Just Foreign Policy News
May 20, 2010
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Here comes the war supplemental
The White House wants the Afghanistan war supplemental by Memorial Day. Urge your Representative and Senators to 1) Support the Feingold McGovern bill, requiring the President to establish a timetable for military withdrawal 2) Oppose the war supplemental 3) join the "Out of Afghanistan Caucus" (see below.)
Email:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
Call:
1-888-543-5234 (toll-free number established by FCNL) connects you with the Capitol Switchboard.
Out of Afghanistan Caucus Formed
Rep. Conyers has established an "Out of Afghanistan" Caucus in the House.
http://conyers.house.gov/_files/OutofAfghanistanCaucusPrinciples.pdf
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) By reflexively dismissing the Brazil-Turkey-Iran deal, the US risks seeming unreasonable and petulant, writes Stephen Kinzer for GlobalPost. A wiser course would be to welcome the deal as a promising foundation, and seek positive ways to build on it.
2) Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists, says the technical difference between the October deal and the May deal is small – and that Iran is offering up a key opportunity for engagement, Wired.com reports. FAS is encouraging the State Department to take a serious look at the proposal. "This whole deal was supposed to be a step forward for engaging Iran, not to stop its enrichment program," Oelrich said. "Frankly, we’re about to go over to the State Department today and try to convince them to accept Iran’s timing of their proposal."
3) The New York Times argues in an editorial that the deal to exchange enriched uranium for fuel rods is worth pursuing. But then the Times states nonsensically that Brazil and Turkey should vote for new sanctions against Iran, even if their diplomatic efforts are snubbed.
4) The row between the Obama administration and the leaders of Brazil and Turkey over how to handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions reflects a more fundamental and widening disagreement over how the world should be run in the 21st century, writes Simon Tisdal in the Guardian. What the US would like to portray as the international community’s united front against Iran is likely to boil down to a narrowly-based coalition of the willing involving Washington and a handful of west-European states. This week’s attempt by Brazil and Turkey to do things differently, and the divisions the subsequent row exposed, suggests this already rickety traditional international security architecture, maintained and policed by a few self-appointed countries, cannot hold much longer. Power is shifting away from the west. You can almost feel it go.
Afghanistan
5) The Obama Administration’s notion that the US must negotiate "from a position of strength" with the Afghan Taliban is superficially appealing but doesn’t correspond to reality, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Servce. Waiting for another year to begin negotiations in Afghanistan will have no real impact on their outcome, and Washington knows it.
IMF
6) Republicans are trying to stop the US from participating in the bailout of overindebted European countries through the IMF, the Washington Times reports. Rep. Mike Pence has introduced a bill that would require Treasury to oppose any further IMF loans to European countries until all EU members are in compliance with their own constitutional limits on debt. Sen. Jim DeMint has introduced companion legislation in the Senate. The threat of the legislation, which has populist appeal among "tea party" groups, prompted Senate Democratic leaders to agree to a less stringent amendment to the bill that would prohibit the U.S. from participating in bailouts that are not considered likely to be repaid. That amendment, which passed by a vote of 94-0, requires the IMF to certify it expects its loans in Europe to be repaid. Republicans say that amendment gives too much leeway to the IMF to judge as sound loan programs like the one to Greece that many analysts think eventually will end in default or restructuring of the country’s debts.
7) Romanian state workers and pensioners protested in Bucharest, demanding the annulment of IMF-required cuts in wages, pensions and unemployment benefits, Bloomberg reports. 30,000 teachers, police officers and other workers threatened to go on strike next week if the government cuts wages by 25 percent and pensions by 15 percent. "We’ll block the economy as of next week until the government gets the message," said the leader of an umbrella group that includes more than a million state employees.
Iran
8) President Sarkozy of France called the Brazil-Turkey-Iran agreement a "positive step," notes Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation. In the US, however, reaction is sharply negative. It’s almost as if the Obama administration is more concerned that its hard-fought battle to get Russian and Chinese support for more (useless) sanctions on Iran is unraveling than it is about a real solution to the problem.
