[lit-ideas] US 'allies' keep Iran options open
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: polidea@xxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 02:05:59 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF06Ak02.html
US 'allies' keep Iran options open
By M K Bhadrakumar
In diplomacy, when adversarial relations undergo
mending, grandstanding becomes necessary. Henry
Kissinger's Paris talks with North Vietnam in the
early 1970s were interspersed with some of the
fiercest US bombing campaigns of the war.
Yet we now also know how quickly the US temperament
can adapt to new equations when vital interests are at
stake. Kissinger took a few extended evenings in
Beijing to rewrite the narrative of Sino-US relations.
In its sweep of realism, dramatic irony and its
phenomenal potential for rewriting world politics, the
turnaround in US policy toward Iran is perhaps
comparable to Kissinger's 1972 mission to China.
But the Paris talks somehow come to mind with greater
ease. Last Wednesday's policy shift in Washington in
which it said it
would talk to Iran over its nuclear program (with
conditions) has intriguing aspects to it.
Much of it seemingly lies in the realm of public
diplomacy, though. Part of the problem lies in that
the Bush administration has to grapple with three
different fronts at the same time - domestic,
international and the Iranian.
First, the domestic aspects. It is important to
remember that hardly a fortnight has passed since
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while visiting
Washington, described the Iranian government as an
existential threat.
At a joint press conference on the White House lawn on
May 23 with President George W Bush, Olmert made a
hard-hitting statement: "The Iranian regime, which
calls for Israel's destruction, openly denies the
Holocaust and views the United States as its enemy,
makes every effort to implement its fundamentalist
religious ideology and blatantly disregards the
demands of the international community. The Iranian
threat is not only a threat to Israel; it is a threat
to the stability of the Middle East and the entire
world. And it could mark the beginning of a dangerous
and irresponsible arms race in the Middle East."
True, Israel is not a salient issue for many
Americans. To be sure, Washington first used the
neo-conservative gentile, John Bolton, who serves as
the US permanent representative to the United Nations,
to call up his Iranian counterpart in New York, Javed
Zarif, to intimate that the US was willing to talk
with Iran.
Nonetheless, question marks arise, given the Israeli
lobby's known influence on Capitol Hill and with the
US media and prominent think-tanks. Indeed, the Bush
administration's own track record has been one of
allowing the Israeli government and the pro-Israel
groups in the United States to shape US policy toward
Iraq, Syria and Iran, and its grand strategy of
reordering the Middle East as a whole.
This is so much so that the former national security
adviser under president George H W Bush, Brent
Scowcroft, two years back said that Israeli premier
Ariel Sharon had George W Bush "wrapped around his
little finger". Moreover, pandering to Israel is a
bipartisan malaise in US politics - Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry wore on his sleeves
through his election campaign in 2004 his unqualified
loyalty toward Israeli interests. Hillary Clinton will
gladly emulate Kerry's example.
Therefore, are we to assume that Bush and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice have finally chosen to make a
distinction between US national interests and Israeli
interests? More important, can the lobby's power be
curtailed?
In a brilliant essay titled "The Israel Lobby and
American Foreign Policy" in the London Review of Books
in March, two leading American academics, John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, analyzed precisely this
question.
Their conclusion: "Given the Iraq debacle, the obvious
need to rebuild the American image in the Arab and
Islamic world ... there are ample grounds for leaders
to distance themselves from the lobby and adopt a
Middle East policy more consistent with broader US
interest ... But that is not going to happen - not
soon anyway. AIPAC [American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee] and its allies (including Christian
Zionists) have no serious opponents in the lobbying
world ... Besides, American politicians remain acutely
sensitive to campaign contributions and other forms of
political pressure, and major media outlets are likely
to remain sympathetic to Israel no matter what it
does."
That is why it is important to recollect that on May
24, hardly a week before Rice was to make her Iran
announcement, Olmert referred to Iran in apocalyptic
terms. Addressing the US Congress on the concluding
day of his official visit to Washington, Olmert said,
"Allow me to turn to another dark and gathering storm
casting its shadow over the world ... Iran, the
world's leading sponsor of terrorism, and a notorious
violator of fundamental human rights, stands on the
verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. With these
weapons, the security of the entire world is put in
jeopardy ... This challenge, which I believe is the
test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to
fail.
"The radical Iranian regime has declared the United
States its enemy. Their president believes it is his
religious duty and his destiny to lead his country in
a violent conflict against the infidels. With pride he
denies the Jewish Holocaust and speaks brazenly,
calling to wipe Israel off the map. For us this is an
existential threat, a threat to which we cannot
consent. But it is not Israel's threat alone. It is a
threat to all those committed to stability in the
Middle East and the well-being of the world at large.
