The Palestinian Authority (PA) has now moved a step closer to making good on its threat to go to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and bring charges against Israel. There is little doubt that this was a move Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tried desperately to avoid. In the end, he was forced to do it by a combination of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism, Palestinian desperation to do something to try to end Israel’s occupation, and his own many missteps.
Abbas signed on to 18 international agreements after the quixotic attempt to pass a resolution at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) predictably failed. Among them was the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC and took formal effect in 2002. This is the step that the U.S. and Israel have warned Abbas against most strongly. Among all the “unilateral steps” the Palestinians could take (which, one should note, is no more “unilateral” than any number of actions taken by Israel on a routine basis), this is the one Israel worries about most.
The reason, of course, is obvious. Israel knows it has committed war and other international crimes—some very serious—in the course of its occupation. While Israel generally scoffs and waxes indignant at critical world opinion, it is concerned that being hauled before the ICC could further negatively impact public and elite opinion in Europe, Israel’s main trading partner, where patience with Israeli policies has grown ever thinner.
Abbas knows only too well that he risks losing what little power he has in the West Bank. There are many ways this move can blow up in his face, and most of the roads to success are going to take more time than he has. That he has taken this step testifies to his desperation.
When, on behalf of the Palestinians, Jordan submitted its resolution to the UNSC last month, it did so under tremendous pressure from other Arab states. Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah had preferred to wait until France was ready with its own resolution, which the United States had strongly hinted it would support, or at least not oppose. Abbas knew full well that, even if the Palestinian resolution had mustered the nine votes needed to pass the UNSC, Washington would have vetoed it. Approval of the French version, while toothless and lacking a fixed deadline to end Israel’s occupation, would at least have had virtue of demonstrating the international community’s insistence on a two-state solution.
But internal pressure to submit the Palestinian version, as well as the external pressure that turned out to be decisive, seems to have pushed the French version to the back burner, at least for the time being. With the expected failure of the Palestinian resolution at the UNSC, Abbas was forced to carry through with his threat to sign the Rome Statute, a move that many Palestinians, including many in his own Fatah faction, had been clamoring for ever since the 2012 U.N. General Assembly vote that granted Palestine non-member observer state status, thus enabling it to join international agreements and UN specialized agencies.
In the long run, this is a move that could pay off for the Palestinians, but it carries enormous risks, especially to the PA. The most obvious and immediate threats lie with the responses that can be expected from Israel and its most important foreign backer, the new Republican-led U.S. Congress. Many in Congress have made it clear that they intend to push for suspension of aid to the PA if it signs the Rome Statute. And Israel will surely ramp up its settlement expansion and likely once again withhold taxes it collects on the PA’s behalf. The resulting economic impact could very well lead to the PA’s collapse.
That outcome has been forestalled in the past by Israel’s recognition that the security and economic costs it would inherit would be exorbitant. Israeli officials not only allowed their own cooler heads to prevail, but also urged restraint on their friends in Congress. Despite the recent splash the Labor Party made by joining forces with peace process veteran Tzipi Livni, Bibi Netanyahu’s main challenge still comes from his right in the elections scheduled for mid-March, and he can’t afford to look soft on the Palestinians.
That certainly won’t help Abbas. He knows the dangers that confront him. Moreover, the approach to the ICC carries another risk. Even if Abbas survives the Israeli-U.S. response, it is very possible that Hamas will also face charges at the ICC. The case against Hamas, while covering crimes involving far less destruction and loss of life, is also more clear-cut than one likely to be brought by the PA against Israel, whose acts in Gaza and in the day-to-day occupation of the West Bank will require lengthy investigation. Should Hamas find itself on the losing end of the law before Israel does, Abbas’s position is likely to weaken further.
Despite his moves toward internationalization, Abbas still much prefers to work with Washington. U.S. fecklessness in the face of persistent Israeli opposition to any diplomatic initiative, however, has essentially brought him to this Rubicon. And his own clear reluctance to cross it will itself likely diminish the chance of success.
Under the Rome Statute, the Palestinians will not be able to formally file any cases with the ICC prosecutor for 60 days from the date of signing. That time will certainly be used by the Obama Administration, which will no doubt argue that such a filing could bolster the Israeli Right in the critical final days of the election campaign, to pressure the Palestinians against going forward. Still, the repeated failure of the Security Council to address the occupation in any substantive way, coupled with the failed history of the U.S.-brokered peace process, has sent the Palestinian people the message, however unintentionally, that diplomacy and cooperation are dead-end strategies. That is going to lead to more Palestinians embracing the violent paths called for by Hamas and other, considerably more militant, factions.
At the same time, Palestinians have seen the futility of armed struggle over the decades. Failure at the UNSC and joining the ICC — but then forgoing charges against Israel – will only increase Palestinian despair and desperation. That will no doubt lead to more of the kind of “lone wolf” attacks that Israelis endured in 2014.
The one party that could make a difference is the European Union (EU). It can exert serious pressure on Israel of a kind even the United States cannot match. The EU accounts for nearly one-third of Israel’s export business. (By comparison, the U.S. accounts for just under one-quarter). Labeling settlement products (as some EU countries currently require, but don’t generally enforce) could be a first step. And if it is couched as a warning that sterner measures are in the offing, the impact on Israeli thinking could be significant, perhaps even a game-changer.
Indeed, ultimately, that sort of European action is what Israel fears. If the Obama administration wants to see a reversal of the downward spiral its own peace-making efforts have helped create in Israel-Palestine, it could quietly encourage the EU in that direction.
