A new round of nuclear talks between Iran and the European Union will take
place on Wednesday and Iran's point man, Ali Larijani, has warned that "if they
seek a diplomatic dance in the negotiations, it will not yield any results".
The steps to this dance are becoming ever more complicated, and ahead of the
talks some diplomatic toes have already been trodden on, even though the
meeting between Larijani and the EU's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, is
too important for either
side to jeopardize by trying to score public relations points.
Iran has something to boast about, though - its biggest-ever deal with a
European company. Even as the EU has adopted tougher sanctions against Iran
than those mandated by the United Nations Security Council for Tehran not
stopping uranium-enrichment activities, an Austrian company has entered a
multibillion-dollar gas agreement with Iran.
The United States has expressed its concern over Iran's memorandum of
understanding with OMV (Osterreichische Mineral-
oelverwaltung), Austria's largest oil-producing, refining and gasoline-station
operating company, under which OMV will import some 2.2 million tons of
liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran annually and acquire a 10% stake of an
LNG company in Iran involved in the upstream development of Phase 12 of the
giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf. The deal is worth an estimated
US$30 billion over 25 years.
"We're going to talk to the Austrian government, talk to the firm involved, and
raise with them the idea that perhaps this is not the most appropriate time to
be making or committing to making large investments in the Iranian oil-and-gas
sector," said US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, noting that the
venture could draw US sanctions.
On Monday, EU foreign ministers voted for a total arms embargo against Iran,
compared with the partial ban imposed by the UN last December. In addition,
European leaders agreed to impose a more extensive travel ban, with a larger
list of people alleged to be involved in Iran's nuclear program to be prevented
from entering Europe than that agreed by the UN.
No sooner had the measures been adopted, though, than Solana said that if Iran
stopped enriching uranium, the newly agreed sanctions would be suspended.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was having none of it. Speaking to the
news agency Reuters, he said: "Iran will not accept it [the EU demand] because
the sanctions are not legal, so you cannot ask a country to suspend its legal
activities in return for a suspension of an illegal move."
Earlier, the US State Department slapped sanctions on 14 people, companies and
government agencies, including the Syrian navy and air force, which it says
either buy or sell Iranian weapons. The list includes Hezbollah in Lebanon,
which Iran supports, and firms from China, Malaysia, Mexico and Singapore. The
sanctions bar any US aid, government contracts or export licenses to the named
entities for two years.
Ready to talk
Initially scheduled in Vienna, the meeting between Larijani and Solana has been
switched to Ankara, the Turkish capital, after a bid by the Turkish government
to play host and, perhaps, act as mediator, per reports from a Turkish paper.
In a press conference on Monday, Larijani was asked about the choice of host
country and he meaningfully responded that "Turkey is between Iran and
Brussels". This is a definite plus for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party faces an uphill battle in upcoming
elections.
Having played a small but noticeable role in the release of British sailors and
marines from Iranian custody last month, Erdogan can now take credit for trying
to close the gap between Iran and Europe. This gives him an edge over his
secularist opponents, who cannot claim such privileged relations with the
Islamic Republic.
Of course, much depends on the outcome of the talks, and the United States'
willingness to sign on to any agreement or understanding reached between Iran
and the EU.
Solana and Larijani met several times last year, in Vienna, Brussels and
Berlin, and reportedly agreed on 11 points until "some adventurist countries
meddled", to paraphrase Larijani. The question is, of course, whether or not
the US, which has blessed the talks this time, in sharp contrast to its serious
misgivings last year, will remain consistent.
"The US must speak with one voice," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Mohammad-Ali Hosseini has demanded - a fair request seeing how the White House
and the State Department often have different tones toward Iran.
According to Kazem Anbarlooee, editor of the conservative daily Resalat, "The
Larijani-Solana talks and the summit in Sharm al-Sheikh [in Egypt] influence
each other."
The Egyptian summit, on Iraq's security, scheduled for early next month, is
still under a cloud of uncertainty. According to Larijani, "We have ambiguities
regarding Sharm al-Sheikh, both in terms of content and form. For any country
that wants to enter into a process, the procedure and content should be well
defined."
