US 'allies' keep Iran options
open By M K Bhadrakumar
In diplomacy, when adversarial relations
undergo mending, grandstanding becomes necessary.
Henry Kissinger's Paris talks with North Vietnam
in the early 1970s were interspersed with some of
the fiercest US bombing campaigns of the war.
Yet we now also know how quickly the US
temperament can adapt to new equations when vital
interests are at stake. Kissinger took a few
extended evenings in Beijing to rewrite the
narrative of Sino-US relations. In its sweep of
realism, dramatic irony and its phenomenal
potential for rewriting world politics, the
turnaround in US policy toward Iran is perhaps
comparable to Kissinger's 1972 mission to China.
But the Paris talks somehow come to mind
with greater ease. Last Wednesday's policy shift
in Washington in which it said it
would talk to Iran over its
nuclear program (with conditions) has intriguing
aspects to it.
Much of it seemingly lies
in the realm of public diplomacy, though. Part of
the problem lies in that the Bush administration
has to grapple with three different fronts at the
same time - domestic, international and the
Iranian.
First, the domestic aspects. It
is important to remember that hardly a fortnight
has passed since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert, while visiting Washington, described the
Iranian government as an existential threat.
At a joint press conference on the White
House lawn on May 23 with President George W Bush,
Olmert made a hard-hitting statement: "The Iranian
regime, which calls for Israel's destruction,
openly denies the Holocaust and views the United
States as its enemy, makes every effort to
implement its fundamentalist religious ideology
and blatantly disregards the demands of the
international community. The Iranian threat is not
only a threat to Israel; it is a threat to the
stability of the Middle East and the entire world.
And it could mark the beginning of a dangerous and
irresponsible arms race in the Middle East."
True, Israel is not a salient issue for
many Americans. To be sure, Washington first used
the neo-conservative gentile, John Bolton, who
serves as the US permanent representative to the
United Nations, to call up his Iranian counterpart
in New York, Javed Zarif, to intimate that the US
was willing to talk with Iran.
Nonetheless, question marks arise, given
the Israeli lobby's known influence on Capitol
Hill and with the US media and prominent
think-tanks. Indeed, the Bush administration's own
track record has been one of allowing the Israeli
government and the pro-Israel groups in the United
States to shape US policy toward Iraq, Syria and
Iran, and its grand strategy of reordering the
Middle East as a whole.
This is so much so
that the former national security adviser under
president George H W Bush, Brent Scowcroft, two
years back said that Israeli premier Ariel Sharon
had George W Bush "wrapped around his little
finger". Moreover, pandering to Israel is a
bipartisan malaise in US politics - Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry wore on his
sleeves through his election campaign in 2004 his
unqualified loyalty toward Israeli interests.
Hillary Clinton will gladly emulate Kerry's
example.
Therefore, are we to assume that
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have
finally chosen to make a distinction between US
national interests and Israeli interests? More
important, can the lobby's power be curtailed?
In a brilliant essay titled "The Israel
Lobby and American Foreign Policy" in the London
Review of Books in March, two leading American
academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt,
analyzed precisely this question.
Their
conclusion: "Given the Iraq debacle, the obvious
need to rebuild the American image in the Arab and
Islamic world ... there are ample grounds for
leaders to distance themselves from the lobby and
adopt a Middle East policy more consistent with
broader US interest ... But that is not going to
happen - not soon anyway. AIPAC [American-Israel
Public Affairs Committee] and its allies
(including Christian Zionists) have no serious
opponents in the lobbying world ... Besides,
American politicians remain acutely sensitive to
campaign contributions and other forms of
political pressure, and major media outlets are
likely to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter
what it does."
That is why it is important
to recollect that on May 24, hardly a week before
Rice was to make her Iran announcement, Olmert
referred to Iran in apocalyptic terms. Addressing
the US Congress on the concluding day of his
official visit to Washington, Olmert said, "Allow
me to turn to another dark and gathering storm
casting its shadow over the world ... Iran, the
world's leading sponsor of terrorism, and a
notorious violator of fundamental human rights,
stands on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.
With these weapons, the security of the entire
world is put in jeopardy ... This challenge, which
I believe is the test of our time, is one the West
cannot afford to fail.
"The radical
Iranian regime has declared the United States its
enemy. Their president believes it is his
religious duty and his destiny to lead his country
in a violent conflict against the infidels. With
pride he denies the Jewish Holocaust and speaks
brazenly, calling to wipe Israel off the map. For
us this is an existential threat, a threat to
which we cannot consent. But it is not Israel's
threat alone. It is a threat to all those
committed to stability in the Middle East and the
well-being of the world at large.
