So let’s catch up with things on Iran since our last couple of posts (mine, David’s). In Europe on Sunday night, French foreign minister (and founder of Medecins sans Frontieres) Bernard Kouchner commented that:
“We have to prepare for the worst … the worst is war.”
That remark elicited a furious response from International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei, who said on Monday that:
“I would not talk about any use of force. There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”
ElBaradei’s comments were buttressed by off the record briefing by UN officials, one of whom told the Guardian that
“There’s a strategic reason for doing these things. He really is alarmed. He sees this thing going out of control. The feeling around here is that this looks like the run-up to the Iraq war.”
So what’s going on here – and is the risk of war real? Here’s a quick rewind of how, as far as I can tell, things got to where they are and how things play out from here.
- During August, ElBaradei (see excellent NY Times profile here) negotiated a secret agreement with Tehran, under which Iran would answer questions about its nuclear program in return for a series of concessions. His approach was essentially supported by China and Russia, but led to an immediate apoplectic reaction from the US, UK, France and Germany, who argued that ElBaradei had undermined the Security Council process and allowed Iran to buy itself more time to pursue its nuclear program – especially since the IAEA’s agreement with Iran included no stipulation that the latter had to suspend uranium enrichment.
- But the EU-3 and the US realised that ElBaradei had won the key political advantage: momentum. According to the New York Times, a senior European official commented that “We told the Americans it would do no good to criticize ElBaradei, that it would only make him look even more like a hero.” Consequently, the Times went on, the US backed down: “Early in September, when the agency’s board gathered in Vienna and discussed the new plan, the American envoy, Gregory L. Schulte, stunned colleagues by praising Dr. ElBaradei. He told the board that the deal was “a potentially important development and a step in the right direction.”
- Then, on Monday this week, Bernard Kouchner tried to regain the momentum by proposing a new gambit: a European sanctions regime. But there are obvious problems with his approach. While his tougher stance is strongly backed by the US and the UK, the sanctions option is hampered by the fact that no-one (least of all the US) really believes that sanctions work – all the more so when the sanctions are European-only. And there’s also a real risk that proposing a European sanctions regime is a tacit, but still clear, admission that the UN Security Council process is no longer the scene of the action.
And that leaves the question of where the Americans fit into all this. People in touch with the US government think they’ve seen a tipping point where the key American concern now has as much to do with the proxy war it thinks Iran is waging in Iraq, as with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It’s not clear whether or not a decision has been made in Cheney’s office to push for war; publicly, the White House continues to endorse a diplomatic solution. But it feels like a moment of considerable risk. If the US does want war, then a fractured international approach can work strongly to its advantage: it can argue that the UN process has failed, that the French sanctions approach won’t deliver, and that ElBaradei is placing too much trust in Iranian interlocutors who’ve proved time and again to be unreliable.
So unless the European sanctions approach works, and if the US Security Council process becomes seen to have broken down, then the EU-3 may face a stark choice between throwing their lot in with the US, or backing the increasingly Blix-like figure of ElBaradei.
It remains to be seen how ElBaradei’s approach pans out. But one point in his favour: he appears to be the only international player making a concerted effort to see things from the Iranian side. Last year, I sat in on a House of Lords debate on Iran and listened to David Hannay – a former UK Ambassador the the UN, and member of Kofi Annan’s High Level Panel on threats, challenges and change – speak. A year and a half later, his concluding words still seem as relevant as they are ignored:
Finally, I make a plea as someone who began his diplomatic career 45 years ago in Tehran. We must really try to put ourselves in the shoes of the Iranians and to understand their thinking. It would be quite wrong to suppose that this is exclusively conditioned by religious extremism. Some of the things that President Ahmadinejad says could just as well have been said—indeed, they were said—by Prime Minister Mossadeq in the 1950s. Iran’s experience of being pushed around and manipulated by the great powers is a long and bitter one. We need to appeal to the pragmatic instincts, which exist in every Iranian whom I have ever known and to avoid playing to those memories of earlier defeats and humiliations. To coin a phrase, we need to show them respect, even when we disagree with them.