9) The US should welcome the deal, writes Stephen Walt for Foreign Policy. The only feasible way out of the current box is via diplomacy. And the only way to get a diplomatic deal is for the US to climb down from the non-negotiable demand that Iran give up control of its indigenous enrichment capacity. ). This is a prestige goal for the Iranian government and it enjoys wide support among the Iranian population, including most leaders of the opposition. Instead, the goal ought to be to encourage Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, and the best way to do that is to take the threat of military force off the table and negotiate a deal whereby Iran signs and fully implements the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
10) Linking the Tehran Research Reactor deal to suspension of enrichment by US officials is a new component – it was the White House itself that decided last year to go forward with a deal to swap Iran’s LEU for fuel rods without a suspension, notes Trita Parsi in a blog for ABC. The US reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish deal may undo some of the progress the Obama administration has achieved with the international community. Washington’s lack of appreciation for the breakthrough may fuel suspicions of whether sanctions are pursued to achieve success in diplomacy, or whether diplomacy was pursued to pave the way for sanctions – and beyond.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) UN sanctions risk real progress on Iran
Stephen Kinzer, GlobalPost, May 18, 2010 16:23 ET http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/diplomacy/100518/iran-sanctions-un-hillary-clinton
[Kinzer is author of the new book "Reset: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future."]
[…] Should the U.N. continue pressing for harsher sanctions even as Turkey and Brazil work to arrange a nuclear fuel swap that would send 1,200 kilograms of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Turkey?
No, say the Turkish and Brazilian leaders who brokered the deal. "This plan is a route for dialogue and takes away any grounds for sanctions," Foreign Minister Celso Amorim of Brazil told reporters after the breakthrough in Tehran.
Not so fast, the Obama administration has replied. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement in Washington suggesting that the new deal was "simply words." He insisted that if Iran does not make more concessions, it must "face consequences, including sanctions."
The Turkey-Brazil deal does not end the possibility that Iran could one day develop nuclear weapons. Specialists have already begun picking it apart, and they have found worrying loopholes. Nonetheless it includes some tantalizing concessions. By reflexively dismissing it, the United States risks seeming unreasonable and petulant. A wiser course would be to welcome the deal as a promising foundation, and seek positive ways to build on it.
If this crisis were about almost any country other than Iran, the U.S. and its friends in London and Paris would probably have taken this tack. In their dealings with Iran, though, Western powers often seem guided more by emotion than cool calculation. They sometimes behave as if they will accept nothing less than a full Iranian surrender, preferably including a strong dose of public humiliation. That approach to a proud country with 25 centuries of rich history is doomed to fail.
[…] By brokering the deal with Iran, Turkey and Brazil have immensely complicated the American push for sanctions. There was undoubtedly much dismay in Washington when, hours after the deal was struck, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi of China said his country "expresses its welcome" and looks forward to more negotiations.
This is the path Turkey’s visionary foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, urged the U.S. to follow. "Discussions on sanctions will spoil the atmosphere," he warned after returning to Istanbul. "Each side now should have a positive approach, constructive style and a real intention and objective of dialogue rather than focusing on mutual suspicion, skepticism, mutual threats, sanctions or other options."
There are at least three good reasons for the U.S. to try responding positively to the new deal, rather than dismissing it out of hand and pressing ahead with its drive for harsh sanctions on Iran.
First, the sanctions proposal has considerably less global support now than it did before the Tehran deal was struck on Monday. Second, experience from Belgrade to Baghdad shows that sanctions tend to punish the poor and enrich a criminal class of smugglers; in Iran they might also help turn a remarkably pro-American population toward anti-Americanism. Third and most important, the Turkey-Brazil deal holds out a glimmer of hope for resolution of a crisis that, if left unsolved, could gravely destabilize the world’s most volatile region.
It may be true, as the U.S. insists, that Iran has managed to fool its Turkish and Brazilian interlocutors and has no real interest in compromise on the nuclear issue. Given the high stakes, though, it is self-defeating for the U.S. not to seize this chance and see what can be made of it. Not doing so encourages the view that the West does not really want a deal at all.
2) Iran’s Nuke Fuel Deal: Breakthrough or Bogus?
Nathan Hodge, Wired.com, May 17, 2010 http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/irans-nuke-fuel-deal-breakthrough-or-bogus/
[…] However, Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and FAS researcher Ivanka Barzashka told Danger Room that the technical difference between the October deal and the May deal is small – and that Iran is offering up a key opportunity for engagement. "A ton of LEU [low enriched uranium] is a crude nuclear weapons’ worth of material," said Barzashka. "It’s safe to say that you’re reducing the number of nuclear weapons Iran can make in the future."