"Our moment is now. History will judge our generation
by the actions we take now, by our willingness to
stand up ..."
Could it be that Olmert has since had a change of
heart regarding Iran? Israel is keeping mum about the
US offer to Iran. Could Bush and Rice have woven their
famous charm around Olmert? (Curiously, Rice's
announcement coincided with the arrival of eight ships
belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's
southern forces at Haifa port in Israel and the
announcement that Israeli naval craft would
participate for the first time as an "integrated
force" in a NATO exercise in July.)
It is inconceivable that Bush has chosen the weakest
point in his political standing at home to take on the
lobby frontally. Bush administration officials have
begun "leaking" to influential sections of the US
media a far too embellished version to the effect that
the president and the secretary of state have
single-mindedly choreographed the overture to Iran,
brushing aside the reservations of Vice President Dick
Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Yet Rumsfeld condemned Iran while speaking at an
international conference in Singapore this weekend -
calling it "one of the leading terrorist nations in
the world".
Rumsfeld sarcastically added that it was "strange"
that Moscow and Beijing chose to bring into the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization "one of the leading
terrorist nations in the world" even as the SCO
claimed it was opposed to terrorism.
Rumsfeld was savvy enough to know that this was hardly
the way Bush would expect a senior member of his team
to speak publicly. So was Rumsfeld reassuring the
lobby back home? Rumsfeld added, "The information
[emphasis added] has just been communicated to them
[Tehran], and it seems to me the appropriate thing now
to do is to wait and see which path the Iranian
government will take."
A second aspect about the United States' Iran offer
concerns the compulsions under which the Bush
administration would have made its policy reversal.
Deep briefings to select US media organs by unnamed
"senior officials" in Washington have largely
concentrated on casting Bush and Rice as visionary
leaders. Period.
The "leaks" have a contrived tone. No one argued that
talking to Iran would help the US stabilize the Iraqi
situation and the Middle East in general - though it
is the most obvious thing to say. The American
officials admitted that contrary to US assertions,
Iran was far from internationally isolated. But this
was not any secret.
The latest evidence in this regard was the statement
by the ministerial meeting of the coordinating bureau
of the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement at its meeting
in Putrajaya, Malaysia, last week. Even a close ally
of the US, Singapore, takes note of this political
reality.
Referring to the warm welcome accorded to Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad during his recent visit
to Indonesia, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong said last week, "This showed how successfully
Iran has portrayed itself as a leading Muslim country,
its nuclear project as a project in which Muslims
worldwide should take vicarious pride, and the issue
as a nationalist struggle."
The Bush administration's briefings alluded to two
external factors having influenced the change of
course in US policy. First, Washington could sense
that the "Iran Six" (the US, Britain, France, Germany,
Russia and China) was falling apart, and an initiative
was necessary that would somehow bring all the six
powers to share a common platform. And there could be
no better platform than if the US were to join any
future talks with Iran.
The US officials claimed that having now made the
offer to talk to Iran, Washington had a right to
expect reciprocal Russian and Chinese support if the
talks did not proceed with Iran, and the nuclear issue
was thrown back to the court of the United Nations
Security Council.
According to the New York Times, "Three senior
officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because they were describing internal debates in the
White House, he [Bush] made the final decision only
after telephone calls with President Vladimir Putin of
Russia and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany led him
to conclude that if Tehran refused to suspend its
enrichment of uranium, or later dragged its feet, they
would support an escalating series of sanctions
against Iran at the United Nations that could lead to
a confrontation."
But that wasn't how the Russian Foreign Ministry
seemed to view the events. According to a Russian
statement on Thursday, while Moscow welcomed the US
side's announcement on its readiness to hold direct
talks with Iran, such talks were "long overdue" and
"there is no reasonable alternative" to talks and
negotiations.
Furthermore, Moscow saw the US decision to normalize
relations with Iran in terms of a cessation of the
"crisis state" in US-Iran relations, which was not
serving the interests of the two peoples. Moscow felt
that the normalization of US-Iranian ties would
"benefit regional and international stability" and
help resolve "other crisis situations in the region"
(read Iraq).
Putin, too, welcomed the US decision and called it "an
important step". So where is the question of Moscow
reciprocating Bush's decision? This brings us to a
crucial point. Indeed, what happens if Iran refuses to
give up its uranium-enrichment activity?
