The new year may have brought with it some signs of progress toward a comprehensive deal between world powers and Iran, lending credence to one of Graham Fuller’s 2015 predictions for the Middle East. However, any movement toward a nuclear agreement must now contend with a potentially game-changing complication: the desire of a new and more hawkish Republican-led Congress to impose additional sanctions on Iran regardless of how the talks are progressing.
The Associated Press reported on Friday that the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China) had reached a tentative agreement with Iranian negotiators on a plan to have Tehran ship some portion of its stockpiled low enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia. The agreement would presumably be along the lines of the arrangement that was first reported by IPS’s Gareth Porter in October whereby Iran’s stockpiled LEU, as well as much of its newly enriched LEU, would be converted by the Russians into fuel for its Bushehr civilian nuclear facility.
If the AP report is accurate, the deal could represent a major breakthrough in one of the core areas of dispute between the parties: the size of Iran’s uranium enrichment program. The P5+1 have sought to limit the number of centrifuges that Iran would be allowed to operate under the terms of a deal in order to lengthen the amount of time it would take the Iranians to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a single nuclear bomb if it chose to pursue one (Iran’s “breakout time”). But Iran has balked at the idea of reducing its centrifuge program. However, another element in the “breakout time” calculation (part of the so-called “Rubik’s Cube” of a final nuclear deal) is the amount of LEU that Iran has stockpiled. Were Iran to agree to ship its LEU (which can be fairly easily enriched to levels required for weaponization) to Russia for conversion into fuel rods (which cannot be easily converted to a weaponizable form), then Iran’s “breakout time” could be extended with only a relatively minor –and perhaps even no — reduction in Iran’s current centrifuge capacity.
It should be noted that the AP report contained no specifics, saying simply that “both sides in the talks are still arguing about how much of an enriched uranium stockpile to leave Iran.” It also offered no indication that the deal would motivate the US/P5+1 negotiators to alter their demand that Iran cut its current number of operating centrifuges by over 50%, to 4500, under a final deal. In addition, Iran’s foreign ministry quickly dismissed the AP report, with spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham saying that “no agreement has been reached yet on any of the issues [being discussed] during nuclear talks,” although that denial could reflect diplomatic posturing on Iran’s part.
Other news out of Tehran, however, has offered a more encouraging sign that the sides may be moving closer to a deal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday argued that Iran should be prepared to accept some limits on its uranium enrichment program if doing so could help achieve a larger aim:
Speaking to an economic conference in Tehran, Rouhani both countered hard-line critics worried Iran will give up too much while also attempting to signal his administration remains open to negotiation with the six-nation group leading the talks.
If “we are ready to stop some types of enrichment which we do not need at this time, does it mean we have compromised our principles and cause?” Rouhani asked.
He responded: “Our cause is not linked to a centrifuge. It is connected to our heart and to our willpower.”
Rouhani’s remarks caused a bit of a social media storm, with some reputable analysts, including Suzanne Dimaggio who heads the Iran initiative at the New American Foundation, suggesting that a final deal is on the horizon.
Important speech by #Iran‘s @HassanRouhani today: “Our ideals are not bound to centrifuges.” Preparing for a deal. http://t.co/f9CB66RT9G
— Suzanne DiMaggio (@suzannedimaggio) January 4, 2015
Additionally, Rouhani seemed to suggest that he could put the terms of a final nuclear deal to a national referendum, possibly in order to bypass potential opposition from hardliners in the Majles (Iran’s parliament) and higher up the country’s religious and political hierarchy. As Juan Cole notes, the results of such a referendum could still be overruled by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei may be reluctant to overrule the will of a majority of the Iranian public.
Unfortunately, these positive developments take place amid the rise of a new threat to the ongoing negotiations, not from hardliners in Iran’s parliament but rather from hardliners in the newly installed (as of Saturday) US Congress. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) visited Israel late last month and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there would be a vote on the previously stymied Kirk-Menendez bill (to impose additional sanctions on Iran) sometime in January, and that the new Congress would “follow [Netanyahu’s] lead” on dealing with Iran and the nuclear talks. Putting aside the astonishing sight of a US senator pledging allegiance to a foreign leader, sanctions are a clearly decisive issue for Tehran. The imposition of another round of broad US sanctions, even if they are made conditional on Iran abandoning the talks or breaking its obligations under the existing negotiating framework, would strengthen hardliners in Tehran who have long argued that Washington cannot be trusted. The Obama administration has pledged to veto any additional sanctions on Iran so long as talks are ongoing, but that may not matter; Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) told reporters last week that he expects the new Congress to pass a new sanctions bill with veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The most recent extension of the talks called for a final framework to be in place by March 1 and for a full deal to be reached by July 1. It seems likely that most Republicans in Congress will do their best to scuttle the talks before either of those deadlines can be reached, putting negotiators (who will meet again Jan 15. in Geneva) on an even tighter timeframe.
]]>by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
The decision announced last Monday in Vienna to extend the talks aimed at a compressive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program for an additional seven months has resulted in Iran’s currency taking dive. In one week, the rial lost more than 5% of its value in the unofficial market. The devaluation has clear political and economic implications: it will revive inflation, slow or stop economic growth, and increase the pressure on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as his government tries to make good on the election promises he made 18 months ago.
But will this soften Iran’s negotiating position? To answer this question, we need to look at the basis of this phase of the rial’s devaluation and what it means for ordinary Iranians.
The drop in the value of the rial after the extension was announced on Nov. 24 indicates that expectations in Iran for a final deal were high before the deal failed to materialize. This optimism had kept the rial’s value above what the economics of the situation warranted. In other words, rather than being in “free fall,” as several reports in the press have suggested, the rial is actually adjusting to a new equilibrium.
Two major factors have been putting pressure on the rial in the last few months, neither of which is related to the negotiations or the sanctions. The first is the decline of the price of oil, by more than 30% since this summer, which has reduced the already strained supply of foreign currency to the Iranian economy. As I noted in my previous post, prior to Nov. 24, the rial had remained surprisingly stable despite the falling price of oil.
The rial was also under pressure because Iran’s inflation exceeded that of its major trading partners, making Iranian producers less competitive. Prices in Iran have increased by 23% since Rouhani’s election in June 2013 when the rial traded around 31,000 per dollar. All else the same, the rial would have to fall by 23% to keep Iranian production competitive. That would mean an exchange rate of over 38,000 rials per dollar in the unofficial market and 32,500 in the official market. Presently, these rates are at 34,000 and 26,500.