Oelrich and Barzashka point to a second problem, however: Iran has used stalled negotiations about the research reactor to start enriching a small quantity of uranium to 20 percent. In theory, if Iran develops a significant stockpile of 20 percent uranium – something it has not done yet – it would cut in half the time to reach 90 percent. "That’s an important thing to avoid," Oelrich said.
According to calculations by Barzashka and Oelrich, if Iran had shipped out a ton of material back in October, it would have left them with around 800 kg as feedstock, not enough to acquire a significant quantity of highly enriched uranium. If they continue to enrich uranium, however, they might have enough by October to ship out a ton and still have enough material left over to begin enriching a bomb’s worth of the stuff.
Thus far, however, Oelrich and Barzashka argue that the effort to enrich to 20 percent is modest, and has more political than technical meaning. "We think it’s largely symbolic at this point," Oelrich said.
And FAS is encouraging the State Department to take a serious look at the proposal. "This whole deal was supposed to be a step forward for engaging Iran, not to stop its enrichment program," Oelrich said. "Frankly, we’re about to go over to the State Department today and try to convince them to accept Iran’s timing of their proposal."
3) Iran, the Deal and the Council
Editorial, New York Times, May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/opinion/19wed1.html
[…] It was no surprise on Monday when Iran announced it was ready to accept a deal to ship some of its nuclear fuel out of the country – similar to the deal it accepted and then rejected last year. So it is welcome news that the United States, Europe, Russia and China will press ahead with new United Nations Security Council sanctions.
The deal to exchange enriched uranium – which could, with more enrichment, be used in a weapon – for fuel rods is worth pursuing. We also are sure that there is no chance of reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions without sustained unified pressure by the major powers.
[…] The 11th-hour agreement announced this week with the leaders of Brazil and Turkey was much like one reached with the big powers last fall. Iran would transfer about 2,640 pounds of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey within one month and receive – within one year – fuel rods for use in a medical research reactor.
There are big differences, however. In October, 2,640 pounds represented nearly 80 percent of Iran’s stock of enriched uranium. Now it is only about half of its supply.
The original deal was intended to measurably delay Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon while opening the door to serious negotiations. The current deal leaves Iran with too much fuel, puts no brakes on enrichment at a higher rate, lets Tehran take back the fuel stored in Turkey when it wants and makes no commitment to talks.
Brazil and Turkey – both currently hold seats on the Security Council – are eager to play larger international roles. And they are eager to avoid a conflict with Iran. We respect those desires. But like pretty much everyone else, they got played by Tehran.
American officials have not rejected the deal completely. They say that Iran will have to do more to slow its nuclear progress and demonstrate its interest in negotiating, rather than just manipulating the international community.
Brazil and Turkey should join the other major players and vote for the Security Council resolution. Even before that, they should go back to Tehran and press the mullahs to make a credible compromise and begin serious negotiations.
4) The Iran nuclear deal and the new premier league of global powers
Brazil and Turkey are determined to pursue diplomacy and compromise – even if it means upsetting Washington
Simon Tisdall, Guardian,Wednesday 19 May 2010 16.59 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/19/iran-nuclear-brazil-turkey-us
The furious row between the Obama administration and the leaders of Brazil and Turkey over how best to handle Iran’s nuclear ambitions, following this week’s controversial "uranium swap" deal in Tehran, reflects a more fundamental and widening disagreement over how the world should be run in the 21st century.
On Iran, as on other issues that it regards as critical to its security and national interest, Washington expects to have its own way – and is accustomed to getting it. If necessary, it stands ready to impose its will. This is what secretary of the state, Hillary Clinton, tried to do this week by whipping the UN security council into line.
Brazil and Turkey, two leading members of a new premier league of emerging global powers, have a quite different approach. They stress persuasion and compromise. In the case of Iran, instead of ultimatums, deadlines and sanctions, they prefer dialogue. It helps that neither country feels threatened by Tehran.
Lula da Silva, Brazil’s popular president, typifies this outlook. He gave Clinton fair warning earlier this year that it was "not prudent to push Iran against a wall". More broadly, Lula has championed the cause of emerging countries, challenged the rich world’s assumptions at the Copenhagen climate summit, and bearded the US over Cuba and Hugo Chávez.
Lula speaks for a world that was formed in the west’s image but is increasingly rejecting its tutelage and its ideas. China and India are the foremost members of this pack. But their leaders’ overriding priority is to build up their countries’ economic strengths. For most part, Beijing avoids open fights with the Americans and their west-European allies. The time will come when that will change – but not yet.