"Our
moment is now. History will judge our
generation by the actions we take now, by
our willingness to stand up ..."
Could it
be that Olmert has since had a change of heart
regarding Iran? Israel is keeping mum about the US
offer to Iran. Could Bush and Rice have woven
their famous charm around Olmert? (Curiously,
Rice's announcement coincided with the arrival of
eight ships belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's southern forces at Haifa port in
Israel and the announcement that Israeli naval
craft would participate for the first time as an
"integrated force" in a NATO exercise in July.)
It is inconceivable that Bush has chosen
the weakest point in his political standing at
home to take on the lobby frontally. Bush
administration officials have begun "leaking" to
influential sections of the US media a far too
embellished version to the effect that the
president and the secretary of state have
single-mindedly choreographed the overture to
Iran, brushing aside the reservations of Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.
Yet Rumsfeld condemned Iran
while speaking at an international conference in
Singapore this weekend - calling it "one of the
leading terrorist nations in the world".
Rumsfeld sarcastically added that it was
"strange" that Moscow and Beijing chose to bring
into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization "one of
the leading terrorist nations in the world" even
as the SCO claimed it was opposed to terrorism.
Rumsfeld was savvy enough to know that
this was hardly the way Bush would expect a senior
member of his team to speak publicly. So was
Rumsfeld reassuring the lobby back home? Rumsfeld
added, "The information [emphasis added]
has just been communicated to them [Tehran], and
it seems to me the appropriate thing now to do is
to wait and see which path the Iranian government
will take."
A second aspect about the
United States' Iran offer concerns the compulsions
under which the Bush administration would have
made its policy reversal. Deep briefings to select
US media organs by unnamed "senior officials" in
Washington have largely concentrated on casting
Bush and Rice as visionary leaders. Period.
The "leaks" have a contrived tone. No one
argued that talking to Iran would help the US
stabilize the Iraqi situation and the Middle East
in general - though it is the most obvious thing
to say. The American officials admitted that
contrary to US assertions, Iran was far from
internationally isolated. But this was not any
secret.
The latest evidence in this regard
was the statement by the ministerial meeting of
the coordinating bureau of the 116-member
Non-Aligned Movement at its meeting in Putrajaya,
Malaysia, last week. Even a close ally of the US,
Singapore, takes note of this political reality.
Referring to the warm welcome accorded to
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad during his
recent visit to Indonesia, Singaporean Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last week, "This
showed how successfully Iran has portrayed itself
as a leading Muslim country, its nuclear project
as a project in which Muslims worldwide should
take vicarious pride, and the issue as a
nationalist struggle."
The Bush
administration's briefings alluded to two external
factors having influenced the change of course in
US policy. First, Washington could sense that the
"Iran Six" (the US, Britain, France, Germany,
Russia and China) was falling apart, and an
initiative was necessary that would somehow bring
all the six powers to share a common platform. And
there could be no better platform than if the US
were to join any future talks with Iran.
The US officials claimed that having now
made the offer to talk to Iran, Washington had a
right to expect reciprocal Russian and Chinese
support if the talks did not proceed with Iran,
and the nuclear issue was thrown back to the court
of the United Nations Security Council.
According to the New York Times, "Three
senior officials said, speaking on the condition
of anonymity because they were describing internal
debates in the White House, he [Bush] made the
final decision only after telephone calls with
President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor
Angela Merkel of Germany led him to conclude that
if Tehran refused to suspend its enrichment of
uranium, or later dragged its feet, they would
support an escalating series of sanctions against
Iran at the United Nations that could lead to a
confrontation."
But that wasn't how the
Russian Foreign Ministry seemed to view the
events. According to a Russian statement on
Thursday, while Moscow welcomed the US side's
announcement on its readiness to hold direct talks
with Iran, such talks were "long overdue" and
"there is no reasonable alternative" to talks and
negotiations.
Furthermore, Moscow saw the
US decision to normalize relations with Iran in
terms of a cessation of the "crisis state" in
US-Iran relations, which was not serving the
interests of the two peoples. Moscow felt that the
normalization of US-Iranian ties would "benefit
regional and international stability" and help
resolve "other crisis situations in the region"
(read Iraq).
Putin, too, welcomed the US
decision and called it "an important step". So
where is the question of Moscow reciprocating
Bush's decision? This brings us to a crucial
point. Indeed, what happens if Iran refuses to
give up its uranium-enrichment activity?
