Swift blows to Iran and nuclear
talks By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
NEW YORK - Swift, the Belgian-based
financial clearing house, delivered a major blow
to Iran's international trade by announcing on
Saturday that it would cut financial services to
Iranian banks. For Iran's oil economy, this was
shocking in its simplicity: it means that Iran
will find it even more difficult to receive money
for its major oil transactions.
While it
will take a few months to tabulate the net effect
of Swift's decision, rationalized by the European
sanctions on Iran, it is
fairly certain that the
timing was critical, coming prior to multilateral
nuclear talks between Iran and the so-called "5
+1" nations (ie, the UN Security Council's
Permanent Five plus Germany). This and the White
House's warning of a shrinking "window of
opportunity for diplomacy," are meant to have the
sledge-hammer effect of jolting Iran into
submission at the negotiation table, although the
exact date and venue for talks has yet to be
announced.
Although the Turkish Foreign
Minister has expressed his country's interest in
hosting the nuclear talks, much like the last
round in Istanbul in January 2011, there is a
hesitation on Iran's part, due principally to
Turkey's anti-Syrian government role that is
directly at odds with Tehran's pro-Damascus
policy. A clue to the depth of Turkish-Iranian
division over Syria is that Iran may opt to move
the talks somewhere else - and there is talk in
Tehran of Moscow, in order to send Ankara a clear
signal. On the other hand, in light of Turkey's
cooperative behavior on the nuclear issue in the
past, and the on-going Iran-Turkey trade despite
the Western sanctions, Tehran may not want to
ruffle the waters with Turkey too much at this
critical hour when the rings around Iran are
rapidly tightening.
Irrespective of where
the talks are held, the bigger and more important
question is, of course, what can be expected and
whether they will yield a breakthrough or another
round of fruitless discussions?
From the
Western camp, the pre-talk strategy of pounding
Iran with maximum pressure, including warnings of
"last opportunity" before the Israeli bombs
dropped, apparently relayed to Russia by US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently, holds
sway in various Western capitals, although there
is no unity of purpose among the "Iran six"
nations and China and Russia have gone on record
opposing further sanctions on Iran.
Meanwhile, greater cooperation between
Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) is in the offing, per reports from Vienna
suggesting that Iran and the IAEA officials are
getting close to finalizing "modality" or
framework to resolve the outstanding
"ambiguities". That should turn down the heat on
the crisis. The temperature of relations in
Europe, on the other hand, is fixated on the
coming presidential elections in France, scheduled
for April 22, that can have profound ramifications
on the rest of Europe as well as Europe's
relations with the Middle East if ardently
pro-Israel President Nicolas Sarkozy is defeated
by his socialist challenger Francios Hollande, who
is presently ahead in the opinion polls.
With national elections in Germany and
Italy next year, the French elections could be a
good omen for heralding a new, and vibrant, turn
to the left in European politics that may
translate into a more balanced and less
US-dependent external politics by the European
Union, whose oil sanctions on Iran go into effect
come this July.
"France has not really
been a big factor in the nuclear talks and they
have taken their cues from the Americans without
showing any sign of independence, but this may
change and France may become a more proactive
player in the nuclear talks if there is a
socialist government," says a Tehran University
political science professor who spoke to the
author on the condition of anonymity. In other
words, Iran is vesting some hope in "regime
change" in Europe, just as some Western
politicians and media pundits are hedging their
bets on regime change in Tehran as a result of
"crippling sanctions" and other similar punitive
efforts, such as supporting the Iranian political
opposition.
Russia's 'step-by-step'
proposal At the moment, the Russian
"step-by-step" proposal is the only game in town,
and no one with any familiarity with the Iran
nuclear talks is even minimally hopeful that Iran
would ever consent to scrap its expensive uranium
enrichment program under external pressure. The
so-called "zero enrichment" option is for all
practical purposes a passe and, yet, Western
officials have stubbornly refused to present a
viable alternative.
What is more, United
States President Barack Obama's turn to a more
hardline posture of "deterrence", that lowers the
US threshold of tolerance to Iran's "nuclear
capability" rather than "bomb-possessing ability,"
simply means that the US has pushed itself into a
corner where a more rigid and inflexible
negotiation strategy can be expected that is not
conducive to achieving a mutually-acceptable
breakthrough.
Obama's stiffened position
is a product of domestic considerations in an
election year and has less to do with the nuclear
realities on the ground in Iran, and is yet
another reminder of how the Iran nuclear standoff
is hostage to the domestic politics of various
players involved in the crisis. A resolution
requires political realism, diplomatic
flexibility, and parties' preparedness to
compromise. These are increasingly rare
ingredients to come by in 2012.
It may
make more sense to actually postpone the Iran
nuclear talks after the US and Iran presidential
elections, or simply use the opportunity of coming
talks this spring for "confidence-building". The
problem with this alternative option is, however,
that the Iran sanctions have biting effects on the
Iranian economy, thus leading some Iranian
political and military leaders to entertain the
option of introducing further costs to their
adversaries, such as by playing hardball in
Afghanistan, in light of a recent announcement by
a revolutionary guard commander calling on the
Afghan people to "expel" the Americans and their
allies.
"If Mr Obama wants to deliver on
his promise of US troop withdrawal from
Afghanistan in two years, then he should know that
Iran has the means to frustrate him and make the
US suffer in Afghanistan in response to US trying
to make life difficult on the Iranians," says the
Tehran professor mentioned above.
Not only
that, from Tehran's perspective, the recent
showering of southern Israel by the Palestinian
rocket attacks from Gaza has sent a timely signal
to Israel, as a dress rehearsal for much bigger
attacks, by both Hamas and Hezbollah, in case
Israel attacks Iran. The Iran-Israel war may not
actually happen, due to Israel's "tyranny of
distance" - to quote an Israeli general - from
Iran. But the potential for the threat of that war
to trigger smaller wars and flare-ups is
indisputable.
All this means that there is
ample reason for both sides to give the Russian
proposal and its call for the staged removal of
sanctions in return for Iran's resolution of
outstanding IAEA issues, decent consideration, up
to the point of adopting the proposal's implicit
agenda; that is, recognizing Iran's right to
enrich uranium. For now, the US and its Western
allies are stepping in the opposite direction, but
the question is how long they can sustain their
position, that obliterates the chances for a
diplomatic solution, without appearing as
unreasonably inflexible and even dogmatic?
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 Looking for
Rights at Harvard. His latest book is UN
Management Reform: Selected Articles and
Interviews on United Nations CreateSpace
(November 12, 2011).
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