Page 2 of 2 A grand bargain Russia
might just
refuse By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
to what almost all Iranian pundits
agree, that Russia is genuinely feeling the heat
of America's military pressure by the
missile-defense system in question. Some are
openly hoping for a widening in the
Moscow-Washington rift over this and related
matters, such as Iran's nuclear program.
This may not be an entirely unfounded
hope, in light of a recent statement by Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the United
States' planned defense system in Eastern Europe could
"complicate" the peaceful
resolution of Iran's nuclear crisis.
Echoing Lavrov, some members of Iran's
Majlis (parliament) have called for a strong
Iranian response to Putin's suggestion of forming
a partnership with the US in manning the radar
system in Azerbaijan, in sharp contrast to
commentaries by various pundits who claim that
this would pose no threat to Iran.
On the
contrary, there is a strong sentiment in Tehran
that any US-Russian military cooperation against
their imagined, or real, threat from Iran is a
minus development, negatively affecting Iran's
security and geostrategic calculus. Still, this
worry is tempered by the safe bet that Russia and
the US are moving apart, militarily and otherwise,
and the chances of their reaching a critical
agreement such as that proposed by Putin are, in
fact, minimal.
For the moment, though,
what worries Iran even more is the alarming news
of Turkey's troop buildup near Iraq and the
ramifications of a full-scale invasion of northern
Iraq by Turkey's army to root out Kurdish rebels
and to nip in the bud the post-Saddam Hussein
accelerated momentum for an independent Kurdish
state.
The crushing of the
"quasi-independent" Kurdish Iraqis will not be
easy, particularly when and if Iran intervenes on
behalf of the well-armed and disciplined Kurdish
Peshmerga.
Why is Iran so worried about a
Turkish invasion of Iraq? The consensus among
experts in Iran appears to be partly related to
Israel's strategic relations with Turkey and its
influence on Turkish generals. "Israel operates by
the chaos theory. The more chaos, the more
regional wars, the better," a Tehran
political-science professor has told the author.
The argument is that Israel is prodding
Ankara to go into Iraq not so much to reverse or
retard the Kurdish state-making process but to
accelerate that process. This is given the near
certainty that Iraq's Kurds would declare
independence once they were attacked without
receiving any meaningful support from the Baghdad
government, currently crippled by the insurgency
and factional infighting.
The problem with
that interpretation, however, is that it gives
Israel too much credit for decisions the Turkish
Army and political leaders may soon make based on
their own calculations of risks to Turkey's
national-security interests.
Given
Russia's misgivings about Turkey's past
interventions in the Caucasus and Central Asia,
any Turkish adventure in Iraq would help the cause
of Iran-Russia cooperation, no matter how the
Iranians now criticize Russia's "unjustified
procrastination" in completing the Bushehr nuclear
power plant in Iran.
The containment of
pan-Turkism or Turkish expansionism may soon
become a common goal of Moscow and Tehran,
bridging the gaps between them precisely at a time
when Washington is aggressively trying to steer
Russia against Iran, by twisting its arm via the
missile-defense system. Contrary to Nye, such
coercive tactics may backfire and illuminate not
so much the "soft power", but rather the "negative
power" of the rogue superpower.
Revising Iran's 'two-plus-one' security
formula Reversing gears on regional
insecurity, it may be worthwhile to revisit a
security initiative by Iran's former national
security chief, Hassan Rowhani, which he spelled
out in 2004 - Iran-Russia-Turkey security
cooperation.
Although this bemused both
Moscow and Ankara, it was not a fleeting tissue of
imagination and, in a subsequent communication
with Rowhani's deputy, Hosein Mousavian, this
author was informed that Iran was serious about
this formula and considered it a step in the right
direction with respect to regional security
issues.
So far, Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad and his foreign-policy advisers have
stayed away from Rowhani's idea. But given the
recent evolution of Russia-Turkey relations and
the growing consensus among many experts in the
region regarding the need for new, and creative,
security initiatives, the time for Iran's
president to embrace this formula might have
arrived.
There is no reason Russia cannot
cooperate on security matters with Iran,
bilaterally, trilaterally and multilaterally
(through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization)
when it has offered to do so with Washington. As
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated
recently, Iran and Russia have a great deal in
common and should enhance their cooperation. It is
up to Russia to heed the call.
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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