Reacting angrily to Clinton’s implied suggestion that somehow they had been suckered into the uranium deal by the crafty Iranians, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil’s ambassador to the UN, said Brazil would not co-operate with US-initiated security council discussions on a new resolution. Without unanimity in the council, new sanctions are even less likely to be honoured or effectively implemented than is already the case now.
Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, also warned Washington to think again. "We have a chance to achieve a peaceful, negotiated solution [with Iran]. Those who turn down that possibility, or who think that sanctions or other measures would get us closer, they’ll have to take responsibility for that." Such robust language is an eloquent expression of the changing power dynamic between the old superpower and its new rivals.
[…] Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, made clear Ankara’s opposition to further sanctions – and that he was not worried about upsetting the Americans. "We don’t want any new sanctions in our region because it affects our economy, it affects our energy policies, it affects our relations in our neighbourhood," he said. Without Turkish co-operation, any new measures will struggle to have an impact.
That may prove to be the case anyway. Overlooked in the furore is the consideration that, thanks to stiff Chinese and Russian opposition, the proposed new sanctions, even if agreed as drafted, are fairly weak. This is nothing like the "crippling" package promised by Clinton, is largely voluntary or non-binding in nature, and will have no effect on Iran’s oil and gas sales – its main source of income.
Supplementary, tougher measures are expected from the EU at a later date while individual countries, such as the US and Britain, may take additional, unilateral steps. So what the US would like to portray as the international community’s united front against Iran is likely to boil down, in reality, to a narrowly-based coalition of the willing involving Washington and a handful of west-European states.
This week’s symbolically significant attempt by Brazil and Turkey to do things differently, and the divisions the subsequent row exposed, suggests this already rickety traditional international security architecture, maintained and policed by a few self-appointed countries, cannot hold much longer. Power is shifting away from the west. You can almost feel it go.
Afghanistan
5) Obama and the Bunkum of "Negotiating from Strength"
Gareth Porter, Smirking Chimp, May 18 2010
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/28851
In his press conference with President Karzai last week, President Obama suggested publicly for the first time that he will not negotiate with the Taliban until the U.S. military has demonstrated "effectiveness in breaking their momentum". Obama seemed to be embracing the shibboleth that you don’t negotiate with an adversary until you can do so from a "position of strength".
That idea has also been pushed by a senior military official to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius and by talking heads in the national security elite. The trouble with invoking the superficially appealing notion of a "position of strength" in this context is that it doesn’t correspond to reality. When your "strength" is built on sand, as it is in Afghanistan, the notion that you must "negotiate from strength" is the worst kind of bunkum.
There is good reason to believe, in fact, that the unnamed "senior military official" and many others in Washington know very well that waiting for another year to begin negotiations will have no real impact on their outcome. As I reported last week there are already signs of serious worry that McChrystal’s strategy is not going to work. First the Defense Department’s report on the war suggests that the Taliban have already achieved considerable success in frustrating the U.S. strategy. Then senior military and civilian officials hinted at the limitations of that strategy to Ignatius.
What has apparently become much clearer to senior officials in recent weeks is that Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry identified a fatal flaw in the McChrystal strategy in his November 6 message to the State Department [7]. The problem is not just Karzai, he observed. The Afghan political elite that is dependent on U.S. support has "little or no political will or capacity to carry out basic tasks of governance."McChrystal’s strategy assumes that the Afghan government will be able to carry out "rebuilding" – meaning the delivery of governance reform and development – soon after the U.S. clears an area. But as Eikenberry pointed out, "That cadre of Afghan civilians does not now exist and would take years to build."
Eikenberry’s analysis erred only in being too optimistic. He did not question the capability of U.S. troops to "clear and hold" the areas they chose to occupy. But in fact, as the senior military official who shared his doubts with Ignatius pointed out [8], some of the areas supposedly cleared by foreign and Afghan troops in the central Helmand river valley in February are still controlled by the Taliban. The idea that McChrystal’s forces will be more successful in clearing Kandahar than they were in clearing central Helmand is not likely to be taken seriously in the Pentagon.
What the DOD report reveals is that the Pentagon doesn’t believe the McChrystal plan to win the hearts and minds of Afghans will have any influence on the Taliban’s readiness to negotiate. The report omitted any reference to that plan in identifying the factors it hopes might "help to set conditions for future reconciliation and reintegration". The two factors it does mention are the arrests of Taliban officials in Pakistan and what it calls "the operations against lower level commanders".
