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US moves towards engaging Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar
The coming few weeks are going to be critical in the standoff between the
United States and Iran as the upheaval in the Middle East reaches a turning
point. And all options do remain on the table, as the George W Bush
administration likes to say, from military conflict to a de facto acceptance of
Iran's standing as the region's dominant power.
One thing is clear. The time for oratorical exercises is ending. A phase of
subtle, reciprocal, conceptual diplomatic actions may be beginning. An
indication of this is available in the two radio interviews given by Bush last
weekend and beamed into Iran, exclusively aimed at reaching out to the Iranian
public on the Persian New Year Nauroz.
Significantly, ahead of Bush's interviews, former secretary of state
Henry Kissinger spoke. Kissinger, incidentally, is a foreign policy advisor to
the Republican Party's presidential nominee, Senator John McCain. For the first
time, Kissinger called for unconditional talks with Iran. That is a remarkable
shift in his position. Kissinger used to maintain that the legacy of the
hostage crisis during the Iranian revolution in 1979 and "the messianic aspect
of the Iranian regime" represented huge obstacles to diplomacy, and combining
with "Persian imperial tradition" and "contemporary Islamic fervor", a
collision with the US became almost unavoidable. Interestingly, Kissinger's
call was also echoed by Dennis Ross, who used to be a key negotiator in the
Middle East, and carries much respect in Israel.
Bush's interviews with the government-supported Voice of America and Radio
Farda, especially the latter, were a masterly piece in political overture. He
held out none of the customary threats against Iran. This time, there was not
even the trademark insistence that "all options are on the table". There were
no barbs aimed at President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Least of all, there were no
calls for a regime change in Tehran. Bush simply said something that he might
as well have said about Saudi Arabia or Egypt. As he put it, "So this is a
regime and a society that's got a long way to go [in reform]."
Bush spoke of the evolution of the Iranian regime's character rather than its
overthrow. The criticism, if any, of Iranian government policies approached
nowhere near the diatribes of the past. There was none of the boastful claims
that the US would work toward isolating Iran in its region and beyond. In fact,
Bush acknowledged, "There's a chance that the US and Iran can reconcile their
differences, but the [Iranian] government is going to have to make different
choices. And one [such choice] is to verifiably suspend the enrichment of
uranium, at which time there is a way forward."
Bush assured that in return the US would be "reasonable in our desire to see to
it that you have civilian nuclear power without enabling the government to
enrich [uranium]". Here again, he pointed out that the problem is that "they
[Iranian governments] have not told the truth in the past, and therefore it's
very difficult for the United States and the rest of the world - or much of the
rest of the world - to trust the Iranian government when it comes to telling
the truth".
Bush elaborated, "Well, one thing is to reiterate my belief that the Iranians
should have a civilian nuclear-power program. It's in their right to have it.
The problem is that the government cannot be trusted to enrich the uranium
because, one, they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one
now - who knows? And, secondly, they've declared they want to have a nuclear
program to destroy people - some - in the Middle East. And that's unacceptable
and it's unacceptable in the world. But what is acceptable to me is to work
with a nation like Russia to provide the fuel so that the plant can go forward.
Which therefore shows that the Iranian government doesn't need to learn to
enrich."
Arguably, Bush's interviews signify that "unconditional talks" may have begun
with Iran. Everything - almost everything - he said indeed had a caveat. But
then, isn't that how negotiations commence without loss of face between any two
stubborn adversaries?
Any number of reasons could be attributed to the Bush administration finally
jettisoning a war strategy toward Iran. First and foremost comes the unbearable
financial cost of waging a war with Iran, which would have to be underwritten
by China, Saudi Arabia and Japan. As Nobel Laureate and US economist Joseph
Stiglitz stated last week, the impact of the subprime crisis in the US will
persist for two to three years, and only after that time could the US economy
hope to recover. Stiglitz blamed the Iraq war for dragging down the US economy.
"It has proven to be an enormous error," he said, stressing that the Iraq war
has been "a disaster in every way".
If in 2001 the US spent about US$4.4 billion a month on military operations in
Iraq, the figure had jumped to $8.4 billion by 2007. By the end of the current
year, the financial costs of the Iraq war could rise above $650 billion. The
human costs have been equally unacceptable. The number of US troops fallen in
Iraq now exceeds 4,000. Over 29,000 soldiers have been wounded. The brand
"America" has taken a beating that will take years to repair. The horrific
images of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Haditha, Mahmudiya and Bagram
will linger in memory for a long time.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll in March shows that 63% of Americans feel the
Iraq war was not worth fighting and only a slight majority of Americans believe
now that the war will one day succeed. Clearly, there is no stomach for yet
another war in the remaining term of the Bush presidency.
Equally, everything is up in the air on the warfronts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Bush administration has its hands full. The sudden visit of US Deputy
Secretary of State John Negroponte, accompanied by Assistant Secretary of State
for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher, to Islamabad on Tuesday,
no sooner than the newly elected Pakistani government assumed office,
underscores the gravity of the crisis facing the Bush administration in
Afghanistan.
What is at stake now is Pakistan's willingness to continue as an ally in the
"war on terror". At the very minimum, the terms of engagement will have to be
renegotiated, which, of course, is going to take time and a lot of patience and
give-and-take. That is, assuming the Pakistani leadership will show the grace
to take the Bush administration as anything other than a lame duck.
This became apparent when soon after meeting the US officials in Islamabad on
Tuesday, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif - who is emerging as Pakistan's
number one politician - alleged publicly that the people of Pakistan are being
"mercilessly" killed in the name of the "war on terror".
"We should not kill our own people for the sake of others," he said. He sought
a review of the entire war strategy. "The basic issue is that just as the US
wants to be safe from terrorism, we don't want to see bombs and missiles flying
in our villages, we want our people to be safe and we don't want blood to flow
in our streets," Sharif insisted.
He was virtually endorsing a call by the Pashtun nationalist Awami National
Party, which is forming the government in the sensitive North-West Frontier
Province bordering Afghanistan, for a negotiated solution to the alienation in
Pakistan's tribal areas. Clearly, with hardly a week to go for the 60th
anniversary summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in
Bucharest, Romania, the agenda of the Afghan war has become much more than an
issue of the alliance's force levels.
The status of the Iraq war, too, hangs in balance. After what appeared to be a
descending calm, the security situation is showing signs of fragility. Sunday's
mortar strikes on Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, which is home to the Iraqi
government and the US Embassy, underline the pretence behind the Bush
administration's claims of "success" of the so-called "surge" strategy. It does
seem as if someone just thought of shaking up the dream world that Washington
sought to create.
Again, the southern Basra region has gone under curfew following fighting among
Shi'ite political parties and their militias. Most ominous, the Mahdi Army,
loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, is showing signs of becoming restive. Its
self-imposed ceasefire was one main reason why the graph of violence had dipped
in recent months.
The Bush administration's priority will be to leave it to the next president in
the White House to decide on any major reduction of troops in Iraq. But that
means the Iraqi situation will remain in focus all through the period of the
presidential campaign till
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