by Shireen T. Hunter
Not long after the outbreak of the crisis over Ukraine and Crimea, many observers began asking the following question: what impact could renewed Russo-Western tensions have on the fate of the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program? Will the Russians encourage Iran to become more obdurate [...]]]>
by Shireen T. Hunter
Not long after the outbreak of the crisis over Ukraine and Crimea, many observers began asking the following question: what impact could renewed Russo-Western tensions have on the fate of the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program? Will the Russians encourage Iran to become more obdurate and change its current and more flexible approach to negotiations with the P5+1 countries (the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany), stop complying with sanctions on Iran, or even help it financially and militarily, for example by delivering the promised-but-withheld S-300 air defense system or even shipping the more advanced S-400?
Other questions are also important. Notably, what impact has the West’s treatment of Iran had on Russia’s ability to pressure Ukraine and in general to regain its influence in independent states of the former Soviet Union, including the Caucasus and Central Asia? Indeed, the Western policy of containing Iran and excluding it from many regional and transnational energy and other schemes has facilitated Russia’s policy of consolidating its position in the former USSR.
A major tool that Russia has used in its quest to regain influence over its former possessions has been its vast oil and gas reserves. This is quite evident in Ukraine’s case, where Russia has switched the gas spigot on and off as a way of pressuring Kiev. Iran is only second to Russia in its gas reserves and could have been an alternative to Russia in many countries of the former USSR, including Ukraine. Yet the Western policy of preventing any foreign investment in Iran’s energy sector, coupled with preventing any transfer of Iran’s oil and gas to Europe via various pipeline routes, has meant that Russia has gained an excessive share of the European energy market. Iranian gas could have easily been transported to Europe, especially the East European countries, through Turkey, Bulgaria and so on. Even Ukraine could have satisfied some of its energy needs through Iranian gas.
The same has been true in the Caucasus. Both Georgia and Armenia have wanted more energy cooperation with Iran. However, they were discouraged by the West and, in the case of Armenia, also pressured by Russia. The result has been their greater vulnerability to Russian pressure.
Meanwhile, preventing any of the Central Asian energy sources to pass through Iran, the only country with common land and sea borders with these countries (with the exception of Uzbekistan, which is a land-locked country), has made it more difficult for countries like Georgia to get, for instance, Turkmen gas. In other areas, too, excluding Iran from regional energy schemes, and discouraging Central Asian and Caucasian countries from cooperating with Iran, has worked either in Russia’s favor or created opportunities for China.
Even in the areas of security and conflict-resolution, Iran’s exclusion and the West’s encouraging regional countries to adopt anti-Iran policies has had negative effects. This has even given rise to new tensions and problems, for instance, between Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as exacerbated sectarian tensions. For example, Azerbaijan’s resulting animosity to Iran has led it periodically to favor Sunni radical Islamists. Consequently, today Azerbaijan has a serious Salafi problem, and sectarian tensions in the country have been on the rise.
The experience described above provides important lessons for Western policy towards Iran and regional issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and South Asia. The first lesson is that a policy of containment on several fronts is not practicable, at least not in the long run. For twenty years, the US has tried to contain both Russia and Iran in these regions and to bar Iran’s interaction with these regions, while also looking askance at China’s progress.
A second lesson is that excluding Iranian oil and gas from global markets inevitably limited Europe’s and Central Asia’s energy choices, making both more vulnerable to Russian pressures since, with the exception of Qatar, the Persian Gulf oil giants are not major players in the gas market.
The last and the most important lesson is that the West should press forward with negotiations with Iran, toward a satisfactory conclusion to the nuclear dispute. This should be followed by lifting sanctions, encouraging the return of Western energy companies to Iran, and planning new networks of energy transport which would include Iran. In the long run, this kind of engagement would also translate into better political relations between Iran and the West and produce a positive impact on Iran’s political evolution and hence issues of human rights and other freedoms in Iran.
With regard to broader regional security issues, the West should work with Iran on a case-by-case basis wherever this serves Western interests, rather than making all aspects of relations with Iran hostage to its stand on the Palestinian question. As shown by the example of Afghanistan — where Iran supported US interests in toppling the Taliban, only to be deemed part of an Axis of Evil — isolating and excluding Iran harms the West as much if not more than it does the Islamic Republic. Right now, the only real winner is Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
]]>Umit Enginsoy, of the Turkish news site Hurriyet, seems to be one of the only journalists to have noticed that, had Obama waited a few more days — until 2011 — to make these recess appointments, the four ambassadors could have served until the end of 2012 before requiring Senate confirmation. (Recess appointments last until the end of the subsequent calendar year.) Since Obama made these appointments in the waning days of 2010, the diplomats will have to secure the confirmation of the full Senate by the end of 2011, or their diplomatic posts may once again be vacant.
As it is, the president’s move has been assailed by Republicans and neoconservative ideologues. The Obama administration most likely did not want to make matters worse by squeezing in half a dozen recess appointments — four of them diplomats — on the holiday weekend prior to the official opening of the 112th Congressional session on Jan. 3rd (although neither chamber will even be sworn in until Jan. 5). Though weekend appointments most likely would have been valid, since Obama himself announced fifteen recess appointments on March 27, 2010 — a Saturday.
