by Peter Jenkins
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to the UN General Assembly today leaves me feeling frustrated. There are more than 30 points in it that I would dearly love to discuss with him, either because they seem to be of questionable veracity, or because they are assertions [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to the UN General Assembly today leaves me feeling frustrated. There are more than 30 points in it that I would dearly love to discuss with him, either because they seem to be of questionable veracity, or because they are assertions that are not backed up by evidence.
But perhaps I should count myself lucky that such an opportunity will never come my way. I suspect Mr. Netanyahu is a politician who finds it hard to concede a point or learn from his mistakes.
If this piece has any readers, let me assure them that I am not going to itemise all 35 of the Israeli Prime Minister’s questionable propositions. Instead I propose to react to a handful of Mr. Netanyahu’s points (paraphrased below) that touch on my experience of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues over the last eleven years…
Rouhani was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005. He masterminded the strategy that enabled Iran to advance its nuclear weapons program behind a smoke screen of diplomatic engagement. Here’s what he said in his 2011 book: “While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan.”
The US intelligence assessment is that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Francois Nicoullaud, who was France’s ambassador to Iran at the time, has written that it was Dr. Rouhani who, with the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader, ordered abandonment.
Iran’s completion of a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan in 2004 occurred with the full knowledge of Iran’s European negotiating partners, and indeed of the rest of the world, thanks to International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) inspection visits to the site. In doing so, Iran was not in breach of its 2003 agreement with Europe.
In 2002 Iran was caught red-handed secretly building an underground centrifuge facility in Natanz.
It is unknowable whether Iran intended the Natanz facility to be secret. In 2002, their safeguards agreement with the IAEA obliged them to declare new facilities 180 days before the first introduction of nuclear material. Well before the 180-day mark, an Israeli-supported anti-Iran organisation proclaimed to the world that Tehran was building a “secret” enrichment facility. An Iranian declaration followed in good time. Personally, I doubt the Iranians could have been naïve enough to intend a large facility to be secret.
In 2009 Iran was again caught red-handed secretly building a huge underground nuclear facility for uranium enrichment in a mountain near Qom.
A similar story. The US and its allies allowed their knowledge that this facility was under construction to leak. At much the same time Iran declared the facility to the IAEA. Would Iran have made that declaration had it not been for the leak? Would they have declared it later, 180 days before the introduction of material? These questions are unanswerable until the relevant Iranian archives are opened.
Why would a country with vast natural energy reserves invest billions in developing nuclear energy?
I wonder whether this question was ever put in the 1960s to the USA, Canada and the USSR. I wonder whether now Israel is putting it to the United Arab Emirates.
Iran has also continued work on the heavy water reactor at Arak; that’s in order to have another route to the bomb, a plutonium path.
To extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel a reprocessing facility is necessary. Neither the IAEA nor US intelligence has ever come across evidence of an Iranian reprocessing facility. Iran has assured friend and foe for the last ten years that it has no intention of acquiring a reprocessing capability.
Since Rouhani’s election — and I stress this — this vast and feverish effort has continued unabated… The sanctions policy today is bearing fruit.
These two assertions look to me to be contradictory. In any case, Iran’s “effort” hardly qualifies for the epithet “feverish”: 18,000 centrifuges installed over the course of seven and a half years; 10.000 kg of low enriched uranium produced over the same period (only enough for four or five nuclear devices, if further enriched, or for just over a third of a fresh fuel load for Iran’s sole power reactor).
In 2005, North Korea agreed to a deal that was celebrated the world over by many well-meaning people… A year later, North Korea exploded its first nuclear weapons device.