Such a course would be wise. Abbas’s strategy of relying entirely on U.S. help to pull him through has clearly failed, and his reign, whether due to a P.A. collapse or just his own advancing age, will not last much longer. He has no clear heir apparent, so what comes after is a mystery. The United States won’t exert significant pressure on Israel in the near future, and, absent some unanticipated shock, Obama’s successors in the White House are unlikely to spend as much political capital as he has on resolving the conflict. The pressure must come from Europe and from the Palestinians using whatever international tools are at their disposal.
This is, after all, just what was always demanded of the Palestinians—that they pursue their goals without recourse to violence. If a peaceful path to statehood is denied them, ongoing and escalating violence is all we can expect to see.
]]>The stated rationale for the United States casting on Tuesday one of the very lonely votes it sometimes casts at the United Nations General Assembly, on matters on which almost the entire world sees things differently, warrants some reflection. The resolution in question this time endorsed the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and called on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to renounce any possession of nuclear weapons, and to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A nuclear weapons-free Middle East and universal adherence to the nonproliferation treaty are supposedly U.S. policy objectives, and have been for many years. So why did the United States oppose the resolution? According to the U.S. representative’s statement in earlier debate, the resolution “fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.”
You know something doesn’t wash when the contrary views are as overwhelmingly held as on this matter. The resolution passed on a vote of 161-5. Joining Israel and the United States as “no” votes were Canada (maybe the Harper government was thinking of the Keystone XL pipeline issue being in the balance?) and the Pacific powers of Micronesia and Palau. The latter two habitually cast their UN votes to stay in the good graces of the United States; they have been among the few abstainers on the even more lopsided votes in the General Assembly each year calling for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
An obvious problem with the United States complaining about a resolution on a topic such as this being an expression of concern about the activities of only a single country is that the United States has been in front in pushing for United Nations resolutions about the nuclear activities of a single country, only just not about the particular country involved this time. The inconsistency is glaring. Iran has been the single-country focus of several U.S.-backed resolutions on nuclear matters—resolutions in the Security Council that have been the basis for international sanctions against Iran.
One could look, but would look in vain, for sound rationales for the inconsistency. If anything, the differences one would find should point U.S. policy in the opposite direction from the direction it has taken. It is Iran that has placed itself under the obligations of the nonproliferation treaty and subjects its nuclear activities to international inspection. Since the preliminary agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program that was negotiated last year, those inspections are more frequent and intrusive than ever. Israel, by contrast, has kept its nuclear activities completely out of the reach of any international inspection or control regime. As for actual nuclear weapons, Iran does not have them, has declared its intention not to have them, and according to the U.S. intelligence community has not made any decision to make them. Neither Israel nor the United States says publicly that Israel has nuclear weapons, but just about everyone else in the world takes it as a given that it does, which would make it the only state in the Middle East that does.
One might look, but still in vain, for justifying discrepancies that go beyond the respective nuclear programs of the countries in question but still involve questions of regional security and stability. What about, for example, menacing threats? Iran and Israel have each had plenty of unfriendly words about each other. Iran’s words have included bloviation about wiping something from pages of history; Israel’s have included more pointed threats of military attack. What about actual attacks? Israel has initiated multiple wars with its neighbors, as well as launching smaller armed attacks; The Islamic Republic of Iran has not started a war in its 35-year history. Terrorism? Well, there were those assassinations of Iranian scientists, with some later attacks against Israelis being an obvious (and not very successful) attempt by Iran at a tit-for-tat response against those responsible for murdering the scientists. And so forth.
Singling out one country in a multilateral context can indeed cause problems. The resolution the General Assembly passed this week need not involve a problem, however, since it was not calling for differential treatment of anyone—only for Israel to get with the same program as any state in the Middle East that does not have nukes and adheres to the international nuclear control regime.
Iran, by contrast, is being treated much differently from anyone else. Tehran already has acquiesced to some of that differential treatment, but Iranians unsurprisingly wonder why Iran should be subjected to more such treatment, or indeed to any of it. They wonder, for example, why Iran should be subject to unique restrictions that several other non-nuclear-weapons states that also are parties to the nonproliferation treaty and enrich their own uranium are not. Such wonderment is almost certainly a factor in Iranian resistance to making the sorts of additional concessions that many in the United States are expecting or demanding that Iran make. The differential treatment should be kept in mind in any discussion in the United States about who has made bigger concessions than whom and about what would or would not constitute a fair and reasonable final agreement.
Then there is the irony—although Iranians might use a more bitter word than irony—of Israel leading the charge in constantly agitating about Iran’s nuclear program (and by trying to torpedo an international agreement to restrict that program, making the issue fester and thus making it more possible for Israel’s agitation to go on forever).
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>So much has been written and said about the uranium enrichment aspect of the 14-month nuclear negotiation with Iran that it is hard to look at it with fresh eyes, and starting from first principles. Nonetheless what follows is an attempt to do so. It suggests that the US and Iran are closer on enrichment than once seemed possible, but are still at risk of failing to find common ground in the course of the extension agreed a week ago.
From an international legal perspective the text that matters is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran deposited its last instrument of ratification on 5 March 1970, the same day as the deposit of the US instruments. Under the NPT the US is a “Nuclear Weapon State,” Iran a “Non-Nuclear Weapon State” (NNWS).
The NPT does not prohibit the acquisition of enrichment technology by NNWS. Nor does it impose any limit on the size or number of NNWS enrichment facilities. It merely requires NNWS to use that technology exclusively for peaceful purposes, and to place all the nuclear material fed into and produced by such facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
In the current negotiation, Iran has assured the US that it takes its NPT obligations very seriously. It has also reaffirmed its intention to use enrichment technology exclusively for peaceful purposes, and to continue to implement the NPT safeguards agreement that it concluded in 1975.