The latter phrase refers, of course, to the vastly increased night raids by Special Operations Forces targeting suspected local Taliban leaders, which former Special Operations Commander McChrystal has ordered and continued to support. But far from increasing leverage on the Taliban, those raids – which frequently kill groups of civilians – have created such widespread anger against American troops all across the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan that McChrystal himself was forced to admit that "nearly every Afghan I talk to mentions them as the single greatest irritant."
Obama should understand by now that postponing negotiations to give McChrystal a free hand for his counterinsurgency war is likely to result in a worse outcome than initiating such negotiations now.
[…]
IMF
6) Conservatives oppose IMF bailout in Europe
Patrice Hill, Washington Times, Wednesday, May 19, 2010
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/19/conservatives-oppose-imf-bailout-in-europe/
Conservative Republicans are trying to stop the United States from participating in the bailout of overindebted European countries through the International Monetary Fund.
Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican Conference, is hosting what he calls a "Greek" forum on ending European bailouts Wednesday on Capitol Hill and has introduced a bill that would require the U.S. Treasury to oppose any further IMF loans to stricken European countries until all European Union members are in compliance with their own constitutional limits on debt – very few of them are.
Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, has introduced companion legislation in the Senate and is considering offering it as an amendment to the financial reform bill pending on the Senate floor.
Just the threat of the legislation, which has populist appeal among "tea party" groups, prompted Senate Democratic leaders late Monday to agree to a less stringent amendment to the bill that would prohibit the U.S. from participating in bailouts that are not considered likely to be repaid.
That amendment, which passed by a vote of 94-0, requires the International Monetary Fund to certify to the Treasury that it expects its loans in Europe to be repaid. However, Republicans say that amendment gives too much leeway to the IMF to judge as sound loan programs like the one to Greece that many private analysts think eventually will end in default or restructuring of the country’s debts.
[…]
7) Romanian Workers, Pensioners Protest Against IMF-Required Cuts
Irina Savu, Bloomberg, May 19
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-19/romanian-workers-pensioners-protest-against-imf-required-cuts.html
Romanian state workers and pensioners protested outside the government building in Bucharest today, demanding the annulment of International Monetary Fund-required cuts in wages, pensions and unemployment benefits.
About 30,000 teachers, police officers and other workers took to the streets at 11 a.m. and threatened to go on strike next week if the government cuts wages by 25 percent and pensions by 15 percent from June, said Bogdan Hossu, leader of Cartel Alfa, an umbrella group for unions that includes more than 1 million state employees.
"We want a compromise for everybody, there are resources if there is the political will to use them," Hossu said today. "People are desperate and they urge us not to surrender; we’ll block the economy as of next week until the government gets the message."
Prime Minister Emil Boc’s administration is clashing with labor unions and the opposition, who say the austerity measures will spark a social and political crisis and who want further negotiations with the IMF to implement new measures to stimulate the economy.
[…]
Iran
8) Brazil, Turkey Engineer Breakthrough on Iran
Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, May 18, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/blog/brazil-turkey-engineer-breakthrough-iran
The best comment so far about the brilliant diplomatic coup engineered by Brazil, Turkey, and Iran yesterday comes from the Turkish ambassador to the United Nations, who said, in reacting to the smarmy, negative reaction from Washington: "I would have expected a more encouraging statement. We don’t believe in sanctions, and I don’t believe anyone can challenge us, certainly not the United States. They don’t work."
Despite the huffing and puffing from the Obama administration, there are other powers reaction positively to the dramatic development. President Sarkozy of France called it a "positive step," adding: "France will examine this with the Group of Six [international powers] and is ready to discuss without preconceptions all its implications for the whole of the Iran dossier."
[…] Before traveling to Iran, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said that he believed that he had a 99 percent chance of a successful breakthrough in the talks with Iran, even as U.S. officials expressed extreme skepticism that anything could be accomplished. What Brazil and Turkey did is to get Iran to reaffirm the terms of the October, 2009, deal that was worked out in Geneva, by which Iran would have sent the bulk of its enriched uranium to Russia and France for reprocessing into fuel rods for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Under the new accord, worked out by Brazil and Turkey, Iran will send about half of its enriched uranium to Turkey, instead. True, Iran has more enriched uranium now than it had in October, but the very fact that Iran is still ready to ship some of its fuel abroad is a sign that diplomacy can still work.