Iran has reacted sharply to a recent statement of a US State Department
official that the summit "will be successful even without the participation by
Iran". On the other hand, an Iranian parliamentarian, Mohammad Nabi Roodaki,
has stated that "there are signs of the [coming] release of the five diplomats"
held by the US in Iraq. If true, this will remove a major roadblock to the
participation of Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the Sharm
al-Sheikh meeting, which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to
attend.
Contours of Iran-EU diplomacy
At a time when hawkish politicians in the US are pressuring the EU to freeze
$18 billion in credit to European companies doing business with Iran, and with
the EU adopting the harsher sanctions, there are limits to what can be
accomplished by the Solana-Larijani talks as long as there is no breakthrough
on the thorny issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program.
Solana has expressed hope "to begin resumption of the talks that we left some
time ago to see if we can move towards negotiations". Yet the bulk of his chore
may be toward his own European institution, which has ignored Solana's
occasional hints that stopping or reversing Iran's mastery of the nuclear-fuel
cycle is futile and alternative paths must be explored.
"It is to Europe's advantage to improve the climate and the groundwork for
mutual cooperation in the future," Larijani stated in his press conference. He
added meaningfully that despite talks of sanctions, Iran and OMV have signed a
major agreement of strategic economic importance.
The Iran-OMV deal is yet another strike against the sanctions regime imposed by
the US. According to US Congressman Brad Sherman, since 1999 Iran has attracted
more than $100 billion in foreign investment in its energy sector, proving that
the United States' policy toward Iran is not working. One may add that it also
shows that the contradictory policy of the EU is not either.
From Iran's vantage point, it has strong leverage going into the talks in
Turkey and Egypt, by demonstrating its "swift advance" on the enrichment
process, thus making it harder for the West to seek a complete halt. Also, Iran
has gained diplomatically with the EU as a result of the successful resolution
of the sailor crisis, at least by putting America's key European ally, Britain,
on the defensive.
And in both neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq, where European forces are on the
ground, the situation is desperate enough to call for careful diplomacy toward
Iran (which can play spoiler as much as contributor).
Results and prospects
"Iran is prepared to provide the most cooperation in the area of control and
monitoring" of its nuclear program, the powerful editor of Resalat has stated,
a position reiterated by Larijani, who has said: "If they are concerned about
diversion [to a weapons program], the issue is so important as to become the
focus of future negotiations. We would like that others would have no concern
about Iran's peaceful nuclear activities."
Calling for a "different methodology" to pursue results in the nuclear talks,
Larijani has at the same time declared Iran's "readiness to step in the path of
cooperation". He has dismissed a report from Russia that as long as the nuclear
stalemate continues, the power plant in Bushehr in Iran that the Russians are
building will not be completed.
Yet that may be the price that Iran will have to pay if Russia and other
members of the UN's "5+1" - the Permanent Five Security Council members (the
United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China) plus Germany -
escalate pressure on Iran in the face of Tehran's defiance of UN resolutions
over ceasing uranium enrichment.
Russia has already committed itself to the charted path of the Security
Council, and President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to shift course at a time he
is cultivating relations with the EU and repairing damage with Washington.
Iran's challenge is precisely how to find a suitable formula whereby its
nuclear rights can be maintained while, at the same time, it shows a greater
deference than hitherto observed toward UN resolutions.
Failed talks between Larijani and Solana will only harden the resolve of the
5+1 to toughen sanctions, whereas a mini-breakthrough will give Russia the
space necessary to maneuver at the UN and, perhaps, make a pitch for returning
Iran's dossier to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear
watchdog.
In the absence of serious signs of a new flexible approach, Iran's nuclear
diplomacy runs the risk of alienating not only the EU but also Russia and
China, and thus failing to reverse the negative impact of sanctions on Iran's
economy. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes, and the new circumstances
demand a deeper level of flexibility from Iran than hitherto observed.
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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