Page 2 of 2 A new Chinese red line
over Iran By M K Bhadrakumar
the relevance of their shared experience dealing with North Korea to the
potential crisis with Iran could be timely and historically expedient."
US leaves allies in the lurch
Curiously, the NIE echoes the line of thinking that the Chinese leaders put
across to Brzezinski. But it leaves the US's allies with a lot of egg on their
faces. Not only the US's European allies but
also its Asian partners, like Japan, India and Australia, went out on a limb to
demonstrate their willingness to toe Washington's line on the Iran question.
Britain and France will be severely embarrassed by the u-turn in the NIE. They
were hardliners. Germany, in comparison, has been the weakest link. The
mounting US pressure on Germany will now ease. On the whole, the European
allies will now be even more lukewarm about pursuing a confrontational path
with regard to Iran.
Among Washington's Asian partners, it is India which will be the hardest hit.
India's Iran policy is in a shambles. Amazingly, it now transpires that Delhi
succumbed to US pressure to curtail banking links with Iran. Delhi will be
hard-pressed to claw its way back into friendship with Tehran. There is a
stunned silence among the strategic community and media elite in Delhi, who
used to disparage the "mad mullahs" in Tehran. The NIE has been a nasty hit
when there is much criticism already in public opinion over Delhi's pro-US
foreign policy.
Compared to the US's Asian partners, its Middle Eastern allies find themselves
far better placed to cope with the fallouts of the NIE. They heave a sigh of
relief that the threat of war descending on the region may now lift. The
pro-West Arab regimes should feel relieved that they kept a dual-track approach
by also engaging Tehran actively. The changes in Saudi foreign policy in the
post-September 11, 2001, period in the direction of more diversified external
relationships included a judicious approach of keeping lines of communication
open to Tehran at the highest levels of leadership, no matter the US-Iran
tensions.
Therefore, the GCC's decision to invite Iran for its summit for the first time
goes beyond a symbolic gesture. What remains to be seen is the extent to which
the GCC kept Washington informed in advance about its overture to Tehran.
Conceivably, the GCC consulted Washington. If so, we are witnessing the
foundation-laying ceremony for a new regional security architecture in the
Persian Gulf region.
Washington's choice
The NIE poses Washington with a difficult choice. Prominent neo-conservative
thinker Robert Kagan, who is close to the US administration, starkly posed the
dilemma: "With its policy tools broken, the Bush administration can sit around
isolated for the next year. Or it can seize the initiative, and do the next
administration a favor, by opening direct talks with Tehran."
Kagan argues a strong case for negotiations and suggests an agenda of intrusive
IAEA inspections and monitoring of Iran's nuclear facilities, and underlines
that any talks with Tehran should be wide-ranging and include such thorny
issues as terrorism and al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, and of course Iraq.
Meanwhile, Bush and Rice have kept up a road show that the NIE changed nothing.
Such grandstanding doesn't come as surprise. Washington will strive to
negotiate with Tehran from a position of strength. Also, it is far from clear
how the NIE shock waves play out on Iran's complicated political landscape. The
Bush administration will be closely watching for signals from Tehran.
Ahmadinejad certainly comes out a winner on the Iranian political heap. He
astutely played his cards. By appointing a tough negotiator like Jalili, he
ensured that his position that Iran would not stop its uranium-enrichment
program would be put across more firmly than before. The West now realizes that
the stance carries conviction and is rooted on a principle that is difficult to
counter, namely, that as long as Iran honors its commitments under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has no reason to forgo its rights either.
A logjam has resulted insofar as UN Security Council resolution 1747, adopted
in March, insists on suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing-related
activities by Iran. That leaves two choices. First, if Iran stubbornly refuses
to curtail its uranium enrichment, then the Security Council ought to impose
tougher sanctions. But China and Russia will not agree. The alternative is
embarrassing and precedent setting - the Security Council backtracks from 1747,
admitting a mistake. Iran has essentially challenged the US's untenable
assumption that it is incumbent on the NPT's non-weapon signatories to prove
the peaceful nature of their programs.
On balance, Ahmadinejad has won. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said recently
that it no longer makes sense to insist Iran should stop enrichment since its
nuclear program is already far advanced. Washington has to learn to live with
Iran, just as it did with North Korea, despite the latter actually possessing
nuclear weapons. No wonder, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier
Solana, who met with Jalili last week, plainly admitted he had no more
proposals to make to Iran, nor did he think Iran would resume nuclear talks.
Putin, too, acknowledged this reality when he referred at his meeting with
Jalili in Moscow on Tuesday to the "intensive contacts at all levels" lately
between Moscow and Tehran and "stepped-up cooperation on all fronts", and
added, "I am very pleased to note the intensification of contacts between your
country and the IAEA. We welcome the expansion of cooperation and expect that
all your nuclear programs will be open, transparent and conducted under the
supervision of this international organization."
But it is unlikely Tehran will brag too much. Once the dust settles on the NIE,
cool stocktaking will follow in Tehran. The diplomatic statements at
responsible levels so far - by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the head
of the majlis (Parliament)foreign policy committee, Ala'eddin Broujerdi - have
been mature and reasonable.
The highly respected former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans has
assessed after a recent visit to Tehran and meetings with top Iranian officials
that the outlines of a deal are emerging and the NIE "gives us the chance to
break out of this impasse [of Iran insisting on its right to enrich]". He
suggested that the "red line" should no longer be the issue of enrichment, but
could be between the "civilian and military capability" of NPT signatories, and
if such a new red line would hold, "it would not matter whether Iran was
capable of producing its own nuclear fuel".
Evans added, "That [red] line will hold if we can get Iran to accept a highly
intrusive monitoring, verification and inspection regime" with additional
safeguards, and if Iran could be persuaded to "stretch out over time the
development of its enrichment capability and to have any industrial-scale
activity conducted not by Iran but by an international consortium".
Evan assesses that Iran is "capable of being persuaded" if incentives include
the lifting of sanctions and normalization of relations with the US. Evans
concluded: "This is a country seething with both national pride and resentment
against past humiliations, and it wants to cut a regional and global figure by
proving its sophisticated technological capability. One only wishes that
something less sensitive than the nuclear fuel cycle had been chosen to make
that point."
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service
for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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