by Thomas W. Lippman
It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.
At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.
At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the Persian Gulf is iron-clad and will not change. The U.S Navy’s Fifth Fleet and the 35,000 soldiers and sailors in the region are staying, they said, and Iran will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons. They reminded the audience that President Barack Obama, his secretaries of state and defense, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told all this to Gulf Arab leaders over and over, most recently during the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia in March.
“We are present in a major and significant way,” one senior Pentagon official said at this gathering, organized by the Atlantic Council. “We are not leaving and we are not inattentive.”
The next morning, different panelists, assembled by the Middle East Policy Council, acknowledged that the message had been delivered unequivocally and often, and agreed that Obama and the others were no doubt sincere. Unfortunately, they said, Gulf Arab leaders don’t believe it.
“They think we don’t have the will to uphold our principles,” said Mark T. Kimmitt, a former senior official of both the State and Defense departments. “It’s not about our strength on the ground. It’s about our willingness to use it.” Given the record of the past few years, he said, “There’s not a lot of reason for the Gulf Arabs to be happy.”
“There are deep structural sources of anxiety” about the United States among leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, said Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Obama’s first term. First among these, he said, is “the widespread perception that the United States is simply politically exhausted” after more than a decade of war and has no appetite for further involvement. Witnessing the U.S. troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “They wonder when the U.S. will begin to draw down in the Gulf.” The GCC leaders were taken aback, he said, by the strong popular opposition among Americans to military intervention in Syria, and drew their own conclusions.
Michael Gfoeller, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis and others have been disconcerted by the way the United States and its partners have conducted nuclear negotiations with Iran without input from them. In their view, he said, Washington is proceeding “with almost no input from us and yet we are going to be the front line of what we think is going to be a nuclear armed Iran…They think that when we don’t consult with them it’s a sign that we don’t take their national security seriously.”
These panelists said it was useful that President Obama went to see King Abdullah and other senior princes in Riyadh, but not sufficient to overcome the doubts that have been built up about U.S. staying power. Ford Fraker, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that a week ago he asked Prince Muqrin, now second in line to the Saudi throne, how he assessed the Obama-Abdullah meeting. Muqrin, who speaks fluent English, “looked at me and said, ‘We did have the opportunity to clarify a number of important issues,’ and that’s all he said,” Fraker reported.
The two forums amounted to a fascinating but also baffling conversation about a topic that has been a focus of analysis in Washington and the Gulf states for months. The United States and its allies in the region have compelling interests in common — combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates, seeking a solution in Syria, ensuring the free flow of oil through the Gulf, stabilizing Yemen and Iraq, and countering what they see as the malign activities of Iran in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Bahrain. The Gulf states buy American weapons, depend on the United States for military training and assistance with cyber-security issues, and share intelligence about terrorist financing. And these relationships have been in place for many years. Why, then, have the Gulf leaders, and particularly the Saudis, been so vocally unhappy about U.S. policy?
The first answer participants gave was the nuclear negotiations with Iran, from which they are excluded. In the view especially of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, panelists said, these negotiations are dangerous either way: if they fail, nothing will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but if they succeed, sanctions will be lifted, Iranian oil exports will surge, and Iran will be free to pursue its quest for regional hegemony. Moreover, in the Gulf view, if the negotiations succeed, the United States will have another incentive to reduce its military commitments in the Gulf.
Gulf Arab leaders, panelists said, are well aware of the constraints that are curtailing Pentagon spending. Cuts will have to be made somewhere, and they see their region as a target, especially if the United States reaches some accommodation with Iran.
The Gulf leaders were shocked by the alacrity with which Washington turned its back on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak after demonstrations against him broke out in 2011. They think “Maybe the United States won’t be a reliable ally for them,” Kahl said. These doubts have been stoked, he and other panelists said, by all the talk about growing U.S. oil output in the fracking boom, and the possibility that the United States will feel itself safely insulated from developments in the Gulf.