An alleged Iranian nuclear threat to global survival deserves more rigorous analysis than a vague argument by analogy. And this is an analogy that breaks down when exposed to facts. In 2005, the DPRK, unlike Iran, was not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and was not subject to IAEA safeguards; it already possessed enough plutonium for at least ten nuclear devices. Its leaders knew that the US and its allies were unable to make a credible threat to end the DPRK nuclear weapons program by force or to retaliate for DPRK bad faith, because the DPRK was capable of killing millions of South Koreans in a matter of hours by conventional means. The DPRK has a record of reneging on deals with the US; Iran does not. The DPRK is a “loner” that has not the remotest chance of ever being elected to preside over the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM); Iranians care passionately about the prestige and reputation of Iran, which currently presides over the NAM.
In standing alone, Israel will know that it will be defending many, many others.
I wonder whom Mr. Netanyahu has in mind. India? China? Japan? Indonesia? Malaysia or Thailand? Sub-Saharan Africa? Latin America? Europe? Russia? Iraq? Turkey? Syria? Egypt? Algeria? Oman?
I would like to conclude with a quotation from a political thinker whom I would expect Mr. Netanyahu to admire: Nicolai Machiavelli. “I believe that forced agreements will be kept neither by princes nor by republics.”
Israeli fears will never be dispelled by forcing Iran to give up uranium enrichment, nor by destroying its enrichment facilities. Safety lies in the US negotiating an agreement that Iran will have no interest in breaking but that will nonetheless be subject to stringent verification and and actionable under the NPT.
]]>by Peter Jenkins
Divining the Obama administration’s foreign policy intentions can be intellectually challenging.
At the beginning of February the US Vice President appeared to be offering Iran an opportunity to enter into bilateral talks on the nuclear dispute.
Three weeks ago the US was encouraging its European allies to review [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
Divining the Obama administration’s foreign policy intentions can be intellectually challenging.
At the beginning of February the US Vice President appeared to be offering Iran an opportunity to enter into bilateral talks on the nuclear dispute.
Three weeks ago the US was encouraging its European allies to review their opening position for the upcoming Almaty talks and be open to demanding a bit less of Iran while offering a little more.
Two weeks ago the Secretary of State was hailing the outcome of the Almaty meeting as useful and expressing hope that serious engagement could lead to a comprehensive agreement.
Yet last week in New York, addressing a UN Security Council committee, Ambassador Susan Rice, a member of President Obama’s cabinet, was speaking of Iran as though nothing had changed since the end of January.
There are many clever people working for the Obama administration. So I suppose we must assume that this apparent incoherence is in fact part of a highly sophisticated stratagem, which will deliver what most — though not all — of us want: peace in our time.
Any, though, who are less inclined to think more of US officials than former British diplomats do, should be forgiven for feeling perplexed — perhaps even a little worried — by Ambassador Rice’s remarks.
Let me try to illustrate that by reviewing a few of her points from the position of a Non-Aligned (NAM) member of the UN. Of course, a former British diplomat cannot hope to imagine the thoughts of NAM counterparts with pin-point accuracy. But I have rubbed shoulders with NAM diplomats for a sufficient number of years, and listened to enough of their intergovernmental interventions, to have a rough idea of what impression Ambassador Rice will have made.
“The Iranian nuclear issue remains one of the gravest threats to international security” she intoned. Really? I, as a NAM diplomat, am not sure Iran has ever violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and am certain Iran has not violated that treaty’s most important provisions. Surely North Korea, which has just conducted its third nuclear test, is a greater threat? And what about Israel, which possesses hundreds of dangerous weapons of mass destruction, as well as sophisticated long-range delivery systems? What about India and Pakistan, which came close to nuclear blows in 2002? What about Israel’s refusal to withdraw from territories it has occupied for over 45 years, a standing affront to Arab self-respect? What about the potential consequences of Western-sponsored civil war in Syria, civil unrest in Iraq, and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan?
“We meet at a time of growing risks.” Is that so? Surely the latest International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report suggests that Iran is being careful to deny Israel’s Prime Minister a pretext to draw the US into a war of aggression?
“[Iran is] obstruct[ing] the IAEA’s investigation into the program’s possible military dimension by refusing to grant access to the Parchin site.” Well, yes. But surely the question of access to Parchin is legally more open to dispute than this implies? And hasn’t the US intelligence community concluded that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program ten years ago? Don’t the IAEA’s suspicions relate to experiments that may have taken place more than ten years ago and that would have involved only a few grams of nuclear material? Why all the fuss?