Some people assume that such assurances are worthless. They point to the breaches of the NPT safeguards agreement that occurred between approximately1991 and 2003. However, none of those breaches amounted to evidence of an intention to use enrichment for non-peaceful purposes. And US intelligence has yet to come across any such evidence; suspicion of Iranian nuclear weapon intent has rested on inference, not evidence. States, like people, can make mistakes and then resolve not to repeat them.
There are also several resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council (UNSC) between 2006 and 2010 that make legal demands of Iran. But none of them imposes limits on the size and number of Iranian enrichment facilities. Still less do any of them outlaw Iranian possession of enrichment technology for peaceful purposes. One of them requires Iran to cooperate with the IAEA to resolve concern that Iran has engaged in research into nuclear weapon-related technologies. Iran has been doing that since November 2013, albeit with increasing hesitancy.
In the Iranian case another perspective is as important as the legal perspective; it is the confidence-building perspective. This was crucial to an attempt to resolve the problem peacefully in the wake of the IAEA Director General reporting the safeguards breaches to which reference is made above, because these breaches had undermined confidence in Iran’s peaceful intentions.
In the autumn of 2003, Iran volunteered, in the interest of confidence-building, to go beyond the requirements of its NPT safeguards agreement and make available to the IAEA the information and access required by the Additional Protocol (AP). Tehran also undertook to suspend activity at its only enrichment facility while it negotiated longer-term confidence-building measures with the UK, France and Germany (E3). The Iranians implemented these short-term measures scrupulously and ceased doing so only after they had grasped that nothing less than renunciation of the enrichment option would satisfy the E3.
In the current negotiation, various reports suggest that Iran has so far volunteered to renew application of the AP, de facto initially and later de jure; to accept limits on the size and number of its enrichment facilities during a confidence-building period; to refrain from producing uranium enriched to more than 5% U235; to convert some of its under 5% U235 uranium (LEU) into forms in which it would not be readily available as feed material; and to send the rest of its LEU stock to Russia for use in the fuel that the Rosatom corporation is supplying to the power reactor at Bushehr. Iran’s negotiators also have reportedly suggested that they are ready to extend the Bushehr fuel supply contract well beyond 2021.
In parallel, Iran has negotiated that Rosatom will help build two further power reactors and will supply them with fuel throughout their operating lives.
In confidence-building terms, this amounts to an impressive package. With only 10,000 IR-1 centrifuges in operation in only one facility, and its LEU stock unavailable to serve as feed material, Iran would need at least six months to produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for one nuclear device. With only 8000 IR-1s and no LEU feed, Iran would need at least eight months.
And if the Bushehr supply contract were extended to 2031, Iran would only need to consider increasing the available quantity of separative work units (a measure of centrifuge output) in the late 2020s.
In other words, Iran is offering a package that exceeds its NPT obligations by a wide margin. IAEA inspectors would be able to acquire confidence that there are no undeclared nuclear activities or material in Iran. The international community would know that it had six to eight months at least to react to any sign of Iranian misuse of its enrichment capacity for non-peaceful purposes.
So why in Vienna did it seem that this package is not enough for the US? That is for representatives of the US administration to explain. Past statements suggest that they will say that they need certainty that Iran will be incapable of producing (“cannot”) even one nuclear weapon.
That may sound reasonable but is in fact an unrealistic goal. It would require Iran not only to destroy all its centrifuges but also to wipe the minds of its engineers clean of all their knowledge and experience of enrichment technology. It also puts the negotiation at risk of the same fate as the 2003-5 E3 negotiation, because Iran is unready to build confidence by closing down its enrichment program. And it runs counter to the spirit of the NPT, since the NPT bases nuclear non-proliferation on self-restraint, political will, and deterrence through verification, not on nuclear technology surrender.
If instead the administration admits that it cannot literally “close all pathways” to a weapon but claims that it needs at least 12 months to react to any break-out attempt, then they should be asked why six to eight months would not be enough.
It is self-evident that 12 months of additional sanctions would not cause Iran to abandon a break-out attempt. Eight years of sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to re-suspend enrichment. Post-1918 history is littered with failed sanctions policies.
On the other hand, 12 months are more than are needed to get UN Security Council approval for the use of force to prevent break-out and to act on it—or for a coalition of the willing to form in the unlikely event of Russia or China threatening to veto a UNSC resolution. In 1990, only six months were needed for the US to gain approval for and prepare a massive operation to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. As recently as last April, Secretary John Kerry was formulating the goal as “six to 12 months.”
This analysis will be misconstrued by some as an apologia for Iran. Others will realize, I hope, that it is an attempt to clarify the progress that has been made on enrichment over the last 12 months; to explain why the current Iranian offer is reasonable from a legal and from a confidence-building perspective; and to counter the pernicious influence on US negotiating goals of people who want the bar set so high that Iran will refuse the jump.
]]>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
A new Brookings Institution paper, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” has rightly attracted considerable attention. The author, Robert Einhorn, has a distinguished record and was Special Adviser for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the State Department from 2009 to 2013. His recommendations must be seen as authoritative.
The paper [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
A new Brookings Institution paper, “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” has rightly attracted considerable attention. The author, Robert Einhorn, has a distinguished record and was Special Adviser for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the State Department from 2009 to 2013. His recommendations must be seen as authoritative.
The paper addresses the issues that are at the center of the ongoing negotiations in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). Einhorn recommends key requirements for an acceptable agreement with Iran — requirements designed to prevent Iran from having a rapid breakout capability and to deter a future Iranian decision to build nuclear weapons.
Preventing a rapid breakout capability
Iran’s development of a capability to enrich uranium has been at the core of Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme for over a decade. The two enrichment facilities that Iran has built, at Natanz and Fordow, are being used to produce low-enriched uranium for civil purposes but could be used to produce highly enriched uranium for military purposes.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) prohibits the manufacture of nuclear weapons by states such as Iran but does not prohibit the possession of enrichment facilities. The West’s negotiators therefore have a delicate task: they must contrive to persuade Iran to accept restrictions on its use of this technology — restrictions that would give the UN Security Council enough time, reacting to evidence, to prevent Iran from producing enough weapons-grade uranium for one device (i.e. from “breaking out”).