While Obama’s decision to make before-year-end appointments shortens the potential terms of the diplomats at their postings, the long delay in their Senate approval owes to special interests, politics, and ideological attacks from neoconservatives and their allies.
When Obama named Ricciardone as the top U.S. envoy to Ankara on July 1, his confirmation by the Senate was expected to be routine. A career diplomat who speaks fluent Turkish, his first assignments were to Ankara and Andana when he entered the U.S. Foreign Service 32 years ago. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee interviewed Ricciardone on July 20, and his appointment was approved to go before the full Senate. With confirmation imminent, Ricciardone’s predecessor, Amb. James Jeffrey, left Ankara at the end of July, preparing to become the U.S.’s top diplomat to Baghdad in mid-August.
But on August 5, when the Senate unanimously confirmed 27 of Obama’s ambassadors, Ricciardone was not on the list. By the time the names were brought forward for a voice vote, neoconservative pundits and their allies had been attacking Ricciardone for weeks. Über-hawk Elliott Abrams blamed Ricciardone, who had served as Ambassador to Egypt between 2005 and 2008, for both the growing popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood and for the failure of democratization and political reform in Egypt, telling The Cable’s Josh Rogin:
“Especially in 2005 and 2006, Secretary Rice and the Bush administration significantly increased American pressure for greater respect for human rights and progress toward democracy in Egypt. This of course meant pushing the Mubarak regime, arguing with it in private, and sometimes criticizing it in public. In all of this we in Washington found Ambassador Ricciardone to be without enthusiasm or energy.”
Speaking to Rogin, Danielle Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), also went after Ricciardone, questioning his loyalties: “Now is not the time for us to have an ambassador in Ankara who is more interested in serving the interests of the local autocrats and less interested in serving the interests of his own administration.”
After the August 5 vote, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) took up the anti-Ricciardone banner, placing a hold on any further Senate consideration of Ricciardone’s nomination. Parroting Abrams and Pletka, Brownback expressed doubts that Ricciardone would be “tough” enough on the Turkish government, or capable of reversing what Brownback called a “Turkish tilt toward Iran and away from Israel.”
As Laura Rozen of Politico reported, Brownback sent a letter on June 12, 2002, lavishing praise on Ricciardone’s diplomatic skills and thanking him and his staff for their professionalism in the fight against terrorism. While Ambassador to the Philippines, Ricciardone played a key role in the attempt to secure the release of two Evangelical missionaries captured and held for over a year by the Abu Sayyaf organization.
Nevertheless, Brownback’s stubborn and single-handed block of Senate consideration of Ricciardone’s nomination remained in place until the end of the 111th Congress, even after his Nov. 2 election as governor of Kansas.
When Sen. John Kerry, outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, breezed into Ankara as part of his Middle East tour in November, urging Turks to play nice with Israelis, he apologized for the delay in appointing a U.S. ambassador to Turkey.
“I tried very, very hard to get an ambassador chosen before we left for recess in October,” Kerry told Turkish journalists. “We had one or two senators who blocked it. This is not the U.S.’s position, this is politics at home and we were trying to break through it. I will go back next week and I am going to speak to those senators. I will try to secure a nomination, if not I will personally recommend to the president that he make a recess appointment.”
But Kerry and the Turks both knew the possibility that Ricciardone might receive a “recess appointment” during the congressional lull in October and November had already been pre-empted by a deal reached by Democratic and Republican senators. A little known and rarely used procedural manoeuvre — twice weekly pro forma sessions, during which the Senate’s presiding officer gavels in and out in a deserted chamber — kept the Senate technically in session but without the ability to get anything accomplished. This stripped Obama of his power to make recess appointments just before and after the 2010 election.
Had such a deal not been made, Senate Democrats said in their own defense, Senate Republicans could have forced the president to repeat the entire process of nominating each of the 110 pending presidential appointees, including executive and judicial positions, and diplomatic ones like Ricciardone. The agreement allowed for the possibility of Senate confirmations during the “lame duck” congressional session,” which began in mid-November and ended last week before Christmas.
The day before the President’s recess appointments were announced, Turkish news sources were doubtful that Ricciardone’s nomination would be able to move ahead. Once the new session of Congress opens on Jan. 3, Obama will have to begin the nomination process of all pending nominees who are subject to Senate ratification at square one.
On Wednesday, while on vacation in Hawaii, Obama announced that six long-delayed nominees whose appointments were being held up in the Senate would be receiving recess appointments. including four ambassadors. Ricciardone was one of them. The Turks have their U.S. ambassador at last. Ricciardone plans to take up his long-awaited post in Ankara in early January.
As Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly points out, all four of the ambassadors who received recess appointments were considered fully qualified by the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had approved their nominations and sent them to the full Senate. All had been kept from taking up their diplomatic posts by unilateral actions on the part of one or two senators who prevented appointments from reaching the Senate floor for the votes that would have confirmed them. (Benen’s detailed deconstruction of Washington Post “Right Turn” blogger Jennifer Rubin‘s claim that these recess appointments were in any way “controversial” is well worth a read.)
