Rabbit and carrot: US turns
the tables on Iran By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
NEW YORK - The United States has
pulled a rabbit out of its nearly empty diplomatic
hat by offering direct talks with Iran - a superb
maneuver that almost instantly turns the tables on
Tehran by putting it on the defensive.
The
pitch is nearly perfect, that is, that the White
House is "bowing to pressure" by offering direct
talks with the defiant Iranians, to quote the
Financial Times, which, like most of the
mainstream Western media, spun the development as
a sign of "patient US diplomacy".
Thus two
cheers for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
for reportedly winning over the anti-talk forces
in the Defense Department and within the White
House. Soft power over hard power, persuasive
diplomacy over the art of war. Or is it?
The Iranian reaction, as expected, was to
welcome the offer but
reject the precondition set
by Rice and President George W Bush, that Iran
suspend all uranium-enrichment-related activities.
If the US was serious about its sudden new
desire to engage Iran directly over the nuclear
row, then the requested precondition should have
been viewed as a potential outcome of the talks,
and not their precondition. Consequently, unless
the White House relents on this particular demand,
there is little prospect of any direct US-Iran
dialogue any time soon.
Perhaps
coincidentally, the US offer to talk came on the
eve of the United States, Russia, China, Britain,
France and Germany saying they had agreed on a
package of incentives intended to resolve the
nuclear crisis with Iran.
Few details of
the agreement were released, with the countries saying
that the negotiators wanted to present the package
to Iran before making it public. It is known,
though, that the package shelved any punitive
action by the United Nations Security Council
until Iran had time to respond to the proposals,
within a time frame of a few weeks.
On the
positive side, the Americans' stated willingness
to join the so-called European Three (EU-3 -
Germany, Britain and France) and shun any
unilateral initiative with regard to Iran is a
good omen for multilateralism, particularly if the
real intention is genuine and not
pseudo-multilateralism.
In a sense, the US
has in the past few years been a quasi-participant
in the EU-3 talks over Iran's nuclear program,
given that the European foreign ministers
frequently visited Iran in 2004 and consulted with
then-secretary of state Colin Powell between
sessions.
Indeed, the stage has been set
for some time for direct US involvement in the
nuclear talks. This is just as much by the
persistent manner in which US diplomats have
weighed on their European counterparts in terms of
formulating the mixed "carrot and stick"
approach, as well as in switching "good cop, bad
cop" roles.
But with mounting pressure
on the Bush administration to push the envelope of
diplomacy and refrain from premature military
action, in light of the unforeseeable dire
consequences for global peace and stability, the
White House's announcement of offering direct
talks with Iran, several weeks after receiving
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's letter offering to
talk, was hardly surprising.
Yet what is
surprising is the deep well of negatives that
soaks this announcement, bound to aggravate the
anti-American mood in some Iranian corners, as
well as the naive assumption that the mere offer
of talks would somehow persuade Iran to shelve its
nuclear program.
Hardly anyone familiar
with the world of diplomacy expects that, and if
the US insists on this rather unreasonable demand,
the net result will be further escalation of the
nuclear standoff, given Bush's blunt threat of UN
sanctions if Iran refused the offer.
The
talk offer is, therefore, best interpreted as a
tactical move intended to pave the road to
Security Council action, the likely US assumption
being that in response to Iran's rejection of
conditional talks, its next move in the Security
Council will have a better chance of converting
the Russians and Chinese into allies.
Said
otherwise, the United States' calculation that
Iran will not suspend its nuclear activities, as
demanded, will deny Russian and Chinese diplomats
their hitherto sound justification not to follow
the road to sanctions. Thus the US offer for talks
is geared less to solicit a positive answer from
Iran than toward the expected positive reaction
from Moscow and Beijing in the aftermath of a
failed attempt at direct diplomacy.
The
real litmus test of US multilateralism toward Iran
will be over the Iranian response to the latest
package of incentives to be offered to Tehran.
What this package may or may not contain
is, of course, of highest importance, which is why
European diplomats have exercised extreme caution
not to have it leaked to the press.
A
clue, though, was given by Rice, who cited
"beneficial" rewards, such as "trade and
investment", hinting at the United States'
willingness to drop some of its sanctions against
Iran in return for Iran's willingness to stop its
nuclear drive.
Iran's options Iran appears set on its present course of
gradually mastering an independent nuclear-fuel
cycle no matter what the threats or incentives.
But this does not by definition preclude the
option of a mini-return to the past, that is, the
Paris Agreement, which stipulated that the Iranian
suspension of enrichment activities would continue
as long as talks with the EU-3 were ongoing.
Another option would be to put Iran's
centrifuges on "cold standby", and then engage in
direct talks. This would have the distinct
advantage of not appearing as a concession to the
US. The fact that there are reportedly technical
problems with the centrifuge operations, per a
recent article in the New York Times, adds weight
to this option to give diplomacy a real chance in
the face of a crisis that has been spiraling down
a very dangerous path.
On the other hand,
if Iran rejects the US offer for talks and the
European package altogether, it will almost
certainly lose the battle for world public
opinion, and that is a hefty price it can ill
afford.
After all, the non-aligned
countries have thrown their weight behind Iran's
nuclear rights, this after much diplomatic energy
and expenditure by Iran - praised even by Iran's
critics in the Western media. Yet the new US move
has the ability to knock down this diplomacy if
Tehran takes rash missteps instead of prudent
counter-moves.
With the ball thrown back
in Iran's court, the burden is on its diplomats to
devise a concerted effort that acts in
anticipation of the next two or three moves by the
US and its allies, within a coherent strategic
whole.
Iran has a tendency to trade
diplomacy with rhetoric, and there are political
limits to its nuclear flexibility. The latter is,
however, a double-edged sword, given that any
future sanctions would hit many Iranians in the
pocket and thus add to political turmoil at home.
All in all, the United States' shrewd
maneuver has opened a new window of opportunity
for a diplomatic solution of the crisis,
irrespective of the tactical nature of the move,
due to its implications for global
multilateralism. And the fact that only half a
window is open does not by itself mean it is a
dead end.
Rather, the fear of unwanted
consequences by both sides is a primary motive for
seizing on the opportunity of this crisis to
create a real way of finding a way for the Islamic
Republic and the US to get along together. The
only trouble is that there are other, conflicting
motivations that impede this force.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear
Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear
potential latent", Harvard International Review,
and Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating
Facts Versus Fiction.
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