MIDDLE EAST
HOTSPOTS Obama keeps friends and foes
guessing By M K Bhadrakumar
The world community can heave a sigh of
relief since there might not be an outbreak of
wars led by the United States between now and
November. That was one message of President Barack
Obama's press conference in the White House on
Tuesday.
Obama spoke on the two Middle
Eastern "hotspots" - Iran and Syria - with a
common thread: while he is tenaciously looking for
ways to pursue policies that serve American
interests, his preferred option is not to resort
to the use of force.
Obama launched a
frontal offensive on the Republican right, saying
they were being irresponsible and vacuous in
beating the war drums on Iran and Syria. Obama
knows he is in sync with the
mood of the American
public, which is preoccupied with the economy.
The press conference came a day after
Obama's talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, and he visibly took pleasure in giving
a knockout punch to media hype (inspired largely
by the Israelis) that his re-election bid might be
in jeopardy unless he agreed Iran was fast nearing
the "zone of immunity" in its nuclear program.
Obama warned that any premature action by
Israel would have "consequences" for the US as
well and that a "careful, thoughtful, sober
approach" was needed.
The intriguing part
is that Obama knew very well that he was also
speaking to another foreign audience - in the
highest echelons of power in Tehran - who were
listening attentively when he said:
"Now, the one thing that we have not
done is we haven't launched a war. If some of
these folks think that it's time to launch a
war, they should say so. And they should explain
to the American people exactly why they would do
that and what the consequences would be.
Everything else is just talk." [Emphasis
added.]
On the one hand, Obama
sounded even more hopeful than in the week before
about engaging Iran:
"At this stage ... we have a window
of opportunity where this can still be resolved
diplomatically. That's not just my view. That's
the view of our top intelligence officials ...
The Iranians just stated that they are willing
to return to the negotiating table. And we've
got the opportunity ... to see how it plays
out."
But on the other hand, he spelt
out his expectations:
To resolve this issue will require
Iran to come to the table and discuss in a clear
and forthright way how to prove to the
international community that the intentions of
their nuclear program are peaceful. They know
how to do it ... It obviously has to be
methodical. I don't expect a breakthrough in a
first meeting ... And there are steps that they
can take that would send a signal to the
international community and that are verifiable,
that would allow them to be in compliance with
international norms, in compliance with
international mandates, abiding by the
non-proliferation treaty, and provide the world
an assurance that they're not pursuing a nuclear
weapon.
The Iranians would be
justified in estimating that Obama is setting the
pace. Ali Larijani, former nuclear negotiator and
influential speaker of the outgoing Majlis
(parliament), reacted on Wednesday saying it would
be counter-productive if "the West continues to
put Iran under pressure".
"If they [the
West] seek to go with their previous course of
action and try to force concessions under
pressure, negotiations will yield no results",
Larijani, who is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, warned. But then, he also reiterated
that Iran is not after nuclear bombs.
Iran's deputy foreign minister in charge
of Europe and America, Ali Asghar Khaji, in turn
urged the West to be "innovative" and to come up
with "more initiatives". Clearly, sparring has
begun.
One at a time Moving on
to Syria, Obama said there isn't going to be a
unilateralist US military intervention in that
country. However, the strategy will be to seek
regime change. In short, call "regime change" by
any other name if you will, and, second, it will
have to be by means other than a US invasion of
Syria.
Obama said the issue is not whether
or if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would go,
"it's a question of when". However, he made a
careful distinction between what happened in Libya
and the Syrian situation.
The
international community is yet to be mobilized on
Syria; no mandate from the United Nations Security
Council is available; the "full cooperation" of
the Arab states is not yet realized; and, the
project may not even be achievable in a
"relatively short period of time". All of this
makes the Syrian situation much more complicated.
All the same, the US will continue to work
on the project with "key Arab states and key
international partners" and is planning "how do we
support the opposition; how do we provide
humanitarian assistance; how do we continue the
political isolation [of Bashar]; how do we
continue the economic isolation." Obama
avoided explicitly committing on any form of
military assistance to the Syrian opposition,
although Foreign Policy magazine claimed
separately on Tuesday on the basis of extensive
deep briefings by unnamed senior US officials that
Washington is edging close to doing that.
One factor could be that a number of
diplomatic moves are under way. Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov is about to engage the Arab
League on Saturday; Beijing has mooted a six-point
plan on Syria; yet another Chinese special envoy
arrived in Damascus on Tuesday.
Besides,
Kofi Annan, joint special envoy of the UN and Arab
League, was expected to commence his mediatory
mission in Cairo on Wednesday before reaching
Damascus in the weekend; last but not the least,
Syria has agreed to schedule a visit by Valerie
Amos, UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs.
Alongside, a revised US draft resolution
on Syria has just been mooted in the UN Security
Council, on which Washington hopes to negotiate
Russian and Chinese acceptance.
Clearly,
Obama made no overtures to Russia or China. Nor
did he evince any interest to work with them,
leave alone acknowledge their robust efforts at
peacemaking. Plainly put, he showed indifference
towards the Russians and Chinese.
The US
diplomacy could be estimating that while the
Russian and Chinese diplomatic efforts on Syria
converge in many respects, they also may have an
independent character. But both Moscow and Beijing
insist on dialogue and oppose foreign
interference; they also endorse Assad's reform
program.
Russia's Ambassador to the UN,
Vitaly Churkin, accused in an open meeting of the
Security Council on Syria in New York on
Wednesday, "We have received information that in
Libya, with the support of the authorities, there
is a special training center for the Syrian
revolutionaries and people are sent to Syria to
attack the legal government. This is, according to
international law, completely unacceptable."
The Russian imputation couldn't have been
lost on Washington, although Churkin didn't
exactly point a finger at who could be putting the
fragile Libyan government through such a high-risk
enterprise. Meanwhile, the Russian foreign
ministry specifically warned the West not to
expect any change in Moscow's Syria policy
following the election victory of Vladimir Putin.
(Putin made global meddling by the US one of his
campaign themes.)
The foreign ministry
said, "Russia's position on a Syrian settlement
was never subject to political considerations and
is not formed under the influence of electoral
cycles, unlike those of some of our Western
colleagues. Our approaches to a resolution of
internal conflicts are based on international law
and the UN Charter. We are talking primarily about
strict adherence to the principle of
inadmissibility of interference from the outside."
Obama's intention, partly at least, would
have been to grandstand before the American public
on a Super Tuesday when the Mitt Romney campaign
moved aggressively. Nonetheless, without resorting
to propaganda blast or showing signs of
hand-wringing, he struck a diplomatic balance by
stressing negotiations with Iran, while largely
maintaining the tough course on Syria.
And
if there were indeed any linkage between the
situation around Iran and the Syrian crisis, Obama
wouldn't talk about it. One at a time - that's the
Obama way.
Ambassador M K
Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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