Action on the nomination of career diplomat Robert Stephen Ford, who Obama designated to be the first U.S. Ambassador to Syria since President George W. Bush vacated the post in 2005, had been blocked by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) since the beginning of May. Benen points out: ”Republicans didn’t object to Ford, per se, but didn’t want the post filled at all. The administration insisted that having an ambassador to Syria was integral to U.S. diplomacy in the region.”
The appointment of another career diplomat, Matthew Bryza, as Ambassador to Azerbaijan had been blocked by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who are fiercely protective of the interests and sensitivities of the pro-Armenian lobby ANCA. In a recent letter published in the Washington Post, Menendez accused Bryza of denying there was an Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turkey in 1915. Menendez considers Bryza too favorably disposed toward Azerbaijan and Turkey, making him by definition anti-Armenian.
Obama’s choice to post his legal adviser on ethics, Norm Eisen, in the Czech Republic has been held up by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA). Grassley blames Eisen for the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin in June 2009, the details of which have absolutely no bearing on his qualifications to be the top U.S. envoy to Prague.
While Turks seemed pleased that Ricciardone’s ambassadorial appointment went through, neoconservatives lost no time in disparaging it. AEI’s Michael Rubin told Hurriyet‘s Ilhan Tanir that recess appointments tended to be “lame ducks” whose one year terms were rarely extended because senators didn’t like presidents using the tactic: “Turkey might want a serious American representative with weight in Washington, but what they got is a controversial has-been who, at best, will be home before the year is out.”
Tanir also quoted Jamie Fly, executive director of the newly-founded and highly ideological Foreign Policy Initiative, as stating, “It is disappointing that President Obama made this recess appointment given Ambassador Ricciardone’s track record in previous posts. We need an ambassador in Ankara who will stand up for U.S. interests even when they conflict with Turkey’s desires. Ricciardone has shown himself unable to manage similarly difficult challenges in the past.”
Chas Freeman, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and a retired diplomat who edited the entry for “Diplomacy’ for the current edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, strongly disagrees. “Frank Ricciardone is a diplomatic professional who speaks Turkish and who has managed embassies in the very challenging circumstances of the Philippines, Egypt, and Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine anyone more qualified to represent our country in Ankara,” he told LobeLog in an e-mail interview. “It’s not the job of ambassadors, even American ambassadors, to act as viceroys or to direct the internal affairs of the countries to which they are accredited. Nor can the United States promote democracy in countries where U.S. policies are deeply resented and expect not to have to deal with elected governments that reflect that resentment.”
Expect this battle to re-emerge when the current term of recess appointments expires.
]]>“Facing [competition with emerging regional [...]]]>
“Facing [competition with emerging regional powers and a decline in Iran's own] regional importance — in addition to a fresh round of EU, U.S., and Kremlin-backed U.N. sanctions, internal unrest and an array of external military threats — Tehran has chosen to fight back with vigorous diplomatic campaigns in its near abroad,” Edwards writes from Tbilisi.
Iran’s outreach, as well as some Caucasian reciprocity, has been robust: They exchange envoys, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has traveled to Georgia, rail roads and pipelines have been proposed, Azeris and Georgians no longer need visas to travel to Iran, and trade deals, especially for energy, are always in the works.
Much of the effort is directed at keeping the countries on Iran’s northern border from “getting too chummy” with hostile nations, particularly the U.S. One Georgian executive, speaking anonymously, tells Edwards that the Iranians are clear that they don’t want any U.S. bases to their north.
But what’s going to come of all of it? Taking a rather great leap that Iran’s central fall back strategy might simply be a nuclear bomb, Edwards concludes:
]]>The real economic and geopolitical dividends of all this Iranian diplomacy in the South Caucasus are mostly theoretical at this point. For example, an Iranian business community that has developed a taste for the lucrative transit market might act a moderating force on the Iranian government. For another, Iran’s willingness to behave diplomatically and encourage stability in the Caucasus could produce a potential backchannel through which Tehran is able to begin to soften its 30-year history of isolation from the West.
Realistically, though, that’s not likely to happen any time soon. Iran-watchers caution that Tehran’s ambition may exceed its true reach. Another east-west pipeline from Azerbaijan, through Georgia, to Turkey — from which Iran was deliberately excluded — is already in the works. Neither Moscow, which currently has a chokehold on the European gas supply, nor Washington, with its policy of containment of Iran, are likely to allow Iranian pipelines to reach Europe. Politics aside, the gas industry hardly sees Iran as a reliable supplier. And despite big talk, real economic partnerships between Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are still small. In 2008, for instance, only about 1 percent of Georgian imports were Iranian.
Even if everything goes Iran’s way in the South Caucuses, it doesn’t amount to a long-term strategy for the Islamic Republic. Rapprochement with the West doesn’t seem to be in the cards, and it’s unclear how increased regional trade will counter the effects of international sanctions. If Tehran has a grand strategy, it seems to be oriented toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons. At some point, one imagines, that’s also going to have to be the subject of discussion between Iran and its neighbors.