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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 4/29/12

Understanding Iran's diplomatic strategy

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Despite the Bush administration's refusal to even acknowledge it, that proposal reveals the broad outlines of what Iran hopes to accomplish in negotiations with Washington. It offered to establish three parallel working groups to negotiate "road maps" on the three main areas of contention: the nuclear program, "terrorism and regional security," and "economic cooperation." On the issue of its nuclear program, the Iranian proposal offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including the adoption of new IAEA protocol that would guarantee the IAEA access to any facility, whether declared or undeclared, on short notice -- in return for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology."

Iran's negotiating document also offered to accept, as part of a "grand bargain" with the United States, the March 2002 Arab League declaration embracing the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Beyond that diplomatic position, