Iran faces a dilemma. It can neither fully
accept nor reject the package of incentives
offered by Germany and the United Nations Security
Council's permanent five (the United States, the
United Kingdom, France, Russia and China),
irrespective of the growing international
pressure, the UN's deadline of August 31 and the
threat of international sanctions.
Also,
Tehran cannot weed out undesirable aspects of the
package, as they all revolve around the central
question of Iran's nuclear-enrichment program.
All the same, the package, consisting of
generous offers of state-of-the-art nuclear
assistance, a nuclear-fuel supply, trade
incentives and certain
pledges on security issues, is very enticing.
Iranian leaders have repeatedly praised it as
positive and a step in the right direction to end
the dispute over their nuclear program.
It
is too bad, then, that there is a big string
attached, namely the demand for the full
suspension of Iran's enrichment-related activities
and the termination of construction of a
heavy-water reactor in Arak. Iran's Atomic Energy
Organization said on Monday that it would start
operating the plant "in the near future",
describing it as one of the country's greatest
achievements.
With UN Resolution 1696 (for
Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program by
August 31) flashing like an ominous red light down
the road, the internal debate has been
illuminating.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki recently went on record announcing Iran's
willingness to discuss the suspension of rotating
centrifuges. But not only has he not been seconded
by anyone, even his own ministry's spokesperson
and other officials have sounded in disharmony
with him.
And the final arbiter of Iranian
politics, spiritual leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali
Khamenei, threw his weight behind the so-called
rejectionist camp on Monday by stating
unequivocally that Iran would continue with its
nuclear program and would not be deterred by fear
of the outside world's reaction. A formal
statement to this effect was expected from Tehran
on Tuesday.
While this pretty much tears
the incentive package's central axis, it does not
discard it in its entirety, as there is a vast
gray area below this declaration that could still
save the package, at least in theory.
There are suggestions that enrichment
could be suspended after the talks, and not as
their precondition, and also of interim suspension
and a standby option. The last is borrowed from
the United States' own experience of putting one
of its largest enrichment facilities on both cold
and warm standby, incurring a substantial cost,
principally to prevent the equipment from decaying
and keeping scientific personnel on payroll.
Of course the US wants none of that, and
senior government officials have promised a swift
UN reaction should Iran reject the package. And
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has demanded a
"firm response" that would not contain shades of
gray.
Iran, however, is desperately
looking precisely for that. There is, after all, a
real threat of a US military strike, corroborated
by the US media recently, which has not
disappeared as a result of the war between Israel
and Hezbollah. This is irrespective of recent
misinterpretations that go as far as claming that
Israel has "rescued" Iran. Such optimistic
prognostications leave a lot to be desired,
however, and instead we may safely extrapolate a
growing Iranian fear due to this war's wind
blowing in Iran's direction.
Indeed, Iran
may feel good about being bracketed on the
winner's side of the conflict. Yet as former
president Hashemi Rafsanjani hinted at his recent
Friday-prayers sermon, the price has been terribly
high. No one in Iran wishes to see the country
experiencing such a calamity sold as triumph, no
matter what is at stake. And on the nuclear
account, not everyone is convinced that its
strategic priority is worth risking everything.
But it may come down to that,
unfortunately, if the ideologues who want to brave
the sanctions' tsunami win the argument within the
ranks of the government. In that case, instead of
a "multidimensional answer", it will be bleak and
ominous, portending a showdown with the US
superpower as a distinct possibility.
No
wonder Iran has launched major military exercises,
showcasing new types of weaponry, including
missiles, and exuding a new level of influence as
a major regional power. It is easy to lose
perspective in this brave new environment laden
with potential minefields that is the country's
nuclear dossier.
The US is formidable,
having knocked out in a couple of weeks an Iraqi
nemesis that Iran could not dislodge after eight
years of fighting. A total rejection of the
US-backed package clearly paves the way to a
greater danger of a US military strike, and only a
vocal minority wishes for such a scenario.
Before events spiral out of control, the
international community could stop the clock on
the artificial deadlines and work instead to
assure Iran of the viability of the promises
reflected in the package, including security in
the Persian Gulf.
Iran has by all
indications not yet reached a comfortable
consensus on where to go with the proposed list of
incentives, and its response of Tuesday may in
retrospect turn out to be premature and unripe. A
ripe answer may take a few more weeks, certainly
not enough time to build bombs, yet entirely
sufficient to weave the thread of compromise into
the fabric of the Iranian answer.
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", 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 is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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