Iran: The perils of nuclear
populism By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Who is afraid of a breakthrough deal with
Iran on the nuclear question? Answer: those vested
interests in Washington who are not happy with
anything short of a complete dispossession of
Iran's nuclear technology and who are intent on
torpedoing any agreement that falls short of their
ultimate objective.
Why else should the
powers that be leak sensitive information to the
right-wing, ardently pro-Israel Washington Times,
on the eve of a critical Iran-European Union talks
in Berlin, which proved poison
for
a potential breakthrough?
On Tuesday, Bill
Gertz of the Washington Times reported the
following: that Iran and the EU were nearing an
agreement in which Iran would suspend uranium
enrichment for 90 days; that at Tehran's
insistence, negotiators led by EU foreign-policy
chief Javier Solana agreed to keep the temporary
enrichment halt a secret; and that in exchange,
Iran would get a temporary reprieve from the
imposition of sanctions by the United Nations
Security Council.
The next day, a
Washington Times editorial went one step further
and revealed that the above-said deal was favored
by some officials in the State Department, hinting
that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was among
them. The editorial attacked the deal as
unsatisfactory and simply beneficial to Iran,
which is under the gun of a Security Council
resolution.
Iran's reaction to the
Washington Times report was instant and expected.
A top nuclear official, Mohammad Saeedi, held a
press conference and denied the report, stating
that his boss, Ali Larijani, was meeting with
Solana in Berlin simply around the issue of an
incentive package by the so-called "Five-plus-one"
ie, the UN Security Council's permanent five plus
Germany. But, of course, Saeedi had a hard time
getting around the question that this package
centered, after all, on the very issue of
suspension.
This was followed by President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad's speech at a rally in the city
of Karaj on Thursday, stating categorically that
the operation of centrifuges would not stop even
for one day. Again, Ahmadinejad insisted on Iran's
right to peaceful nuclear technology and the
double standard of the nuclear-have nations
pressing such an unreasonable demand on Iran.
Meanwhile, Rice has once again voiced
support for the ongoing EU-Iran talks, which are
scheduled to continue, but this raises a curious
question: Is the US favoring a process with one
hand while the other hand undermines it?
No doubt such a schizophrenic approach is
a direct result of immense infighting, reportedly
pitting the State Department against the Defense
Department. Within the White House too there are
signs of a lack of a consensus, resulting in a
contradictory approach that ultimately may win the
day in favor of hawkish elements pushing for an
eventual confrontation with Iran.
The US
policy debate has its mirror image inside Iran,
with the policymakers grappling with the contours
of a sound approach that would simultaneously
maintain Iran's nuclear rights while showing signs
of flexibility and accommodation so that Iran
could take advantage of the rather generous net of
incentives offered by the P5+1 and avert a UN
showdown, let alone a military showdown with the
US and or Israel in the future.
Both the
US and Iranian policy debates have been raging
outside the purview of public opinion, for the
most part, except when one hears contradictory
and/or contrasting points of views expressed by
different officials. For now, both sides in the
Berlin talks have reported "progress" and have
agreed to follow-up talks, yet the chances are
that the deliberate leak of behind-the-scene talks
in the Washington Times has managed, albeit
temporarily, to set the process back at a delicate
and exceedingly critical moment in the
negotiations.
The Washington policy
faction that looks with disfavor at any deal
brokered by Solana and the EU that would let Iran
off the sanctions hook is keenly aware of Tehran's
policy constraints caused by the populist streak
that weighs heavily on Iran's rulers. This, in
turn, allows them to manipulate the negotiation
process by remote control. But at the same time,
in so doing, this faction in the US capital must
deal with its own detractors, including the dovish
State Department officials who see how fast
sanctions can lead to military action.
After all, Rice has yet to echo her boss,
President George W Bush, in attacking
"Islamo-fascism", and has as of late shown a great
deal more prudence. Rice's increasingly deft
diplomacy is, however, a chariot to oblivion as
long as she has such strong critics who have a
different, and more deadly, script vis-a-vis Iran.
Where to go from here? In his
recent interview with this author, Iranian Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki expressed optimism
about the prospect of negotiations and,
simultaneously, dismissed the possibility of US
military action as inimical to the United States'
own interests in grappling with its existing
crises in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A recent
report, in fact, shows that the vast majority of
US citizens are opposed to the military option and
favor a diplomatic solution. The latter
strengthens the hands of Secretary Rice and other
US officials pushing the edge of negotiations and
is a positive development that acts as a timely
antidote to the Machiavellian manipulations
mentioned above.
On Iran's part, on the
other hand, there is the danger of it boxing
itself into predetermined positions that tie the
hands of the nuclear-negotiation team led by
Larijani. Ahmadinejad's speeches at mass rallies
are clearly aimed at domestic consumption, but
should they be the pillars of Iran's nuclear
diplomacy?
Again, the perils of nuclear
populism are discernible here, whatever their
advantages. And since Iran's outspoken president
has gone on record opposing the suspension of
uranium-enrichment activities even for one day,
this in turn raises the prospect for another
option not seriously considered so far, that is,
the standby option.
Between the two
opposing options of full suspension and no
suspension, there is a third, and hitherto
unexplored, option based on the United States' own
experiment with the standby option at its large
Portsmouth uranium-enrichment plant at Piketon,
Ohio.
Although the Iranian and US contexts
are different - for example, the Portsmouth plant
is a gaseous-diffusion enrichment plant, whereas
the Natanz facility in Iran operates centrifuges -
there are sufficient similarities that can be
applied.
The US Department of Energy shut
down the Portsmouth plant in 2000, while keeping
portions of the enrichment cascades operating in a
"recycle mode", buffering all of the cells with
dry air and conducting surveillance and
maintenance. The cold-standby mode ended after
five years, costing the government a hefty $370
million.
As with the US plant, the Natanz
facility could be put on cold standby, at least
for the duration of the proposed multilateral
talks, whereby a monitored program would be put in
place that would include the replacement of any
components that degraded during shutdown. It would
also include regular maintenance and surveillance
of the facility.
In short, the standby
option offers the best means for a verifiable
pause in Iran's uranium-enrichment operations
while keeping its capabilities for the future.
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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