Waiting for Godot - but only Gates arrives
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
"This business of US-Iran relations is like waiting for Godot," Giandomenico
Picco, a veteran United Nations diplomat, once told this author, and then
meaningfully added, "Except that Godot never arrives," in reference to Samuel
Beckett's play in which two characters wait in vain for Godot.
That was in 2001, when this author collaborated with Picco on the UN program,
Dialogue Among Civilizations, which, at one point, brought the then-US
secretary of state Madeleine Albright to a
speech by Iran's president at the time, Mohammad Khatami.
But that was as close as Iran and the US ever got and it has been a one-way
uphill battle ever since. Two years later, in 2003, the White House summarily
dismissed an Iranian initiative to settle all differences between the two
countries in a comprehensive package, and now in 2007 the prospects for
normalization are as bleak as they have been since the US broke diplomatic
relations with Iran over the US Embassy hostage crisis in November 1979.
Nearly 30 years later, we hear from Defense Secretary Robert Gates that
"diplomacy with Iran is working". Gates' statement coincides with news from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has installed some 1,300
centrifuges and has begun the uranium enrichment process by injecting gas into
those centrifuges.
The latest IAEA figure is well below the 3,000 centrifuges claimed by Iran and
more than the "hundreds" claimed by IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei a mere two
weeks ago. By any account, however, it is a dramatic advance over the limited
"pilot project' of nearly two years ago, giving Iran's nuclear negotiators a
degree of confidence that certain facts have been "accomplished on the ground"
regarding Iran's mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Thus the question: in what sense is US-led diplomacy on Iran yielding results,
other than sanctions and other pressures aimed at isolating Tehran? In fact,
Gates' own current trip to the Middle East represents a frantic effort to
salvage the sinking ship of US diplomacy - by not only isolating Iran but also
Saudi Arabia.
This is hardly surprising after the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, vehemently
criticized the US's Iraq policy at an Arab summit in March. Still reeling from
the Saudi king's stinging criticism of "illegal" and "illegitimate occupation
of Iraq", the US policy is now geared toward creating divisions in the Saudi
kingdom and isolating the king, who has embraced Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad with open arms.
But of course, US-Saudi ties are too deep to be unraveled by such "snags",
however uncomfortable they may be. Gates has not really pressured the Saudis,
rejecting the Israeli request to slap the defiant Saudi leader on the wrist by
curtailing arms sales. Nor has he or any one in the Bush administration ever
put any inordinate heat on the Saudi government to stop the traffic of jihadis
to Iraq - when all indications are that a large percentage of foreign fighters
in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia.
According to one Iranian analyst, the US has for some time been trying to
divert Sunni extremists in Iraq against the (pro-Iran) Shi'ites, as a
"deflective strategy". "Most of the attacks today are against the Shi'ites and
not the occupation forces, if you look closely," the Tehran analyst pointed
out.
At the same time, the US is widening the net of its accusations against Iran,
by alleging that Iran is aiding not just Shi'ite groups but also "extreme
Sunni" groups in Iraq, and increasingly seeing an Iranian hand in the growing
turmoil in Afghanistan. Could it be that Iran is simply following in the US's
own footsteps, as its own version of "deflective strategy"?
Iran's political analysts dismiss the US's criticisms by pointing at Tehran's
friendly ties with both Kabul and Baghdad.
They argue that Iran has excellent relations with Iraqi Kurds, which the US has
tried to poison, in part by assisting a fringe Iranian Kurdish group operating
from Iraq, and by refusing to disband the armed opposition group, Mujahideen
Khalq Organization, considered a terrorist organization by both the US
Department of State and the European Union. Lauren Secor of the New York Times
has aptly pointed out in her article "The Persian Paradox" that the US policy
of supporting opposition groups has already proved counterproductive.
Issues for the Iraq summit
Given the above, many Iranians are wondering why Iran should bother to
participate at all in the Iraq security summit scheduled for early May in the
Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm al-Sheikh.
US policymakers should not expect cooperation from Iran on Iraq as long as they
refuse to acknowledge any constructive role by Iran and, instead, continuously
paint it negatively. This is part and parcel of a new "strategic thinking" that
seeks alliance with Sunnis against Shi'ites.
This is a shallow move bound to backfire in Iraq, which is dominated by
Shi'ites. There is, however, a window for the US to remap its approach for the
summit, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to attend. This
even though her Iranian counterpart has said that, short of some movement on
the fate of Iranian hostages in the US's hands, he may not attend.
Concerning the latter, the latest news from the US is that the case of the five
Iranians abducted by the US will come up for review in June or July, following
a "six-month" review cycle. This issue may be the freeze that reverses the thaw
achieved at the initial Iraq security summit in Baghdad, where the US and
Iranian representatives met and shook hands.
Rice needs to do all she can to prevent this from happening and to make sure
that a face-to-face meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki,
takes place in Sharm al-Sheikh. Her failure to do so will be tantamount to
missing a golden opportunity to build on the mini-achievements of the Baghdad
summit.
Iran's outgoing ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has told the
Washington Post that the present course of action against Iran will not yield
any results, only confrontation, calling for a "different path". That is an apt
suggestion that should be heeded by all concerned.
But with a long history of half-steps, aborted initiatives and reversals, this
is unlikely, reminding us of the viability of Picco's sad intuition. The Godot
of Iran-US rapprochement will never arrive as long as there is no paradigmatic
shift in the US's power approach toward Iran.
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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