Once again in the West’s troubled relationship with Iran, a new deadline is on the horizon, and once again both sides are playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship. At the end of this month the Iranian government has to provide pledges to the United Nations that it will halt the production of enriched uranium, one of the essential stages in the production of nuclear weapons. If it refuses, the UN has reserved the right to impose a range of economic sanctions.
This has been an issue for the past two years, but Iran has generally scorned Western threats and pushed ahead with the development of its nuclear industry, claiming it has every right to do so. As Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki put it at the time: “Iran does not need any country’s permission, it is our right to have nuclear technology.”
In June, trying to persuade Iran to change course, the Europeans, the US, Russia and China offered Iran a package of economic and trading incentives to halt its attempts to enrich uranium. It was a reasonable offer: in return for introducing an open and verifiable nuclear policy and for guaranteeing “regional security arrangements”, they would supply Iran with trading and economic agreements that would permit peaceful development of its nuclear industry. A doubting US had to be persuaded to sign up to the offer, but there are still hopes that Iran will respond positively when it publishes its reply on Thursday, the day the UN deadline runs out.
“The worst thing would be to escalate into a confrontation between the West and Iran,” says French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, whose country has stood against the introduction of sanctions. “I’m starting from the principle we should have a dialogue with the Iranians, that we must hold out our hands to them.”
Against all expectations, the first indications are that the Iranians may well be interested in a negotiated settlement. This will be sold not so much as a climb-down but as the introduction of some much-needed common sense, which will spike US threats to push for sanctions. The most likely outcome is that Iran will accept the offer in principle but question the small print in an attempt to win concessions. For example, they are desperate to have international support for producing nuclear energy, and they need the technology to build reactors. But before they do anything, they require guarantees .
‘This is a typical piece of stalling by Tehran,” says a British diplomat with long experience of the region. “On one hand it looks as if it is a victory for the moderates, and in a way it is, but on the other it’s well-worn diplomatic technique to divide the opposition. The US and Britain are doubting Thomases who are unhappy about Iran’s intentions, while the Europeans, the Russians and the Chinese want to maintain a peaceful dialogue.”
Russia has already put its cards on the table by rejecting all talk of sanctions, and China is near certain to follow suit. Cynics will say Moscow has a vested interest, as it is involved in the construction of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, but there is a feeling across the board that the other powers have little appetite for a new confrontation with Iran. The US and Britain are already mired in an unwinnable conflict in Iraq; there seems to be no immediate solution to the impasse between Israel, a key US ally, and the Palestinians; and the southern Lebanese border with Israel remains a tinderbox awaiting the spark. Against that background, and with feelings running high in the Arab world that the US was thought to be too slow in pushing for a ceasefire in the war against Hezbollah, the Security Council is unlikely to gain a majority for sanctions.
“I’m sure there will be high-level talks on whether there is some formula regarding sequencing of suspension, based on Iran’s hints that it could shelve enrichment as the upshot of talks to carry out the incentives,” said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The question is whether there is a basis to fudge the sequencing – that is, Iran commits to suspension after a very short period of negotiations.”
An additional problem has been an admission from the CIA that it has no clear intelligence about the
development of Iran’s nuclear programme. Coming on top of earlier criticisms about the manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, and more recent attacks on US foreign policy in the Middle East, made by the respected Republican senator John McCain, most US analysts in the Bush administration are keen to avoid a fresh crisis in the region. Their thinking was reinforced by the production of a new report, from the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, that Iran has become the single most important foreign power in Iraq and that “there is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terrorism in the Middle East”.
Instead of producing stable regimes on either side of Iran, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have destabilised the geo-political region and strengthened the administration in Iran. This has allowed it to lend support to the main Shia militias – the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades – and the new self- confidence has been bolstered by Israel’s failure to smash Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In turn, the strengthening of Iran’s regional position has encouraged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to press ahead with his country’s nuclear programme and to take any decision about compromise right up to the wire. As ever, it will all boil down to which side blinks first; or, as Iranian analyst Trita Parsi put it: “The strongest motivation to give talks a chance seems to be the international community’s lack of appetite for a fourth conflict in the Middle East.”
27 August 2006