“More alarming still…Iran is now….installing hundreds of second-generation centrifuges”. Why is this so alarming? Surely Iran has declared this installation to the IAEA, will submit the machines’ operations to frequent IAEA inspection and intends to use them to produce low-enriched uranium for which Iran will account? Developing centrifuge technology under IAEA safeguards is not a treaty violation.
“These actions are unnecessary and thus provocative.” Since when have states been entitled to dictate what is necessary to one another? Some states certainly don’t see these actions as provocative.
“[Iran’s missile launches] allow Iran to develop a technology that [could] constitute an intolerable threat to peace and security.” Iran has no treaty obligation to refrain from developing missile technology. Many other states have done so. And, didn’t I (NAM diplomat) read recently on the US Congressional Research Service that Iran is unlikely to have an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by 2015?
“Working together, we can continue to clarify for Iran the consequences of its actions and show Iran the benefits of choosing cooperation over provocation.” My, that sounds patronising, even a little threatening! Will it encourage Iranians to believe that the latest US offer of engagement is sincere?
So what, US readers may feel. The US can say what it likes; it’s a Great Power. Yes, but a power that has the misfortune to be great in an age when greatness confers responsibility for nurturing a law-based international system.
It doesn’t do much good to that system for US ambassadors to sound unreasonable, alarmist, bereft of a sense of proportion and perhaps a little inclined to double standards. Good leaders lead from the middle, not one of the extremities.
And could it be the case that the US is a Great Power that needs a diplomatic solution to an intractable dispute? Neither the Pentagon nor the US public wants another war at this stage. Sanctions have been hurting innocent Iranians but benefitting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and conservative elite, who feel confident of their ability to contain popular discontent.
When one is running out of options, negotiating theorists suggest that building trust in one’s good faith is a better tactic than dishing out hyperbole and half-truths.
Photo Credit: US Embassy New Delhi/Flickr
]]>By Robin Yassin-Kassab
In August 2012 Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi attended a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran. His presence at the conference was something of a diplomatic victory for the Iranian leadership, whose relations with Egypt, the pivotal Arab state, had been at the lowest of ebbs since [...]]]>
By Robin Yassin-Kassab
In August 2012 Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi attended a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran. His presence at the conference was something of a diplomatic victory for the Iranian leadership, whose relations with Egypt, the pivotal Arab state, had been at the lowest of ebbs since the 1979 revolution.
Egypt’s President Sadat laid on a state funeral for the exiled Iranian shah. A Tehran street was later named after Khalid Islambouli, one of Sadat’s assassins. Like every Arab country except Syria, Egypt backed Iraq against Iran in the First Gulf War. Later, Hosni Mubarak opposed Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, worked with the US and Saudi Arabia against Iran’s nuclear program, and was one of the Arab dictators (alongside the Abdullahs of Jordan and Saudi Arabia) to warn darkly of a rising “Shi’ite cresent”. Not surprisingly, Iran was so overjoyed by the 2011 revolution in Egypt that it portrayed it as a replay of its own Islamic Revolution.
Iran also rhetorically supported the revolutions in Tunisia and Libya, the uprising in Yemen, and, most fervently, the uprising in Shia-majority Bahrain.
In Syria, however, Iran supported the Assad tyranny against a popular revolution even as Assad escalated repression from gunfire and torture to aerial bombardment and missile strikes. Iran provided Assad with a propaganda smokescreen, injections of money to keep regime militias afloat, arms and ammunition, military training, and tactical advice, particularly on neutralising cyber opponents. Many Syrians believe Iranian officers are also fighting on the ground.
Iran’s backing for al-Assad is ironic because at a certain point the Syrian revolution was the one that most resembled 1979 in Iran – the violent repression of demonstrations leading to angry funerals leading to still more in a constantly expanding circle of anger and defiance; the people chanting allahu akbar from their balconies at night; women in hijabs joining women with bouffant hair to protest against regime brutality.
It was also a massive miscalculation, a lesser cousin to the miscalculations made by Bashaar al-Assad, and one which stripped the Islamic Republic of the last shreds of its revolutionary legitimacy. Like the Syrian president, Iran was popular among Syrians until twenty two months ago, even among many sectarian-minded Sunnis. (So too was Hizbullah, now widely reviled. In 2006, the Syrian people – not the regime – welcomed into their homes a million south Lebanese refugees from Israeli bombing.) It now seems very unlikely that any post-Assad dispensation in Syria will want to preserve Iranian influence. The Free Syrian Army, the anti-Assad Islamist militias, and the Syrian National Coalition all see Iran as an enemy of Syria, not as an honest broker that could help negotiate a transition.
Iranian popularity has also collapsed in the wider Arab world, where its pro-Assad policy has undercut its position more effectively than American or Israeli messaging could ever have done. (James Zogby’s poll was conducted in June 2011, too early for revulsion over Syria to have fully developed, but it nevertheless shows a dramatic decrease in favourable attitudes to Iran.)
Back in August, President Morsi (whose foreign policy has been much more intelligent than his domestic governance) chastised his hosts on the Syrian issue. “We should all express our full support to the struggle of those who are demanding freedom and justice in Syria,” he said, “and translate our sympathies into a clear political vision that supports peaceful transfer to a democratic system.” The Iranian leadership was embarrassed enough to censor this part of Morsi’s speech from its state TV broadcasts.
Morsi also offered the Iranians the following deal: Egypt would develop a warm economic and political relationship with Iran to the extent of championing Iran’s nuclear energy program and opposing sanctions in the international fora. In return, Iran would pull back from its support of the Assad regime.
By its continued support for Assad, Iran in effect rejected the deal. Nevertheless, Morsi set up a four nation contact group – Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran – which has foundered not only on Iranian intransigence but also on Saudi absences from meetings. (Saudi Arabia has offered rhetorical support and some light weapons to the Syrian resistance; it also sent troops to Bahrain to help put down the democratic uprising there.) Egyptian-Iranian consultations on Syria continue.
Morsi was actually offering something substantial to the Iranians. It’s difficult to see how negotiations involving the Americans could produce better results so long as the US, bound up as it is with Israel’s self-perceived interests in the region, insists on sanctioning Iran’s nuclear program.
This is a great shame. Alongside Russia, Iran is the only power to exert any real influence on Bashaar al-Assad. It is to be hoped that, as the fall of the Assad regime becomes more apparent, wisdom will eventually prevail in Tehran. A volte face even at this late stage would strengthen Iran in its battles with the West and would temper rising anti-Shia sentiment in Syria and the wider Arab World.
- Robin Yassin-Kassab is the author of The Road From Damascus, a novel, co-editor of the Critical Muslim, a quarterly journal which looks like a book, and of www.pulsemedia.org. He blogs at www.qunfuz.com.
]]>On 20 August Al-Monitor published a perceptive article about the upcoming Iranian three-year presidency of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). The authors were Abbas Maleki, who was a deputy foreign minister of Iran for many years, and Kaveh Afrasiabi. One of the authors’ points was that any nuclear “missteps” by [...]]]>
On 20 August Al-Monitor published a perceptive article about the upcoming Iranian three-year presidency of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). The authors were Abbas Maleki, who was a deputy foreign minister of Iran for many years, and Kaveh Afrasiabi. One of the authors’ points was that any nuclear “missteps” by Iran would be seen by many of Iran’s NAM partners as a betrayal of trust. This is a shrewd observation.
I was serving in Vienna in 2003 when Iran’s nuclear safeguards violations over several years were reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors. NAM countries, with few exceptions, were not amused. They felt that Iran had let their side down.
