Changing Western attitude and resolution of Iran's nuclear issue

This commentary is simultaneously published in Middle East Online.

Former ambassadors of major European powers to Tehran, led by the former head of the British diplomatic mission to Tehran, Richard Dalton, recently published a memo, entitled “Iran is not in breach of international law”, in some major British and American newspapers on the current status of nuclear negotiations between Iran the P-5+1 countries, which marks a break from the conventional representation of Iran’s nuclear issue in the West . The memo has been written by the former European ambassadors in recognition of the failure of the current Western strategy towards Iran’s nuclear issue and with a view to offering Western powers a solution to the existing deadlock in their relations with Iran.

The publication of the memo is striking not for the reason that it offers any consistent practical proposals for the resolution of the current standoff between Western powers and Iran but because it makes several rare and daring admissions , which if recognized and followed suit by a wider spectrum of Western political elites, can potentially serve as a basis for a logical solution to Iran’s nuclear issue in the future.

The first admission by the former ambassadors is that they recognize that Iran’s nuclear activities are consistent with international law and that there has been no diversion of nuclear activities in Iran to military purposes. The former ambassadors note “nothing in international law or in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty forbids the enrichment of uranium” and that “the IAEA has never uncovered in Iran any attempted diversion of nuclear material to military use”. The public recognition of this fact by the former European ambassadors to Tehran is praiseworthy, given that the general public in the West are systematically bombarded with contrary claims by mainstream Western media on an almost daily basis.

The former ambassadors further recognize that there is no issue from the perspective of international law with achieving a nuclear threshold status by Iran either, even if this turns out to be Iran’s ultimate goal. The former ambassadors write “ Again, nothing in international law or in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty forbids such an ambition. Like Iran, several other countries are on their way to or have already reached such a threshold but have committed not to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody seems to bother them”.

　

In addition to questioning the conventional Western assumptions about Iran’s nuclear program, the former European ambassadors also challenge some of the main practical aspects of the current Western strategy towards Iran’s nuclear issue. More specifically, they denounce the goal of "zero centrifuges operating in Iran, permanently or temporarily," as unrealistic and as a key culprit for the failure of the current Western strategy towards Iran’s nuclear issue. They accurately recall that “in 2005 Iran was ready to discuss a ceiling limit for the number of its centrifuges and to maintain its rate of enrichment far below the high levels necessary for weapons”, and that “Tehran also expressed its readiness to put into force the additional protocol that it had signed with the IAEA allowing intrusive inspections throughout Iran, even in non-declared sites”, and blame Western unrealistic demands for the failure of those negotiations.

While doing an outstanding job of critiquing the main foundations of the current Western strategy towards Iran’s nuclear issue, the memo suffers from some notable shortcomings too. The main drawback of the memo is that the former European ambassadors do not draw consistent conclusions from their own assumptions and arguments and fail to offer any genuinely different solution to Iran’s nuclear issue. They note “The next step should be for the two sides in this conflict to ask the IAEA what additional tools it needs to monitor the Iranian nuclear program fully and provide credible assurances that all the activities connected with it are purely peaceful in intent. The agency's answer would offer a basis for the next round of pragmatic negotiations with Iran”.

The former European ambassadors do not explain why, despite their own assumptions about Iran’s nuclear program, they believe Iran still deserves a discriminatory treatment as compared to other members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Iran’s nuclear activities are consistent with international law and if there has been no diversion of nuclear material in Iran to military use, the question remains unanswered as to why Iran’s nuclear activities would need additional IAEA’s monitoring beyond its existing mandate.

The former ambassadors also do not discuss how to reverse the wrong course that has been taken by Western powers over the past several years towards Iran’s nuclear issue. If Western strategy towards Iran’s nuclear issue has been misguided over the past several years, as the former ambassadors convincingly argue, will it be possible to build a new structure with a view to resolving Iran’s nuclear issue before deconstructing the existing edifice? Is it reasonable to speak of enhanced confidence-building measures by Iran while maintaining enhanced economic sanctions that have been imposed on it by the West over the past several years? While deserving credit for some of their daring and honest statements about Iran’s nuclear issue, it should be clear that the former European ambassadors to Tehran would have made a more persuasive case had they answered a number of hard questions before offering any practical solutions to Iran’s nuclear issue.

U.S. policy towards Bahrain and the Iran factor

This article is simulatenously published in Foreign Policy In Focus, Foreign Policy Journal, American Chronicle and On Line Opinion.

The popular uprising in Bahrain has put U.S. foreign policy makers in an awkward position. The U.S. government has largely lent its diplomatic weight to the Saudi regime in stifling popular uprising in Bahrain for fear that any democratic transformation in that country would work to Iran’s advantage, thus undermining its own interests in the Persian Gulf region. This explains why President Obama refrained in his recent address on the Middle East from even mentioning, much less slightly criticizing, Saudi Arabia for its military intervention in Bahrain and why he sufficed with only a soft criticism of the Bahraini regime’s crackdown on its pro-democracy movement. This posture has further undermined the image of the U.S. in the eyes of the Middle Eastern publics, due to its perceived double standards towards regional political developments, and is likely to work to the detriment of U.S. strategic interests in the region in the long run.

