After the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) in Moscow last June, dialogue at the senior political level was put on ice due to the American presidential vote. Eighty-five days have passed since the re-election of Barack Obama, and high-level talks [...]]]>
After the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) in Moscow last June, dialogue at the senior political level was put on ice due to the American presidential vote. Eighty-five days have passed since the re-election of Barack Obama, and high-level talks between Iran and the P5+1 have yet to resume. There are many reasons for this.
On the Iranian side, there are four main, mutually reinforcing factors behind Tehran’s cautious approach to fresh talks. First, certain figures within the political system, the nezaam, are in favor of waiting for Obama to finalize changes to his cabinet, including his national security team. These figures are by no measure dominant. Indeed, the prevailing narrative in Tehran is that a change of personalities won’t make any difference and that the American nezaam has certain engrained interests and institutions as well — among them, enmity with the Islamic Republic.
Meanwhile, more influential Iranian figures are pushing for Western positions to be clarified in more detail before the resumption of talks. The reason behind this maneuver is to maximize readiness for potential damage control; Iran does not want to be blamed for any diplomatic failure.
Inherent in the latter aspect of the situation is an Iranian desire to not be seen as being dragged to the negotiating table by sanctions. While Iran does seek sanctions relief, it wants such measures to be put forward in a serious manner.
The majority of the most punishing Western oil and financial penalties were imposed after the beginning of Iranian enrichment of uranium to 19.75% purity in 2010. In exchange for movement on this level of enrichment, Tehran would need some removal of the post-2010 sanctions, which include the EU oil embargo, shipping & insurance penalties, as well as US sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran.
The most important factor affecting Iranian behavior, however, is how it has entered its election cycle. Tehran is filled with debate and rumors about likely presidential candidates and what they’ll be able to do after assuming office. Western policymakers would be wise to recognize that all politics is local and show an understanding for how the Iranian presidential elections may slow down dialogue. The Iranian leadership’s main preoccupation until June is to maintain maximum stability. In this context, a nuclear deal that cannot be sold at home is not necessarily better than no deal and more sanctions.
While the Supreme Leader has final say on the nuclear issue, the next president would at least initially be able to enter the scene with some fresh ideas — both his own and from higher circles — and have room for maneuvering. The exact amount of political space, of course, depends on which candidate will win.
There are two main reasons for this: first, a new president would be better suited to pursue an opening with blessing from above, as failure can easily be deflected on him before domestic public opinion. Second, whoever the next president will be, it is unlikely that he will at least initially be as divisive as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Less tension at home will give Iran a stronger negotiating stance, along with improved Western acceptance of an Iranian ability to deliver.
This line has been echoed by influential officials such as former envoy Sadeq Kharrazi, who has argued that “lively elections” will empower the government and bring “wise people to power” with a consequent greater Iranian capacity to extract concessions from the United States. Kharrazi also said that he didn’t believe relations between Iran and the US would be normalized during Obama’s second term prior to Obama’s re-election and has indicated that the real window for diplomacy on the nuclear issue will be after Iran’s presidential election. Kharrazi argues that this is because the Americans have never been and never will be willing to negotiate with Ahmadinejad’s government.
The writing between the lines is that many figures within Iran are not going to let any negotiations with the US be successful as long as Ahmadinejad is in power.
In sum, while Iran’s bottom line on the nuclear issue won’t change (i.e. enrichment on Iranian soil), the next Iranian president would at least initially be able to pursue an opening. Moreover, a new president would give the United States in particular a badly needed new “face” to deal with.
Ultimately, power to change the US-Iran relationship is equally in the hands of Barack Obama. A day after Obama’s first Nowruz message in 2009, at the end of a damning speech, Iran’s Supreme Leader responded that “if you change your attitude, we will change our attitude.” Most likely, that offer still stands.
Until then, a mutual desire to keep things from spiraling out of control will in all probability result in both sides kicking the can down the road until after this summer.
- Mohammad Ali Shabani is a doctoral researcher at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London and the Editor of Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs.