Einhorn explains that the breakout timeline depends on the numbers and types of centrifuges used and on the nature of the uranium feedstock available for a breakout attempt (for instance, if the feedstock is already low-enriched much less time is required than if it is un-enriched).
He goes on to describe the implications of limiting Iran to between 2000 and 6000 first-generation centrifuges. This creates the impression that these are the sorts of numbers that ought to be agreed to in Vienna. That is unfortunate, because Iran has already installed 19,000 first-generation centrifuges and is using 10,000 of them — and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has ruled out the dismantling of any existing capabilities (which his political opponents could portray as a humiliating surrender of Iranian rights).
Einhorn’s choice of what looks like an unrealistically low figure appears to stem from wanting to give the UN Security Council several months to react to evidence of a breakout attempt. However, as he himself implies, several months would be useful only if the Security Council were to want to impose sanctions before opting for force. In reality, since sanctions have proved ineffective as a tool for coercing Iran, the council would be well-advised to opt for force within a matter of days, and could do so if the P5+1 had pre-agreed that this would be the most appropriate response (see below).
A related concern is possible Iranian development of more advanced centrifuges. With a few thousand third-generation machines, using a low-enriched feedstock, only a few weeks would be required to break out. This concern could be resolved by placing limits on the scope of Iran’s centrifuge R&D, as Einhorn recommends. But tight limits may not be negotiable.
Yet another concern relates to the plutonium-producing potential of a 40MW reactor under construction at Arak. Einhorn describes ways in which this potential could be reduced. Recent Iranian statements suggest that they, too, are working up some proposals. So this concern is likely to be largely allayed, although the risk of a plutonium-based breakout may not be totally eliminated.
Deterring an Iranian decision to build nuclear weapons
In the absence of watertight solutions to these breakout concerns (or to concern that Iran might break out using a small clandestine facility) the West’s negotiators will do well to devote at least as much effort to deterring breakout as to trying to make rapid breakout impossible.
Since 2007 US National Intelligence Estimates have drawn attention to the importance of influencing the cost/benefit calculations of Iran’s leaders, implying that this is likely to be the most effective way of ensuring that Iran does not become a nuclear-armed state.
The framers of the NPT perceived that the treaty’s impact would hang on the ability of parties to recognise a national security interest in supporting nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Consequently the only deterrents envisaged in the treaty are verification of nuclear material use by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the risk that non-compliance will result in UN sanctions or authorisation of force, and the certainty that non-compliance will lead to a loss of prestige and exclusion from the society of the treaty’s adherents (currently 190 states).
Since 2003 President Rouhani has shown that he understands all this very well. He knows that Iran would pay a high price for breaching its non-proliferation obligations and that acquiring nuclear weapons would bring no benefit, since Iran is not in need of a nuclear deterrent. The signs are that his political opponents, too, have figured that out.
All this needs to be borne in mind when determining whether any additional (going beyond the NPT) deterrents are necessary in the current context.
Einhorn believes that they are. The most questionable of his recommendations are that:
These recommendations betray a flawed understanding of Iranian psychology. Such public threats would be seen in Iran as humiliating, and would be resented. That resentment could be used to stir up opposition to the agreement and could even end up providing a motive for ditching it. The threats would serve no practical purpose since leading Iranians are already well aware of what they would risk were they to attempt breakout.
More in keeping with Iranian psychology and a more effective deterrent would be a private P5+1 intimation that they will be united in urging the Security Council to authorise force in the event of evidence of a breakout attempt. Nothing more is needed. Iranian diplomats are highly intelligent.
Conclusion
This paper is heartening. It offers reason to think that the Vienna negotiators can succeed in producing a resolution of Western concerns that Iran will have an interest in respecting. However, as Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif likes to remind us, a resolution will require flexibility from both sides. The West must try to avoid the over-bidding (in pursuit of over-insurance) that doomed the 2004-05 negotiations between Iran and the E3 (the UK, France and Germany).
Photo: Representatives of Iran and the P5+1 celebrate after an interim nuclear deal is signed in Geneva, Switzerland on Nov. 24, 2013. Credit: FARS News/Majid Asgaripour
]]>by Derek Davison
Russia moved to annex Crimea this week, as Ukraine evacuated most of its soldiers from the peninsula. Tensions in eastern Ukraine seem to have reached a tense equilibrium, even as reports of a Russian military build-up along its Ukrainian border raised the possibility of another incursion.
Recent [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
Russia moved to annex Crimea this week, as Ukraine evacuated most of its soldiers from the peninsula. Tensions in eastern Ukraine seem to have reached a tense equilibrium, even as reports of a Russian military build-up along its Ukrainian border raised the possibility of another incursion.
Recent events
Moving quickly on the heels of last week’s referendum on Crimean independence, in which Crimean voters nearly unanimously voted to secede from Ukraine and become part of Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into law a bill to formally annex the peninsula. On Thursday, one day before a temporary truce between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Crimea was set to expire, the Ukrainian defense ministry announced that plans were “well underway” to evacuate and resettle the roughly 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers currently stationed in Crimea to other parts of Ukraine. Pro-Russian forces stormed the Belbek airbase near Sevastopol, wounding one Ukrainian soldier and taking the base commander prisoner. The interim Crimean government issued an order for Crimea’s Tatar population to vacate part of the land on which it is currently settled, but insisted that it will allocate other land for Tatar settlement and that Tatars will be “well represented” in the Crimean government moving forward.
