The day the US took a beating over Iran
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Despite claims that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has
regained the diplomatic initiative from Iran with a conditional offer to join
multilateral talks with Tehran, the real story behind the policy shift is that
the US administration has suffered a decisive defeat of its effort to get
international sanctions for possible military action against Iran.
US officials and French and British diplomats have sought to obscure the
failure to get the agreement of Russia and China to a hardline United Nations
Security Council resolution making Iranian
compliance mandatory if it refused to suspend its uranium-enrichment
activities.
Nevertheless, details of the proposal finally given to Iran and Russia's
subsequent statement both confirm that the US administration has had to accept
a package without the threat of Security Council action it had counted on.
The list of "possible measures in the event that Iran does not cooperate" in
the proposal, as revealed by Reuters on Friday based on the earlier draft of
the proposal released by ABC (American Broadcasting Co) News and interviews
with Western diplomats, includes 13 economic and diplomatic "disincentives" to
be applied gradually, depending on Iran's behavior.
But the document makes no reference to the possibility of an enforceable
Security Council decision that the US administration could use to justify a
military attack on Iran.
Going into the crucial negotiations on Iran's nuclear program between
Washington and the other five powers - France, Britain, China, Russia and
Germany - in early May, the administration of President George W Bush had
regarded such an enforceable Security Council action as the key to its strategy
for increasing the pressure on Iran.
The New York Times reported on April 30 that US officials had described a plan
by Rice to get agreement on a UN Security Council resolution requiring that
Iran cease enriching uranium that would be enforceable under Chapter VII of the
United Nations Charter. Chapter VII authorizes the use of penalties, and if
those are ineffective, of military force.
It now is clear that Rice hoped to get the agreement of the five powers to her
plan by making a concession the US administration had been resisting for weeks
- the agreement to join the talks between the EU-3 (Britain, France and
Germany) and Iran. On her way to New York for the crucial meeting with the
other five powers on May 8 and 9, Rice shared with aides her plan to offer that
concession at the meeting, as senior State Department officials later revealed
to the Times.
In return, the United States wanted the five powers to call for UN sanctions
under Chapter VII. But the Russians and Chinese had other ideas.
Before the crucial New York meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki had received assurances from both Russia and China that they would not
support any Chapter VII resolution in the Security Council. On May 2, Mottaki
told the conservative Kayhan newspaper, "The thing these two countries have
officially told us and expressed in diplomatic negotiations is their opposition
to sanctions and military attacks." The Iranian foreign minister expressed
confidence that "no sanctions or anything like that will be on the agenda of
the Security Council".
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart, Li
Zhaoxing, were unmoved by Rice's sudden willingness to join the talks with
Iran. Reuters reported that night, "China has made it clear that any reference
to possible sanctions or war should be eliminated from the UN resolution order
to Tehran to curb is nuclear program. Both Moscow and Beijing oppose invoking
Chapter VII of the UN Charter."
Steve Weisman of the New York Times confirmed in a May 19 report that Lavrov
had made it clear in the May 8-9 meeting that Russia would not go along with
any Security Council resolution that made compliance mandatory. The Europeans
at the meeting, he observed, had been more realistic, hoping only that the
Russians would accept a threat of sanctions divorced from Chapter VII.
Thus the real story behind Rice's dramatic May 31 announcement and the proposal
announced in muted terms the following day in Vienna is that the US had backed
down and accepted a package without the threat of Security Council sanctions
that Rice and Bush had wanted going into New York.
It was a major defeat for the Bush administration's policy, which Rice and
other administration officials immediately began to cover up. The day after the
fateful New York meeting, Rice admitted only to "some tactical differences
about how to express that in the Security Council", and suggested that those
slight differences would all be ironed in "a couple of weeks".
That same day, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick assured members of
Congress that China had "agreed in principle" to go along with the US plan for
sanctions - something he most likely knew by then was not the case. But a
careful read-through of his testimony would have noted his clear attempt to
pressure China over the issue, saying China's relationship with the US was
"going to be determined by how they act in Iran in dealing with this nuclear
issue".
Rice continued to maneuver over the next three weeks, along with Britain and
France, to get agreement on a Chapter VII resolution. The Associated Press
reported of May 20 that the three governments had agreed on a draft that
included the sentence, "Where appropriate, these measures would be adopted
under Chapter VII, Article 41 of the UN Charter."
The US administration's desperation to obtain Russian and Chinese support for
the US aim is indicated by the fact that Bush made a personal call to Russian
President Vladimir Putin on May 30, according to a June 1 Los Angeles Times
report.
Bush was unable to sway the Russian leader. As reported by RIA (Russian
Information Agency) Novosti on Thursday, Lavrov said Russia would back UN
Security Council "measures" against Iran only if "Iran starts to act in
contradiction to its obligations under the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty"
(NPT).
Iran's enrichment program itself does not constitute a violation of the NPT,
much to the dismay of the United States, which has proposed changes to the
treaty that would outlaw such activities.
At her May 31 press conference, when asked whether she had agreement from
Russia and China for UN sanctions, Rice ducked the issue, saying, "I think
there is substantial agreement and understanding that Iran now faces a clear
choice."
The defeat of the Bush administration's plan for getting major-power support
for the threat of potential military action does not mean the administration is
incapable of going to war. But it makes the possibility of military action
increasingly difficult, adding another dimension to Rice's refrain that "Iran
is not Iraq".
Gareth Porter is a historian and national-security policy analyst. His
latest book Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War
in Vietnam was published in June 2005.