Despite assurances from Washington to the contrary, panelists said, the Saudis and Emiratis believe that the United States is focused exclusively on the nuclear issue in its negotiations with Iran, ignoring other troubling aspects of Iranian policy. Kahl said it’s actually a good idea to confine the current negotiations to the nuclear issue because Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani does not control the other Iranian activities that so trouble its neighbors. Those matters are under the jurisdiction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kahl said, and it would be counterproductive to bring the IRGC into the nuclear discussions.
In a separate commentary published during the same week as the panel discussions, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that, “One Saudi businessman complained to me recently that there was no discernible U.S. global strategy, and that its absence makes it impossible for Saudi Arabia to construct any strategy at all. The quandary is common among many U.S. allies, and it raises fundamental questions about U.S. commitments abroad. Is there anything for which U.S. allies can rely on the United States, and under what circumstances might it change? Equally confounding, how can America’s friends make themselves vital to the United States if the United States has no clear understanding and ordering of its own interests?”
In some ways, however, as several of the panelists noted, it is not just the United States that seems to be groping for an effective regional strategy. The six monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council have deep policy differences among themselves, about Iran, about Syria, and about the dangers of religious extremism. Oman, for example, hosted the secret diplomacy that led to the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and is reportedly planning a $1 billion natural gas pipeline link to the Islamic Republic. And on Saturday, the Washington Post reported that the United States has identified Kuwait as the major source of funding for jihadist groups fighting in Syria — groups that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are trying to defeat. If Alterman’s Saudi friend is having difficulty discerning a comprehensive U.S. strategy in the region, perhaps it’s not surprising.
Several of the panelists said that the key to assuaging the anxiety among GCC leaders is more and closer consultation, more often. It’s well and good for the president and cabinet members and officers from the U.S. Central Command to go to the region from time to time, they said, but the Gulf leaders want to see the deputy assistant secretaries and other policy worker bees out there more often. To some extent they made the Gulf leaders sound like spoiled children demanding mommy’s full attention right this minute.
Photo: President Barack Obama meets with King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during a bilateral meeting at Rawdat Khuraim in Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar last Wednesday, citing Qatar’s support for organizations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states”:
The statement said they had withdrawn their envoys “to protect their security” because Qatar failed to fulfill vows [...]]]>
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar last Wednesday, citing Qatar’s support for organizations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states”:
The statement said they had withdrawn their envoys “to protect their security” because Qatar failed to fulfill vows “to refrain from supporting organizations or individuals who threaten the security and stability of the gulf states, through direct security work or through political influence,” and also “to refrain from supporting hostile media.”
This came on the heels of a UAE court sentencing Qatari doctor Mahmoud al-Jaidah to seven years in prison on Monday for the crime of aiding a banned opposition group called al-Islah, which the UAE alleges has operational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Islah insists that any connection it has with the Brotherhood is purely ideological). As Emile Nakhleh writes, the decision by the three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members to recall their ambassadors from a fourth member state illustrates quite clearly that the first “C” in “GCC” — “cooperation” — means virtually nothing at this point, if it ever did mean anything. This was a coordinated move, led by the Saudis, to punish Qatar for supporting Muslim Brotherhood interests around the Middle East (and also for assuming a more prominent role in pan-Arab politics), but beyond that it reflects the Saudis’ deep and ongoing concern about an Iranian resurgence in the Gulf. From the Saudi perspective the Qataris have been punching above their proper weight, and making nice with the wrong people.
Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are clearly the public justification for this row; it is no mystery why Saudi Arabia followed up last Wednesday’s diplomatic swipe at Qatar with a decision on Friday to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. The Saudis, while they share certain conservative Islamic principles with the Brotherhood, are more than a bit put off by the group’s opposition to dynastic rule. Despite that feature of the Brotherhood’s ideology, though, the very dynastic Qatari monarchy has been a strong supporter of Brotherhood-allied movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt (especially), and Syria. Their rationale for doing so has been two-fold: one, they feel that supporting the Brotherhood abroad should insulate them from the Brotherhood at home, and two, Qatar has been predicting that the Brotherhood would be the main beneficiary of the Arab Spring. Had they been right in their prediction, Qatar’s regional influence would have been significantly increased as a result, but by the looks of things, they were wrong. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is now outlawed in Egypt, its Ennahda Party in Tunisia has voluntarily agreed to give up power, and it has lost most of its influence within the Syrian opposition. Last November’s reorganization of Syrian opposition groups from the Qatar-financed Syrian Islamic Liberation Front to the Saudi-backed Islamic Front can be seen as evidence of the Brotherhood’s — and thus Qatar’s — loss of stature.
A related complaint that these countries have with Qatar is with the country’s Al Jazeera television news network (the “hostile media”). Al Jazeera has continued to provide media access to Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt even as that organization was outlawed by the interim Egyptian government. Now several Al Jazeera journalists are currently on trial in Egypt for allegedly aiding the Brotherhood. These countries are also angry about the fact that Al Jazeera continues to give airtime to the controversial Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is actually wanted for extradition to Egypt over his comments about the coup that removed the Brotherhood from power there, and he just recently lambasted, on Al Jazeera’s airwaves, the UAE, for “fighting everything Islamic.” The reported pressure being placed on Saudi and Emirati journalists working in Qatar to quit their jobs and return home undoubtedly has something to do with the overall irritation with Qatari media.
However, there is another factor at play here: Qatar’s close — too close for Saudi comfort — ties with Iran (the real “organization” that “threatens” Gulf — i.e., Saudi — security), which has to do largely with natural gas. Qatar shares its windfall natural gas reserves with Iran, in what’s known as the North Dome/South Pars Field in the Persian Gulf. The International Energy Agency estimates that it is the largest natural gas field on the planet. Qatar has been extracting gas from its side of the field considerably faster than Iran has been, for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, the North Dome side of the field (the part in Qatari waters) was discovered in the early 1970s, whereas the South Pars side was only discovered about 20 years later, so Qatar had a lot of time to get a head start on developing the field. For another thing, the North Dome field is pretty much the only game left in Qatar, whose Dukhan oil field is clearly on the decline. Qatar has a huge incentive, then, to develop as much of the North Dome as they can as fast as they can in order to fund the numerous development projects that, when all the oil and gas finally run out, will be what keeps Qatar from going back to the days when pearl diving was its biggest industry. There is a potential conflict here, though. Natural gas, like any other gas, tends to flow toward areas of low pressure. So when one end of a gas field is being drained of its gas faster than the other end, some of the gas in the less exploited end may flow to the more exploited end. This is fine when an entire field is controlled by one country, but in this case, one can easily envision a scenario in which, several years from now, the Iranian government is accusing Qatar of siphoning off its gas.
What this means is that Qatar has a strong incentive to maintain friendly relations with Iran, and on this they have considerable disagreement with their Saudi neighbors. To Saudi Arabia, Iran is a potential regional rival and must be countered at every turn; their opposition to easing international sanctions against Iran, for example, is not so much about the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as it is about the fear of Iran escaping from the economic cage in which those sanctions have trapped it. The proxy war taking place between Saudi and Iranian interests in Syria is the most obvious example of the rivalry between the two nations, and the Saudi move against Qatar can be seen as another front in that war. Qatar — although it has backed elements of the Syrian opposition — sees things differently than the Saudis where Iran is concerned. In January, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah publicly called for an “inclusive” approach to Iran, which he argued “has a crucial role” in ending the crisis in Syria. There is enough historic tension between the Qataris and the Saudis for this kind of disagreement over foreign affairs to provide the basis for a wider fracturing of relations. For its part, Bahrain has every reason to go along with a Saudi diplomatic move against a suspected regional ally of Iran; after all, it was Saudi intervention that saved Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family from a Shiʿa-led rebellion in 2011, a rebellion that Bahrain accuses Iran of fomenting.