Of course, all else is not the same. The price of oil is lower, Iran has started receiving around $700 million a month of its unfrozen assets, and there have been changes in economic policy. Some of these changes, like the lower price of oil, would require the rial to devalue further, while others would have the opposite effect.
At the same time, although the rial could continue to decline, currently it’s certainly not in free fall.
An overlooked fact in Western press reports on this issue is that the Rouhani government, populated in part by economists focused on the competitiveness of Iranian producers, had signaled its intention to officially devalue the rial before the Nov. 24 extension was announced. Indeed, officials spoke publicly last month about a (modest) 7.5% increase in the official exchange rate to be used in the 1394 (2015/2016) budget to 28,500 rials to the dollar.
Now on to that burning question: How long will this crisis last?
The pace of devaluation in the free market has quickly slowed down—the rial even rose against the dollar on Dec. 1—but as I mentioned earlier, further drops in the value of the rial are still possible as the reality of the lower price of oil sinks in.
Devaluation is a sign of an underlying imbalance in the economy, so when it happens, people are naturally alarmed. But it is also part of the solution to the same imbalances that need correcting. Consider, for example, that a cheaper rial is good for production and employment, even in a poor business environment hampered by international sanctions and domestic impediments to production, which business people refer to as “internal sanctions.”
Devaluations also redistribute income. In the short-run, inflation, which dropped last year below 20%, will rise as prices for goods bought and sold at the unofficial rate increase. The burden of the higher inflation will fall primarily on people living on fixed incomes, on the public payroll, and those who travel abroad or send money to their children abroad—all of whom compose the better part of the middle class.
Unlike former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani does not believe in directly paying the poor, so what happens to this segment—about 10-20%— of the Iranian population is less certain. Wages of unskilled workers usually increase with inflation, though not always in tandem. They also rise with demand for labor, which could get a boost from devaluation. However, the 30% increase in the price of bread that was quietly implemented earlier this week, on Dec. 1, will hurt the poor disproportionately, as it was put through without any compensatory mechanism.
Of course, if the Rouhani government is forced to reduce the country’s much larger energy subsidies to balance its budget in the face of falling oil revenues, it may ultimately have to swallow its pride and take up the Ahmadinejad cash transfer mechanism, which Rouhani strongly criticized during his presidential campaign.
Ultimately, the drop in the price of oil will result in lower economic growth and loss of income across the country. But there is no policy that can fully compensate for a large decline in the terms of trade, which the recent decline in the price of oil represents—there are only good and bad policy responses. Allowing the rial to devalue is a good start, but not enough. The government should also be planning policies to help domestic producers rise to the occasion and measures required to protect the poor as prices for basic goods such as bread and energy rise.
]]>by Ariane Tabatabai
With the November 24 deadline for a comprehensive deal between world powers and Iran on the country’s nuclear program now behind us, the negotiating teams have returned to their capitals to debate next steps. They will reconvene in Oman in early December to continue their efforts to strike a deal in seven months.
The extension represents both good and bad news. It shows once again that the parties truly want a final deal and that they are ready to take up the task. At the same time, the prolonged timeframe for a deal won’t be welcomed by various factions back home, who now have more time and room to derail the process altogether.
Indeed, as the negotiating teams were working around the clock to try to bridge the remaining gaps, various groups in Tehran and Washington, as well as in Tel Aviv and Riyadh, were working to get their own concerns onto the negotiating table.
In the United States, some influential members of Congress believe that Iran is in a comfortable position, not really seeking a solution but rather an indefinite extension of the talks to get sanctions relief. But as noted by Secretary of State John Kerry from Vienna on the day the extension was announced, Iran has been complying with the interim deal concluded in November 2013. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report the same day showing that key elements of the Iranian nuclear program remain suspended. Tehran, then, is not just kicking the can down the road.
Powerful Iranian figures also have concerns about the extension. They believe that the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), signed last year in Geneva, has effectively suspended important parts of the country’s nuclear program without giving Iran much back in return. However, they are also ignoring an important element of the process: The JPOA has granted Tehran access to some of its frozen assets, as it slowly prepares to reopen its market to international business, and leave its political isolation.
Over the next few months, critics on all sides will become louder, especially as Tehran and Washington continue to engage in cordial settings, raising concerns among some of their respective key constituencies.
The remaining key issues—the number of centrifuges Iran will be able to keep and operate, the timeframe of the deal, and sanctions relief—will likely be the main points of contention for these constituencies.
Other challenges could also arise in the process, including the interpretation of the JPOA over the next several months and the grey areas it includes. For instance, a couple of weeks prior to the deadline, Iran began to feed its IR-5 centrifuges (currently non-operational) with Uranium Hexafluoride, which caused a serious debate among nuclear experts. According to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, this act was a violation of the interim deal. Others, however, including Jeffrey Lewis at the Monterey Institute, rejected the charge, stating that the JPOA does in fact allow Iran to pursue research and development, including this activity. Expectedly, Iran denied that it had failed to uphold its end of the bargain and the US State Department ultimately backed up the Iranian position.
However, while key components of the Iranian program, including the installation of new centrifuges or further work on the Arak heavy water reactor, are suspended under the JPOA, Tehran continues its research and development. This means that a new generation of centrifuges could add fuel to the fire. Ideally, Iran would refrain from such activities while the talks are ongoing. But while such a step would be received positively on the international stage, thereby aiding the confidence-building process, domestically, it would backfire. It would provide conservatives and other hard-liners in Tehran with more ammunition to shoot at the negotiating team and the government generally.
Indeed, balancing international and domestic priorities and expectations is going to constitute a major challenge for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as the talks continue. If his government is to make any concessions, it needs to show its domestic constituencies that it is not giving up and still making progress on the nuclear program.
The good news is that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, continues to back the negotiating process. He reiterated his support for the negotiators led by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Nov. 25, the day after the deadline was missed, saying that Zarif and his team remained standing even as the West tried to force them to kneel. This crucial statement, which reiterated his deep mistrust of the West, came amid increasing pressure from hard-liners in Tehran and will serve in quieting them down for a while.
But as they key countries of Iran and the United States continue to engage, the prospect of prolonged détente, and especially rapprochement between the two long-time adversaries will result in the unity of four unlikely stakeholders—hard-liners in Tehran and Washington, as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv—in opposing improved US-Iran relations, for their own reasons.
