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Time
for substantive Iran-US talks
On 8th May the Iranian government's
spokesman revealed that the Iranian president had sent a
letter [translation
here] to President
George Bush suggesting new ways of resolving the
differences between the two countries. The 18-page long
letter does not contain any new suggestions on Iran's
nuclear file, but has criticised some of the United
States recent policies in the Middle East. US officials
have summarily dismissed it as 'rambling' and not
addressing the nuclear standoff. They have also indicated
that they do not intend to respond to the letter.
Ahmadinezhad's
letter is most significant
However, the very fact that the
hard-line Iranian president who had declared only a short
time ago that there was no need to talk to the United
States has decided to take this unusual step is of
enormous significance, at least as a reflection of Iran's
internal politics. This is the first time in more than a
quarter century since the Islamic revolution that the
Iranians have broken the taboo of directly communicating
to US officials. If the wiser heads in Washington decide
to take the letter more seriously and use it as an
opening shot in more detailed and substantial
communications between the two countries, it could usher
in a new era in Iran-US relations.
Prior to this communication, the
relationship between the United States and Iran had hit a
new low. Both President George Bush and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice have indicated that 'all options'
are on the table in order to prevent Iran's alleged
nuclear weapons program. There have been many
authoritative reports that some hawkish members of the US
Administration are even contemplating the use of tactical
nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's underground nuclear
facilities.
For its part, Iran has denied that
it has a weapons program and has also intensified its
rhetoric, vowing that any attack on her nuclear sites
would receive a firm response. Iran's envoy at the United
Nations Mohammad Javad Zarif in a letter to the UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan has condemned American
officials "for their illegitimate and open threats to use
force against the Islamic republic of Iran".
After many years of efforts by the
United States and Israel to refer Iran's nuclear file to
the Security Council, and two and a half years of efforts
by the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) to find a
diplomatic solution to the problem through negotiations,
the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy
Agency reported Iran's file to the Security Council on
8th March 2006. However, that was the easy part.
The real difficulty is to decide
what to do now that the Security Council is in charge of
Iran's file. Iran was given a further one month to put an
end to her uranium enrichment, but Iran intensified her
efforts and enriched uranium to 3.6 percent, sufficient
for fuel to produce energy. In its latest report, the
Managing Director of the IAEA Muhammad ElBradei has
confirmed that Iran's claim to have enriched uranium was
not an empty boast. Meanwhile, the representatives of the
five permanent members of the Security Council plus
Germany meeting in Paris on 1st May failed to reach
agreement, and the draft resolution tabled by the United
States, Britain and France has been rejected by Russia
and China. The talks on 6th May on a draft resolution
under Chapter VII of the UN Charter also ended without
agreement, as did the meeting of the foreign ministers of
the five permanent members of the Security Council in New
York on 8th May.
While the United States, Britain,
France and Germany are calling for sanctions to be
imposed on Iran, Russia and China have argued that there
is no sign that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons
program and, therefore, sanctions would be inappropriate.
They have advocated returning Iran's file to the IAEA to
ensure that inspections continue and that there will be
no diversion from a peaceful program. The US envoy at the
United Nations has pointed out that if the Security
Council cannot reach agreement about imposing sanctions
on Iran America and her allies would act outside the
United Nations framework. Even the vague possibility of
such measures has already sent the oil price to above
$74.00 a barrel and it would definitely go through the
roof if any sanctions or an attack on Iran
materialised.
War
must be avoided
Before jumping to yet another
disastrous war in the volatile Persian Gulf region, it is
necessary to weigh all the options and to see if there is
a more realistic way of resolving the dispute. Given the
American preoccupation in Iraq and Afghanistan a
full-scale invasion of Iran, which would require hundreds
of thousands of troops and hundreds of billions of
dollars of expenditure, is beyond the realm of
possibility. However, it is argued that the US could
launch an aerial and naval attack on Iran's suspected
nuclear sites and delay Iran's program by a number of
years. The best case scenario for such an attack would be
that thousands - most probably tens of thousands - of
Iranians would be killed, US's image in the Islamic world
and beyond would be further damaged and the outcome of
the raid would be uncertain.
The worst case scenario is too
horrible to contemplate. It is absolutely certain that
the Iranians - even the opponents of the present regime
who could be counted on as the West's best friends -
would fall behind the regime and any prospect of
democratic reform in Iran would be put back by many
years. Worse still, the Iranian regime is bound to
retaliate not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also
against Israel and against American interests in the
Persian Gulf. More than three years after the invasion of
Iraq when it was alleged that Iraq's abundant oil would
pay for her reconstruction and the price of oil would
plummet, Iraq's oil output is still less than the
pre-invasion level and oil price has not gone below
$60.00 a barrel. It is difficult to remember that only a
few years ago the price of oil was a quarter of what it
is now.