]]>To anyone trying to guess where this year’s re-engagement of Iran by the Obama administration is likely to lead, two things look clearer in the aftermath of the 18-19 June talks in Moscow.
First, the administration appears to have thought better of the idea of tolerating uranium enrichment, even at [...]]]>
To anyone trying to guess where this year’s re-engagement of Iran by the Obama administration is likely to lead, two things look clearer in the aftermath of the 18-19 June talks in Moscow.
First, the administration appears to have thought better of the idea of tolerating uranium enrichment, even at low levels, in Iran. The distinction President Obama drew earlier in the year between opposing the development of nuclear weapons (his position) and opposing the development of a nuclear weapons capability (the Israeli position), and the signal implied when the President authorised a resumption of talks with Iran even though Iran had failed to commit to suspending its enrichment activities–hitherto a pre-condition for such talks–have turned out to be misleading.
In Moscow, the US and its EU allies once more placed emphasis on the suspension of enrichment (a so-called “international obligation” which Iran must implement fully to secure a deal) and they declined to give Iran the assurance it wants that these talks will eventually result in the West tolerating enrichment.
Without that assurance Iran is unwilling to embark on the process of concession-making that is diplomatically termed “confidence-building”. Iran believes that it has a treaty right to master the nuclear fuel cycle provided it submits all nuclear material in its possession to International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) inspection. It also considers the UN Security Council resolutions that the West has sponsored to override that treaty right to be illegal. (The resolutions are certainly not a proportionate response to Iran’s IAEA safeguards non-compliance.)
Second, neither the US nor its EU allies seem inclined to purchase Iranian confidence-building by granting Iran the other thing (apart from “recognition” of its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rights) that it craves: some measure of relief from the sanctions introduced by the US and EU (without UN authorisation) in the course of the past winter. Instead the West has sought to obtain concessions by offering what look like baubles for Iran’s negotiators.
On the face of it, therefore, re-engagement has been a failure. It has not sparked the give-and-take, the reciprocity that characterises almost all successful negotiations. It may have contributed to a pre-electorally useful drop in gas prices, but that drop is more likely due to a weakening global economic outlook. It has failed to deliver the Iranian capitulation that would complicate life for proponents of another war in the Gulf or regime change in Iran.
There is, however, an important difference between the 2009 version of engagement and the 2012 version. This time around neither side, it seems, is in a hurry to declare the process dead.
That this should be the case for the US and its allies is hardly surprising. In an electoral year the administration has every interest in heeding the American public’s preference for what Winston Churchill called “jaw-jaw” over “war-war”. And if diplomacy can contribute to lowering the cost of gas and make it harder for Israel to justify an aerial strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, so much the better.
What’s less obvious is what motivates Iran to help spin out talks that are going nowhere.
Iran does have an interest, of course, in making it harder for Israel to justify a strike. But Iran has never taken such Israeli threats very seriously and the opposition to a strike voiced by Israeli intelligence and military professionals earlier this year will have reinforced that inclination.
Iran has no interest in lower oil prices. But perhaps it reasons that bringing the Istanbul process to an end would not have much of an effect on prices, given the worsening economic outlook and the expansion of oil production under way in Gulf States allied to the US.
Perhaps, then, the answer is that Iran’s leaders are hoping that President Obama will be re-elected and that he will award them for their cooperation in keeping the show on the road until November by softening, early in his second term, the US position on enrichment and sanctions.
If so, will they be disappointed? At any time tolerating enrichment and removing or relieving sanctions will be politically costly for whoever occupies the White House, so widespread is Congress’ animosity towards Iran. The line of least resistance for an Obama II administration would be to back the judgement of those who claim that Iran will eventually capitulate under the weight of sanctions.
But it is not impossible that the President and his closest advisers have realised that a negotiated solution tends to be more durable than a solution imposed on a prostrate foe. That, after all, is a lesson that can be drawn from 19th and 20th century European history and from the 1783 Treaty of Paris between the US and Great Britain. Machiavelli once wrote: ”I believe that forced agreements will be kept neither by a prince nor by a republic”.
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