Meanwhile, the stakes are higher than ever. President Obama, who will be dealing with a Republican-dominated Congress as of January, needs a major foreign policy achievement before his term is up in 2016. In the meantime, his ability to effectively “defeat and ultimately destroy” Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria—another defining element of is presidential legacy—will inevitably be influenced by the outcome of the talks. On the Iranian side, by the new deadline of July 1, 2015, the Iranian president will have spent the better half of his first term almost entirely focused on the nuclear issue, essentially rendered unable to seriously advance other items on his agenda.
In other words, both presidents have been banking on a historic deal, but while the extension of the talks allows Tehran and the West to continue engaging, thereby building the trust necessary for a final accord, it also means more time and room for detractors to sabotage the process.
Ariane Tabatabai is an Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
It’s too early to tell all there is to be told about the negotiations in Vienna between the so-called P5+1 and Iran on the latter’s nuclear program. The “telling” by each and every participant of what happened will surely take place in the next several days, and then better-informed assessments can be made. As of now, we know that the talks did not reach agreement by the November 24 deadline—a year after the interim Joint Plan of Action was agreed—and that the negotiators are aiming for a political agreement no later than next March and a comprehensive deal by June 30.
This is better than having the talks collapse. Better still would have been a provisional interim fill-in-the-blanks memorandum of headings of agreement that is so often put out in international diplomacy when negotiations hit a roadblock but neither side would have its interests served by declaring failure.
An example of failing either to set a new deadline or to issue a “fill in the blanks” agreement was vividly provided by President Bill Clinton’s declaration at the end of the abortive Camp David talks in December 2000. He simply declared the talks on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement as having broken down, rather than saying: progress has been made, here are areas of agreement, here is the timetable for the talks to continue, blah, blah. I was at dinner in Tel Aviv with a group of other American Middle East specialists and Israel’s elder statesman, Shimon Peres, when the news came through. We were all nonplussed that Clinton had not followed the tried and true method of pushing off hard issues until talks would be resumed, at some level, at a “date certain,” which had been the custom on this diplomacy since at least 1981. One result was such disappointment among Palestinians that the second intifada erupted, producing great suffering on all sides and a setback for whatever prospects for peace existed. Poor diplomacy had a tragic outcome.
This example calls for a comparison of today’s circumstances with past diplomatic negotiations of high importance and struggles over difficult issues. Each, it should be understood, is unique, but there are some common factors.
Optimism
The first is the good news that I have already presented: the talks in Vienna did not “break down” and no one walked away from the table in a huff. The other good news is that the official representatives of the two most important negotiators, the United States and Iran, clearly want to reach an agreement that will meet both of their legitimate security, economic, and other interests. Left to themselves, they would probably have had a deal signed, sealed, and delivered this past weekend if not before. But they have not been “left to themselves,” nor will they be, as I will discuss below.
Further good news is that all the issues involving Iran’s nuclear program have now been so masticated by all the parties that they are virtually pulp. If anything is still hidden, it is hard to imagine, other than in the minds of conspiracy theorists who, alas, exist in abundance on any issue involving the Middle East. A deal to be cut on specifics? Yes. New factors to consider? Highly unlikely.
Even more good news is that the United States and the other P5+1 countries (US, UK, Russia, China, France plus Germany), have got to know much better than before their official Iranian counterparts and overall Iranian interests, perspectives, and thinking (US officials, long chary of being seen in the same room with “an Iranian,” lag behind the others in this regard). We can hope that this learning process has also taken place on the Iranian side. This does not mean that the actual means whereby Iran takes decisions—nominally, at least, in the hands of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei—is any less opaque. But even so, there is surely greater understanding of one another—one of the key objectives of just about any diplomatic process.
A partial precedent can be found in US-Soviet arms control and other negotiations during the Cold War. The details of these negotiations were important, or so both sides believed, especially what had to be a primarily symbolic fixation with the numbers of missile launchers and “throw-weight.” This highly charged political preoccupation took place even though the utter destruction of both sides would be guaranteed in a nuclear war. Yet even with great disparities in these numbers, neither side would have been prepared to risk moving even closer to the brink of conflict. Both US and Soviet leaders came to realize that the most important benefit of the talks was the talking, and that they had to improve their political relationship or risk major if not catastrophic loss on both sides. The simple act of talking proved to be a major factor in the eventual end of the Cold War.
The parallel with the Iran talks is that the process itself—including the fact that it is now legitimate to talk with the “Devil” on the other side—has permitted, even if tacitly, greater understanding that the West and Iran have, in contrast to their differences, at least some complementary if not common interests. For the US and Iran, these include freedom of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz; counter-piracy; opposition to Islamic State (ISIS or IS); stability in Afghanistan; opposition to the drug trade, al-Qaeda, Taliban and terrorism; and at least a modus vivendi in regard to Iraq. This does not mean that the US and Iran will see eye-to-eye on all of these issues, but they do constitute a significant agenda, against which the fine details of getting a perfect nuclear agreement (from each side’s perspective) must be measured.
Pessimism
There is also bad news, however, including in the precedents, or partial precedents, of other negotiations. As already noted, negotiations over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza have been going on since May 1979 (I was the White House member of the first US negotiating team), and, while some progress has been made, the issues today look remarkably like they did 37 years ago.
Negotiations following the 1953 armistice in the Korean War have also been going on, with fits and starts, for 61 years. The negotiations over the Vietnam War (the US phase of it) dragged on for years and involved even what in retrospect seem to have been idiocies like arguments over the “shape of the table.” They came to a conclusion only when the US decided it was time to get out—i.e., the North Vietnamese successfully waited us out. Negotiations over Kashmir have also been going on, intermittently, since the 1947 partition of India. The OSCE-led talks on Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia versus Azerbaijan) have gone on for about two decades, under the nominal chairmanship of France, Russia, and the United States. All this diplomatic activity relates to a small group of what are now called “frozen conflicts,” where negotiations go on ad infinitum but without a lot of further harm done.
But with the exception of the Vietnam talks, all the other dragged-out talking has taken place against the background of relatively stable situations. Talks on Korea go nowhere, but fighting only takes place in small bursts and is not significant. Even regarding the Palestinians, fighting takes place from time to time, including major fighting, but failure to get a permanent end of hostilities does not lead to a fundamental breakdown of “stability” in the Middle East, due to the tacit agreement of all outside powers.