Oil installations are very easy to
sabotage and massive installations on the southern shores
of the Persian Gulf provide very rich pickings. Nearly
two-fifths of the world's oil exports pass through the
narrow Strait of Hormuz, which is dominated by Iran. It
does not require powerful missiles or sophisticated means
to make shipping through that narrow Strait very risky
indeed. Saddam Hussein ruled by brute force and did not
enjoy any deep support among the Iraqis. Nevertheless,
three years after the war, the insurgency shows no sign
of abating.
Whether we like it or not, at least
10-20 percent of Iran's 70 million population fanatically
supports the regime of the mullahs. In case of an attack
they will wreak such havoc in the Persian Gulf and beyond
that would make the Iraqi insurgency look like child's
play. This is even if an attack on Iran would not drag in
other powers and would not spread to the rest of the
Middle East. The chaos that would ensue as the result
of such an eventuality would be unimaginable. It could
prove the last straw that would break the camel's back
and would force the United States permanently out of the
Middle East.
Given these horrendous
alternatives, it is essential to look for more peaceful
ways of resolving the dispute.
The
history of mutual feelings of hostility
The mutual feeling of hostility
between the United States and Iran runs deep, but is not
something that could not be overcome with some farsighted
diplomacy. After all, Iran was America's chief ally in
the Middle East under the shah. With American assistance
Iran had become the gendarme of the Persian Gulf and the
Indian Ocean and the shah's arsenals were brimming with
the most advanced American weapons.
It is often forgotten that the
American Administration was helping and indeed
encouraging the shah's regime to build more than 20
nuclear reactors. The Bushehr reactor, which is at the
centre of dispute, was nearly completed by 1978. Iranian
students constituted the largest number of foreign
students in American universities for many years and
there were more than 100,000 US military advisors and
civilian contractors working in Iran.
The Islamic revolution put an end
to all that and replaced the strongest pro-American
regime in the Middle East with an intensely anti-American
theocracy. The images of US diplomats taken hostage by
militant Iranian students have been etched on American
memory and are difficult to erase. Yet it is often
forgotten that the hostage crisis did not come out of the
blue. The Iranians who had the memory of US backing for
the CIA-led coup that toppled Dr Mohammad Mosaddeq's
nationalist government in 1953 were suspicious of the
repetition of the same scenario when the shah was
admitted to the United States for medical treatment. It
should also be remembered that during the first year of
the Islamic regime there were three unsuccessful military
coups against the regime organised by the shah's former
generals and his last prime minister Dr Shapur Bakhtiar,
and the mullahs suspected US backing or acquiescence for
those attempted coups.
While the Americans were rightly
outraged by the hostage-taking episode, Iran lost a great
deal as the result of that foolish act. There is some
evidence that some in the United States encouraged Saddam
Hussein to attack Iran to weaken the regime of the
mullahs. However, even without that encouragement, in the
course of the eight-year war that killed and wounded
nearly a million Iranians and inflicted hundreds of
billions of dollars in material loss on Iran, the United
States provided a great deal of military, intelligence
and financial support to the Iraqi regime. Later on, as
the result of attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf
(mainly by Iraq) the United States got involved in the
hostilities, which resulted in the destruction of a good
part of the Iranian navy and offshore oil facilities. The
United States has imposed sanctions on Iran and has
studiously prevented the transfer of oil and gas
resources from Central Asia and the Caucasus through
Iran.
Iran's
friendly gestures ignored
Nevertheless, there were short
periods of co-operation between the United States and
Iran. Shortly after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death
in 1989 and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, not only
Iran remained neutral in that conflict, but quietly
provided a great deal of the assistance to the US-led
Coalition forces, for which Iran was publicly thanked by
President Bush senior. Later on, Iran sent many signals
that she was ready to talk to the United States to patch
up their differences. President Hashemi-Rafsanjani
offered a one billion-dollar contract to an American Oil
Company for oil exploration in Iran, as a friendly
gesture.
However, while all other countries
that provided assistance to the anti-Saddam coalition
were rewarded, the US response to Iran's friendly
overtures was the 'dual containment policy', followed by
Iran-Libya Sanctions Act which is still in force. Under
President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government, Iran
continued its friendly signals to remove 'the wall of
mistrust' that had been created between the two
countries.
With his proposal of 'dialogue of
civilisations' and 'détente' in relations with the
West he tried very hard to initiate a new chapter of
relationship with the United States. After the 9/11
terrorist acts there were spontaneous candlelight vigils
by thousands of Iranians, and President Khatami expressed
his condolences to the "great American nation."
Once again, these initiatives were
responded to with the 'Axis of Evil' speech, designating
Iran as a member of the improbable axis with her
long-time enemy Iraq and North Korea with which she had
very little contact.
U.S.
concerns - and new demands
For her part, the United States has
a number of major concerns regarding Iran. She accuses
Iran of terrorism, due to Iran's support for militant
Lebanese and Palestinian groups that are hostile to
Israel. She rightly criticises the human rights record of
the Iranian regime, and she is also opposed to Iran's
nuclear program that she suspects is aimed at acquiring
nuclear weapons. The United States also has some concern
with Iran's role in Iraq.
