Page 2 of 2 Iran's long road to Sharm
al-Sheikh By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
will de-escalate the situation. In
turn, this poses a policy dilemma for Iran. Tehran
is publicly committed to a timetable, yet it has
vested interests in Iraq that may not be served if
this is implemented prematurely.
"Right
now, poverty and economic hardship [are] just as
important as security for the Iraqi people, and
yet we talk about security without mentioning
economic security," an Iranian analyst at the
Tehran
think-tank Center for Strategic Research told the
author.
This is apt criticism in light of
a recent report in the New York Times that seven
out of eight reconstruction projects in Iraq, such
as hospitals and power plants, have remained idle.
As one of Iraq's main economic partners, Iran can
do a lot to improve its economic security, and
this depends in no small measure on a parallel
improvement in Iraq's security as well as US-Iran
relations, which remain tense over a host of
issues.
One of Iran's main challenges is
how to broker peace between the increasingly
warring Shi'ite factions, particularly between
Muqtada al-Sadr and his (faction-ridden) Mehdi
Army and the Shi'ite factions in the government
that disapprove of Muqtada's decision to split
from the government - on the issue of a timetable.
Iran's insistence on a timetable at
Sharm-al Sheikh will translate into even closer
ties to the Mehdi Army, which Iran counts on in
the event of a showdown with the US on the nuclear
question.
Muqtada's breakaway from the
Maliki government is inherently a dangerous
proposition, as it might facilitate the demise of
Maliki, who has a weaker base of support and whose
relative impotence was vividly demonstrated when
his objections to the "security wall" being built
in Baghdad went unheard by the US military.
According to one Iranian analyst,
Muqtada's "Islamist nationalism" has made him more
attractive as a government leader a few years from
now. But that future may never come if Iraq's
political meltdown continues and preemptive
actions such as the security summit do not achieve
any major breakthrough.
To return to
Iran's foreign policy, a commentator on the
semi-official website Baztab.com has lamented the
friction between Mottaki and Larijani and
criticized the "weaknesses" of Iran's foreign
policy. He went as far as to claim that "the
Islamic Republic is experiencing one of its
weakest periods in the realm of foreign policy and
economics".
The article does not propose
any solutions and blames Tehran's foreign-policy
machinery for the three United Nations Security
Council resolutions against Iran over its nuclear
program, without asking whether an alternative
policy short of succumbing to external pressure on
Iran to forfeit its nuclear rights would have made
any difference.
In foreign policy, a
short-term loss can prove a small price for a
long-term gain - and on the nuclear front Iran
appears to have made some headway, at least with
the Europeans. This is in light of Solana's
statement that should Iran meet the concerns of
the international community, then its rights under
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should be
fully respected.
This is a discreet call
for coming to terms with Iran's mastery of the
nuclear-fuel cycle, which has apparently begun to
sink in with Washington policymakers as well.
Certain US State Department officials have begun
to talk of the possibility of allowing "a limited
number of centrifuges" by Iran (see Cracks in the Iran nuclear
stalemate, Asia Times Online, April
17).
A litmus test for Iran's regional and
global diplomacy, the Sharm al-Sheikh meeting is
an occasion for Mottaki to break major ice with
the United States without at the same time
appearing to be appeasing US hegemony.
A
confluence of factors pertaining to Iran's
national, Islamist, regional and international
concerns operate as Iran takes the fateful step of
participating in this international forum by
sidestepping its profound hesitations.
Having cleared some of the potential
landmines with its pre-conference diplomacy, Iran,
still weary of "conference entrapment", is
resorting to shuttle and telephone diplomacy to
preempt any backlashes at or after the conference.
The road to Sharm al-Sheikh is paved with
not only ambiguities, but also ambivalences - of
intentions, and on the latter Tehran has a heavy
chore of self-scrutiny and transparency.
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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