In the United States, however, reaction is sharply negative. It’s almost as if the Obama administration is more concerned that it’s hard-fought battle to get Russian and Chinese support for more (useless) sanctions on Iran is unraveling than it is about a real solution to the problem.
The Washington Post, petulant and petty in its editorial today, called "Bad Bargain," says that the Brazil-Turkey accord will "do nothing to restrain Tehran’s nuclear program," that it might "derail" the Obama administration’s sanctions push, and that it represents a "major diplomatic coup for the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." In fact, it might have been a diplomatic coup for the United States, if Washington hadn’t foolishly insisted that the terms of the October deal were sacrosanct and couldn’t be altered in order to get the deal back on track, after Iran first accepted it and then rejected it. It could have been a diplomatic coup for President Obama if he’d encouraged Brazil and Turkey to go ahead, rather than having his spokesmen pooh-pooh the effort and issue ugly warnings to Brazil.
[…]
9) Why the U.S. Should Welcome the Nuclear Deal with Iran
Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, Tuesday, May 18, 2010 – 10:05 AM http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/18/big_deal
[…] Here’s why I think the United States should welcome the deal. The only feasible way out of the current box is via diplomacy, because military force won’t solve the problem for very long, could provoke a major Middle East war, and is more likely to strengthen the clerical regime and make the United States look like a bully with an inexhaustible appetite for attacking Muslim countries. (And having Israel try to do the job wouldn’t help, because we’d be blamed for it anyway). I think George Bush figured that out before he left office, and I think President Obama knows it too. So do sensible Israelis, though not the perennial hawks at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, who appear to have learned nothing from their shameful role cheerleading the debacle in Iraq back in 2002.
Furthermore, the only way to get a diplomatic deal is for the United States and its allies to find some way to climb down from the non-negotiable demand that Iran give up control of the full nuclear fuel cycle (i.e., its indigenous enrichment capacity). This is a prestige goal for the Iranian government and it enjoys wide support among the Iranian population, including most leaders of the opposition. Instead, the goal ought to be to encourage Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, and the best way to do that is to take the threat of military force off the table and negotiate a deal whereby Iran signs and fully implements the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
[…] The key point to bear in mind is that the latest deal is essentially meaningless unless outside powers (e.g., Russia, France, or the United States) buy into it. Why? Because Turkey or Brazil can’t fulfill the terms of the deal (i.e., they can’t provide the reactor fuel that Iran needs). And that means that one of the parties to the earlier deal that fell apart last fall will have to go along.
Hardliners worry that the deal is a disaster because it will undermine support for stronger economic sanctions. It might, but who cares? Sanctions weren’t going to change Iran’s mind either. And states that are now worried about a double-dip recession are not going to be eager to impose sanctions that might involve real costs. (And no, that’s not an argument for launching a preventive war either, because the last thing a fragile world economy needs right now is a war in the Persian Gulf and the soaring oil prices that this would entail).
So what should the United States do? It should welcome the deal in principle, while making it clear that it will monitor implementation carefully and emphasizing that this particular agreement does not resolve the larger question of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Rejecting the deal would do nothing to advance broader U.S. objectives and would be an unnecessary slap in the face of Turkey and Brazil. Trying to scotch the deal would also allows Iran to blame Washington should the deal fall through, and it will only reinforce Iranian assertions that U.S. leaders are lying when they say they would like to improve relations.
But if the United States welcomes the deal and it then falls apart, Iran won’t be able to blame us for the failure and third parties will see the United States as reasonable and Iran as intransigent. Indeed, if we greet it favorably and Iran eventually backs out (as it did last fall), our position with Istanbul and Brasilia will be enhanced and Iran’s is likely to suffer, because both President Lula da Silva and Prime Minister Erdogan won’t appreciate having been taken for a ride. So to the extent that we are worried about an emerging Istanbul-Teheran-Brasilia axis (and we shouldn’t be), the smart play is not to criticize the deal at this stage and to thank them for their efforts.
