Page 2 of 2 Russia softens stance on Iran
'smart' sanctions By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
and training hundreds of
engineers and technicians at the Novoronezh
nuclear power plant. Internal opposition to
Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran is growing,
however, led by the semi-official Council on
Foreign and Defense Policy, which has concluded
that Iran's nuclearization is "inevitable".
The question of travel In the
past, the Security Council has imposed travel bans
on individuals in several countries, such as Iraqi
officials who
obstructed UN weapons
inspections, Sierra Leone's rebels and their
family members, leaders of the Haitian military
junta, and supporters and top officials of the
National Union for the Total Independence of
Angola (UNITA) and their family members.
As with the Haitian sanctions, which
covered a vague category of people who supported
the junta, the proposed travel ban on Iranian
officials, scientists and nuclear deal-makers is
bound to run into similar problems. This is
accentuated by the fact that with Bushehr
exempted, these same individuals have no legal
barrier for their entry into Russia - or do they?
Does Moscow have to get the Security
Council's approval for the travel of any of those
individuals and, indeed, can the Security Council
truly carry this heavy burden with any degree of
satisfaction?
The Washington Post reported
that the US and its allies are experiencing
difficulties in developing an accurate list of
targeted individuals, with the Central
Intelligence Agency and the State Department at
odds over information-sharing and the US
government even resorting to "Googling" the names
in its bid to come up with a satisfactory list.
The record of UN travel sanctions is
mixed. Enforcement is challenging and the intended
negative impact, with respect to their isolating
and legitimacy-denying effects, are hard to
tabulate. If the intention is to make Iran's
policy of non-compliance with regard to the UN's
demands more costly and difficult to sustain, the
proposed mild sanctions are unlikely to succeed.
They will likely prompt a negative Iranian
reaction in the form of curtailing its cooperation
with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
and, in the case of escalating sanctions in the
future, even Iran's exit from the NPT altogether,
as called for by some Iranian hardline
politicians.
After all, even in their
current mild form, the proposed Iran sanctions at
the UN follow the same traditional logic, that is,
the greater the costs (political and otherwise)
caused by sanctions, the higher the probability of
compliance.
But the exact reverse could be
true in Iran's case. A German analyst at a Berlin
think-tank has written: "Europeans feel that once
the Security Council would agree on sanctions, the
situation could escalate; Iran could expel IAEA
inspectors and even withdraw from the NPT." The
narrow-focused proposed sanctions can have
disproportionate negative results, even paving the
way to the "military option".
Iran's
diplomacy questioned The plethora of
challenges facing Iran's diplomacy today are truly
daunting. Iran's invitation of Syrian's leader to
attend a regional summit went unanswered last
month. Saudi Arabia is increasingly adopting a
stern anti-Iran stance with respect to Iraq and
Iran's nuclear program, and Germany has shelved
its reticence. Russia and China are now 99% on
board with UN sanctions on Iran. Add to this the
negative ramifications of Ahmadinejad's crusade on
the issue of the Holocaust, decried by the UN and
all Western leaders as well as Russia.
On
Wednesday, the following statement appeared on the
Russian Foreign Ministry's website: "You know that
in the past we described as unacceptable the
statements of the Iranian leadership that disputed
the right of Israel to existence and questioned
the scale of the elimination of Jews in Europe
during World War II."
Thus a pertinent
question: What foreign-policy interest, objective
or priority of Iran is served by the Holocaust
conference in Tehran? Is it in Iran's interest to
put itself at the forefront of a battle with
nuclear-armed Israel, when the two countries are
far apart from each other and Iran can, logically
speaking, avoid inconveniencing itself by not
locking horns with Israel?
These questions
aside, there is the moral question, posed several
years ago by this author in an article on the
"Need for public education on the Holocaust in the
Middle East", perhaps worth quoting:
If the future of peace in the Middle
East depends in part on better Muslim-Jewish
dialogue, then there is no doubt that this
should entail what is clearly lacking in Iran
and other Middle East countries, namely the
minutest public education about the Holocaust
... This education can come about in different
shapes and forms, including the cinematic medium
... The horror of Jewish extermination in Europe
is an everlasting reminder of the forces of
barbarianism in the midst of civilization, and
the delusion of declaring them dead after the
Nazis' downfall, notwithstanding the tragedy of
Kosovo and the Balkans.
That was
written before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and, in
retrospect, we must add Iraq to the list and, in
light of the controversy surrounding the Holocaust
conference in Tehran, it is as apt as ever.
Stepping back from the brink Stepping back from the promised Christmas gift
of sanctions to Iran is, however, a prudent
action, particularly if a deal can be somehow
worked out among the parties involved, given the
likely negative effect on the proposed diplomatic
engagement of Iran by the Iraq Study Group.
Playing brinkmanship with Iran at the UN
has its limitations, after all, and the
interconnectedness of nuclear and regional issues
warrants this recommendation; otherwise the risks
of things all around getting worse rather than
better run high.
Iran is required to show
a greater degree of flexibility to make this
happen, or it will soon have to grapple with the
isolation-inducing sanctions, which will be
enormously hard to reverse.
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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