Since late January, when the White
House decided there would be advantage in
reverting to a policy of engagement after having
acquired political cover in the form of additional
sanctions, the possibility of direct talks between
the United States and Iran has been in the air.
Direct talks have been a rarity since
1979. But Iranians and Americans got together
constructively in Geneva in the autumn of 2001
when Iran was offering help for United States
operations in Afghanistan, and for some time after
that an informal back-channel was kept open.
To secure Iranian agreement to direct
talks now, it would make sense to work through an
intermediary. The Turkish and Omani governments
spring to mind. Turkey and Oman are long-standing
friends of the US, but are also friends of Iran
(even if the Syrian
crisis has created
strains in the political relationship between
Ankara and Tehran). Algeria might also be ready to
help, as it did in 1980-81.
In Tehran
approval for talks would have to come from Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Approval would not
be a "slam-dunk". The Leader's public
pronouncements over the years suggest a profound
distrust of US sincerity (which mirrors widespread
American distrust of Iranian good faith). His
statements also imply that he considers the US
arrogant and aggressive and finds this deeply
offensive.
In August 2010, for instance,
he is reported to have said:
We have rejected negotiations with
the US for clear reasons. Engaging in
negotiations under threats and pressure is not
in fact negotiating. For the same reason Iranian
officials have stated that the Islamic Republic
is ready to engage in negotiations but not with
a US that is seeking to conduct negotiations
under threats, sanctions and bullying.
At Friday prayers on 3 February 2012
he said:
We should not fall for the smile on
the face of the enemy. We have had experience of
them over the last 30 years ... We should not be
cheated by their false promises and words; they
break their promises very easily ... they feel
no shame ... they simply utter lies.
So any US initiative could fall on
stony ground - unless the White House were to find
some way of convincing Khamenei that this time
it's different. For that they have one invaluable
asset: the president. To many non-Americans he
comes across as a decent man, whose commitment to
making the world a better place is sincere. His
speeches on foreign policy in 2009 were devoid of
arrogance and suggested a new United States of
America, bent on respecting other states' rights.
But the White House would also need to
fashion its public diplomacy carefully. Calls on
Iran to demonstrate its sincerity, to show it can
be trusted, and to build confidence in its
intentions would go down badly in Tehran.
Nine years have passed since Iran admitted
to the International Atomic Energy Association
(IAEA) that it had failed to declare the
acquisition of small quantities of nuclear
material, and the use of a fraction of that
material to test a few primitive centrifuge
machines and conduct laser enrichment experiments.
Those failings were soon remedied, as the
IAEA statute required. No further non-declarations
have come to light since (unless one believes what
has not been proved: that Iran had no intention of
declaring the Fordow plant in 2009). The
declaration of basic nuclear weapons research is
not required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT).
For two years after its
initial admissions, Iran volunteered cooperation
that went beyond what the NPT requires, only
desisting after the IAEA board demonstrated that
it would not tolerate Iran making full use of its
NPT rights. Thereafter, Iran cooperated as
required by the NPT; only on a point of legal
interpretation has the IAEA found fault.
Trust between nations is built through
negotiation, not by the peremptory setting of
arbitrary tests. A good international agreement
includes provisions for verifying compliance, so
that the longer the parties remain compliant, the
more confident they can be in one another's good
faith.
Arrogance and aggression are
diplomatic expressions of power. There are
circumstances, eg the 1995 Dayton peace process,
in which they can be effective dispute resolution
tools. But the evidence is that they do not work
with Iran. Having what it takes to survive when
put under pressure is vital to Iran's sense of
self. Successful defiance of US power enables Iran
to demonstrate to itself and to other non-aligned
countries that it is on the way back from 200
years of humiliation at Western and Russian hands.
A further complication lies in the fact
that more issues divide the US and Iran than the
nuclear controversy. Americans reckon that the
Islamic Republic has harmed US interests in many
ways over the past 32 years. It's natural that
this has generated much bad feeling.
But
this too is a mirror image of what Iranians feel.
Those 32 years have witnessed the US siding with
Saddam Hussein in Iraq in his unlawful invasion of
Iran, awarding a medal to an officer responsible
for shooting down an Iranian airliner, excluding
Iran from the Madrid Middle East peace conference
despite cooperative Iranian behavior, rewarding
Iran's leaders for their help in Afghanistan by
branding them as "evil", trying to cripple the
Iranian economy through sanctions, flirting with
"regime change", and threatening unauthorized use
of force against Iranian assets.
The
combined list of Iranian and US grievances is so
long that the only sensible way forward is for
both parties to let bygones be bygones and
convince one another that they want to focus on
improving their relationship. That means
identifying where US and Iranian interests overlap
and giving expression to that overlap through
language that is negotiated fair and square.
Is the White House ready for that kind of
engagement? Can they afford to be so reasonable,
and unaggressive, in an election year? If they
can't, they'd be well-advised to keep their
distance. The last thing the world needs right now
is a further twist in the downward spiral of
US/Iranian relations.
Peter
Jenkins was the United Kingdom's permanent
representative to the IAEA for 2001-2006 and is
now a partner in ADRg Ambassadors.
(This article is run courtesy of Lobelog Foreign
Policy, a project of Inter Press Service
(IPS) and Jim Lobe, who has served as Washington
DC correspondent and chief of the Washington
bureau, IPS.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