Significantly, the statement of the Iran Six foreign
ministers' meeting in Vienna on Thursday scrupulously
avoided any mention of sanctions or other specific
punitive measures. British Foreign Secretary Margaret
Beckett refused to take any questions from the media
after reading out a brief statement in Vienna. It
seems "sanctions" has suddenly become a dirty word.
The path ahead
But where do the Iran Six go if Tehran does not give
up its right to enrich uranium? At the grouping's
Vienna meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
apparently insisted that any consideration of punitive
action by the UN Security Council must remain frozen
for the present. And, indeed, it seems the idea of
sanctions has been frozen.
Putin said in a dismissive tone in Moscow on Friday
that it was simply premature to talk about sanctions
and that Russia would like to talk earnestly with the
Iranian leadership first. (Putin is likely to meet
with Ahmadinejad during the SCO summit in Shanghai on
June 15.)
Putin also made it clear how multilateralism figured
in the Russian calculus. He said, "That the UN openly
discusses issues and remains a venue for resolving
international problems and does not serve the
foreign-policy interests of a particular country not
only gives it a greater universality, but also makes
it indispensable for working out acceptable
international solutions."
The furthest that Lavrov would go in summing up the
Iran Six meeting in Vienna was that there was "a
better quality of participation of Russia, the United
States and China in the process of negotiations". In
the run-up to the meeting, Lavrov had said, "Together
at the negotiating table, we will be able to work out
a way that would allow us to ensure Iran's legitimate
right to peaceful nuclear energy and yet maintain the
non-proliferation regime."
It seems that once again, unnamed "US officials" are
giving a deliberate spin that Russia and China have
"agreed privately" to turn the screws on Iran. A
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman last Tuesday urged
the international community to "pay attention to the
demands and concerns of Iran". He said Beijing would
like the diplomatic negotiations to proceed "in a way
that would protect the interest of all sides". He
pointed out that while Beijing supported the European
proposal to resolve the issue, it also called on the
international community to "remove Iran's concerns".
On the same day, Lavrov said, "Iran must be involved
in international economic cooperation and the efforts
to enhance security in the region ... in parallel, we
are ready to guarantee Iran's right to develop
peaceful nuclear-power engineering." Lavrov drew the
bottom line as to what Thursday's Vienna meeting was
about. He said those consultations had a single
objective, namely, to work out a common approach that
would reflect the strategic goal of ensuring the
non-proliferation regime while observing the interests
of every signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT).
Again, last Thursday, China's permanent representative
to the UN, Wang Guangya, said in response to the
United States' Iran talks offer, "I think it in a way
proves that the US is more serious about the
negotiations than about other options, but I do hope
that this offer could be less conditional." A Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman said on the same day that
Beijing welcomed the US offer to hold talks with Iran
and urged the United States to pave the way for a
peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement last Thursday
welcoming the US offer to Iran underlined that "the
prospects of talks should not be impeded by attempts
to threaten Tehran or place on their agenda matters
not pertaining to the central task of settling the
problem of Iran's nuclear program".
Russia has also made it clear that it does not accept
any strict time frame for Iran to respond to the
European Union offer. Lavrov said, "There is no
categorical deadline. But I think we are talking about
several weeks."
In a telephone conversation with Bush last Friday,
Chinese President Hu Jintao welcomed the US decision
and said China believed the nuclear non-proliferation
system should be preserved and the Iran nuclear issue
should be resolved "in a peaceful way through
diplomatic means and talks", and that to this end,
China would be willing to "maintain contact and
coordination" with the US and play a "constructive
role in resuming negotiations at an early date".
Clearly, from all the above it appears that there is a
degree of disinformation regarding the alleged shift
in the Russian and Chinese position on the Iran
nuclear issue in the past week or so. This
disinformation campaign, the puzzling "Israel factor",
the lobby's immense political clout in the US,
Rumsfeld's innuendos - all this underlines that
Washington is having a messy time retracing steps from
the cul-de-sac into which its Iran policy has driven
it. Tehran would have every reason to be pleased.
But in all probability, Iran's response to the EU
offer will be neither negative nor effusive. Iran
remains wary of US intentions but knows Washington is
caught in a bind too. Iran is, therefore, bound to
come up with a pragmatic reaction.
Tehran seems to be cautiously optimistic that this
time around, the EU will have something substantive to
offer. (At a gathering in Tehran on Sunday, Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, "We have good and
healthy relations with Europe and, in the near future,
because they need our gas and energy, these relations
will become even better.")
Tehran is conscious of the energy card it is holding.
Amid the cacophony over the Iran nuclear issue, Russia
has been probing a new partnership in energy with Iran
that could prove the tipping point in international
energy politics. This puts pressure on the West.