In recent weeks, some commentators and political analysts have questioned the rationale behind the current U.S. policy towards political developments in Bahrain by arguing that the popular uprising in Bahrain has nothing to do with Iran and that the Iranian government has actually a lot to lose in the long run from a democratic government in Bahrain. Others have also played down the sectarian nature of the popular uprising in Bahrain, thus allaying U.S. fears that any new democratic government in that tiny island would ally itself with Iran.

While it is true that the Arab popular uprisings, including the one in Bahrain, are not primarily motivated by sectarian identities and that they are home-grown and independent social movements without any ties to Iran, it can hardly be disputed that Iran will benefit from the fall of conservative authoritarian Arab regimes in both Shiite and Sunni majority states in the region . The experience of the democratic transformation in Iraq which led to the political empowerment of Shiites and Kurds bears witness to the fact that Iran is likely to benefit form the outcome of such political upheavals . Similarly, any democratic and popularly-based political system in Bahrain is expected to exhibit some gravitation toward Iran, given the common religious bonds between the two nations and also in part as a symbolic gesture to mark a break with the foreign policy of the previous tyrannical regime, as witnessed in the case of post-Mubarak Egypt.

But the U.S. government does not need to buy into the claim that Iran will end up to be the loser of the Arab Spring in order to recognize that its current policy towards the region, especially in regard to the popular uprising in Bahrain, is untenable. The U.S. policy towards Bahrain is unjustified for the simpler but more fundamental reason that it does not need to define its national interests in opposition to Iran in all contexts.

Defining Iran-U.S. relations as a zero-sum game in all issue areas would afflict the U.S. foreign policy by limiting its room for maneuver. The fact that every gain for Iran in its foreign policy does not necessarily translate into a loss for the United States seems to not factor prominently into the calculations of U.S. foreign policy makers with regard to the recent political developments in the Arab world . It would of course be brazenly naïve to deny the fact that the United States and Iran are currently serious rivals in the region and have conflicts of interests in a number of important issue areas, most notably Iran’s nuclear program, and that it would take extreme compromise by both parties to reconcile these differences under present conditions. But this does not mean that they cannot be tacit partners and have convergent interests in a number of other issue areas.

While not officially recognized and applied in other similar circumstances, there are practical cases of partnership between the United States Iran in the recent past, where the strategic interests of both countries converged. A notable example is the temporary working relationship that developed between the two countries in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the tragedy of September 11th. Both countries coordinated their actions through multilateral settings under the UN and benefited from toppling their common adversary in Afghanistan. Although that brief formal cooperation between the two countries over Afghanistan soon dissipated after former U.S. president George Bush branded Iran as a part of the “Axis of Evil”, their common interest in preventing the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan has withstood the test of time and has enabled the emergence of a tacit partnership between the two countries.

The fact that Iran has since largely refrained from playing a spoiler’s role in Afghanistan despite the fact that it is well capable of creating serious trouble for the United States in that country in light of its geographical proximity and traditional influence in Afghanistan, bears witness to the existence of such a tacit partnership between the two countries over Afghanistan. Iran’s recognition of its common interest with the United States in preventing the resurgence of the Taliban has helped sustain this tacit partnership to this date.

The current political situation in Iraq also shows that any gain for Iran does not necessarily come at the expense of the United States. Both countries have clearly a shared interest in preserving the status quo in Iraq. Despite occasional disputed claims of limited weapons smuggling from Iran to both Afghanistan and Iraq with a view to helping the insurgents in those countries , there is no evidence pointing to any strategic decision on the part of Iran to undermine the status quo in those countries. In fact all major evidence points to the contrary.

That being said, neither the United States nor Iran are yet prepared for any open bilateral diplomatic engagement with a view to redressing their own mutual ties. Yet they can coordinate their foreign policies towards regional political developments through multilateral settings or intermediaries, as in the case of their low-level diplomatic engagement over Iraq, which was hosted by the Iraqi government in Baghdad during the Bush administration. At the very least, the recognition of their common interests in any relevant issue area should enable them to form tacit partnerships and avoid any paranoid reaction to any political developments in the region that benefit either party .

The current political situation in the region, instigated by the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain and the continued suppression of the public uprising by the Bahraini regime, is clearly unsustainable and has the potential to escalate to outright military confrontations in the strategic region of the Persian Gulf. The zero-sum mentality vis-à-vis Iran characterizing the current U.S. policy towards political developments in the region has created unnecessary costs for the foreign policies of both countries and above all has harmed the genuine democratic aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Bahraini population. The unconditional U.S. support for the Saudi regime and its refusal to apply any substantive pressure on the Bahraini regime will further harm U.S. credibility and long-term interests in the region by placing it on the wrong side of the unfolding history in the region.