporarily to deny
itself portions of this right pertaining to enrichment
activities for its nuclear reactor. This self-denial,
portrayed as a "voluntary confidence-building measure
and not a legal obligation", has been linked with the
overall agreement's twin stated objective, namely to
"provide objective guarantees that Iran's nuclear
program is exclusively for peaceful purposes", and to
"provide firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and
economic cooperation and firm commitments on security
issues".
Here one must wonder what the
difference is between "guarantees" and "commitments" and
whether or not the former is perceived to be more firm
than the latter. Such linguistic niceties should have
been bracketed by Iran's negotiators and the above
sentence should have used the same word, either
"commitment" or "guarantee", for all issues. Yet the very
use of different words here is itself indicative of the
latent awareness of its authors regarding the difficulty
of lumping all issues together.
Iran's official
interpretation is that the agreement, lacking the EU-3's
previous call for "indefinite suspension" in their
Vienna Declaration, is actually a step forward insofar
as it tacitly recognizes Iran's right to enrich nuclear
fuel, albeit with "firm guarantees". In other words, the
EU-3/EU has consented that Iran can renew its enrichment
cycle after the final agreement.
But what if
that final agreement, like the play Waiting for
Godot, never arrives, or, for that matter, arrives
in incremental parts and pieces instead? In other words,
what if the economic or technical and even security
working groups make steady progress, but not the one
focusing on the nuclear issue? Should Iran continue its
"voluntary suspension" ad infinitum? Wouldn't the "red
line" be crossed then, in case protracted negotiations
lasting more than a year, or two or three or more, turn
into an end unto themselves, instead of reflecting a
transitional period? This is an important question
because a lengthy transition is poison for Iran's
nuclear facilities made idle by the Paris agreement,
particularly as it pertains to "all tests" at those
facilities.
As a "temporary agreement" that
binds Iran to a suspension of unspecified duration, the
Paris agreement can only sustain itself through steady
progress on a multiplicity of issues wrapped around the
nuclear question, this while it effectively serves as a
"stopgap measure" in light of the IAEA's ultimatum. Iran
is asked to provide "objective guarantees" that it will
not misuse its nuclear technology for military purposes.
But again, what if those guarantees are not objective
enough or sufficiently guaranteeing, notwithstanding
the fact that the United States has focused on the
"subjective intent" of Iran in favor of nuclear weapons?
The fact is that outside suspicions of Iran's
"nuclear intentions" may linger on even in the face of
strong objective guarantees; so long as Iran's declared
statements against nuclear weapons are treated with
skepticism, particularly by those clinging to a
caricature of Iranians as "ideological zealots" and/or
"evil", then little progress may actually come about in
terms of an eventual agreement.
It is abundantly clear that a
final resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue is not
possible without direct input by the US, and this in
turn necessitates a better Iran policy by the Bush
administration than hitherto observed, since that policy
is overly attached to a package approach unwilling to
move forward incrementally, ie, tackling one issue at a
time and using that as a springboard for related
breakthroughs.
On a related
note, the Paris agreement finally closes the previous
gap between the EU-3 and the EU by conjoining them as
E3/EU, this while the EU has not been officially a part
of the negotiations, nor is the support of the EU's
"High Representative" sufficient for the agreement's
official merger of the position of the EU-3 with the EU.
Iranian officials should have worked against such a
merger of the EU-3's position with the EU, given the
possibility that subsequent negotiations may stall or
literally fall apart in the near future. In that case,
Iran's relations with the entire EU would suffer,
whereas in the absence of EU's institutional
involvement, such a failure would mostly impact just the
EU-3, while providing the EU with a relevant buffer.
But, of course, one major pro of the Paris
agreement is precisely that it commits the EU to several
far-reaching initiatives toward Iran, and it remains to
be seen if this will end up trumping any major con, such
as the threat of sanctions and cancellation of trade
relations in case of a breakdown in negotiations.
The final verdict on the advisability of making
Iran's IAEA file so closely entwined with negotiations
with the E3/EU must be delegated to future history. It
may well be that this is a timely initiative that serves
several interrelated purposes: it creates new ties of
interdependence between Iran and the EU; it provides
security protection for Iran at a critical time when
there could be conflict spillover from adjacent regions
at almost any time. Third, the linkage diplomacy may
actually culminate in expanded cooperation with Europe
which, in turn, will make it more difficult for the EU
to reverse course with Iran and to threaten its own
vested interests.
Moreover, Europe's direct talks
with Iran, in
contrast to the "axis of evil" rhetoric of the US administration
of President George W Bush, is advantageous to
Iran seeking detente with the Western world. This can
thus have salutary effects on Iran's relations with a
host of other countries, including Russia and China,
both of which can now proceed with their nuclear and
energy cooperation with Iran without much fear of US-led
backlashes.
On the other hand, since Iran has
already adhered to the Additional Protocol, the Paris
agreement's call for "objective guarantees" may in fact
translate into more additions to the Additional
Protocol, in terms of surveillance and constant
verification of Iran's nuclear program, which may
impinge on Iran's national sovereignty, whereas a more
strident focus on the Additional Protocol, sadly lacking
today, may have been a more suitable substitute.
In conclusion, the Paris agreement's net of pros
and cons reflects a complex web of factors that need to
be carefully analyzed and put into proper perspective as
part and parcel of Tehran's nuclear diplomacy vis-a-vis
Europe and others at a critical juncture when Iran's
national security is seriously challenged by the
international crises beyond its borders.
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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Washington-initiated allegations that Iran is using its
"dual purpose" nuclear technology for weaponization.