On the one hand, she criticises
Iran for having undue influence in the Iraqi government.
On the other hand, she accuses Iran of assisting the
insurgents. The two assertions are contradictory. The
truth is that both Iran and the United States have common
interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of them know that
stability in those countries would serve their long-term
interests.
At the time when the United States
was supporting the Taliban through Pakistan, Iran was
supporting the Northern Alliance, many of whose leaders
had to take refuge in Iran. Yet after the terrorist
attacks on 9/11 the United States had to rely on the help
of the same Northern Alliance fighters to topple the
Taliban. Yet no sooner had America established her
position in Afghanistan that she demanded that Iran
should cut off all relations with her former allies who
were now members of the new US-installed government.
When the United States was
supporting Saddam Hussein during his long war with Iran,
Iran had given refuge to the Iraqi opposition figures in
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
[SCIRI] and Badr Brigade; the same forces that
the United States used to topple Saddam Hussein. However,
now she is calling on the same leaders to cut off their
links with Iran and is accusing Iran of meddling in Iraqi
affairs. For a number of years Iran has been supporting
the Hizbullah in Lebanon that has now become a part of
the political structure in that country, and HAMAS that
has formed the new government in Palestine.
No doubt when America finds it
convenient to establish links with those two groups to
bring them into the political process, she will call on
Iran to cut off her links with them.
Why
dialog and negotiations must be stepped up and
broadened
Although it is easy to engage in
mutual demonisation, the issues involved in Iran-US
relations are far too complex to be easily dismissed. The
only way to resolve those differences is through
meaningful dialog and negotiation. For two years the
United States relied on the EU-3 to act as a proxy to
continue negotiations with Iran. In her talks with the
EU3 Iran agreed voluntarily to suspend uranium enrichment
in return for meaningful concessions from the West. The
three European countries made a number of minor
concessions, including the sale of aircraft spare parts
and facilitating Iran's membership in the World Trade
Organisation that had been regularly vetoed by the United
States.
But throughout those talks the
absent United States was the proverbial elephant in the
room. The EU3 had the desire but lacked the means of
providing substantial concessions that Iran demanded,
while the United States that possessed the means lacked
the desire to do so.
Iran was hoping to get the
sanctions imposed by the United States over the past
quarter century lifted, having her frozen assets released
and above all receive security guarantees. The EU3 could
not provide any of the above, while the US Administration
and Congress continued with threats of regime change and
invasion.
After over two years of stalemate
in the talks, Iran decided to resume limited enrichment
activities that she had voluntarily suspended, after
informing the IAEA. This provided the United States with
the excuse to push for the referral of Iran to the
Security Council. In his report to the IAEA in March
2006, ElBaradei stated:
"As our report earlier this month
made clear, Iran continues to fulfil its obligations
under the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol by
providing timely access to nuclear material, facilities
and other locations."
After Iran's file was referred to
the Security Council, ElBaradei urged caution and a
return to negotiations. "Everybody is looking forward to
a political settlement," Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's
director general and the most recent recipient of the
Nobel Peace Prize, told reporters in Vienna at the end of
the meeting on Iran. He added: "What we need at this
stage is cool-headed approaches. We need for people to
lower the rhetoric." He also urged that once security
issues began to be discussed with Iran, "the U.S. should
be engaged into a dialogue."
What ElBaradei said makes
eminent sense. Given the alternatives to talks, the
only sane solution to the dispute is for Iran and the
United States to leave the past behind and to get engaged
in substantive talks about a whole host of issues. The
United States should expand the scope of the proposed
talks on Iraq and should discuss the Arab-Israeli
conflict, Iran's support for Hizbullah and HAMAS, the
situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, the security in the
Persian Gulf, the issue of sanctions and Iran's frozen
assets. It is only as a part of these comprehensive talks
that both sides would be willing to make substantial
concessions in return for receiving meaningful
compromises.
America is going to remain in the
Persian Gulf for the foreseeable future. Iran understands
that reality. At the same time, Iran is the largest and
the most influential country in the region. This is a
fact that the United States should also understand and
acknowledge. It is ironic that despite the hostile
rhetoric of Iranian leaders, the Iranian people are
overwhelmingly pro-American, while in most other Middle
Eastern countries with pro-American leaders the majority
of the population is hostile to America.
The present Iranian regime is
deeply unpopular with a large majority of educated and
young Iranians who constitute 70 percent of the
population. A military attack on Iran is the surest way
to unite all the Iranians behind the regime.
Israel's security, meanwhile, would
best be served by an Iranian government that is more
engaged with the West than one that is isolated, or by
inflicting yet one more disastrous conflict on the
region.
The policy of sanctions, followed
by military action and regime change has failed and is
bound to fail again. The time has come for a bold
initiative that would stabilise the region and would also
help Iran towards greater democracy.
* Farhang Jahanpour is a British national of
Iranian origins. He is a former professor and dean of the
Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan, a
former Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at Harvard, and
a part-time tutor on Middle Eastern Studies at the
Department of Continuing Education at the University of
Oxford.
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