This may surprise Western readers who are used to hearing it implied that the NAM is feckless and irresponsible (because it refuses to toe Washington’s line). But that image of the NAM can be misleading. In my experience, most NAM members take seriously their responsibilities as parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and value the moral high ground that compliance with the Treaty’s provisions confers.
Why? Not least because that moral high ground can be used to condemn some of the practices of the three western nuclear weapon states (NWS), which the NAM see as a bad lot: dragging their feet on nuclear disarmament; denying the non-nuclear weapon states the nuclear fuel cycle technology to which the NPT appears to entitle them, provided they place all their nuclear material under safeguards and refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons; and turning a blind eye to the nuclear threat posed by the greatest rogue state (to NAM eyes) in the Middle East: Israel.
So Iran’s three-year leadership of the movement is likely to be two-edged. Should any fresh Iranian non-compliance with its NPT safeguards obligations come to light during this period, the odds are that NAM members will once more put Iran under pressure to correct the failures and come back into compliance with its NPT obligations.
An interesting question is whether NAM members would also be ready, as in 2003, to press Iran to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing-related activities and to re-apply the IAEA’s additional protocol (providing enhanced assurances as to nuclear material remaining in non-weapons use).
On the one hand, NAM members are likely to take a second betrayal of trust by Iran even more badly than the first, given Iran’s representational role as leader of the movement, and given the frequency with which Iran has assured NAM partners that its nuclear activities are blameless and that it is the victim of a vendetta.
On the other hand, the NAM view of the three western NWS is even darker than it was in 2003. NAM members did not appreciate the 2004 Bush administration’s proposal to divide the nuclear world into “haves” and “have nots”, nor a consequent tightening of the guidelines observed by members of the nuclear suppliers group. All but India and its closest friends disliked the same US administration’s decision to make nuclear technology available to one of only three states that have refused to adhere to the NPT: India.
Many NAM members consider the sanctioning of Iran by the UN Security Council, at western NWS instigation, to have been disproportionate to Iran’s pre-2003 safeguards failures, and therefore unjust. They note only modest NWS movement towards nuclear disarmament (though the Obama administration’s record is a big improvement on the back-sliding of the Bush administration). They also deplore continuing Israeli refusal to countenance proposals for a Middle East nuclear weapon-free zone, which would complement such zones covering Latin America, Africa and much of the Asia/Pacific region.
Moreover, the battle between the West’s candidate to succeed Mohamed ElBaradei as director general of the IAEA and the NAM candidate was bitter and divisive, and won by the West’s candidate.
This is a long list. Nonetheless, my hunch is that NAM members would want to give Iran a hard time if credible evidence of current (not pre-dating 2003) non-compliance were to be laid before the IAEA board by a credible IAEA member state (not Israel, the political leadership of which is seen as unscrupulous, and possibly not the US, UK and France, none of whose reputations for integrity have prospered in recent years).
So fate may be handing the West the best opportunity in years to achieve renewed Iranian suspension and reapplication of the additional protocol. There’s a twist, though.
The trigger for NAM pressure on Iran would be credible evidence of a second Iranian betrayal of NAM trust. That same second betrayal of trust would deepen Iran’s confidence deficit with the rest of the world and would increase the number of Westerners – including me, I suspect – who would be convinced that Iran cannot be left in possession of enrichment technology, even with the best guarantees in place against diversion of nuclear material. A long-term settlement based on the NPT, at the end of a suspension during which the IAEA completes its additional protocol investigations, would probably turn out to be as elusive as ever. We still would not be out of the thickets into which the Islamic Republic’s insecurity has driven us.
]]>It must be considered pure fortuity for the Islamic Republic of Iran that the decision to hold the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran was made three years ago in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Although the previous NAM summit took place shortly after Iran’s contested 2009 presidential election, it’s unlikely that anyone [...]]]>
It must be considered pure fortuity for the Islamic Republic of Iran that the decision to hold the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran was made three years ago in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Although the previous NAM summit took place shortly after Iran’s contested 2009 presidential election, it’s unlikely that anyone could have predicted the significance that the next summit would have for Iran in light of the Obama’s administration’s systematic effort to tighten the sanctions regime and the changes in the region.