On May 23, the chief executive officer of Russian
energy giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, met with the
Iranian ambassador in Moscow, Gholamreza Ansari. To
quote a Gazprom statement, the discussions pertained
to "possible cooperation in gas production,
transportation and use". Clifford Kupchan, a former US
diplomat who is currently with Eurasia Group, a
Washington-based think-tank, commented, "Russia very
much wants to coordinate gas supplies with Iran."
Coordination could help alleviate the strain on
Gazprom's supplies in 2011, when Russia has promised
to supply China with 40 billion cubic meters per year.
Kupchan said, "The idea in Moscow is that Iran would
concentrate on Eastern markets, while Russia would
maintain its grip on Western markets."
An expanded energy partnership cementing a strategic
axis involving Russia, China and Iran - this would be
an ultimate nightmare scenario for Washington. The US
State Department recently sought "clarification" from
Moscow as to why Ahmadinejad was invited to attend the
SCO summit in Shanghai on June 15. To quote Kupchan,
"The potential realignment ... crystallized by those
participating in the SCO meeting is new and is of
concern to US interests."
But Iran is an ambitious country. Russia and the
"eastern option" are not Iran's first choice in energy
cooperation. Arguably, Iran would by far prefer an
intensification of energy cooperation with Europe,
leading to its broader integration into the
international community.
The remarks by Ahmadinejad on Saturday at a ceremony
in Tehran contain more or less the salients of the
likely Iranian response to the US offer of talks. He
said Iran would be ready to hold "fair and
unconditional" talks.
Second, Ahmadinejad said Iran's stance would be based
on its "national interests". Anti-Iran propaganda
aside, Ahmadinejad is an immensely popular leader in
Iran. He is arguably the first Iranian leader in a
long while who has reached out to the common people.
But he has asked for realism. The US cannot expect
Iran to negotiate on the basis of preconditions. The
"peaceful use of nuclear energy" is Iran's "legitimate
right", which is not open to negotiations.
Ahmadinejad concluded his remarks saying, "We welcome
talks, logic and contacts, and there are lots of
issues in the world we could discuss." In other words,
Iran intends to make use of the "breakthrough"
(Ahmadinejad used this expression in telephone
conversations with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on
Saturday).
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki summed up
in carefully balanced phraseology much the same when
he said, "We won't negotiate about the Iranian
nation's natural nuclear rights but are prepared,
within a defined, just framework, and without any
discrimination, to hold dialogue about common
concerns."
The Iranian reaction, in short, will leave room for
negotiations. As Mottaki put it, "We think if there is
goodwill, a breakthrough to get out of a situation
they [EU and the US] have created for themselves ...
is possible."
But the challenge facing the Bush administration is
immense. Israel and the lobby are closely watching.
The Bush administration is yet to give a transparent
explanation regarding its abrupt turnaround. There is
no certainty that within the Bush administration there
is unanimity of opinion.
It is unclear whether Bush and Rice have thought
through a strategy of negotiations with Iran (which is
of course closely linked to the United States'
regional policies) or whether this is a ploy aimed at
stalling any Russia-Iran-China energy partnership
taking shape within the SCO.
It is certainly going to be an uphill task to keep up
a reasonable momentum of negotiations and at the same
time assert Washington's leadership of the Iran Six.
Not only Russia and China, but also Germany and France
would feel justified in seeking to ensure that their
bilateral relations with Iran remained protected.
In contrast with the US, they all have huge political
and economic interests with Iran. The position of
Russia and China on the legal grounds for sanctions or
military enforcement measures against Iran may
continue to frustrate the US negotiating brief with
Iran.
The Russian and Chinese position already allowed room
for maneuvering for Tehran. (On the other hand, as
Supreme Leader Khamenei implicitly warned on Sunday,
Moscow too ought to realize how its existing "good"
relations with Tehran would have suffered "if a
pro-American government was in power in Iran".)
Finally, as time passes, the fundamental contradiction
in the US stance is bound to become more and more
glaring: why is it that Iran cannot have what other
NPT allies of the US such as Germany, Japan, the
Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina can have?
Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told Annan in
Beijing on May 23 that the Iran nuclear issue
concerned the "authority and efficiency" of the
international non-proliferation mechanism, and "it
also concerns the peace and stability of the Middle
East as well as international energy security".
Therefore, Tang stressed, "It is pivotal for relevant
parties to continue dialogue and negotiation, to
increase trust and find a solution with broad
support."
Bush and Rice have quite a job on their hands.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with
postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98)
and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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