The New York Times characterized the situation in the eastern part of mainland Ukraine as “an uneasy calm” between “entrenched pro-Russian and pro-Western camps that scarcely existed before [the uprisings in Kiev].” Pro-secession fervor there is at a high level, particularly in large cities that tend to have higher proportions of Russians and Russian-speakers than the surrounding countryside. Friday’s announcement that the Ukrainian government had signed an association agreement with the European Union, a deal that will bring the two parties into “closer economic and political cooperation,” raised fears that tensions in the more pro-Russian east could rise still higher.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced that it would deploy civilian observers to Ukraine (not including Crimea), after Russia dropped its objections to such a move. However, NATO officials continued to express concern over an alleged Russian troop buildup along its Ukrainian border, suggesting that the units could be used either to invade mainland Ukraine or to cross Ukraine and seize control of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, whose leaders requested that Russia annex it earlier this week. The Russian government claimed that any troop movements were part of routine military exercises and that there were no plans to cross the border into Ukraine. Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia, told American media that the chance of a Russian-Ukrainian war was “becoming higher.”
The United States and the EU levied further sanctions against top Russian officials and allies of President Putin on Friday. The new list of American targets includes Putin’s chief of staff as well as key figures in Russia’s energy and banking sectors. The EU list includes several figures who had been named in the initial round of US sanctions on Monday. A Kremlin spokesman said that the Russian government was “bewildered” by the new sanctions and promised that it would retaliate, which it then did by placing travel bans on several American political figures, including Senators Harry Reid and John McCain and Speaker of the House John Boehner.
There are two disputed narratives that are fueling the ongoing conflict:
Was the Crimean referendum legitimate?
Although the Ukrainian government appears to have no intention of contesting Russia’s annexation of Crimea on the ground, it, along with the US and EU, has insisted that last week’s referendum is illegal under both international and Ukrainian law. Russia has argued that the referendum was consistent with international law, specifically Article 1 of the UN Charter (which mentions “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” as one of the UN’s guiding principles), and Putin has specifically cited Kosovo’s secession from Serbia (which Russia opposed) as having set the precedent for this similar act by Crimea.
International law does not take a firm position on the question of self-determination versus national sovereignty. Without a clear declaration by a body like the UN Security Council there is no “law” that deals conclusively with Crimea’s decision to leave Ukraine and join Russia. Kosovo is a problematic case to use as precedent, given that its secession was the product of a war in which Serbians committed war crimes against Kosovar Albanians (though in fairness the Albanian rebels committed war crimes of their own). There is evidence of some mistreatment of Ukraine’s Russians, but a UN report (which Russia rejects) found no systematic abuses. However, the fact that the first act of the interim Ukrainian government was an aborted attempt to repeal the country’s law governing the use of official minority languages was cause for alarm among Ukrainian Russian-speakers.
Under Ukrainian law there is no question that the referendum is illegal, since Article 73 of the Ukrainian constitution requires that any changes to Ukraine’s territory be approved in an “All-Ukrainian referendum.” Last week’s Crimean vote was regional, and therefore does not meet this requirement. However, given that the Crimean and Russian governments do not recognize the authority of the interim Ukrainian government, they presumably reject its invocation of the constitution as well.
Is the Ukrainian government legitimate?
The Ukrainian government obviously thinks so, and so do the US and EU. But there is no disputing the fact that Viktor Yanukovych was the legally elected president of Ukraine before his ouster, and Russia’s official position has been that it still recognizes him as Ukraine’s rightful president, though it has not pushed for his restoration. Russia has characterized the Euromaidan protest movement that removed Yanukovych from office as an “armed fascist coup,” engineered with considerable American support. Far-right Ukrainian parties did play a large part in the protest movement, as evidenced by the sizable role that they have been given in the interim Ukrainian government. Moreover, a recording of a January phone call between Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt shows that American officials were at least discussing ways to assist the protest movement and what a post-Yanukovych government might look like. Russia also accuses the EU of having spurred the protests by forcing the Ukrainian government to choose between Russia and the EU rather than allowing it to have strong ties with both, an accusation that EU officials have denied.
On the other hand, the US supported a February 21st agreement that would have kept Yanukovych in office but restored Ukraine’s 2004 constitution (which reduced the power of the presidency relative to parliament). That deal collapsed when protesters (including the far-right elements of the movement) rejected it, despite the fact that several protest leaders had already signed off on it. Further, while the Nuland phone call is evidence that the US government supported the protesters, it is not in itself evidence of the level of that support, let alone of the idea that the US was actually behind the movement. The Obama administration contends that Yanukovych forfeited his authority when he fled the country after the February 21 agreement collapsed. Yanukovych, who also recorded a statement resigning his office, which he later retracted, was impeached and removed from office by the Ukrainian parliament. Nevertheless, there are serious questions as to the constitutionality of that impeachment vote and the manner in which Yanukovych’s successor was determined.
Photo: Crowds waving Crimean and Russian flags in Simferopol in Crimea after the referendum. Credit: Alexey Yakushechkin/IPS
]]>by Thomas W. Lippman
The rulers of Saudi Arabia are becoming masters of a diplomatic style best described as sulking in the tent. If a country or organization is not performing in a way that suits them, they issue a petulant statement and walk away. It’s easier than constructive engagement, but far [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
The rulers of Saudi Arabia are becoming masters of a diplomatic style best described as sulking in the tent. If a country or organization is not performing in a way that suits them, they issue a petulant statement and walk away. It’s easier than constructive engagement, but far less effective, as the Saudis are — or ought to be — learning.
