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October surprise in US-Iran relations
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
NEW YORK - Defying the onslaught of pessimistic predictions, the Geneva meeting
on Thursday of Iran and the "Iran Six" nations did not end in failure, given
the recent revelations of a second Iranian uranium-enrichment plant.
Rather, there was a mini-breakthrough in that both Iran on the one side and the
United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany on the other agreed
to hold a follow-up meeting later this month. What is more, US and Iranian
representatives met one-on-one on the sidelines of the meeting, following an
11th-hour request by the US on Wednesday.
Adding to the flurry of diplomatic initiatives surrounding the Geneva talks was
a surprise move by the US Department of State to grant a visa to Iranian
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to
visit Washington, ostensibly to inspect Iran's Interest Section. However, this
unprecedented visit might have been mainly symbolic as a gesture of goodwill by
the Barack Obama administration on the eve of the Geneva meeting.
Reciprocating the warm signals from Washington, Mottaki in an interview with
the Council on Foreign Relations reiterated Iran's readiness for comprehensive
and constructive dialogue, while making it clear that Tehran's intention at the
Geneva talks was to defend the country's nuclear rights.
"Our intention is also to see if there is a change of behavior on the part of
the Obama administration and if we can detect evidence of a new behavior away
from the hegemonic mindset and toward mutual respect," Mottaki said, adding
that the threat of sanctions could "ruin opportunities for cooperation".
Mottaki's presence in the US has been a major plus for US-Iran diplomacy, by
allowing Iran to complement its moves at the negotiation table in Geneva with
Mottaki's string of interviews to the US media, meant to bolster Iran's public
diplomacy.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, added some meaningful
bone to Iran's negotiation posture by holding a press conference one day ahead
of the Geneva talks. He expressed optimism about the meeting and proposed the
establishment of "three specialized committees" that would issue reports on
pertinent nuclear and non-nuclear issues of mutual concern, culminating in a
"summit of heads of states".
Also, Ahmadinejad made sure that such gestures by Iran would be understood as a
part of his government's efforts to shore up Iran's role in "global
management". In other words, as aspects of a coherent global strategy that
seeks to assert a trans-regional and indeed global status for Iran in light of
Iran's geostrategic and geoeconomic importance.
The details of the Geneva talks had not been made public at time of writing.
Ahead of the meeting, a statement by a US State Department spokesperson
referred optimistically to the talk's prospects of leading to "more in-depth
dialogue". He also assured the world that the US would refrain from "snap
judgments".
Although on the latter, the US's negotiator, William Burns, a George W Bush
appointee who is ranked as under secretary of state for political affairs,
seemed to harbor minor misgivings about the ability of Iran's negotiation team
led by Saeed Jalili to "make decisions", per an interview with a former US
official who spoke to the author on condition of anonymity.
Tehran's decision to agree to the US's request for a one-on-one meeting,
specifically tailored to discuss Iran's nuclear program, may come as a shock to
the hawkish critics of Obama's Iran policy. They have painted the Iranian
government as rigid and inflexible.
That is not Iran's own self-understanding. As a case in point, at a private
meeting with US think-tanks in New York last week, Ahmadinejad repeatedly
emphasized his record of showing flexibility toward the Obama administration,
without, however, receiving any reply from Obama.
Instead, Obama has directed all his communication to Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bypassing Ahmadinejad. This is partly due to the poor
advice he has received from a number of "Iran experts", such as Vali Nasr and
Ray Takyeh, who have publicly dismissed Ahmadinejad as a "noisemaker" without
any significant power and influence in decision-making.
Yet, Iran's presidency is a powerful institution and Ahmadinejad is a source of
foreign policy decision-making, even though the supreme leader's final seal of
approval is mandatory for the macro-policies. Both in terms of devising
specific tactics and strategies and selecting foreign and nuclear priorities,
without doubt Ahmadinejad and his foreign policy team, including Jalili and
Mottaki, play a central role.
The October surprise in US-Iran relations now consists of the fact that despite
numerous hurdles, a semi-successful initial direct encounter between the US and
Iran has transpired. This could conceivably be deepened in subsequent meetings,
which will in turn further build confidence, especially against the backdrop of
a rather poisoned environment filled with accusations and counter-accusations.
One reason why the Geneva meeting did not collapse is that there is a zone of
agreement between the two sides when it comes to the thorny issue of Iran's
nuclear transparency. This follows repeated assurances by Ali Akbar Salehi, the
new head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, regarding a timetable for
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Iran's
self-disclosed second enrichment facility under construction near the city of
Qom.
Iran's disclosure of that site, in a letter to the IAEA on September 21,
together with Iran's test-firing of short-, medium- and long-range missiles on
the eve of the Geneva talks, were meant to solidify Iran's bargaining position.
The idea was to introduce new hurdles to the "military option" by showcasing
Iran's deterrent capability. The moves were also to show that Iran's nuclear
program could survive an attack, given Iran's nuclear know-how.
These efforts by Iran pretty much neutralized the West's pre-meeting maneuvers
to weaken Tehran's position, including Obama's decision to scrap a US missile
defense shield in Europe on the grounds that Iran did not pose a long-range
missile threat for the foreseeable future. Yet, within days of that
announcement, Iran was able to successfully test-fire the Shahab-3 and (solid
fuel) Sejil missiles that are capable of hitting parts of Israel, Europe, as
well as US bases in the region.
"In Iran today, many people are congratulating the government for its
successful heavy lifting of some chess pieces, without which the P5+1 [Iran
Six] would be eating Iran alive in Geneva," a Tehran University political
science professor told the author.
Indeed, there is a consensus among Tehran's foreign policy experts that through
deft hard-power and soft-power diplomacy, Iran has gained much respect in the
international community and forced the other side to treat it with greater
deference.
The issue of Iran's nuclear program - which many still believe is aimed at
developing nuclear weapons - is far from settled, though. It will require
willpower on both sides of the negotiation table to move forward, by focusing
on areas of shared interests and "objective guarantees" to ensure Iran's
peaceful nuclear program, to echo Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign
policy chief.
Already, in light of the IAEA's regular inspections of Iran's facilities and
its cameras and other surveillance measures at the enrichment facility at
Natanz, a good deal of those objective guarantees are firmly in place. What is
needed is to extend those to Iran's new facility, and, perhaps to convince Iran
to re-adopt the intrusive Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty.
The latter is possible if the United Nations Security Council agrees to drop
its demand for Iran to suspend its uranium-enrichment program, a demand that is
rejected by Iran as "unlawful" and which has absolutely no chance of being
embraced by any politician in Tehran, short of political suicide.
At this point, with the glass of US-Iran diplomacy now half full after an
initial encounter that has opened the possibilities for future dialogue, there
is sufficient ground for cautious optimism of a de-escalation of Iran's nuclear
crisis.
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.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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