The extraordinary effort put into the summit – it will include 5 days of holiday for government workers in Tehran along with 30 extra liters of rationed gasoline, perhaps as an encouragement for people to take a vacation away from the capital city – is intended to showcase Iran’s global role and offer concrete evidence that the United States-led initiative to isolate Iran has failed.
This is not my interpretation. It is a point loudly made by various officials in Iran. For instance, Ezatollah Zarghami, the head of Iran’s radio and television, called the summit “a maneuver against arrogance… giving the message that the nation of Iran can play a role in global equations irrespective of the power of global arrogance.”
The summit is being used to make a visually forceful case that it is not the “global community” that has problems with the Islamic Republic, as repeatedly asserted by US officials, but only a US-led and pressured coalition of countries. And, ironically, the Obama administration is conceding that point by identifying Tehran as a “strange and inappropriate choice” for the summit while trying to dissuade various leaders from attending the meeting.
According to Ali Saeedlou, Iran’s vice president and chair of the secretariat for the summit, 150 delegations, including from 20 international organizations, will participate. Saeedlou said Tehran is prepared to host 7,000 delegates with plans for them to visit “industrial plans, and cultural and historical venues.” India’s delegation alone will include 250 people and will be led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
To be sure, whether this showcasing of Iran’s non-isolation will strengthen Iran’s hand and actually have an impact in denting the escalating US-imposed sanctions regime is an entirely different matter. NAM has already issued several statements in support of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and there is not much else that it can or will do in Tehran beyond confirming its past positions.
There is potential for a degree of unpleasantness regarding Syria, which will have representation in the summit. According to IRNA, a news agency close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there is even debate in Iran about whether President Bashar al-Assad should attend. But Assad’s attendance is highly unlikely and chances are that a rather bland statement calling for regional cooperation on resolving the Syrian imbroglio will satisfy the attendees. IRNA has already conceded that inclusion of support for Syria’s sovereignty as a member of NAM in the Summit’s final statement is unlikely.
Probably the most important aspect of the summit is Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi’s decision to attend. But this decision is more about Egypt’s new foreign policy direction than Iran’s non-isolation. The Egyptian president is the current secretary general of the Nonaligned Movement and had he not gone to Iran to hand over NAM’s rotating leadership, his move would have been seen as an insult to NAM as well as a continuation of Egypt’s US-dependent foreign policy under the ousted Hosni Mubarak.
And, if Egypt and Iran do eventually decide to re-establish full diplomatic relations, that decision will not be based on what happens at the summit; it will result after the time and desire for resuming diplomatic ties has finally come in both countries. In Iran, the desire and concerted effort to elevate relations with Egypt has existed since Mohammad Khatami’s presidency and the last vestiges of opposition have vanished with the political change in Egypt. Meanwhile, the exchange of ambassadors between the two countries is effectively the least expensive way for Egypt to announce its new independent foreign policy. Not having ambassadorial relations with Iran when every other Arab country including Saudi Arabia does, simply doesn’t make sense anymore and even the US must understand this.
Ambassadorial-level relations do not necessarily mean friendly relations – as the current state of Iran-Saudi relations show. And the extent to which Cairo will be willing to deepen relations with Tehran will depend on, and in all likelihood be limited by, the balance of power in Egypt’s domestic politics as well as the country’s relations with the US and other regional powers.
Still, depending on how well organized the summit turns out to be, Tehran will try to garner as much publicity as possible for a show staged essentially for an audience that resides outside of Iran.
As to the audience inside Iran, once the summit is over, it will continue to be divided and weighed down with the reality of severe economic challenges and a broken and paranoid political system that still does not know what to do with a large number of disaffected citizens and cannot offer an explanation for why a former prime minister (and his spouse) and a former speaker of the Parliament continue to be incarcerated without charge.