A longstanding example is their refusal to do business with the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. Riyadh backed a rival candidate in Iraq’s election, and never accepted the outcome. The Saudis have no embassy in Iraq — two years ago they appointed an ambassador for the first time in 20 years but he was officially “nonresident,” living outside the country — and minimal economic investment. The result is that they forfeited the field of influence in Baghdad to the country they consider the greatest threat, Iran, even as they accuse Maliki of being an agent of Iranian ambitions.
Then came the decision to turn down a seat on the United Nations Security Council, a seat the Saudis had sought for years. The Saudis said they did it to protest the Security Council’s inability to deliver an Arab-Israeli peace settlement acceptable to the Palestinians, and its inability to halt the civil war in Syria. But nobody heard that tree when it fell in the forest. If there is any evidence that the Security Council or its individual members has adopted policies more to Riyadh’s liking as a result of this theatrical but futile gesture, it has not come to light. Meanwhile, the Saudis forfeited any chance they might have had to influence the Security Council from the inside. Jordan replaced Saudi Arabia, and life went on as before.
Now the Saudis, along with Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, have announced the withdrawal of their ambassador from neighboring Qatar. The three released a long, murky statement that basically accused Qatar of failing to implement an agreement among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members to work together to ensure their security, to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs, and to halt support for “hostile media.” That was a clear reference to Al Jazeera, the popular satellite news channel financed by Qatar’s ruling family, which among other things provides a forum for the popular preacher Youssef al-Qaradawi, a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The Saudis, who support the military government that took over in Egypt last year, have made no secret of their displeasure with Qatar’s backing of the previous government, which was headed by the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi. The military government in Cairo joined Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain in withdrawing its ambassador from Doha, a hollow gesture since he had already left.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia formally designated the Brotherhood, many of whose members have found refuge in Qatar as Egypt cracked down on them, a terrorist organization. The Saudis’ quarrel with the Brotherhood is not about religious issues; their problem is the popularity of the Brotherhood as a political organization, which by its nature poses a threat to the al-Saud regime.
For Saudi Arabia, the public breakdown of comity within the GCC represents a sharp policy reversal. Just three months ago, at a GCC summit meeting, Saudi Arabia was promoting the idea of a formal political union among the six members. That plan was shot down by Oman, not by Qatar, but it is highly unlikely that Qatar would have supported it had it come to a vote. Although dwarfed by Saudi Arabia in size, Qatar has been playing an outsize role in regional affairs that is often out of synch with Riyadh, in Syria as well as in Egypt, and Doha would not have welcomed the inevitable Saudi dominance of a closer, formal union.
The Saudis might ask themselves how their diplomacy over the past three years or so has advanced their objectives. They wanted a friendly government in Iraq that would resist Iranian encroachment. They wanted the U.N. Security Council to turn up the heat on Israel in favor of the Palestinians. They demanded an end to the civil war in Syria even as they supported rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad. And they espoused a political union of the GCC members. None of those goals appears within reach, nor is it apparent that Riyadh, having withdrawn from the diplomatic arena, has a Plan B for achieving any of them. Perhaps some new strategy will emerge after President Obama visits Riyadh later this month.
The GCC was not created to be a defense organization; it was created to promote political and economic solidarity among the Gulf monarchies. That objective has long been unrealistic as the members went their own way on everything from energy policy to relations with Iran. Now it appears to be entirely out of reach.
For the United States, the diplomatic spat within the GCC might seem to be a minor concern, except that Washington has been pumping advanced weapons into the member states in a longstanding effort to form an effective regional security force that would confront Iranian ambitions. Recognizing that the members would never agree on a joint military command, U.S. defense officials have promoted a policy of providing compatible equipment and communications systems that in the event of a direct threat could all function in coordination with each other and with the U.S. Central Command. Those efforts will continue, regardless of the tensions among the GCC’s leaders.
]]>by Peter Jenkins
Ten years ago Western diplomats used to scour IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reports on Iran’s “implementation of its NPT Safeguards Agreement” for evidence of safeguards failures that could be used to pressurise Iran into abandoning its fledgling uranium enrichment program.
Today that’s a futile pursuit. The latest IAEA [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
Ten years ago Western diplomats used to scour IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reports on Iran’s “implementation of its NPT Safeguards Agreement” for evidence of safeguards failures that could be used to pressurise Iran into abandoning its fledgling uranium enrichment program.
Today that’s a futile pursuit. The latest IAEA report suggests that Iran is in full compliance with its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards obligations, and states unequivocally that “the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at nuclear facilities…declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement”.
These days Iran’s failings are a consequence of obligations placed upon Iran by the UN Security Council (UNSC). These are different in nature from NPT obligations, since they were not undertaken voluntarily, and since, to create them, the Council had recourse to Chapter VII of the UN Charter, even though conclusive evidence of a threat to international peace was lacking, as was an explicit threat finding by the Council.
Chief among these failings is the inadequacy, in Agency eyes, of Iranian cooperation to resolve concern about “the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organisations”.
Happily, however, there is now movement on what is known as the PMD (Possible Military Dimensions) front. As the report indicates, Iran and the Agency agreed on November 11 to cooperate to resolve “all present and past issues”, and on February 7 they agreed specifically that Iran would provide an explanation for why it had developed Explosive Bridge Wire detonators (which have both civil and military applications).
That is an important step in a hopeful direction. Together with the Agency’s report that Iran is fully implementing all voluntary measures to which it is committed by the November 24, 2013 Joint Plan of Action (JPA), this progress justifies a “so far, so good” inference from the report.
In fact, the report’s only disturbing features are two of the clarifications of intention that Iran has offered pursuant to the JPA – and, almost certainly, these are less disturbing than might at first appear.
In a letter dated February 8, Iran informed the Agency that it plans to build a 10 MW light water research reactor that will require 20% enriched uranium oxide fuel.