Look, though, at the two GCC members that did not pull their ambassadors from Qatar: Kuwait, where the Brotherhood’s Hadas Party is out of favor, but whose relations with Iran are “excellent”; and Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has been critical of the Brotherhood, but who is close enough to Iran to have served as a go-between for back-channel US-Iran negotiations. If the issue were really Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and not its relationship with Iran, both of these countries may well have joined the others in recalling their ambassadors. The one country for which this explanation does not make sense is the UAE, whose relations with Iran are improving after the two countries recently reached an accord over the disposition of three disputed Gulf islands. In this case, it may really be that Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and especially the Jaidah case and Qaradawi’s criticisms, motivated their action.
The Saudi decision to break ties with Qatar is, as Thomas Lippmann notes, another in a line of recent “sulking” diplomatic moves by the oil giant. Qatar’s failed bet on the Muslim Brotherhood made this an opportune time for the Saudis to move against them, but Saudi fears about an Iranian resurgence may well have been the real reason behind their action.
Photo: Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani chats with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos Bin Said during a meeting in Tehran on August 25, 2013. Credit: ISNA/Mona Hoobefekr
]]>by Emile Nakhleh
Yesterday’s public announcement by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain that they’re withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar signals a serious rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The seismic regional changes that have occurred since the establishment of the GCC 33 years ago will likely torpedo [...]]]>
by Emile Nakhleh
Yesterday’s public announcement by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain that they’re withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar signals a serious rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The seismic regional changes that have occurred since the establishment of the GCC 33 years ago will likely torpedo this tribal organization.
The stated reason for the ambassadorial recall is Qatar’s perceived support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the three states view as a threat to their rule. Yet, the other two GCC members — Kuwait and Oman — did not support the move.
Saudi Arabia is angry at Qatar for striking an independent foreign policy course in responding to Arab upheavals in the past three years. The Saudis are lashing out probably because of their arguably waning influence in the region. For example, they failed to get a unanimous GCC support for sending troops to Bahrain to quell the anti-regime uprising in 2011.
They were equally unable to sell the call for unification of the GCC states. Only the Bahraini King supported the Saudi position, which forced them to shelf the proposal.
The Saudis have also disagreed with Qatar’s position on Iran and Syria. As the largest and most powerful member of the GCC, Saudi Arabia resents Qatar’s larger than life posture in the region and internationally. Riyadh’s rulers are wary of Doha’s pro-active search for modernity, Western education, and political and ideological pragmatism. Qatar’s satellite news station Al Jazeera has been a thorn in the Saudi and Bahraini side.
The GCC came into being May 26, 1981 for the sole purpose of preserving the tribal, Sunni and hereditary family rule in the Gulf Arab states and countering perceived rising threats.
At the time those threats included the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Iraq-Iran war, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Ruling Sheikhs and Emirs viewed the rising wave of terrorism in the region as coming from Iran and its Shia supporters across the Gulf and beyond.
The establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan forced Gulf rulers to turn to Sunni Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood, for protection against the “atheist” Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the “Safavi, Persian menace.”
They preached and bankrolled Salafi Sunni jihad against both perceived enemies. By recasting the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as the current enemy, these rulers are being seen as hypocritical and shortsighted. They are also playing a dangerous game.
Bahrain, for example, has promoted a Sunni Islamic ideology at home that is well grounded in the MB as a line of defense against the Shia opposition. Over the years, some Bahraini political and business Sunni leaders have established close relations with the MB, regionally and internationally, according to media reports.
The Saudis and the Bahrainis are also financing Sunni Salafi jihad in Syria against the Assad regime. Earlier they supported similar groups in Iraq against the Shia power structure. In fact, in the past two years, several radical Sunni activists from Bahrain went to Syria to wage jihad against Assad, presumably with the approval of the Bahraini authorities.
