27 August 2008: Arab Times
The acrimony between Russia and the West stirred by the Georgia conflict complicates any effort to tighten UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme. Yet with the geopolitical and economic aftershocks of the crisis rumbling on, it may be too early for Tehran to assume it is off the hook — as some Iranian newspapers have suggested. The United States and its European allies will clearly find it trickier to forge a consensus with a truculent Russia and a wary China on harsher sanctions to curb Iran’s nuclear drive. “If we are moving in the direction of a new Cold War, it will be harder to find a joint solution to problems ... such as the nuclear conflict with Iran,” said Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
He dismissed suggestions that this might prompt the United States to opt for unilateral action against Iran.
“Of course cooperation on the Iran issue could fall victim to the current confrontation between the United States and Russia, but this does not have to be the case,” he said. “In past months, the US has moved away from unilateralism on this question and moved towards more multilateralism.” Russia, one of five veto-holding nations on the United Nations Security Council, has backed three previous sanctions measures against Iran, but only after watering them down. The sanctions have failed to dissuade Iran from pressing ahead with a nuclear programme it says aims only to generate electricity, not to make atomic bombs as the West charges. The Iran News daily said this week the Georgian crisis had removed Iran from world headlines, while Russia’s invasion of its neighbour had raised doubts about Western accusations that the Islamic Republic was the gravest threat to global security.
The English-language newspaper discerned clear benefits for Iran in Russia’s fierce quarrel with the West over Georgia.
“It makes the enforcement of already ratified sanctions against Tehran more challenging ... and significantly reduces the chances of consensus ... for the imposition of a fourth round of punitive sanctions against our nation.”
That seems hard to contest, even for Iran’s nuclear critics.
“The downward spiral in relations between Russia and the West will make it harder to work together on anything, and Iran policy heads the list of areas that are going to suffer,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“Finding consensus on additional Security Council sanctions was hard to begin with,” he said, adding that any new resolution might just focus on better implementation of existing ones.
Agenda
US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out a much more ambitious agenda on Monday, when he said the world must “tighten the screws diplomatically” with sanctions on Iran.
“We’ve got to do that before Israel feels like its back is to the wall,” he said, when asked if Israel had a green light to strike Iran in the absence of more world pressure on Tehran.
The United States is pressing for further sanctions, giving the priority for now to diplomatic over military action.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said this month that the United States “does not see an action against Iran as the right thing to do at the moment” but shared the Jewish state’s view that “no option should be removed from the table”. The Georgia crisis has not brought a US attack on Iran’s nuclear installations any closer, Perthes said. “It will not become easier to lead a third war in the Middle East just because one now also faces a conflict with Russia.”
A senior European diplomat said cooperation may be bumpier, but argued that Russia and the United States still share the strategic goal of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear arms.
“It’s no use denying there’s a huge amount of tension in the relationship following the Georgia intervention, but there will be a lot of determination to keep the Iran show on the road.”
Other diplomats voiced scepticism on the prospects for this.
“Everyone believes Russia will no longer join US pressure on Iran,” said a Vienna-based diplomat versed in the Iran issue, describing Russian leaders as furious over Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s “adventure encouraged by the Americans”.
Georgia and Russia fought a brief war over South Ossetia this month after Georgian troops tried to retake the breakaway region. A Russian counter-attack pushed inside Georgia.
Moscow’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian region, has fuelled Western wrath. Paul Rivlin, an analyst at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Centre, said Washington’s failure to help its Georgian ally had highlighted an erosion in US strategic power relative to Russia, China and even Iran since the 2003 war on Iraq.
“Hostility to the war at home, in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world has had negative effects on the US image and ability to galvanise the international community on any issue, be it the Iranian threat or even support for Georgia,” he wrote in a recent paper.
“Russia now has fewer reasons to cooperate with Washington regarding Iran’s nuclear programme,” Rivlin added.
Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has dashed hopes of Tbilisi regaining control over the provinces, analysts said.
Weakened
It has also weakened President Mikheil Saakashvili, who had made the return of the two regions to Tbilisi’s rule a priority, analysts said, but not derailed his ambitions to bring Georgia closer to the West. “It was already ‘mission impossible’ before and now it will be even more difficult” for Georgia to bring the two regions back under its control, said Tornike Sharashenidze, a Tbilisi-based political analyst. “This is the final culmination, the nail in the coffin,” said Svante Cornell, the research director of the Stockholm-based Central Asia Caucasus Institute. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s decision to formally recognise the two regions as independent followed a five-day conflict this month that saw Russian military might rout the much-smaller Georgian army after it attempted to retake control of South Ossetia. South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Georgian control during wars in the early 1990s and have since had de facto independence. Moscow, which has long backed the separatists, stepped up its support earlier this year by establishing formal ties with the rebel governments.
It has handed out passports to residents and stationed troops in the two republics that border Russia in the volatile Caucasus region.
“Georgia didn’t have control of these territories and now it’s even more unlikely that it will ever be able to reintegrate them. If Georgia tried, it would probably escalate into military conflict again,” said Nick Grono, vice president of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
Analysts said that once the dust settles over the conflict, Saakashvili will face some tough questions over the handling of the crisis and his political future may well be hanging by a thread.
But regardless of Saakashvili’s fate, analysts doubt Georgia will turn away from the pro-Western path he set since becoming president after the peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003.
“The western choice is an historic and natural choice of the Georgian people. Nothing can change this choice,” said Giorgi Margvelashvili, a political analyst in the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. Cornell said it’s even possible the crisis will push the West to embrace Georgia’s efforts to join the Nato military alliance and forge closer ties with Europe.
“Georgia has been trying for a very long time to tell the world what has been going on. They kept saying the Russians were taking up new positions and putting new elements into play but people said they were exaggerating,” Cornell said.
“Now the West can’t look away anymore and Georgia’s point of view is becoming difficult to ignore. It’s way too early to make long-term predictions, but it could positively influence Nato and the EU towards Georgia.”