A reactor of this type would rank low in any nuclear proliferation risk assessment (unless the assessment were produced in Israel, where the norm seems to be to proclaim any nuclear activity in the region a threat to the future of mankind, unless the activity is undertaken by Israelis).
Still, a putative requirement for 20% enriched uranium fuel cannot be welcome to Western negotiators who embarked on a five-month negotiation with Iran on February18, and who are hoping to persuade Iran to commit to refrain from producing uranium hexafluoride enriched to more than 5% (since the passage from 20% to weapons-grade hexafluoride is quickly made).
However, the fact that Iran will have had no difficulty predicting Western reactions to the mention of 20% suggests that this “plan” is a newly-minted bargaining counter. This would not be the first time that Iran has used technological advances or stated intentions to acquire a little negotiating leverage to offset the massive leverage that the West has acquired through the imposition of sanctions.
A similar calculation probably underlies Iran’s declaration to the Agency on January 18 that it has started the site selection process for five additional enrichment plants. Before Western negotiators succumb to heart failure, they should explore the extent to which Iran is sure that it has a practical need for five more enrichment plants, and the extent to which it might be open to alternative arrangements. That is a discussion the Iranian negotiators will enjoy.
All in all, the report confirms that much useful ground has been covered since the Iranian people had the good sense to elect Hassan Rouhani to be their President in June 2013. Production of 20% hexafluoride has stopped; Iran’s stock of 20% hexafluoride is well below what would be needed to produce sufficient weapons-grade hexafluoride for just one nuclear device; production of 5% hexafluoride has held steady at a low level; Iran has ceased to expand or enhance installed capacity at either of its enrichment plants; the installation of components for a 40 MW reactor that is a legitimate proliferation concern is in abeyance; and Iran has started to resolve residual Agency and UNSC questions about past nuclear-related activities and to shed light on future intentions.
Photo: IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on February 18 on the margins of the nuclear-related talks between the P5+1 and Iran. Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA
]]>via IPS News
On a purely rational view, it is hard not to be optimistic about the upcoming talks with Iran in Geneva (Nov. 7-8), and about what might follow.
On the Iranian side, the negotiations are now under the direction of a very accomplished diplomat who reports to a President who [...]]]>
via IPS News
On a purely rational view, it is hard not to be optimistic about the upcoming talks with Iran in Geneva (Nov. 7-8), and about what might follow.
On the Iranian side, the negotiations are now under the direction of a very accomplished diplomat who reports to a President who wants to resolve the nuclear dispute once and for all — and the President reports to a Supreme Leader who has authorised a degree of flexibility to secure an agreement. Both President and Leader recognise that Iran has much more to gain by respecting its nuclear non-proliferation obligations than by violating them.
On the Western side, there is a feeling that Iran’s new President has done such a good job of helping Western voters think that he is a decent, moderate and reasonable man, that Western leaders can afford, politically, to be seen to be doing business with him.
The main components of a deal have long been so obvious that negotiators can get down to brass tacks, as people say in the North of England, without much ado.
Iran must allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to locations, documents and individual scientists and technicians that goes beyond what is required according to conventional interpretations of Iran’s NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
Iran must volunteer limitations on its stocks of low enriched uranium and its enrichment capacity to signal that it has no interest in producing, undetected or uninterrupted, enough highly enriched uranium for at least one nuclear weapon.
And Iran must propose ways of reducing, if not eliminating, the theoretical risk that a new reactor under construction at Arak could be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
In return the West must reassure Iran that, in wanting the IAEA to shine a light on nuclear weapons research done during the years when Iran had reason to fear Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, the West is not looking for grounds to impose still more hardship on the Iranian people.
The West must also find a way of protecting from assassination any Iranian researchers whom Iran allows the IAEA to interview. The sad fact is that the IAEA secretariat is so penetrated by certain intelligence services that the risk of at least one unscrupulous state using IAEA data to commission the murder of Iranian researchers cannot be dismissed as fanciful.
The West must also come off the fence and leave Iran in no doubt that at the end of an agreed process it will lift all objection to Iran enjoying the same NPT rights as other NPT parties.
Finally, the West must abandon its niggardly approach to the easing of sanctions in reciprocation for the steps wanted of Iran by the West (above).
For too long Western thinking on sanctions has been flawed by the fallacy that without the pressure of sanctions, Iran will fail to implement whatever voluntary commitments it may offer and will not comply with its non-proliferation obligations. This fallacy stems from an assumption that Iran has no interest in demonstrating that its nuclear intentions are peaceful and in complying with its treaty obligations. In reality, the opposite is true: Iran has a strong interest in signalling that its nuclear program is not a threat to other states, in allaying proliferation concerns expressed by the UN Security Council and in being NPT-compliant. So, Iran does not need to be pressured into honouring its commitments.
The West should also recall that it justified the imposition of the unilateral EU sanctions that have done the greatest damage to the Iranian economy by claiming that these were needed to pressure Iran into engaging, and into doing what the Security Council had demanded. Iran is now engaging; if Iran also offers the desired confidence-building, then logically a commensurate suspension of EU sanctions should follow.
A failure to recognise these two points, and an avaricious hoarding of oil and banking-related sanctions to some undefined point in a distant future, will lead inexorably to the collapse of the talks and to the loss of the best opportunity to end this dispute in a long time.
That is not in the West’s strategic, economic, commercial or humanitarian interests.
So there is much at stake as in Western capitals, in the coming weeks, the battle between reason and politics intensifies. Reason must triumph!
Photo Credit: Fars News/Sina Shiri
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The trick to finding an agreement between the P5+1 world powers and Iran has become clear: keep Israel and Saudi Arabia out of the room. (But don’t expect them to be happy about it.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is touring the globe now with his message of doom [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The trick to finding an agreement between the P5+1 world powers and Iran has become clear: keep Israel and Saudi Arabia out of the room. (But don’t expect them to be happy about it.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is touring the globe now with his message of doom about an impending Iranian nuclear weapon. “It will be tragic if (Iran) succeeds in avoiding the sanctions,” Netanyahu said in Rome on Tuesday.