Significantly, the statement of the Iran
Six foreign ministers' meeting in Vienna on
Thursday scrupulously avoided any mention of
sanctions or other specific punitive measures.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett refused
to take any questions from the media after reading
out a brief statement in Vienna. It seems
"sanctions" has suddenly become a dirty word.
The path ahead But where do the
Iran Six go if Tehran does not give up its right
to enrich uranium? At the grouping's Vienna
meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
apparently insisted that any consideration of
punitive action by the UN Security Council must
remain frozen for the present. And, indeed, it
seems the idea of sanctions has been frozen.
Putin said in a dismissive tone in Moscow
on Friday that it was simply premature to talk
about sanctions and that Russia would like to talk
earnestly with the Iranian leadership first.
(Putin is likely to meet with Ahmadinejad during
the SCO summit in Shanghai on June 15.)
Putin also made it clear how
multilateralism figured in the Russian calculus.
He said, "That the UN openly discusses issues and
remains a venue for resolving international
problems and does not serve the foreign-policy
interests of a particular country not only gives
it a greater universality, but also makes it
indispensable for working out acceptable
international solutions."
The furthest
that Lavrov would go in summing up the Iran Six
meeting in Vienna was that there was "a better
quality of participation of Russia, the United
States and China in the process of negotiations".
In the run-up to the meeting, Lavrov had said,
"Together at the negotiating table, we will be
able to work out a way that would allow us to
ensure Iran's legitimate right to peaceful nuclear
energy and yet maintain the non-proliferation
regime."
It seems that once again, unnamed
"US officials" are giving a deliberate spin that
Russia and China have "agreed privately" to turn
the screws on Iran. A Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman last Tuesday urged the international
community to "pay attention to the demands and
concerns of Iran". He said Beijing would like the
diplomatic negotiations to proceed "in a way that
would protect the interest of all sides". He
pointed out that while Beijing supported the
European proposal to resolve the issue, it also
called on the international community to "remove
Iran's concerns". On the same day, Lavrov
said, "Iran must be involved in international
economic cooperation and the efforts to enhance
security in the region ... in parallel, we are
ready to guarantee Iran's right to develop
peaceful nuclear-power engineering." Lavrov drew
the bottom line as to what Thursday's Vienna
meeting was about. He said those consultations had
a single objective, namely, to work out a common
approach that would reflect the strategic goal of
ensuring the non-proliferation regime while
observing the interests of every signatory to the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Again, last Thursday, China's permanent
representative to the UN, Wang Guangya, said in
response to the United States' Iran talks offer,
"I think it in a way proves that the US is more
serious about the negotiations than about other
options, but I do hope that this offer could be
less conditional." A Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman said on the same day that Beijing
welcomed the US offer to hold talks with Iran and
urged the United States to pave the way for a
peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement
last Thursday welcoming the US offer to Iran
underlined that "the prospects of talks should not
be impeded by attempts to threaten Tehran or place
on their agenda matters not pertaining to the
central task of settling the problem of Iran's
nuclear program".
Russia has also made it
clear that it does not accept any strict time
frame for Iran to respond to the European Union
offer. Lavrov said, "There is no categorical
deadline. But I think we are talking about several
weeks."
In a telephone conversation with
Bush last Friday, Chinese President Hu Jintao
welcomed the US decision and said China believed
the nuclear non-proliferation system should be
preserved and the Iran nuclear issue should be
resolved "in a peaceful way through diplomatic
means and talks", and that to this end, China
would be willing to "maintain contact and
coordination" with the US and play a "constructive
role in resuming negotiations at an early date".
Clearly, from all the above it appears
that there is a degree of disinformation regarding
the alleged shift in the Russian and Chinese
position on the Iran nuclear issue in the past
week or so. This disinformation campaign, the
puzzling "Israel factor", the lobby's immense
political clout in the US, Rumsfeld's innuendos -
all this underlines that Washington is having a
messy time retracing steps from the cul-de-sac
into which its Iran policy has driven it. Tehran
would have every reason to be pleased.
But
in all probability, Iran's response to the EU
offer will be neither negative nor effusive. Iran
remains wary of US intentions but knows Washington
is caught in a bind too. Iran is, therefore, bound
to come up with a pragmatic reaction.
Tehran seems to be cautiously optimistic
that this time around, the EU will have something
substantive to offer. (At a gathering in Tehran on
Sunday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
said, "We have good and healthy relations with
Europe and, in the near future, because they need
our gas and energy, these relations will become
even better.")
Tehran is conscious of the
energy card it is holding. Amid the cacophony over
the Iran nuclear issue, Russia has been probing a
new partnership in energy with Iran that could
prove the tipping point in international energy
politics. This puts pressure on the West.