Dangers of Delay
The talks on the Iranian nuclear program, due to restart in December, are different. While they are dragging along, things happen. Sanctions continue and could even be increased on Iran, especially with so many “out for blood” members of the incoming 114th US Congress. Whether this added pressure will get the US a better deal is debatable, but further suffering for the Iranian people, already far out of proportion to anything bad that Iran has done, will just get worse. Iran may also choose to press forward with uranium enrichment, making a later deal somewhat—who knows how much—more difficult to conclude and verify. Israel will have calculations of its own to make about what Iran is up to and whether it should seriously consider the use of force. And chances for US-Iranian cooperation against IS will diminish.
So time is not on the side of an agreement, and any prospects of Iranian-Western cooperation on other serious regional matters have been further put off—a high cost for all concerned.
Due to the contentious domestic politics on both sides, the risks are even greater. In Iran, there are already pressures from the clerical right and from some other nationalists to undercut both the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, and the lead negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, both of whom, in these people’s eyes, are now tainted. We can expect further pressures against a deal from this quarter.
The matter is at least as bad and probably worse on the Western side—more particularly, on the US side. The new Congress has already been mentioned. But one reason for consideration of that factor is that, on the P5+1 side of the table, there have not just been six countries but eight, two invisible but very much present, and they are second and third in importance at the table only behind the US itself: Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Both countries are determined to prevent any realistic agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, even if declared by President Barack Obama, in his judgment, to satisfy fully the security interests of both the United States and its allies and partners, including Israel and the Gulf Arabs. For them, in fact, the issue is not just about Iran’s nuclear program, but also about the very idea of Iran being readmitted into international society. For the Sunni Arabs, it is partly about the struggle with the region’s Shi’as, including in President Bashar Assad’s Syria but most particularly in Iran. And for all of these players, there is also a critical geopolitical competition, including vying for US friendship while opposing Iran’s reemergence as another regional player.
The United States does not share any of these interests regarding Sunni vs. Shi’a or geopolitical competitions among regional countries. Our interests are to foster stability in the region, promote security, including against any further proliferation of nuclear weapons (beginning with Iran), and to help counter the virus of Islamist fundamentalism. On the last-named, unfortunately, the US still does not get the cooperation it needs, especially from Saudi Arabia, whose citizens have played such an instrumental role in exporting the ideas, money, and arms that sustain IS.
Thus it is to be deeply regretted, certainly by all the governments formally represented in the P5+1, that efforts to conclude the talks have been put off. The enemies of agreement, on both sides, have gained time to continue their efforts to prevent an agreement—enemies both in Iran and especially in the United States, with the heavy pressures from the Arab oil lobby and the Israeli lobby in the US Congress.
What happens now in Iran can only be determined by the Iranians. What happens with the P5+1 will depend, more than anything else, on the willingness and political courage of President Obama to persevere and say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” to the Gulf Arab states, Israel, and their allies in the United States, and do what he is paid to do: promote the interests and security of the United States of America.
]]>As Iran and six world powers scramble to reach a deal over Iran’s nuclear program by the deadline of Nov. 24 in Vienna, Washington is seeing a flurry of last-minute events focused on the pros and cons of pursuing diplomacy with Tehran.
While advocates from both sides made their arguments on Capitol Hill this week, two distinguished former US ambassadors told an audience here Wednesday that a deal between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program offers “huge advantages” and that the chances of a “complete breakdown” in the talks at this stage are low, even if the prospect of a comprehensive accord being signed before the looming deadline is also unlikely.
Stuart Eizenstat, who played a key role in promoting sanctions against Iran under both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, endorsed the diplomatic process with Iran at a Nov. 19 panel discussion hosted here by the Atlantic Council.
“I am of the belief that an agreement is important, and that there are huge advantages—to the United States, to the West, and to Israel—in having an agreement along the lines of what we see emerging,” he said.
Last month the veteran diplomat, who was named special adviser to the secretary on Holocaust issues last year, offered a key endorsement of diplomacy with Iran in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.
Eizenstat, who currently chairs the Coucil’s Iran Task Force, also emphasized the consequences of failing to reach an accord with Iran:
Without an agreement, one always has to ask, “What’s the alternative?” No deal means an unrestrained [Iranian] use of centrifuges, it means a continuation of the Iranian plutonium plant in Arak, it means no intrusive inspections by the IAEA, it means no elimination of [Iran’s] 20% enriched uranium, it means less likelihood of eliminating weaponization, it means undercutting those who are relative moderates in Iran. So there are enormous implications.
Thomas Pickering, who served as Washington’s chief envoy in virtually every hot spot—from Moscow to San Salvador and from Lagos and Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay (in the run-up to and during the first Gulf War)—meanwhile explained why a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program is highly preferable to the “military option.”
“Nobody believes that the use of force is a guaranteed, one-shot settlement of the problem of Iran’s nuclear program,” said Pickering, who co-runs the Iran Project, which promotes diplomacy between Iran and the United States, along with several other top foreign policy experts.
Pickering also argued that a deal would open the door to “further possibilities” for US-Iranian cooperation on a host of regional issues, most immediately in serving the president’s plan of “degrading and destroying” Islamic State (ISIS or IS) forces in Iraq and Syria and in bringing stability to Afghanistan.
“I remain optimistic,” he said, “but only on the basis of the fact that reasonable people could agree.”
Pickering argued that domestic politics in both countries could be the ultimate impediment to a final deal.
“The real problem is that there is a lot of unreasoned opposition, in both countries, that is affecting the situation,” he said.
On the American side, the “unreasoned opposition” Pickering referred to is rooted in Congress, where key members of the House and Senate advocate the Israeli government’s position that any deal should completely or almost completely dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, which would be a non-starter for the Islamic Republic.
Yet whereas Pickering was critical of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for having “overreached” last November in calling last year’s interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) a “historic mistake,” Eizenstat suggested that his hardline stance may actually have toughened the P5+1’s (US, UK, Russia, China, France plus Germany) resolve to minimize Iran’s enrichment program as much as possible.
But Uzi Eilam, the former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Mission to Europe, argued that Netanyahu is “getting used” to the idea that Iran will retain some enrichment capacity under a comprehensive deal.
A deal that includes stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a third party (Russian) commitment to process Iran’s enriched uranium into fuel and assume responsibility for spent reactor fuel would be enough to meet Israeli security concerns even with an active Iranian enrichment program, said Eilam.
Pickering also noted that sanctions relief remains a sticking point, with the Iranians wanting full relief immediately and the P5+1 insistent on maintaining some sanctions in order to ensure Iran’s continued compliance with the terms of the final accord. But he was joined by Eizenstat in arguing that it would be “almost impossible” (Eizenstat’s words) for both sides to just walk away from the talks at this point.
While both Iran and the P5+1 continue to insist that they are focused on reaching a comprehensive accord by the deadline, with just three days to go, it appears highly unlikely.
As to how long the talks would go on in the event of an extension, Pickering argued that “short-term would be better than long-term,” though he acknowledged that “short-term is harder to get because everybody’s tired, they want to go home and think.”
Eizenstat added that the impending political change in Washington, where Republicans will take control of the Senate in January and are expected to oppose any deal with Iran, would make a short extension more desirable than a long-term one.
]]>Within a few days we will know whether President Obama’s efforts to negotiate an agreement with Iran over the latter’s nuclear power ambitions have proven successful or not and, if final compromises are not reached, whether the talks can be continued. The tens of thousands of words devoted to these efforts by negotiators over the last year have naturally focused on the details of an agreed protocol on the number of operating centrifuges in Iran and the pace of sanctions relief.
The president has invested much political capital into this endeavor and the failure to reach a final accord could end his aim of trying to alter the political and military balance of power in the Middle East. The effort has been so arduous and controversial that he has very carefully avoided a full explication of his strategic aims. The recent letter he reportedly sent to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—the full text of which has not been released—in which he is said to have suggested working together in battling Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, might be the closest we could get to Obama’s reasoning.
The long freeze in US-Iranian affairs is softening but where that process is headed is yet to be determined. The election last year of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the delegation of authority to him of testing US intent by the supreme leader reflects not only the pressures of broad economic sanctions but also the slight easing of revolutionary strictures, as well as the shared concern by both countries that events were threatening to run out of control. The US policy of aligning with Israel and the Sunni monarchies has long required adjusting, and President Obama has taken on that initiative with Iran in mind.
Every area of the globe presents a complex mix of old and new frictions, serious and minor conflicts of interests, and the rise of new and challenging issues that further the sense of confusion and helplessness. More than anywhere else, the Middle East evades a clear US strategy or a broad domestic political consensus on clear, rational, and practical interests. In the Middle East the United States contends today with the consequences of its failure to bring democratic governments to old societies; the rise of well-armed militias based in part on extremist Islam; severe tensions between political and religious divisions within Islam; waves of anti-western and anti-American sentiment; the regional antagonism to the close US-Israeli relationship; and the regional efforts to adjust the political boundaries of a post-Ottoman world. American financial assistance to the Sunni militias from the Arab monarchies has meanwhile created a monster that defies our interests.
The Bush administration’s efforts to cope with new and old adversaries and challenges typically were military—the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Both have had, charitably, very limited success and have further distorted the political landscape. At the moment, there is no recognizable and acceptable balance of power, no consensus on limits of national rights and no regional institutions to cope with shared questions.
President Obama has recognized this hapless and dangerous condition and accordingly tried to adjust American policies in the region. He has tried to withdraw militarily from Iraq and Afghanistan while pursuing a more diplomatic posture, starting with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Until recently this year, he was also reluctant to engage militarily in Syria, having understood that the collapse of the country’s government would introduce an array of additional threats to regional peace.
Ending the 35-year-long cold war with Iran has also been a top priority in Obama’s vision of America’s future, but resolving fears, both regional and domestic, over Iran’s putative ambitions for nuclear weaponry has been the prerequisite. Beyond allaying fears of regional nuclear proliferation is the hope that over time, a new relationship will constitute a path to political realignments—a new direction for us and the nations of the area.
Of course, the president still has to contend with his predecessors legacy in Iraq. Following the withdrawal of US forces in 2011, Obama repeatedly said that there would be no more US boots on the ground in that country, yet nearly all his military officers have been quoted saying that without ground forces, air power will be insufficient in thwarting the new militant force of Islamic State (ISIS or IS). If not us, then who? Turkey, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt? Wishful thinking; they are hardly equipped for the job.
Iraq, of course, has its own vision and demands. What is necessary is the very ephemeral realization of greater cooperation and coordination of those who recognize a common threat to their well being—if not their existence. Like it or not, Iran can play a significant part in the attempts to defeat IS and find an acceptable solution for Syria, which is currently the most affected by the rise of Islamic militancy.
Quarantining Syria makes little sense; it’s domestic politics may be loathsome but its leaders are not causing American casualties and losses. It may be time for a realistic debate over the role of Syria in its own defense and the struggles against IS and the other extremist forces ravaging the country.
Unfortunately, nothing is easy in the Middle East, and such initiatives will also continue to meet the strong opposition of American conservatives who do not trust Iran and are subject to lobbying pressure from Israel, the Sunni Arab states and Turkey. In this light, the reach for a greater rationality may simply prove impossible.
]]>by François Nicoullaud
Paris, France—This is not the first time that we may have trapped ourselves when drafting UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that were intended to trap another country—in this case, Iran. The present situation recalls in some respects the period around 1997 when most Security Council members would have liked to rescind, or at least amend, the sanctions adopted against the regime of Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, as their effects were obviously getting out of hand: widespread corruption, and the dramatic deterioration of the Iraqi population’s state of health, to name a couple. But any change in the sanctions would have required unanimity from the five permanent members of the Council, and that was definitely out of reach. The situation led French President Jacques Chirac to express his frustration. “We want to convince, not coerce,” he said. “I have never observed that the policy of sanctions can produce positive effects.”
We have not yet reached such a dramatic juncture with Iran. But should it become useful to rapidly lift the sanctions imposed by the four UNSC resolutions between 2006 and 2010 in order to secure a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Western negotiators may find themselves incapable of delivering and may instead try to kick the can down the road to some point in the distant future.
Aimed at halting Iran’s military, nuclear and ballistic activities, these UNSC resolutions are not the ones that hurt the most. More destructive are those unilateral measures imposed by the United States and the European Union, since they were designed essentially to destabilize the Iranian economy. But the UNSC sanctions carry with them a “pillory effect” that the Iranians perceive, quite correctly, as deeply humiliating. They also provide the legal bedrock upon which the European sanctions, in particular, have been constructed. The Iranians are therefore anxious to see them lifted as soon as possible through a decision by the Security Council to close the file it opened in 2006 and return it to the forum from which it should never have been taken: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The conditions for terminating these resolutions, however, are also overwhelming. In fact, the people who drafted them seem to have been pursuing two not necessarily compatible goals at the same time.
The first goal was to pile up all the preconditions that the authors believed were necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring a deliverable nuclear device, including:
Considering the context in which these resolutions were adopted, there was little chance that the Iranians would comply with such an elaborate and comprehensive set of so-called “confidence-building measures,” which would have forced Tehran to abandon virtually all of its nuclear and ballistic-missile ambitions.
The second goal was substantively quite different from the first and indeed somehow contradictory. It aimed to push Iran into negotiations, as illustrated by the formula that was included in all the UNSC sanctions resolutions, which ritually expressed the “conviction” that Iran’s compliance “would contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution.” Moreover, if Iran suspended its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the Council declared its willingness in return to suspend at least some of its sanctions in order “to allow for negotiations in good faith” and “reach an early and mutually acceptable outcome.”
As we now know, a negotiation process ultimately was initiated, albeit through a radically different path, as the West dropped its demand that Iran fully suspend all its sensitive nuclear activities before entering into substantive talks. One can therefore assume that the second goal will be accomplished as soon as a comprehensive agreement, which will hopefully emerge from the current round of talks in Vienna, enters into force, thus rendering this dimension of the UNSC’s resolutions totally obsolete.
But of course, the resolutions’ first dimension—the exhaustive inventory of “confidence-building measures”—remains in place. Because confidence is essentially an elusive and subjective feeling, taking this path involves embarking on a long-term, winding and always reversible road, the end of which is only faintly discernible now. Such a process is also hardly compatible with the “on-off” mechanism of the Security Council: there is no chance that its resolutions, once cancelled, could be reintroduced. Hence the strong reluctance of the Western powers to commit themselves to such an outcome.
We also all know that the sanctions are much easier to adopt than to rescind, as they tend to create, in the meantime, their own logic and dynamics. They develop new balances of power and vested interests, if only among those in authority who have dedicated themselves so thoroughly to the sanctions’ implementation and enforcement. One has only to recall the notorious example of the general embargo imposed by the Allies against Germany during the First World War whose continuation for several months after the 1918 Armistice unnecessarily prolonged the suffering of the German people and deepened the bitterness of their defeat.
Are Iran’s negotiating partners ready to learn the lessons of history? The Gordian knot that the UNSC sanctions represent should be slashed asunder, if not immediately upon the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Iran, then at least after a moderately short period in which Iran’s determination to comply with its terms could be confirmed. Such a gesture could also be linked appropriately to the formal ratification by Iran’s parliament of the Additional Protocol that Tehran had signed during an unsuccessful round of talks back in 2003—the two moves being equally irreversible.
This would not mean that pending requests made to Iran, such as the ancient issue of the “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program, would have to be abandoned. But it would mean that these requests would thenceforward be dealt with exclusively by the IAEA. It would also mean that the Council, in light of the progress achieved after the signing of a final deal, would no longer consider the Iranian situation a “threat to the peace” under the terms of the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, the only chapter that authorizes the use of coercive measures against a Member State in order “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
]]>by Peter Jenkins
The talks to resolve concern about Iran’s nuclear program will resume in early September. The negotiators will have had time to read and reflect on a well-informed and wise report that the International Crisis Group (ICG) published this week. Let us hope they will have done so.
The latest [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
The talks to resolve concern about Iran’s nuclear program will resume in early September. The negotiators will have had time to read and reflect on a well-informed and wise report that the International Crisis Group (ICG) published this week. Let us hope they will have done so.
The latest negotiating deadline is November 24, which marks one year from the date the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) was signed in Geneva. A further extension may be possible but will not be what any of the parties desire. The alternatives to an agreement are deeply unattractive, as the ICG points out: “a return to the sanctions versus centrifuges race” or recourse to force to destroy Iranian installations, triggering a chain of unpredictable consequences in a region where, arguably, the West already has its hands full.
So the stakes are high.
The parties cannot have failed to realise that. Yet to date both Iran and the West have been reluctant to shift from maximalist demands that they know the other cannot afford, for domestic political reasons, to concede.
This is particularly true of the issue that is at the heart of the negotiation, the resolution of which can open the way to an agreement: Iran’s possession of a nuclear technology that can be used for both civil and military purposes but is not outlawed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—uranium enrichment. This is how the ICG sums up the problem:
Negotiators are bogged down in a worn-out debate over exactly why Iran insists on uranium enrichment; its economic logic or lack thereof; whether Iran should be subject to restrictions beyond those imposed on other members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and how to calculate the time Iran would need to enrich enough uranium for one weapon – which, assuming other abilities are present, measures its “breakout capacity”.
Their solution to the problem is as follows:
These recommendations are based on a sound understanding of Iranian interests—the kind of understanding that is an essential prerequisite to an agreement that caters to the core needs of all parties.
But I am not sure that the understanding goes far enough. Might Iran want more than “a meaningful enrichment program, continued scientific advancement, and tangible sanctions relief” as the ICG says? I suspect the Iranians want to be spared the indignity of being thought dumb enough to try to break out under the eyes of international inspectors at either of their declared enrichment sites.
I also wonder whether the ICG’s recommendations are as balanced as possible. It seems to me that they entail asking rather more of Iran than of the US and its allies. The balance could be improved by the West abandoning its quest to minimize the risk of break out by reducing the number of operating centrifuges from the number agreed on last November, i.e. by imposing additional “quantitative constraints.”
The case for abandonment was strengthened on August 27 when the AFP reported that the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) is ready to test a far more efficient centrifuge than those currently installed. If Iran’s leaders were to decide to break out (there being as yet no evidence that they have), it would make more sense for them to use a small number of advanced centrifuges at a small, undeclared site than to use first-generation centrifuges at sites that are visited daily by inspectors.
So the access to centrifuge workshops that Iran conceded upon the signing of the JPA, and an Iranian commitment to refrain from deploying additional centrifuges during a confidence-building period look to be worth more than additional constraints on current capacity.
In any case, the US and Iran have come a long way since President Barack Obama and President Hassan Rouhani spoke by telephone last September. The ICG is to be commended for a report that can help them complete their journey.
Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry sits across from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Vienna, Austria, on July 13, 2014 before beginning a bilateral meeting focused on Iran’s nuclear program. Credit: State Department
]]>by Jim Lobe
The latest issue of the New Yorker features a lengthy article by Connie Bruck on the recent travails of AIPAC, especially its unsuccessful efforts since last November to increase sanctions on Iran, and its steady Likudnik drift, which has increasingly alienated its more liberal and Democratic supporters in Congress.