The Saudi, UAE and Bahraini anger at Qatar is yet another manifestation of the tensions that have simmered for years within the GCC. While they recognized growing threats to their rule in the early 1980s, they disagreed even then on how to respond to those threats.
The Al Khalifa regime, especially, finds itself in a dilemma: Supporting the Egyptian military junta against the MB, and at the same time relying on pro-MB activists to fight the Shia opposition and Iran, which they blame for the unrest in Bahrain.
Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, on the other hand, are pursuing active political and economic relations with Tehran based on pragmatism and mutual economic interests.
Despite their annual summitry and the public rhetoric of Gulf unity, GCC rulers in the past thirty years have pursued their respective national interests separately with barely a nod to the organization. On very few occasions they acted collectively under the umbrella of the GCC security agreement.
The May 1981 GCC agreement stressed the importance of cooperation in education, manpower training, and economic diversification. But the GCC has been unable to transcend security and establish regional cooperative working arrangements in other areas.
GCC states shied away from economic complimentarity, as envisioned in the original agreement, and established separate airlines, banking systems, investment corporations, and media enterprises. Although they cling to authoritarian hereditary family rule, Kuwait has established a pseudo-democracy. Bahrain had a brush with representative democracy in the early 1970s but scuttled the experiment shortly thereafter. Each state devised a political system that is commensurate with its perceived cultural and demographic particularities regardless of their commitment to the GCC.
When I was doing research for my book on the GCC in the mid-1980s, I asked a successful Arab Gulf businessman what he thought of the GCC. He responded colloquially with one word, “Hatchi” meaning “just talk.”
A real gap exists in the minds of Gulf citizens between the rhetoric of the GCC as a collective organization and its social and economic accomplishments. While the member states have advanced in their individual pursuits, the GCC seems to be withering as an organization.
American and Western policymakers regularly cite the GCC in their public statements, but in reality they deal with member countries as separate states with little consideration of the organization.
Although Qatar is being accused of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, especially providing a home for the televangelist preacher-scholar Yusif al-Qaradawi and his family enterprises, the tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia are much deeper than al-Qaradawi and Al Jazeera, which carries his programs.
Instead of blaming Qatar and recalling their ambassadors, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain should address their poor human rights record at home and respond to their peoples’ demands for genuine reform and social justice.
]]>Foreign Affairs
Addressing an annual gathering of IRGC officials, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei spoke of the necessity for “heroic flexibility” in diplomacy. President Hassan Rouhani welcomed a Russian proposal aimed at eliminating Syria’s nuclear weapons. Rouhani spoke of repairing relations with Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying, “This issue has [...]]]>Foreign Affairs
- Addressing an annual gathering of IRGC officials, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei spoke of the necessity for “heroic flexibility” in diplomacy.
- President Hassan Rouhani welcomed a Russian proposal aimed at eliminating Syria’s nuclear weapons.
- Rouhani spoke of repairing relations with Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying, “This issue has been emphasized in the Saudi king’s congratulatory letter to me and in my thank-you letter to him. We are both eager to resolve the minor tensions between us in pursuit of our mutual interests and the interests of the Islamic world.”
- Rouhani met with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek. Putin accepted an invitation to meet with Rouhani in Tehran.
Nuclear Program
- At a gathering of SCO member states, Rouhani expressed optimism that his administration can “guarantee” the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program through “political will and mutual respect.” He added, “With mutual confidence building, a guarantee can be reached within a short period of time.”
- The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi said in a IAEA conference on Monday, “I have come to Vienna to close Iran’s nuclear file.”
Military
- Speaking at an annual gathering of IRGC officials, Rouhani referenced Ayatollah Khomeini’s insistence that armed forces stay out of “political games,” telling the IRGC to operate “above political currents.”
- A delegation of senior Omani military officials led by the country’s foreign minister arrived in Tehran Tuesday to discuss and sign defense cooperation agreements between the two countries.
