US
rebuffs Russian ingenuity on
Iran By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Amid ongoing speculation that Israel is
preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities this
autumn, Russia has stepped in by proposing a
"step-by-step" approach to resolve the standoff
over Tehran's nuclear program.
Moscow's
solution is worthy of attention by the United
States and other "Iran Six" nations (France,
China, Russia, Britain and Germany), as well as
Iran's policymakers. Yet the US appears to be dead
set on its dual diplomacy-coercion strategy that
has escalated tensions with Iran.
At last
week's meeting between US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov, her Russian
counterpart, Lavrov
revealed Russia's intention
to distance itself from the US's coercive
diplomacy against Iran that in the recent months
has yielded new unilateral sanctions, deemed as
covering both nuclear and human-rights violations.
This move makes it doubly difficult to
pursue Russia's proposal for suspension of
sanctions in return for Iran's compliance with
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands,
simply because it ignores the fact that the US has
imposed sanctions on such Iranian institutions as
the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for its
alleged suppression of pro-democracy activists.
The Russian focus is on inquires put to
Iran by the IAEA and seeks to reinvigorate
dialogue to address US and European concerns that
Iran's nuclear program is aimed at weapons
development - a charge Iran denies.
Rebuffing Lavrov, who is understandably
worried that Iran could be weakened as a result of
the tough sanctions that invite instability in
both Iran and the surrounding Caspian Sea/Central
Asia regions, Clinton insisted on maintaining a
present course of action vis-a-vis Iran that is
deemed excessive by Russia and, to a lesser
extent, China.
As a result of the
sanctions and voluntary compliance by various
shipping lanes, Iran's ability to import food has
been adversely affected, and this may lead to
soaring food prices at a time of reduced
government subsidies, which will add to popular
discontent.
America's "soft war" on Iran
is clearly aimed at slow-motion regime change, yet
the irony of sanctions is that ordinary Iranians
will bear the brunt of sanctions, eg the US
sanctions on Iran's commercial airline, Iran Air,
simply mean that thousands of Iranian expatriates
who dare to fly Iran Air now face criminal
prosecution for violating US sanction laws.
Meanwhile, after a productive meeting in
Vienna two weeks ago between Iran's Foreign
Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and IAEA chief Yukiya
Amano, who has conditioned his Iran visit to
Tehran's satisfaction of certain preconditions,
both sides are exploring a "new mechanism" to
resolve the issue of the IAEA's demand for
information about certain "alleged studies" that,
as per IAEA reports, hint at a military dimension
to Iran's peaceful nuclear activities, a charge
that Tehran flatly denies.
Focusing on
confidence-building steps by Iran to address the
international anxieties over its nuclear
activities, Russia's proposal contains elements of
"freeze for freeze" proposal put forth by Mohammad
ElBaradei, the former head of IAEA, who is
nowadays giving interviews questioning Western and
Israeli claims about Iranian nuclear
proliferation.
ElBaradei, in an interview
with the New Yorker magazine (June 6), said he
never saw "a shred of evidence" that supported
that claim. Compared to ElBaradei, Amano is
strongly tilted in favor of adopting the Western
allegations against Iran, as well as giving
credibility to Western and Israeli intelligence on
Iran's nuclear program, without seemingly
factoring the possibility of disinformation.
An important aspect of Russia's creative
solution centers on Iran's 20% uranium enrichment,
justified in terms of fuel for a Tehran medical
reactor after the failed "fuel swap" talks, and
this would mean that Iran would agree to forego
its recent announcement of tripling the high-grade
enrichment at the new facility near Qom and to
enter new talks with the "Iran Six" nations that
could conceivably revive the fuel swap proposed by
the IAEA three years ago.
According to the
swap proposal, Iran would ship out a bulk of its
stashed enriched uranium in exchange for fuel rods
from Russia and France; a revised version of this
deal conceiving a storage role for Turkey has been
inked under the guise of "Tehran Declaration"
signed by Iran, Turkey, and Brazil in May 2010,
which was quickly dismissed by Clinton.
Theoretically, the fuel swap is still on
the table, and with a little bit of ingenuity by
both sides could be resurrected as a viable
option, in light of the fact that Iran would still
need additional ingredients in order to fit its
home-made fuel for the Tehran reactor; perhaps
from Argentina, which rebuilt the US-made reactor
and provided fuel until the 1994 bombing of a
Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that
killed 85 people.
Regarding the bombing,
with an eye toward restoring relations with
Argentina, this week Salehi expressed sympathy
with the victims and promised Iran's full
cooperation with the ongoing investigation that
involves Interpol (see Interpol's
decision time on 'Iranian' bombing Asia Times
Online, November 7, 2007). The next round of "Iran
Six" talks with Iran may need to focus on
Argentina's supply of fuel for the Tehran reactor,
much as this may seem an unlikely possibility.
What is beyond doubt is that the Iran
nuclear crisis has entered a new and potentially
dangerous phase with the onset of new sanctions
that are hurting the Iranian economy and may not
only backfire with the Iranian people but also
cause further regional instability. This is
because Tehran may resort to the hard power of
supporting the anti-US and anti-North Atlantic
Treaty Organization forces in the region in
response to the perceived national security
threats posed by the soft war of sanctions.
This is not in any one's interest,
including Russia, which is why Moscow has wisely
prioritized the active search for a solution to
the Iran nuclear stalemate, since indirectly at
least, it also poses a national security concern
for Russia too.
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.
He is author of Reading
In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11
(BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and his
latest book, Looking
for rights at Harvard, is now available.
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