The article, “Friends [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
The latest issue of the New Yorker features a lengthy article by Connie Bruck on the recent travails of AIPAC, especially its unsuccessful efforts since last November to increase sanctions on Iran, and its steady Likudnik drift, which has increasingly alienated its more liberal and Democratic supporters in Congress.
The article, “Friends of Israel,” makes clear (in case any additional evidence were required) that the group’s intention all along was to sabotage the ongoing negotiations between Iran and world powers, which we at LobeLog chronicled pretty intensively during the key five-month period, and casts more insider light on the pressure exerted by AIPAC, related groups, and key donors on Democratic lawmakers. Consider this passage, for example:
[Majority Leader Eric] Cantor and [Minority Leader Steny] Hoyer have been steadfast supporters of AIPAC, and its members have held at least a dozen fund-raisers for them each year. But last December AIPAC’s efforts to implement sanctions against Iran were so intense that even this well-tempered partnership fractured. When Congress returned from its Thanksgiving recess, legislators in the House began discussing a sanctions bill. According to the former Congressional aide, Cantor told Hoyer that he wanted a bill that would kill the interim agreement with Iran. Hoyer refused, saying that he would collaborate only on a non-binding resolution.
Cantor sent Hoyer resolution that called for additional sanctions and sought to define in advance the contours of an agreement with Iran. “The pressure was tremendous—not just AIPAC leadership and legislative officials but various board members and other contributors, from all over the country,” the former congressional aide recalled. “What was striking was how strident the message was,” another aide said. “‘How could you not pass a resolution that tells the President what the outcome of the negotiations has to be?’” Advocates for the sanctions portrayed Obama as feckless. “They said, ‘Iranians have been doing this for millennia. They can smell weakness. Why is the President showing weakness?’” a Senate aide recalled.
AIPAC was betting that the Democrats, facing midterms with an unpopular President, would break ranks, and that Obama would be unable to stop them. Its confidence was not unfounded; every time Netanyahu and AIPAC had opposed Obama he had retreated. But Obama took up the fight with unusual vigor. …As the Cantor-Hoyer resolution gathered momentum, House Democrats began holding meetings at the White House to strategize about how to oppose it.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, attended the meetings, at some political risk. Wasserman Schultz represents a heavily Jewish district in South Florida, and has been a reliable signature on AIPAC’s letters and resolution; she has boasted of concurring with a hundred per cent of its positions. Now the lobby e-mailed out an “AIPAC Action Alert,” including the text of a story about the meetings in the conservative Washington Free Beacon, in which she was described as “siding with the Mullahs over the American people.” The alert asked AIPAC’s executive-council members to contact her office, ask if the story was true, and challenge her opposition to Cantor-Hoyer. Stephen Fiske, the chair of the pro-Israel Florida Congressional Committee PAC, sent a similar alert to Wasserman Schultz’s constituents, setting off a cascade of calls to her office. (Fiske told the Free Beacon that the callers included a team of young students: his son’s classmate at a Jewish day school in North Miami Beach.) Wasserman Schultz was furious. Soon afterward, she flew to Israel for the funeral of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. On the trip, she remarked to a colleague, “They’re doing this to me?” [Emphasis added.]
Eventually, of course Hoyer disassociated himself from the initiative, and, as the months unfolded, AIPAC’s campaign to undermine the negotiations by enacting new sanctions legislation in both the House and Senate became increasingly partisan, jeopardizing the group’s carefully cultivated image of bipartisanship, until it finally essentially gave up the effort in March. The article offers many such anecdotes, but, of course, the sentence I bolded above helps to confirm the theory that AIPAC’s aim wasn’t to strengthen President Obama’s hand in the P5+1′s (US, UK, France China, Russia plus Germany) talks with Iran; on the contrary, the objective—entirely consistent with Netanyahu’s wishes, was to blow up the talks.
I particularly appreciated Bruck’s pretty extensive quotation of remarks by former Washington State Democratic Rep. Brian Baird whose on-the-record frankness about AIPAC was undoubtedly made possible by the fact that he left Congress in 2010 and apparently has no intention of running again. Baird, one of the very congressmen who traveled to Gaza after the 2009 war, explains the relationship between fund-raising and AIPAC:
“‘The difficult reality is this: in order to get elected to Congress, if you’re not independently wealthy, you have to raise a lot of money. And you learn pretty quickly that, if AIPAC is on your side, you can do that. They come to you and say, ‘We’d be happy to host ten-thousand-dollar fund-raisers for you, and let us help write your annual letter, and please come to this multi-thousand-person dinner.’” Baird continued. “Any member of Congress knows that AIPAC is associated indirectly with significant amounts of campaign spending if you’re with them, and significant amounts against you if you’re not with them.”
“…When key votes are cast, the question on the House floor, troublingly, is often not ‘What is the right thing to do for the United States of America?’ but ‘How is AIPAC going to score this?’” He added, “There’s such a conundrum here, of believing that you’re supporting Israel, when you’re actually backing policies that are antithetical to its highest values and, ultimately, destructive for the country.” In talks with Israeli officials, he found that his inquiries were not treated with much respect. In 2003, one of his constituents, Rachel Corrie, was killed by a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier, as she protested the demolition of Palestinians’ homes in Gaza. At first, he said, the officials told him, ‘There’s a simple explanation—here are the facts.” Or, “We will look into it.” But, when he continued to press, something else would emerge. “There is a disdain for the U.S., and a dismissal of any legitimacy of our right to question—because who are we to talk about moral values?” Baird told me. “Whether it’s that we didn’t help early enough in the Holocaust, or look at what we did to our African-Americans, or our Native Americans—whatever! And they see us, members of Congress, as basically for sale. So they want us to shut up and play the game.”
While it may seem somewhat unrelated, this last point recalled for me a couple of op-eds published in the New York Times during the most recent war in Gaza on the subject of liberal Zionists (who, not coincidentally, reside almost exclusively in the Democratic Party, and their reaction to the evermore-rightward and aggressive drift of Israeli politics and policy. Both were written by Israelis; the first by Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli writer and fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, which is supposed to study and make recommendations about relations between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora; the second, by Antony Lerman, the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and author of “The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.” In his column, “Israel’s Fair-Weather Fans,” Rosner essentially tells liberal Zionists who have warned Israel’s leadership that their right-wing policies are putting at risk the support of liberal US Jews to, in Baird’s words, “shut up and play the game.”
