The hot topic for today in both the blogosphere and the news media is the growing crisis over Iran’s nuclear development program:
LONDON (AP) – The United States and its European allies pressed Russia and China on Monday to support bringing Iran before the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Representatives of all five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China – and Germany met in London.
They were seeking to resolve differences over what action to take after Iran removed U.N. seals from its main uranium enrichment facility last week and resumed research on nuclear fuel, including small-scale enrichment, after a 2 1/2-year freeze.
The move alarmed the West, which fears Iran intends to build an atomic bomb. Iran claims its program is peaceful, intended only to produce electricity. But the country insists it has the right to enrich uranium, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear energy or material for a nuclear bomb.
Iran has threatened to end cooperation the U.N. nuclear watchdog if it is brought before the Security Council.
The United States, Britain, France, Germany and have been pushing for a referral and the Europeans declared last week that 2 1/2 years of talks with Tehran had reached a dead end.
Officials said the four nations would try to win the backing of Russia and China, which have close commercial ties with Iran and have resisted referral in the past.
Speaking before Monday’s talks in London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the “onus is on Iran” to prove its program is peaceful. He said the international community’s confidence had been “sorely undermined by a history of concealment and deception” by Iran.
Why have negotiations broken down?
One of the key elements in negotiating successfully is that you’ve got to be willing to negotiate. That means, when you get right down to it, that you’ve got to be willing to give up something of value for something that you want more. Or, contrariwise, that you have the will and ability to take something away from the other party that they want. The prime difficulty in negotiating a cessation of their nuclear weapons development program (other than their denying they have such a thing), particularly for the Europeans, is that we don’t want to do either one.
I believe that both carrots and sticks make for the most successful negotiations particularly on the international scene. But to be really effective the carrots must be tasty and the stick must be big enough to cause some pain.
What does Europe have that they’re willing to offer? Or willing to give up? Do they have a stick handy? Europe has been anti-stick for quite a while now and it doesn’t seem too likely that they’ll change their minds. Javier Solana, the European Union foreign affairs chief put it this way:
Looking ahead to today’s meeting, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign affairs chief, continued to insist that diplomacy was the only tactic being considered by the West.
“It’s not in the mind of anyone at this point in time, the use of military action,” he told ITV’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme. “Way before we make a decision like that, the Iranians will feel that they are isolated in the international community and that it is much better for them to return to the table.”
To my mind that approach is merely dilatory: the carrots and sticks should both be on the table at the same time. But, then, if you don’t have any carrots and won’t use any sticks, perhaps isolation in the international community is all you can hold out. Perhaps I’m wrong in this but as I see it Iran has been isolated in the international community for more than a generation. Why will this move them to change their course now?
We’re not in a great deal better shape. We’re extremely reluctant to offer any carrots for any number of reasons not the least of which is that we don’t want to prop up the deeply repugnant Iranian regime. But, contra some, we do have a stick handy. We still have a navy and an airforce. In the current political circumstances in the United States I think it would take a more direct provocation for us to put them to use.
What does the Iranian regime want? Presumably security in their control over Iran which received a thinly-veiled threat in that “Axis of Evil” crack (further emphasized by our invasion and occupation of neighboring Iraq), greater prestige and influence in their region, and, if we take them at their words, the abolition of the state of Israel. Possession of nuclear weapons gives them all of those things and we don’t want to offer them any of them.
Rather than focussing our attentions on negotiating with Iran perhaps we should think about negotiating with China. The Chinese have not supported the Iranian regime through any particular love of the mullahs. It’s access to their oil that interests them.
Previous posts on Iran (in reverse chronological order):
The blogosphere on Iran
Options on Iran II
A sketch history of U. S. military bases in the Middle East: the Overthrow of Mossadegh
The game of rat and dragon
Are we already at war with Iran?
Options on Iran
Courting disaster
