Monday, December 3, 2007

Evolving Without Escalating

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the Gulf Cooperation Council today, which in itsef is significant, given that the Council was established in 1980 in part to counter the spread of Iran's influence and its revolutionary brand of theocracy. But Ahmadinejad's appearance, in which he proposed a regional Islamic security pact and declared once again Tehran's willingness to share its nuclear expertise with other Gulf states, was far from just symbolic.

This is a very cagey Iranian gambit to reconfigure the balance of power in the standoff over its nuclear program. It comes in the aftermath of this Saturday's meeting of the "3+3" (US, Russia, China + Great Britain, Germany, France) in Paris, which reportedly succeeded in moving all concerned (and in particular China) one step closer to a third round of UN Security Council sanctions.

Should Russia and China acquiesce to even watered down sanctions, it would seriously isolate Iran, and put the burden of responsibility on Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment program. Ahmadinejad's proposal is clearly an effort to create a fallback option -- and what's more, one that reinforces the image of a clash of civilizations -- in the event it finds itself isolated on the international stage.

Meanwhile, the new NIE concluding that Iran has frozen the weapons component of its nuclear program is reassuring for three reasons. First, it shows that the current approach of sanctions and negotiations by proxy has so far been effective at discouraging Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity. Second, it provides more confirmation that Iran cares about being perceived as a responsible power, which is a powerful leverage point in continuing negotiations. And third, it suggests that time is not necessarily working in Tehran's favor. Yes, they're continuing to master the fuel enrichment cycle, which is the pre-requisite for a weapons capacity. But if the red line were putting centrifuge cascades online, we'd have already bombed the labs. It's not. The red line is a weapons capacity. And the current approach has forestalled that.

All in all, despite some major structural weaknesses in the EU/US negotiating position, some real obstinacy on both sides of the conflict, and some opportunistic manipulativeness on the part of the Russians, this crisis has somehow managed to evolve without escalating. Ahmadinejad's latest proposal might be the next phase in its evolution, one that, were it to be pursued, borders on a genetic mutation. But given the level of suspicion and alarm Gulf Arab states harbor towards Iran, that's unlikely.

There's no telling what direction the Iranian leadership will choose to take should an international consensus develop against them. Their most recent negotiating position in their talks with Javier Solana of the EU was apparently a disaster. But an alternative line in Tehran has already been articulated by Ahmadinejad's opposition. A hardening of international opprobrium might be the necessary catalyst to undermine Ahmadinejad's internal support.

Regardless of Tehran's position, the determining factor for the EU/US is to build a multilateral consensus that legitimizes its position. That looks more and more like what is happening.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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