An offer too good to refuse

An offer too good to refuse Major U.S. concessions are a must in any deal with Iran, writes Steven Edwards.
	This mural in Tehran tells the tale of Iran's relationship with the United States. Iran is on U.S. President George W. Bush's list of 'axis of evil' states. Photograph by : Raheb Homavandi, Reuters

An offer too good to refuse
Major U.S. concessions are a must in any deal with Iran, writes Steven Edwards.

Steven Edwards
The Ottawa Citizen

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

CREDIT: Raheb Homavandi, Reuters
This mural in Tehran tells the tale of Iran's relationship with the United States. Iran is on U.S. President George W. Bush's list of 'axis of evil' states.

UNITED NATIONS -- Normalizing political and trade ties with a state it believes is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism would seem unpalatable for Washington, but doing so may be the least the Islamic republic will accept in exchange for curtailing its nuclear ambitions.

As the major powers opened talks yesterday in London over Iran's defiance of the United Nations Security Council by expanding its nuclear program, a number of leading experts from across the political spectrum say the chances of an agreement that allays western fears that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb rest as much on a massive climb-down by Washington as by Tehran.

But even if the United States bends to the extent it effectively treats Iran as a partner, the country's ruling mullahs could still calculate that the benefits of attaining nuclear capability outweigh those that might flow from being brought in from the cold by Washington.

In such a case, diplomacy will have run its course, and Washington's only remaining options would be to resort to force or accept Iran as a nuclear power and rely on the deterrent power of its own nuclear arsenal, the latter of which is arguably ineffective against a terrorist-supporting state.

"I think there is a diplomatic solution, but it requires the United States to put some very attractive concessions on the table in exchange for Iran agreeing to rigorous international inspections of its nuclear program," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice-president for defence and foreign policy at the conservative Cato Institute in Washington.

"If we offer the normalization of diplomatic and economic relations with Iran, and a security commitment that we are not going to try to engage in forcible regime change, there is a reasonable chance that Iran might agree."

Yesterday in London, the U.S. State Department said representatives from Germany and the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- will reconvene Thursday to discuss a "sanctions" resolution against Iran.

The focus at the moment is far from working toward any "grand bargain" with a state President George W. Bush has declared part of an "axis of evil" that enables terrorist activities throughout the Middle East, including against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Rather, the United States and European allies Britain, France and Germany -- the three European Union powers that for two years led now-stalled talks with Iran -- say they hope to win Security Council backing for "incrementally" toughening sanctions against the Islamic state.

The aim is to persuade Iran to reconsider an offer made last summer by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, which sit as the veto-bearing Security Council.

The package included providing light-water reactors that would help Iran fulfil its claim that its nuclear program aims only at electricity generation. Iran would also have permission to buy U.S. plane parts.

"The offer on the table is already a hugely generous one. The far-reaching proposals we made last June would give Iran everything it needs to develop a modern civil nuclear power industry and provide the basis for wider co-operation," explained a western European diplomat involved in the talks at the UN.

Yesterday's London meeting, called after the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed last week that Iran had ignored the Security Council's February deadline for suspending its nuclear activities, ended with British Foreign Office official John Sawers saying work had begun on drafting a new resolution.

Washington has already moved to back any increased international squeeze with military deployments that are said to "remind" Iran that force remains an "option," and with continuing efforts to persuade banks and other financial institutions to voluntarily pull back from Iran.

But Russia and China have already telegraphed their reluctance to agree to any significant new pressure on Iran.

Extensive Russian and Chinese economic interests in Iran have long been cited as reasons for such a position, but some of the Russian reticence may also be linked to President Vladimir Putin's recent charge that the United States is trying to create a "unipolar" world in which Washington serves as the "single centre of power."

To analysts, the statement appeared to indicate Russia is more concerned about U.S. hegemony than a nuclear-armed Iran.

"The Iranian nuclear issue is not a frivolous one for Russia, but President Putin is clearly determined to reject a unipolar world order," said Karim Sadjadpour, senior analyst with the Brussels- and Washington-based International Crisis Group.

He said this and the observation that China has contented itself with shadowing Russia's positions on Iran at the UN make Russia the "x-factor" in the diplomatic-solution equation.

"Russia is like a two-in-one package because the Chinese have implicitly made it clear they will follow Russia's lead on Iran policy," he said. "It is going to require very adept U.S. diplomacy in reaching out to the Russians to make it clear that Russian interests will be best served by averting a nuclear-armed Iran."

Further complicating the search for diplomatic leverage is Europe's growing trade relationship with Iran, and even a recent bombshell statement from French President Jacques Chirac.

The European Union accounts for 40 per cent of Iran's imports, with two of the EU-3 negotiating team -- Germany and France -- joining Italy as lead suppliers.

Mr. Chirac set off alarm bells in Washington when he told reporters Iran's possession of "one or perhaps a second bomb a little later (was) not very dangerous."

Mr. Chirac later withdrew the tape-recorded comment, saying he'd thought part of his interview with scribes from the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur, a weekly magazine, was off the record.

While it's agreed that Iran's economy could be vulnerable to outside financial pressure because of the country's reliance on foreign capital to develop its untapped oilfields and nascent nuclear energy sector, Cato's Mr. Carpenter is among those who argue there would be defections from extensive international sanctions -- even among U.S. allies.

"Japan, for example, is extremely worried ... China will swoop in and displace Tokyo's investments," he writes in Iran's Nuclear Program: America's Policy Options, a policy paper in which he lists those countries as well as the EU, Russia and India as the biggest investors in Iran.

Absent international solidarity against Iran, it's argued the current diplomatic track will fail.

"Iranians don't buckle under pressure; they buckle under a lot of pressure. And so far, I don't know if the administration has the capability of creating that kind of pressure," said Ray Takeyh, Middle East specialist with the Council On Foreign Relations, and author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic.

In his Time for Detente With Iran article in the upcoming Foreign Affairs magazine, he calls for four tracks of diplomacy: one dealing with Iraq; another with terrorism; a third with the nuclear question; and the final one with normalization of relations -- including what he calls "sanctions relief."

"The purpose of negotiations is not to create an alliance," he said. "For a long time, the Iran debate has oscillated between wild calls for confrontations and equally wild calls for reconciliation. So Iran is going to be somewhere in between -- a problem state that requires management."

But while the shortcomings of current international diplomatic efforts are noted in Washington, not only members of the Bush administration are talking of the need to buttress sanctions proposals with threats of military force (euphemistically referred to as "all options").

"We have muddled along for far too long," former senator John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate, said via satellite at a conference in Israel last month hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, an Israeli think-tank.

"To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table."

Showdown With Iran

This is the final instalment in a three-part series that began Saturday.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007