The good news for this audience though is the persistence of its wry sense of humor. Making fun of the five-day holiday that the government is giving Tehranis, a joke is going around that during the past weekend 30 people have drowned in the Caspian Sea and 90 people died in car crashes. The punch line? “If Israel waits, a whole bunch of us will just pass away during the summit holidays.”
]]>Turkish-Iranian relations have been rocky since the deepening of the Syrian imbroglio. But the latest row suggests a new low. In no uncertain terms both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressed displeasure with recent harsh statements coming out of Tehran regarding Turkish culpability in [...]]]>
Turkish-Iranian relations have been rocky since the deepening of the Syrian imbroglio. But the latest row suggests a new low. In no uncertain terms both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressed displeasure with recent harsh statements coming out of Tehran regarding Turkish culpability in the quagmire Syria has become. The Turkish leadership was particularly upset with the recent remark by Iran’s chief of general staff who has said that “it will be its turn” if Turkey continues to “help advance the warmongering policies of the United States in Syria.”
Seeking Turkey’s help for the release of some 48 Iranians kidnapped by the insurgents in Syria, Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi tried hard to soften the angry language that is coming out of Iran’s hawkish foreign policy wing. Davutoglu nevertheless warned him “in a frank and friendly manner” against blaming Ankara for violence in Syria.
On the ground, the reality in Syria is taking its toll on the relationship. Along with the exchange of unprecedented accusations, Iran has reportedly decided to suspend a visa-free travel arrangement with Turkey. This arrangement, in force since 1964, was suspended last week under the pretext of concerns for the run-up to the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which will commence at the end of August in Tehran. It will be reinstated after the NAM meeting in September, but the reasoning has been treated with suspicion by the Turkish press. Meanwhile, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç slammed Iran, implying that the recent surge of terror attacks in Turkey’s Southeast has Tehran’s backing. “We have received information that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK] terrorists infiltrated from the Iranian side of the border and that they were stationed in the Şehidan camp [in Iran] and crossed into Turkey from the region of Harkuk in northern Iraq,” he said.
What explains Iran’s most recent vocal offensive against Turkey and the Erdogan government’s testy response? Tehran has obviously been unhappy with Ankara’s role in supporting the insurgency in Syria. But assessing that Erdogan’s Syria policy is not that popular at home – at least among some key stakeholders – Iran seems to have made the decision to highlight the dangers of what it considers to be a Turkish policy of reckless involvement in the Syrian crisis for Turkey itself and eventually for the political standing of the Justice and Development Party.
It should be noted that Tehran is not that off the mark regarding the unpopularity of Erdogan’s policy and as such, there is a method in the madness of offending a government that in Erdogan’s words “stood by Iran when no one was at its side.” Tehran is banking on the fact that with the spilling of the Syrian crisis into Turkey, Erdogan’s Islamist government will be facing increasing criticism from secular forces for jumping on the Assad bandwagon without thinking carefully about the implications of Syria’s disintegration as a country. Tehran is also banking on the belief that in a contested political environment like Turkey’s, public opinion matters.
Tehran’s logic in assessing Erdogan’s domestic vulnerability on his Syrian policy is simple. Bashar al-Assad’s fall may make Iran a loser in the proxy fight over Syria, but Turkey will be an even bigger loser if the motley crew of forces that have come together to dislodge Assad end up destabilizing the borders that were imposed by external forces in the first half of the twentieth century. (The Turkish border with Iraq was negotiated with the British government in 1926 and was established with Syria in 1938 when, after the expiration of the French mandate, the people of the border province of Hatay voted to be a part of Turkey rather than Syria).
Tehran thinks that insecurity resulting from ethnic and religious disputes in Syria and countries like Iraq will deal the greatest and most drastic blow to Turkey among all the regional countries. While Iran may eventually lose a key ally in Assad and find its position weakened in the region, it is Turkey that has to deal with its own angry Arab Alevis residing near the Syrian border (and potentially the much larger Turkish and Kurdish Alevi population frightened by aggressive Sunni acts), opportunistic Kurdish nationalism, and the mayhem that refugees invariably bring into border areas. Tehran feels that such potential costs – some of which are already in evidence – will be the source of political divisions within Turkey and that highlighting them may increase domestic pressure on Erdogan to change course.