- In his address at the annual gathering of IRGC officials, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei affirmed statements made by Rouhani a day earlier on the need for political non-interference, “There is no need for the IRGC to be active in the political arena.
Human Rights
- Eleven political prisoners were freed Wednesday, including prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.
- Freed political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh wrote an open letter to Rouhani calling on the president to safeguard the rights of religious minorities, particularly followers of the Baha’i faith, in light of the recent murder of a Baha’i man in Hormozgan Province.
Economic Issues
- The Tehran Stock Exchange saw a growth of 1.19% following positive political news and a drop in value of the US dollar.
At Home
- Mahmoud Vaezi, newly appointed head of Iran’s Ministry of Communication, said during a press conference, “On the basis of our 100-day plan, our goal is to make Internet speed twice as fast.”
- President Rouhani appointed Hesamedin Ashena as his advisor for cultural affairs. Ashena was one of Rouhani’s campaign managers and introduced the famous ‘key’ that came to symbolize Rouhani’s campaign.
- Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed recent presidential candidate and former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili to the Expediency Council.
– Shawn Amoei is a London-based foreign affairs analyst, specializing in US foreign policy and the Middle East. He writes for Iranwire and the Huffington Post, and can be reached by email.
- Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets Omani Defense Minister Sayyid Badr al-Busaidi in Tehran on 17 Sept. 2013. Photo Credit: ISNA/Hamid Forootan
]]>Direct talks have been a rarity since 1979. But [...]]]>
Since late January, when the White House decided there would be advantage in reverting to a policy of engagement after having acquired political cover in the form of additional sanctions, the possibility of direct talks between the United States and Iran has been in the air.
Direct talks have been a rarity since 1979. But Iranians and Americans got together constructively in Geneva in the autumn of 2001 when Iran was offering help for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, and for some time after that an informal back-channel was kept open.
To secure Iranian agreement to direct talks now, it would make sense to work through an intermediary. The Turkish and Omani governments spring to mind. Turkey and Oman are long-standing friends of the US, but are also friends of Iran (even if the Syrian crisis has created strains in the political relationship between Ankara and Tehran). Algeria might also be ready to help, as it did in 1980-81.
In Tehran approval for talks would have to come from the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Approval would not be a “slam-dunk”. The Leader’s public pronouncements over the years suggest a profound distrust of U.S. sincerity (which mirrors wide-spread American distrust of Iranian good faith). His statements also imply that he considers the U.S. arrogant and aggressive and finds this deeply offensive.
In August 2010, for instance, he is reported to have said:
We have rejected negotiations with the U.S. for clear reasons. Engaging in negotiations under threats and pressure is not in fact negotiating. For the same reason Iranian officials have stated that the Islamic Republic is ready to engage in negotiations but not with a U.S. that is seeking to conduct negotiations under threats, sanctions and bullying.
At Friday prayers on 3 February 2012 he said:
We should not fall for the smile on the face of the enemy. We have had experience of them over the last 30 years…. We should not be cheated by their false promises and words; they break their promises very easily … they feel no shame … they simply utter lies.
So any U.S. initiative could fall on stony ground–unless the White House were to find some way of convincing Ayatollah Khamenei that this time it’s different. For that they have one invaluable asset: the President. To many non-Americans he comes across as a decent man, whose commitment to making the world a better place is sincere. His speeches on foreign policy in 2009 were devoid of arrogance and suggested a new United States of America, bent on respecting other states’ rights.
But the White House would also need to fashion its public diplomacy carefully. Calls on Iran to demonstrate its sincerity, to show it can be trusted, and to build confidence in its intentions would go down badly in Tehran.
Nine years have passed since Iran admitted to the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) that it had failed to declare the acquisition of small quantities of nuclear material, and the use of a fraction of that material to test a few primitive centrifuge machines and conduct laser enrichment experiments. Those failings were soon remedied, as the IAEA Statute required. No further non-declarations have come to light since (unless one believes what has not been proved: that Iran had no intention of declaring the Fordow plant in 2009). The declaration of basic nuclear weapons research is not required by the NPT.