On May 23, the chief executive officer of
Russian energy giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, met
with the Iranian ambassador in Moscow, Gholamreza
Ansari. To quote a Gazprom statement, the
discussions pertained to "possible cooperation in
gas production, transportation and use". Clifford
Kupchan, a former US diplomat who is currently
with Eurasia Group, a Washington-based think-tank,
commented, "Russia very much wants to coordinate
gas supplies with Iran."
Coordination
could help alleviate the strain on Gazprom's
supplies in 2011, when Russia has promised to
supply China with 40 billion cubic meters per
year. Kupchan said, "The idea in Moscow is that
Iran would concentrate on Eastern markets, while
Russia would maintain its grip on Western
markets."
An expanded energy partnership
cementing a strategic axis involving Russia, China
and Iran - this would be an ultimate nightmare
scenario for Washington. The US State Department
recently sought "clarification" from Moscow as to
why Ahmadinejad was invited to attend the SCO
summit in Shanghai on June 15. To quote Kupchan,
"The potential realignment ... crystallized by
those participating in the SCO meeting is new and
is of concern to US interests."
But Iran
is an ambitious country. Russia and the "eastern
option" are not Iran's first choice in energy
cooperation. Arguably, Iran would by far prefer an
intensification of energy cooperation with Europe,
leading to its broader integration into the
international community.
The remarks by
Ahmadinejad on Saturday at a ceremony in Tehran
contain more or less the salients of the likely
Iranian response to the US offer of talks. He said
Iran would be ready to hold "fair and
unconditional" talks.
Second, Ahmadinejad
said Iran's stance would be based on its "national
interests". Anti-Iran propaganda aside,
Ahmadinejad is an immensely popular leader in
Iran. He is arguably the first Iranian leader in a
long while who has reached out to the common
people.
But he has asked for realism. The
US cannot expect Iran to negotiate on the basis of
preconditions. The "peaceful use of nuclear
energy" is Iran's "legitimate right", which is not
open to negotiations.
Ahmadinejad
concluded his remarks saying, "We welcome talks,
logic and contacts, and there are lots of issues
in the world we could discuss." In other words,
Iran intends to make use of the "breakthrough"
(Ahmadinejad used this expression in telephone
conversations with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
on Saturday).
Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki summed up in carefully balanced
phraseology much the same when he said, "We won't
negotiate about the Iranian nation's natural
nuclear rights but are prepared, within a defined,
just framework, and without any discrimination, to
hold dialogue about common concerns."
The
Iranian reaction, in short, will leave room for
negotiations. As Mottaki put it, "We think if
there is goodwill, a breakthrough to get out of a
situation they [EU and the US] have created for
themselves ... is possible."
But the
challenge facing the Bush administration is
immense. Israel and the lobby are closely
watching. The Bush administration is yet to give a
transparent explanation regarding its abrupt
turnaround. There is no certainty that within the
Bush administration there is unanimity of opinion.
It is unclear whether Bush and Rice have
thought through a strategy of negotiations with
Iran (which is of course closely linked to the
United States' regional policies) or whether this
is a ploy aimed at stalling any Russia-Iran-China
energy partnership taking shape within the SCO.
It is certainly going to be an uphill task
to keep up a reasonable momentum of negotiations
and at the same time assert Washington's
leadership of the Iran Six. Not only Russia and
China, but also Germany and France would feel
justified in seeking to ensure that their
bilateral relations with Iran remained protected.
In contrast with the US, they all have
huge political and economic interests with Iran.
The position of Russia and China on the legal
grounds for sanctions or military enforcement
measures against Iran may continue to frustrate
the US negotiating brief with Iran.
The
Russian and Chinese position already allowed room
for maneuvering for Tehran. (On the other hand, as
Supreme Leader Khamenei implicitly warned on
Sunday, Moscow too ought to realize how its
existing "good" relations with Tehran would have
suffered "if a pro-American government was in
power in Iran".)
Finally, as time passes,
the fundamental contradiction in the US stance is
bound to become more and more glaring: why is it
that Iran cannot have what other NPT allies of the
US such as Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil
and Argentina can have? Chinese State
Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told Annan in Beijing on
May 23 that the Iran nuclear issue concerned the
"authority and efficiency" of the international
non-proliferation mechanism, and "it also concerns
the peace and stability of the Middle East as well
as international energy security". Therefore, Tang
stressed, "It is pivotal for relevant parties to
continue dialogue and negotiation, to increase
trust and find a solution with broad support."
Bush and Rice have quite a job on their
hands.
M K Bhadrakumar served as
a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
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