[…]
10) Iran’s Nuke Deal Irritates Washington
Washington Push for Iran Sanctions Complicated By Nuclear Fuel Deal
Trita Parsi, ABC News blog, May 18, 2010
http://abcnews.go.com/International/analysis-irans-nuclear-deal-turkey-brazil/story?id=10681106
A noticeable irritation can be sensed in Washington. After months of investing in a new UN Security Council resolution and an escalation of the conflict – and apparently winning agreement among the permanent members of the council for such a measure – two emerging powers had the audacity to intervene and find a solution. Brazil and Turkey should keep their expectations low, however, because there will not be any thank you party for them in Washington anytime soon.
Only two days after the announcement of the Brazilian-Turkish brokered deal with Iran that would see 1,200 kg of Iran’s low enriched uranium shipped out of the country, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a Senate panel that the United States and its partners seeking new sanctions against Iran have come up with a draft proposal for a new round of penalties. UN Ambassador Susan Rice held a press conference at the UN today unveiling the new resolution.
A day earlier, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley spoke dismissively about the Brazilian-Turkish deal. "The United States continues to have concerns about the arrangement. The joint declaration does not address core concerns of the international community," Crowley said, "Iran remains in defiance of five U.N. Security Council resolutions, including its unwillingness to suspend enrichment operations." Crowley then went on to link the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) deal with the Security Council demand for a suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities. "Public statements today suggest that the TRR deal is unrelated to its ongoing enrichment activity. In fact they are integrally linked," he said.
These developments have taken many observers by surprise. Linking the TRR deal to suspension of enrichment is a new component – it was the White House itself that decided last year to go forward with a deal to swap Iran’s LEU for fuel rods without a suspension in order to throw back Iran’s break out capability.
Furthermore, the earlier justification for the sanctions push was a reaction to Iran’s failure to accept the swap proposal presented to it in October 2009. Administration officials stated on numerous occasions that sanctions would only be pursued if the diplomatic track failed to produce results. Sanctions would be needed to get Iran back to the table and to convince them to accept the deal.
The sudden change of heart in Washington is particularly surprising mindful of the fact that the three objections Iran lodged against the 2009 TRR deal – that the LEU needed to be shipped out in one shipment, that the swap would take place outside of Iran, and that the fuel rods would be delivered to Iran nine to twelve months – have now all been withdrawn. Iran has agreed to the terms the US insisted on.
This may explain Namik Tan’s, the Turkish Ambassador to the US, comments to the Associated Press, "We have delivered what they were asking for. If we fail to get a positive reaction it would be a real frustration."
But there are several factors that can shed light on Washington’s apparent reluctance to take yes for an answer.
First, the Senate and the House are in the final phase of sending a broad sanctions bill to the President. The bill has several problems from the White House’s perspective, including its limitations of Presidential waivers as well as the impact it will have on US allies who will be subjected to these sanctions.
Progress on the UN Security Council track has in the past few months been an important instrument to hold back Congress’s own sanctions push. With Congress eager to sanction Iran, particularly now when the Brazilian-Turkish deal conceivably could derail or delay the UN sanctions track, the Obama administration feels the need to pacify the Congressional sanctions track by accelerating the UN sanctions track.
Second, the Brazilian-Turkish deal explicitly recognizes Iran’s right to enrichment and would, as a result, eliminate the option of pursuing the zero-enrichment objective. While most analysts agree that the zero-enrichment objective simply isn’t feasible, the White House has kept its options open on this issue. It has neither publicly confirmed it as a goal, nor rejected it. This, it has been argued, would provide the US with leverage. Even if it no longer is America’s red line, it can still be America’s opening position in a negotiation, the argument reads.
Third, there is a sense in the Obama administration that after the events of last year, a nuclear deal with Iran could only be sold domestically if Iran is first punished through a new round of sanctions. Only after a new round of sanctions would there be receptivity in Washington for a nuclear agreement with Iran. Hence, any nuclear deal that comes before a new round of sanctions would complicate the Obama administration’s domestic challenges. A deal without punishment even a good deal simply wouldn’t be enough.
Understandably, Washington’s reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish deal has created some apprehension in the international community. The Obama administration has worked diligently to overcome the credibility gap America developed with the international community under President George W. Bush. One element of this effort was to utilize diplomacy as a premier tool of US foreign policy.
Punitive measures such as war or sanctions would no longer be the instruments of first resort. But the reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish deal may undo some of the progress the Obama administration has achieved with the international community. Washington’s lack of appreciation for the breakthrough may fuel suspicions of whether sanctions are pursued to achieve success in diplomacy, or whether diplomacy was pursued to pave the way for sanctions – and beyond.
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Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.