Officially, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, is
authorized to negotiate with Iran on behalf of the "Iran Six" nations that
include the United States, France, China, Russia, England and Germany, yet one
would not know that seeing how Washington constantly undermines Solana's
efforts toward the Iranians.
Call it bad-faith diplomacy or apprehensions about outsourcing Iran policy, or
a basic distrust of Solana's intentions, whatever it is it does not bode well
for the unity of "Iran Six" diplomacy, in light of repeated episodes of
counter-productive US actions that contradict Solana's Iran moves.
Two years ago, the White House deliberately torpedoed the
noticeable progress in dialogue between Solana and Iran's nuclear negotiator at
the time, Ali Larijani, by forcing a United Nations sanctions resolution
precisely at the time Solana and Larijani had tentatively reached an agreement
on some 10 items on their nuclear plate. This week, the spoiler was the White
House's premature announcement of new European Union sanctions on Iran that
were explicitly denied by Solana's office. At the same time, the George W Bush
administration presented a united front with British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, issuing a stern warning to Iran and supporting Britain's plans to impose
new sanctions against Tehran.
Worse, Bush must surely have angered Solana by claiming, just as Solana was
delivering a package of incentives to Iranian officials, that he was
"discouraged" that Iran had rejected it, this when Iranian officials were
promising to seriously consider it and reply after a thorough study. The
package relates to incentives for Iran to stop its nuclear program, which many
believe is being directed towards producing weapons.
None of this makes sense, except as reflective of a built-in US ambivalence
about Solana's mission and Washington's mixed feelings about the likely results
of a breakthrough in the Iran nuclear standoff. Said otherwise, overt signs of
US bad-faith diplomacy raise serious questions about whether or not Washington
is really interested in resolving this crisis.
After all, this is to some extent a crisis of opportunity for the US to pursue
its "Middle East realignment" and to perpetuate the security dependency of
Persian Gulf Arab oil states, not to mention the interests of Israel to deflect
attention away from its mishandling of Palestinian issues as well as its
nuclear arsenal.
Clearly, given the Iran "incentive package" that invokes the idea of a nuclear
weapons free zone in the Middle East, should Iran and the international
community reach a mutually acceptable compromise, then a new level of heat on
Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and subject its
clandestine nuclear program to international inspections will be generated.
Interestingly, in the letter from the foreign ministers of the "Iran Six"
accompanying the incentive package, also signed by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Iran is assured about support for its civilian nuclear
program as well as regional security, should Tehran comply with the demand to
suspend its uranium-enrichment activities. This is a welcome step forward since
it is the first time the US has made such an explicit pledge toward Iran, which
is further reassured by the package's reference to the said countries' pledge
to "reaffirm" their UN obligations to respect Iran's territorial integrity.
Strangely, this seems an ocean away from Washington's otherwise hostile tone
toward Iran, and as long as this awkward "double speak" continues, the US's
Iran policy will be mired in confusion and incoherence, definitely leaving a
negative legacy for Bush, whose every pronouncement on Iran indicates his
fidelity to the "axis of evil" paradigm that linked Iraq, Iran and North Korea
as world threats.
No wonder, then, that no one in Bush's administration has echoed Solana's
sentiment, stated in his Tehran visit, that the "Iran Six" nations have a
positive impression of Iran's own package of proposals, that was given to the
group last month. On the contrary, various White House and State Department
officials have tersely dismissed that package as a mere propaganda ploy.
Henceforth, if Solana is insisting on garnering a positive response from Tehran
to the incentive package and on achieving a timely breakthrough, he must assure
Tehran that he has the full confidence of the US and that the US indeed shares
his sentiments. That means US officials must come forward echoing Solana's
statements, particularly with respect to Iran's own package which, according to
Solana, contains "common points" with the six's incentive package.
Instead, what we are observing from Washington is the old schizoid behavior of
taking away with one hand what has been deferred to Solana's authority with the
other hand, as if the White House is secretly afraid of Solana's success, which
would definitely set a new benchmark in European post-Cold War diplomacy. This
in light of the European Parliament's recent call for the return of Iran's
nuclear file to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rather than the
United Nations. There are certain limits in the US-EU front against Iran, which
is probably why Iran has just announced that it is not withdrawing its assets
from French banks, contrary to earlier reports from Tehran.
After all, compared with the US, which has shut out its companies from doing
business with Iran, the EU remains Iran's number one trade partner and the
vested interests of hundreds of European companies and the EU's energy
dependency on Iran militate against carbon-copying the US's belligerent
approach toward Iran. Indeed, this much is clear in Germany's insistence on a
diplomatic resolution of the Iran nuclear crisis.
Problems with the incentive package
Meanwhile, despite being billed as a "generous" offer to Iran, the sum of
carrots thrown at Iran in the incentive package leaves a lot to be desired. On
one hand, the package's reference to provisions for guarantees of nuclear fuel
delivery to Iran implicitly denote a long-term suspension of Tehran's
enrichment activities, which does not quite sit well with Solana's statement
that they want a suspension for the duration of talks.
On the other hand, conditioning their support of Iran's civil aviation, that is
in desperate need of spare parts endangering Iranian civilians, on Iran's
acceptance of the nuclear demands does not make sense either as these should be
treated as unlinked issues.
Nor is it logical to withhold the affirmation of their UN obligations to
refrain from threatening Iran's territorial integrity pending the outcome of
nuclear negotiations. The "Iran Six" are obligated to peaceful settlement of
international conflicts and respect of another member's sovereign rights and,
therefore, the incentive package actually reinforces the image of a rogue "Iran
Six" precisely when they pay lip service to the rules of the international
community in their package to Iran.
Added to this is the incoherence of the package's repeated reference to Iran's
nuclear rights under the NPT, as if the "Iran Six" have any choice but to
respect those rights or that this is something to barter with Iran. The package
contradicts the rule-oriented logic of "Iran Six" diplomacy by, simultaneously,
requesting from Iran to forfeit aspects of its "inalienable rights" pertaining
to nuclear fuel production simply by claiming that there is insufficient
confidence in Iran's peaceful nuclear intentions.
The NPT regime and its implementation arm - the IAEA - have robust instruments
in place for providing such confidence in the form of intrusive inspections and
verifications, and this means that the "Iran Six" diplomacy must be firmly
anchored in a legal framework of reference, that is, the NPT regime. The irony
of seeking Iran's compliance with international norms while turning a blind eye
to those very rules constitutes the package's main flaw.
As for Iran's self-declared "red line", the ultimate red line is Iran's
national (security) interests and that should be the guiding standard around
which the current Iranian debate of whether to accept or to reject the
incentive package coalesces. This demands diplomatic flexibility and apt
maneuverability on Iran's part, that needs to take into consideration the
damages to its civilian nuclear program and its long-term energy and other
needs in the event the present crisis drags on and, worse, deteriorates as a
result of further sanctions against Iran. The well-being of a whole generation
of Iran is at stake and there is simply no room for errors.
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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