Test of wills over Iran plan


By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times
November 17, 2009


The Barack Obama administration's reliance on quick fixes with regard to Iran's contested nuclear program threatens to derail the White House's Iran engagement, thus delivering a severe blow to the overall edifice of the US's new Middle East approach.

To begin with, the "fuel-for-fuel" deal, given to Iran under the guise of a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whereby Tehran is requested to deliver most of its much-prized "nuclear assets" - some 1,200 kilograms or roughly 70% of its accumulated low-enriched uranium (LEU) - could never have been expected to be feasible.

Under the United Nations-brokered plan, Tehran would send its uranium to Russia and France to be further processed before it was returned for use in a medical reactor core in Tehran. It is now a month and a half since the talks in Geneva between Iran and the "Iran Six" [1] that culminated in Obama's high-profile announcement of the deal.

Yet it is now clear that (a) Iran never agreed to any specific volume of its LEU being shipped out of Iran; only to the basic framework of a draft agreement, and (b) Iran would never consent to any terms that militated against its integrated nuclear strategy.
Still, despite unmistakable signals from Tehran that contradicted Obama's announcement, Washington continues to insist that Iran has revised itself and turned down an agreement to which it initially agreed. This is coupled with the insistence by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that "we are not altering it [the draft agreement]".

Soon after Clinton spoke, Mohamad ElBaradei, the outgoing chief of the IAEA, announced after a meeting with Obama at the White House that the US had now proposed giving Turkey the custodianship of Iran's LEU, as a sort of nuclear escrow. This is unworkable, given the complex dynamic of Iran-Turkey relations, and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was quick to shoot down the idea during a visit to Turkey.

At this point, the US and its allies will need to show greater flexibility and agree to amend the draft agreement. For instance, they could opt for a phased delivery of a much lower amount of Iran's LEU under firm guarantees of timely delivery back to Iran. If the draft stands, Iran may well proceed and produce itself the relatively high (under 20%) enriched uranium it needs for the small Tehran reactor, regardless of the financial and technical challenges. There is no legal bar to this under the articles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory, no matter how alarming the perception in the West of Iran developing a weapons program.

Should all sides show good-faith and flexibility, this could turn into a "win-win" scenario: Iran would agree to dip into its store of LEU, which is a national security asset, and the West would enter into a new phase of "turning confrontation into cooperation", as anticipated by ElBaradei.

Instead, the whole deal now has the distinct possibility of turning into a "lose-lose" proposition, as it could culminate in new punitive measures against Iran.

On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Russia was running out of patience with Tehran and that Moscow might consider new sanctions. A senior US official said that neither Obama nor Medvedev had suggested a deadline for Iran, although France has suggested December. Iran is already subject to some UN sanctions - as well as unilateral ones imposed by the US - over its uranium-enrichment program. New legislation has been introduced in the US calling for even tougher sanctions.

In his most recent message to Iran, Obama spoke of wanting new relations "based on mutual interests and mutual respects". Yet, a major problem with the US is that it is unclear who speaks for its Iran policy.

There are several voices, each putting on a different accent, one sounding the alarm on Iran's "existential threat to Israel", another telling a Jewish lobbyist group that the administration's policy is still that of "zero centrifuges" in Iran. Vice President Joseph Biden has told the world that the US does not care if Israel attacks Iran, while some advisors even talk of regime change in Tehran.

Another problem with the US's Iran policy is that it continues to be bedeviled by the pre-existing problem of "getting Iran wrong", recalling the candid statement of president George W Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who found Iran "an opaque country" that she did not understand.

The question is, does the Obama administration understand Iran any better than its predecessor(s)? The answer is mixed.

To be sure, there is no lack of effort in trying to get Iran right, which is why the administration has recruited John Limbert, a former hostage-turned-Iran expert keen on complex negotiations with Iran, as deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran. He replaces the Iran-phobic Dennis Ross, who has moved on to a new assignment with the national security team in the White House. This portends a new lineup of doves versus hawks on Iran reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter era, when then-secretary of state Cyrus Vance and the hawkish Zbigniew Brzezinski had constant bouts.

"For Iranian negotiators, the test of an agreement is not whether it conforms to the experts' notions of legality, but whether it can be presented as a victory for Islam and Iran," Limbert wrote recently, advising US negotiators to "avoid legal jargon and technicalities".

Limbert is wrong and distorts the current position of Iran's nuclear negotiators - that Iran has not diverted from peaceful nuclear activities and its legal and transparent program, fully monitored by the IAEA, should not be subjected to sanctions and other punitive measures.

For instance, the IAEA in 2007 decided to reduce its technical assistance to Iran by 40%, or 22 out of some 55 programs - an unprecedented action by the IAEA's governing body that Tehran badly wants to see reversed now that repeated IAEA inspections have found no smoking gun that would corroborate the West's and Israel's allegations against Iran.

"We've always said that every option is on the table," Clinton repeated last week. Yet the viable option of abiding by the NPT's norms and respecting Iran's nuclear right to a peaceful enrichment program under the surveillance and safety standards of the IAEA is still missing from the US's assortment of options.

Once the US reconciles itself to this option, which would leave Iran at the threshold of potential but not realized nuclear weapons capability, then all sorts of doors for diplomacy and even rapprochement between the US and Iran would open almost overnight.

For one thing, the US's efforts to enter Iran's nuclear market by, for instance, providing safety instruments for the Tehran reactor, would gain traction with Tehran's decision-makers. And the parties would also warm to enhanced cooperation on many shared interests in the region.

Unfortunately, principally as a result of Israel's pressure, the US is unlikely to consider this option as Israel believes it would deflect from the other standoff in the Middle East - the Palestinian peace process.

Interestingly, though, the Jerusalem Post has indicated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first priority in his recent, unusually low-key visit to Washington was indeed Iran, not the Palestinian issue. Like one of his predecessors, Ariel Sharon, he apparently wants to "sequence" events.

With Sharon, it was selling to Washington the notion of taking out Iraq's Saddam Hussein first, and now with Netanyahu it is settling business with Tehran's mullahs first. The common denominator of the approaches is an indefinite postponement of the Palestinian problem. The only question is whether or not the old trick works with Obama.

By recognizing Iran's status as a "virtual nuclear-weapon capable" state that nonetheless retains that capability in a state of dormancy, the international community does not fall into the trap of appeasement. The ticking clock of more sanctions and even military action are the worst way to deal with Iran's "nuclear threat" simply by virtue of the fact that a threatened Iran is more likely to go fully nuclear.

Note
1. The "Iran Six" includes the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, France, Britain, China and Russia - plus Germany.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KK17Ak01.html