For two years after its initial admissions Iran volunteered cooperation that went beyond what the NPT requires, only desisting after the IAEA Board demonstrated that it would not tolerate Iran making full use of its NPT rights. Thereafter Iran cooperated as required by the NPT; only on a point of legal interpretation has the IAEA found fault.
Trust between nations is built through negotiation, not by the peremptory setting of arbitrary tests. A good international agreement includes provisions for verifying compliance, so that the longer the parties remain compliant, the more confident they can be in one another’s good faith.
Of course arrogance and aggression are diplomatic expressions of power. There are circumstances, e.g. the 1995 Dayton peace process, in which they can be effective dispute resolution tools. But the evidence is that they do not work with Iran. Having what it takes to survive when put under pressure is vital to Iran’s sense of self. Successful defiance of U.S. power enables Iran to demonstrate to itself and to other non-aligned countries that it is on the way back from 200 years of humiliation at Western and Russian hands.
A further complication lies in the fact that more issues divide the U.S. and Iran than the nuclear controversy. Americans reckon that the Islamic Republic has harmed U.S. interests in many ways over the last 32 years. It’s natural that this has generated much bad feeling.
But this too is a mirror image of what Iranians feel. Those 32 years have witnessed the U.S. siding with Saddam Hussein in his unlawful invasion of Iran, awarding a medal to an officer responsible for shooting down an Iranian airliner, excluding Iran from the Madrid Middle East peace conference despite cooperative Iranian behaviour, rewarding Iran’s leaders for their help in Afghanistan by branding them as “evil”, trying to cripple the Iranian economy through sanctions, flirting with “regime change”, and threatening unauthorised use of force against Iranian assets.
The combined list of Iranian and U.S. grievances is so long that the only sensible way forward is for both parties to let bygones be bygones and convince one another that they want to focus on improving their relationship. That means identifying where U.S. and Iranian interests overlap and giving expression to that overlap through language that is negotiated fair and square.
Is the White House ready for that kind of engagement? Can they afford to be so reasonable, and unaggressive, in an election year? If they can’t, they’d be well-advised to keep their distance. The last thing the world needs right now is a further twist in the downward spiral of US/Iranian relations.
Peter Jenkins was the UK’s Permanent Representative to the IAEA for 2001-06 and is now a partner in ADRg Ambassadors.
]]>Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: [...]]]>
Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: Just as neoconservative Iran hawks can’t have it both ways — boosting the Green movement and calling for bombing Iran — those Arab leaders who call for a U.S. attack on Iran probably don’t care a whit about democracy in Iran either. (And why should they? Their countries aren’t exactly democracies nor do they care what their own citizens/subjects think).
In fact, a democratic Iran would probably be bad news for these Gulf dictatorships.
Sadjadpour (emphasis by Duss):
The WikiLeaks revelations make clear that Arab officials believe Iran to be inherently dishonest and dangerous. The feeling is probably mutual. But they hide perhaps a more interesting issue, namely what type of Iranian government would actually best serve Gulf Arab interests.
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and the Islamic Republic may be loathed, but equally the advent of a more progressive, democratic Iran would enable Tehran to emerge from its largely self-inflicted isolation and begin to realise its enormous potential. In the zero-sum game of Middle Eastern politics, a democratic Iran would pose huge challenges to Persian Gulf sheikhdoms.
The irony that someone like Benjamin Wienthal, who’s at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, doesn’t recognize this in his National Review post says something about how the hawkish agenda drives neoconservatives — and not utopian notions of freedom and democracy.
Weinthal writes:
While Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman have long privately conveyed such warnings to diplomats, they never had the courage to flex their muscles in public.
Right! And that’s because these are dictatorships, and these Arab leaders are wildly out of step with their publics.
Neoconservatives, being neoconservatives, will gather allies in their campaign for war with Iran wherever they can find them.
]]>