Erdogan’s fierce response can also be understood with this domestic dynamic in mind. In fact, Erdogan has already issued other angry responses against the domestic critics of his Syrian policy, at times even calling them traitors for questioning his efforts. He took a dig at the Iranian leadership’s own domestic problems when he said last week that “250,000 Syrians have left the country [Syria]. Is this not the responsibility of Iran? Yet, before Iran takes responsibility for the situation in Syria, it must first hold itself accountable [for its own]. We always take responsibility for our actions.”
But Iran holding itself responsible will not solve Erdogan’s Syria angst at home. As Morton Abramowitz points out, Syria is a major domestic issue and there is significant complaining about Erdogan’s handling of the Syria crisis. There is nothing pretty for Turkey in the potential materialization of some form of a Kurdish entity in northern Syria and the emergence of a Syria mired in an ethnic and confessional civil war with different groups controlling different regions.
The activism of Iran in the past week (i.e. Saeed Jalili going to Syria, Salehi going to Turkey, and then the holding of an ambassadorial meeting on Syria in Tehran) must hence be understood as having the following objectives:
- 1. To make a public (and visually unsettling) case that Assad’s fall is not imminent as portrayed by his opponents. The intended message is that Assad may be in trouble, but pushing him out of power requires more than the current militarized approach. Jalili’s very public display of solidarity is reflective of the fact that the hawks in Iran really believe that the fight in Syria is as much a public relations war as a physical war. Jalili’s visit was in many ways a direct response to the US government’s public statement that the flight of the Syrian prime minister suggests Assad’s imminent fall.
2. To highlight Tehran’s position that continued support for the removal of Assad through foreign-backed armed insurgency is a wrong policy that is being pursued by other regional players as well as the US. The policy has so far failed to remove the regime but even if it does succeed, it will underwrite the country’s disintegration with no one having control over the regional implications. Hillary Clinton may be dreaming about keeping the Syrian state intact while getting rid of the regime, but the Iranians are making the case that this is a highly unlikely scenario unless the Assad-must-go-contingency – with Erdogan at its heart – reevaluates its policy.
3. To make the case that the resolution of the Syria problem will be not be possible without Iran’s involvement. Again, note that this is premised on the belief that the current imbroglio and escalation in Syria is much more of a problem for Syria’s immediate neighbors (Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and even Israel) than Iran, which doesn’t have a border with Syria and more significantly, whose borders are not the result of the post-World War I imperial arrangement that is now in danger of being undermined.
Also note that Iran’s assessment of Turkey’s predicament is not that different from many US assessments regarding the threat that the lengthening of the conflict poses for neighboring countries. As Stephen Walt points out, it is difficult not to notice the slew of published opinions from the past couple of weeks – ranging from the always hawkish Washington Post editorial board to liberal interventionists (oops, sorry, I meant liberal internationalists) such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, to even the usually conflict-weary Nicholas Kristof – calling for increased US involvement in order to presumably prevent the post-Assad Syria from spinning out of control. In Walt’s words, for the US, the impulse for more action eventually wins even if in this case “we will almost certainly be fueling a sectarian war whose longer-term regional implications are deeply worrisome; we simply cannot resist the pressure to get involved.”
Unlike the United States, Iran does not have the resources to become directly involved in the expanding Syrian conflict. But it is trying to capitalize publicly on the costly but so far unsuccessful attempt to dislodge Assad. And for now, it is Turkish public opinion that is being conceived as a battleground.
Given the powerful allies that are prodding Turkey to remain committed to the “number-one goal…to hasten the end of the bloodshed and the Assad regime”, Iran’s play is a pretty weak one. But Erdogan’s Syria policy is also turning out to be a gamble that will only be redeemed if Syria does not disintegrate as a country.
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