That statement comes on the heels of his Meet the Press appearance where he said: “I think the pressure has to be maintained on Iran, even increased on Iran, until it actually stops the nuclear program, that is, dismantles it.”
Netanyahu is an accomplished speaker with the media. He is trying to move the United States closer to his own views on Iran’s nuclear program while minimizing the appearance of a difference between U.S. and Israeli positions on the issue. But, despite proclamations from figures like Vice President Joe Biden that “there is no daylight” between U.S. and Israeli positions on security, the inescapable fact is that such daylight is shining rather brightly between the two erstwhile allies.
That light was on display when Secretary of State John Kerry met with Netanyahu in Rome. While speaking as allies who are in agreement on Iran, they said very different things about what they expect. Kerry stated again that the Obama administration would be seeking concrete proof of a peaceful nuclear program in Iran before lifting sanctions. By now, that’s a standard disclaimer, but it’s so self-evident that it really doesn’t need to be stated.
Or it wouldn’t need to be said but for Netanyahu’s endless warnings about nefarious Iranian plots of deception centered around acquiring the nuclear weapon that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agree Iran stopped any motion toward a decade ago.
Following the aftermath of the Iraq War and Netanyahu’s blatant attempt to influence the US 2012 presidential election, Bibi has been pushing for more sanctions regardless of whether Iran is being defiant or cooperative. He has also been hinting at unilateral Israeli military action while saying he supports a diplomatic resolution. Netanyahu has refined, but not changed, that strategy in the wake of Iran’s new openness to dialogue with the West following the election of President Hassan Rouhani. Now he is more regularly pointing to specific aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, some of which can indeed be put to use in developing a weapon, but none of which are actually forbidden under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran — not Israel — is a signatory.
In Rome on Wednesday Netanyahu said:
The foremost security problem that we face, as you said, is Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Preventing that is a goal I share with you and President Obama. And you have said, I think wisely, that Iran must not have a nuclear weapons capability, which means that they shouldn’t have centrifuges for enrichment. They shouldn’t have a plutonium heavy water plant which is used only for nuclear weapons. They should get rid of the amassed fissile material. And they shouldn’t have underground nuclear facilities, underground for one reason – for military purposes.
Here Netanyahu is arguing that an acceptable deal over Iran’s nuclear program should forbid Iran from the very same things that other NPT signatories have access to. The Israeli PM is saying this while calling for sustained sanctions on Iran plus more. The underlying hope here is that if Iran does win concessions, much of the existing sanctions regime would still be in place.
All of this is geared not toward preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon but toward keeping Iran’s economy in deep freeze and limiting its ability to expand its influence in the region. And Netanyahu has some powerful assistance in this endeavor.
Saudi Arabia is at least as concerned about Iran as Israel is. Few doubt that their unprecedented refusal of a seat at the UN Security Council, a spot they’d been trying to attain for years, was motivated in large part by their concern about a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. Their strategy may not be entirely clear (or, for that matter, well thought-out), but Reuters reported on Tuesday that the Saudis were planning a “major shift” in their relationship with the U.S. over Iran, the U.S. decision not to bomb Syria, and Obama’s refusal to support stronger Saudi measures to repress Shi’a protests in Bahrain.
The implication that Saudi Arabia would entirely abandon its cozy relationship with the United States, perhaps for one with Russia or China, is probably a bluff. No other power can come close to America’s ability to fund and arm the Saudi monarchy and its Gulf allies. But they certainly can take some measures to diminish, though not eliminate, dependence on the United States with closer dealings with Russia and China. They could shift some of their monetary holdings away from dollars and U.S. Treasury Notes, and they also could do a lot to increase oil prices, which is a serious hammer to hold over what is still a very fragile U.S. economy.
Thus far, however, the United States seems to be standing its ground in the face of these Israeli and Saudi tantrums. At the Rome meeting, Kerry held fast to what has been the Obama administration’s public position since the historic phone call between Presidents Obama and Rouhani.
While we welcome, and we do welcome, the change of rhetoric, the change of tone, the diplomatic opening that the Iranians have offered through President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, we have made clear and we are adamant that words are no substitute for actions. And … we will need to know that actions are being taken which make it crystal clear… that whatever program is pursued is indeed a peaceful program… President Obama has made it very clear he will pursue a diplomatic initiative, but with eyes wide open, aware that it will be vital for Iran to live up to the standards that other nations that have nuclear programs live up to as they prove that those programs are indeed peaceful.
I have emphasized the part about Iran being held to the same standards as other states that have non-weaponized power because that is a very clear open door that the Iranians can actually reach. With full transparency that confirms what intelligence services have been maintaining for over six years — that Iran stopped pursuing weapons research in 2003 — Iran can be free of sanctions and the threat of war. It is precisely this point that is sending Israel and Saudi Arabia into apoplexy. And we can expect both their rhetoric and lobbying to intensify over the course of the next year, a year which Iran has identified as the length of time that a deal can be reached.
This will not be a simple matter. The politics around peace with Iran will become very intense. There will be real questions raised about whether the gains for the United States will outweigh the potential difficulties with Israel and Saudi Arabia — the US’ staunchest allies in the region for decades. Those won’t be easy questions to answer, but the overriding point will remain: Israel and Saudi Arabia need the United States even more than we need them (far more in Israel’s case). It seems like Obama and Kerry are subtly trying to assert that idea, which deserves popular support here.
Photo: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Credit: UNmited States Department of State/Flickr
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