"We have not dropped or added any preconditions."
- United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
This announcement by Clinton that the US has not changed its position on Iran's
nuclear issue has dismayed Tehran's politicians. They were counting on a
meaningful follow-up to President Barack Obama's explicit hint in his recent
speech in Prague that Washington was willing to recognize Iran's peaceful
nuclear program under "rigorous inspections".
Robert Wood, a US Department of State spokesperson, has insisted that the US's
objectives remains the same - "the goal is
suspension" of Iran's uranium-enrichment activities.
That is an immensely difficult, if not an impossible objective, in light of
this week's celebrations of the fourth National Day of Nuclear Technology in
Iran and Tehran's insistence that the issue of suspension "is an old issue", to
paraphrase Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy director of Iran's Atomic Organization.
Iran says it has a right to nuclear development as a signatory to the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, and discontinuing uranium-enrichment is a red line it
will not cross.
Yet from the point of view of the US and its key European allies, above all
France and Britain, they want new sanctions on Iran if it does not yield to UN
Security Council demands that it suspend enrichment. Several rounds of UN
sanctions have already been placed on Iran, including some by the US
unilaterally.
Paris in particular is unrelenting. While welcoming Tehran's embrace of the
"Iran Six" nations' call for a new round of nuclear talks, France at the same
time is calling on Iran to halt all uranium-enrichment activities throughout
any such talks. The "Iran Six" nations dealing with Iran's nuclear case are the
United States, France, China, Russia, Britain and Germany.
The "freeze-for-freeze" proposal, first invoked by the head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamad ElBaradei, a few years ago,
has not lost its appeal, despite Iran's rapid progress in the area of the
nuclear fuel cycle. Saeedi, in an interview with the Iranian press, stated: "Of
course, in order to accept this matter a great deal of conditions must be set
up." Under the "freeze-for-freeze", Iran would for six weeks or so stop its
uranium-enrichment activities in exchange for the US's suspension of any more
sanctions.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has stated that Iran is on the
verge of delivering a "new package" for dialogue that would reflect the
country's ideas for "resolving global issues". Last week, in a telephone
conference with the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana,
Iran's National Security Advisor Saeed Jalili alluded to this package, which
Iran hopes will lead to the end of the nuclear standoff.
From Tehran's vantage point, the momentum in any nuclear talks is on Iran's
side and a confident Ahmadinejad has told the German magazine Der Spiegel that
at least 10 representatives at the UN Security Council have told Iran that in
the past they backed sanctions resolutions against Iran solely due to political
pressure by "a certain government".
So, the question at this crucial pre-talk stage is: what is the realistic
expectation of the "Iran Six"? Iran has installed more than 7,000 centrifuges,
adopted a new generation of centrifuges and opened new nuclear fuel plants.
This would make Iranian compliance with Western demands prohibitively costly,
both financially and politically.
Something has to give, yet the Obama administration is bombarded by pressures
from various corners to adopt a "tough-minded" approach toward Iran, instead of
showing more flexibility and compromise, just as Obama did fleetingly in Prague
a week ago.
But, even Nicholas Burns, former president George W Bush's point man on Iran's
nuclear issue, who is now counseling a tough Obama policy on this subject, has
openly admitted that the Bush administration constantly made serious threats
against Iran without seeing any results.
Also, it is a sure bet that increased regional instability will be a
side-effect of any new attempt by the "Iran Six" to escalate pressure on Iran.
This is untimely since the US and Iran are slowly making headway on closing
their gaps on Afghanistan, Pakistan and on counter-terrorism.
The latter is reflected in Iran's participation in a number of international
conferences, including the one-day conference in Tokyo this Friday on financial
assistance to Pakistan. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and the
US's special envoy on Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, were due to
meet on the sidelines of this donors' meeting.
Iran and Pakistan are on the verge of inking a final agreement on the
much-anticipated Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, also known as the IPI or
Peace Pipeline, a 2,775-kilometer link to deliver natural gas from Iran to
Pakistan and India. This is accompanied by reinforced attempts by Islamabad to
bolster Pakistan's trade and non-trade relations with Iran, per a recent
statement by the speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly, Fahmida Mitza.
This is a good omen for Afghanistan, under siege by rising insurgency and a
mini-crisis over elections scheduled for August. A Tehran-Islamabad-Kabul
triumvirate could go a long way in addressing Afghanistan's stability woes;
Iran has offered to train Afghanistan's police and will likely increase its
economic aid to Kabul in the coming months.
For the Europeans who have balked at the idea of more major troop commitments
to Afghanistan, the news regarding Iran's enhanced cooperation with both
Afghanistan and Pakistan has yet to be fully appreciated - they persist in
treating Iran in the same manner, using the old language of threats and
ultimatums. This is out of step with the logic of a new approach and the
results it could bring. (See
Europe out of step with US over Iran Asia Times Online, March 26,
2009.)
Some European politicians have echoed the sentiment of Israeli politicians that
Obama's overture toward Iran is simply "tactical and temporary". That is, it is
a prelude for a tougher approach once the cycle of this softer stance has
fizzled out in the thickness of the White House's political frustration with
the "obstinate" Iranians.
"We are neither obstinate nor gullible," Ahmadinejad told Der Spiegel,
insisting that Iran followed a realistic foreign policy. Intent on winning
re-election in the June presidential elections, Ahmadinejad knows well the
importance of sounding pragmatic and flexible on important issues of national
interest. This is in light of the accusation by his chief rival, former prime
minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, that he has followed "extremist" foreign policy
behavior.
Yet, the final arbiter of national policies is Iran's spiritual leader, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in his latest speech before the country's
armed forces vowed that Iran "will never submit to the threats of the world's
bullying powers". He also rebuffed recent calls by Obama on Iran to rejoin the
world community by stating that "the advice of returning to the world order is
tantamount to submission ... to an unjust world order".
Clearly, Iran continues on its revolutionary script as a revisionist power
determined to change the world status quo, instead of accepting it as a fait
accompli. That is one reason why Iran has increasingly tied the talks on its
nuclear program to the issue of disarmament, a popular subject for most
developing nations that are participants in the Non-Aligned Movement and which
are openly critical of the lack of progress on disarmament.
The hard truth is that a resolution of Iran's nuclear standoff is no closer,
despite the feeble, and contradictory, signs of a new "smart power" approach by
Washington.
The only real hope is that as a result of progress on regional cooperation, the
two sides will find new venues for tackling their differences on the nuclear
issue, and in no small measure that rests on the diplomatic skills and acumen
of Washington's and Tehran's negotiators.
Washington has already said that any talks do not have to be preceded by Iran
suspending its enrichment activities. The next logical step is to drop this as
a demand at the negotiation table, since it is an invitation to a stalemate.
Unfortunately, as Clinton and other US officials cited above have made it
abundantly clear, that is a leap forward that the US government is simply
unprepared and unwilling to take.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry,
click here. His
latest book,
Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing
, October 23, 2008) is now available.
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