A new round of talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, the 5+1 Group, starts Monday night in Geneva amid a tsunami of expectations.
Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani has promised “a breakthrough” in his first 100 days. The European Union’s foreign-policy point-woman, Catherine Ashton, has reciprocated by musing about “new horizons.”
Yet Iran and the 5+1 group have been engaged in talks in one form or another for almost two decades without even agreeing on what they were talking about. As far as the core issue is concerned, there’s no reason to believe this time will be any different.
Lacking the courage to tackle the core issue, both sides have been dancing around side issues and are likely to keep on doing so.
The core issue, once again spelled out by Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei last week, is this: The Islamic Republic sees itself as successor to the defunct Soviet Union in the role of chief challenger to “American global hegemony.” It hopes to dominate the Middle East, and beyond it “the Muslim world,” with a narrative of jihad and eventual triumph of Islam.
To that end, Iran needs to champion the destruction of Israel to attract support from “Arab masses.” To consolidate its status as “a Grand Power,” in Khamenei’s words, the Islamic Republic also needs, again in Khamenei’s words, “complete mastery of nuclear science and technology” even if not it doesn’t build an arsenal of nuclear weapons at this time.
Thus, as far as the 5+1 group is concerned, the issue is whether to ignore the regime’s strategic ambitions in exchange for a tactical appeasement.
For two decades, the UN Security Council has rejected that option in six resolutions, all passed unanimously, to hamper key elements of the mullahs’ strategy.
The confrontation between Tehran and the Security Council has found its shorthand expression in an unambiguous demand that the Islamic Republic stop enriching uranium and transfer the uranium it has already enriched outside Iran under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Rouhani’s aims to reverse that shorthand expression into its opposite: the recognition by the “international community” of Iran’s right to enrich uranium and produce plutonium, both used to make the bomb in two different ways. To achieve that, he’ll operate along three axes.
First, he’ll try to drive a wedge between the Europeans and the United States while consolidating support from Russia and China. To that end, he has already met French President Francois Hollande and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, and held talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
Second, Rouhani pretends that the talks are about a broader agenda.
In New York, he went around talking of “new ideas.” Secretary of State John Kerry fell into Rouhani’s trap by also calling for “new ideas.”
Thus, talks supposed to be about the old idea of Iran’s compliance with UN resolutions could be put on a different trajectory.
Rouhani’s next tactical ploy is to link even a formal acceptance by Iran of the UN resolutions to a lifting of key sanctions. He is telling Iranians that the event is not about Iran’s nuclear program, but about “the lifting of unjust sanctions.”
Yet he knows this will require throwing a sop at the 5+1. He’ll most likely offer to transfer some of Iran’s enriched uranium to Russia. Yet no one quite knows how much has been enriched. The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Commission, Ali-Akbar Salehi, has cited the figure of 440 pounds. Others put it at more than 2,200 pounds.
In any case, Iran hopes to retain at least enough to produce a few nuclear warheads, presumably for research purposes.
Rouhani’s offer, likely to be described by Kerry as “generous,”would make a mockery of the UN resolutions that demand a complete halt to all enrichment by Iran.
Rouhani can answer that objection by offering a “voluntary halt” for three years in enriching above the 20 percent level. In exchange, he’d demand that the 5+1 recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium (and, presumably, also to produce plutonium).
The “voluntary halt” could slow Iran’s program by up to three years. President Obama, who’d be out of office by then, could boast about a great diplomatic victory.
Yet such a deal would leave intact the Islamic Republic’s capacity to redirect its nuclear program to military ends whenever it so chooses. It now has an estimated 40,000 centrifuges churning, including some that Salehi calls “among the fastest in the world.”
Rouhani hopes to punch a big hole in the UN resolutions and get an immediate end to sanctions, including those on oil exports and access to international banking services.
Rouhani’s offer is nothing but fool’s gold. The question is whether the 5+1 Group will buy it.