If all Jews are a family, it would be natural for Israelis to expect the unconditional love of their non-Israeli Jewish kin. If Jews aren’t a family, and their support can be withdrawn, then Israelis have no reason to pay special attention to the complaints of non-Israeli Jews.
…If they still want to root for a Jewish state, there’s no substitute for Israel. If they believe there is a need for Jewish sovereignty, Israel is the only option available to them. As the song says, there’s no other country even it it’s on fire.
For his part, Lerman more or less agrees that liberal Zionists in the US have become largely irrelevant, at least in terms of influencing Israeli policies and actions, and thus his title, “The End of Liberal Zionism.”
“Today, the dominant organizations, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as a raft of self-appointed community leaders, have swung to the right. They have made unquestioning solidarity with Israel the touchstone of Jewish identity—even though majority Jewish opinion is by no means hawkish.
…In reality, the only Zionism of any consequence today is xenophobic and exclusionary, a Jewish ethno-nationalism inspired by religious messianism. It is carrying out an open-ended project of national self-realization to be achieved through colonization and purification of the tribe.
Noting that the collapse of the latest US efforts for peace talks, as well as Netanyahu’s de facto rejection last month of the possibility of an independent Palestinian state (despite his previous grudging commitments to a two-state solution), Lerman argues that liberal Zionists have reached a dead end.
Liberal Zionists must now face the reality that the dissenters have recognized for years: A de facto single state already exists, where rights for Jews are guaranteed while rights for Palestinians are curtailed. Since liberal Zionists can’t countenance anything but two states, this situation leaves them high and dry.
Of course, this reality also means that liberal Zionists—who undoubtedly constitute a majority of American Jews (who in turn constitute a major source of political campaign funding for Democrats)—face a choice between their Zionism, as defined by Netanyahu and AIPAC, on the one hand and their liberal values on the other. The two appear to have become mutually exclusive.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Sixty-one percent of the American public prefers a deal permitting Iran to continue limited uranium enrichment and imposing intrusive inspections on its nuclear facilities in exchange for some sanctions relief, according to a unique new survey released here Tuesday.
In contrast to previous polling on attitudes toward Iran’s nuclear program, the survey, conducted [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Sixty-one percent of the American public prefers a deal permitting Iran to continue limited uranium enrichment and imposing intrusive inspections on its nuclear facilities in exchange for some sanctions relief, according to a unique new survey released here Tuesday.
In contrast to previous polling on attitudes toward Iran’s nuclear program, the survey, conducted by the Program for Public Consultation and the Center for International & Security Studies at the University of Maryland between June 18 and July 7, also found no significant differences between self-identified Republicans and Democrats on the issue.
The poll, which was released as negotiations between Iran and six world powers intensified in Vienna in advance of the July 20 deadline for an agreement, was distinct in the level of detail provided to the respondents before they ultimately had to choose between “a) making a deal that allows Iran to enrich but only to a low level, provides more intrusive inspections and gradually lifts some sanctions; [and] b) not continuing the current negotiations, imposing more sanctions, and pressing Iran to agree to end all uranium enrichment.”
As noted by George Perkovich, who heads the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the survey methodology “modeled a rational thought process” much more rational than that which can normally be found in the US government. “Most members of Congress don’t spend much time on this except when they meet with someone who’s writing a check,” he said at the survey’s release.
Nonetheless, he and Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist at the Brookings Institution, agreed that the survey’s findings suggests that, if indeed a deal is reached with Iran, the Obama administration will be in a good position to sell it.
This “Citizen Cabinet” method simulated the policy-making process: respondents were given briefings on the subject and arguments — both for and against — the two options before they were asked to make a final recommendation.
The briefings and arguments were vetted in advance by independent experts and Congressional staffers from both sides of the aisle, according to Steven Kull, the Program’s director, to ensure as much accuracy and balance as possible within the US political context. You can judge this for yourself by examining the study and its methodology (beginning on p. 5). More than one staffer, Kull said Tuesday at a press briefing, commented that the respondents “are going to know more than their Member (of Congress) knows” after reviewing the material.
“At this point, the public doesn’t have a clear idea,” said Kull. “[This survey] tells us what would happen if we had a bigger debate,…and people had more information.”
All of the briefing materials were provided to respondents via the Internet, and access was arranged for those who lacked it. According to Kull, only 16 out of the 748 randomly selected respondents did not complete the exercise, which also required participants to assess each of the arguments separately for their persuasiveness before making a final policy choice. I won’t bore you with further details about the methodology, but here are the main findings:
Still, it’s worth noting that the numbers who prefer a deal over increased sanctions are not so very different from those taken last November when the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) was being negotiated between the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) and Iran in Geneva. Sixty-four percent of respondents in an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted a week before the Geneva accord said they supported “an agreement in which the United States and other countries would lift some of their economic sanctions against Iran, in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear program in a way that makes it harder to produce nuclear weapons.” Thirty percent were opposed.
A second poll taken by CNN on the eve of the agreement found 56 percent of respondents in favor of “an interim deal that would ease some …economic sanctions and in exchange require Iran to accept major restrictions on its nuclear program but not end it completely and submit to greater international inspection of its nuclear facilities.” Thirty-nine percent opposed. In that poll, however, there was a much more significant gap between Republican and Democratic respondents than that found in the survey released Tuesday. While 66% of Democrats supported such a deal in the CNN poll; only 45% of Republicans did.
In addition to the questions about a possible nuclear deal, the new survey asked respondents a number of other pertinent questions after they completed the briefings and made their final recommendations on the nuclear negotiations:
On possible confidence-building bilateral measures, the survey found that:
In responding to the individual arguments made in the survey for and against a deal with Iran, Republicans generally tended to be somewhat more hawkish than Democrats, although independents tended to be substantially more so. More significant partisan differences appeared in their opinions about Iran’s government: 40% of Republicans said they held a “very unfavorable view” of Tehran, compared to 24% of Democrats and 27% of Republicans. Perhaps the most striking difference emerged on the questions regarding the compatibility of the Islamic world and the West: while 62% of Republicans said they considered conflict between the two inevitable, only 33% of Democrats agreed with that view.
Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, US Secretary of State John Kerry shake hands after world powers reached an interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear program on Nov. 24, 2013 in Geneva. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
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