New York Daily News
May 30, 2012
Last week's talks in Baghdad between Iran and the P5-plus-1 -- the
United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- yielded no
agreement. Paradoxically, however, both Washington and Tehran are likely
to view the negotiations as successful, but for vastly different
reasons.
There is an interest that both Iran and the United States hold in
common: staving off military action, whether by the U.S. or Israel. From
there, however, U.S. and Iranian motivations diverge; understanding
this divergence is key to understanding why the talks thus far have
failed.
Iranian officials publicly dismiss but likely privately worry about the
consequences of war, while U.S. officials often seem more worried about
the consequences of military action than about the Iranian nuclear
program a strike would be designed to destroy.
Indeed, for many within the United States and other P5-plus-1 countries,
the mere fact of "intensive" talks about Iran's nuclear program is
itself a success. There is a narrative, espoused by then-candidate
Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, that at the root of
the Iran nuclear crisis is U.S.-Iran conflict, and that the root cause
of that conflict is mistrust.
As a candidate, Obama pledged to meet personally with Iranian leaders
and predicted that the Iranians "would start changing their behavior if
they started seeing that they had some incentives to do so." And as
President, in his famous June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo, Obama spoke of
the need to "overcome decades of mistrust."
In this narrative, talks are successful insofar as they end not in
collapse but in a sustained negotiating process -- that is, more talks.
For Iran, meanwhile, there is little indication that the talks are aimed
at building confidence or opening up the broader possibility of
U.S.-Iran rapprochement. Indeed, there is ample evidence that the
Iranian regime views normal relations with the United States as
undesirable, even threatening, while it views a nuclear weapons
capability as strategically vital.
Giving up the latter for the former would make little sense to Tehran.
Prolonging the talks serves a threefold purpose for Iran beyond merely
buying time or delaying an attack: first, to enhance Iranian prestige by
sitting as co-equal with the world's great powers and discussing the
great regional and global issues of the day; second, to secure tacit
acceptance of nuclear advances once deemed unacceptable; and third, to
gain relief from sanctions without making major concessions.
In this round, Iran appears to have made progress toward the first and
second goals, but not the third. Regarding the first, Iran reportedly
included in its proposals items relating to Syria and other regional
issues -- clearly legitimizing its role as a regional power player.
Regarding the second, Iran's low-level uranium enrichment appears off
the table for discussion, and Western analysts now frequently assert
that insisting on the full suspension of enrichment and reprocessing by
Iran is "unrealistic," even though it is called for in a series of UN
Security Council resolutions.
The focus instead is now on Iran's 20% enrichment. While the recent
discovery of 27%-enriched uranium at Iran's Fordo facility may have an
innocent explanation, it would come as little surprise were Iran to
pocket the P5-plus-1 concessions and move the goalposts once again.
While Iran failed to meet its third likely objective -- sanctions relief
-- it has little reason to rush. It is true that oil sanctions have had
a harmful effect on the Iranian economy, but history suggests that
authoritarian regimes are willing to allow their people to endure severe
hardship for the furtherance of the regimes' own survival.
For any negotiation to succeed, one must begin by understanding the
interests of the other side. The fundamental bargain offered by the U.S.
asks Iran to trade something it apparently values enormously -- the
ability to produce nuclear weapons -- for something in which it has no
demonstrable interest and likely regards as threatening, closer ties
with the West.
To change this and give negotiations a chance of succeeding, Iran must
be presented with a different bargain: end its nuclear weapons work or
face devastating consequences. Iran must be convinced that continued
pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability will threaten, rather than
ensure, the regime's ultimate survival, and that talks are not a
substitute for but a complement to a broader strategy, which includes
ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran and bolstering the credibility of
the U.S. military option.
The true failure of Baghdad and previous rounds of talks is not the
failure to reach an agreement, but the failure to correctly apprehend
Iranian ambitions and implement a strategy to counter them.
Michael Singh is managing director of The Washington Institute and a
former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security
Council.
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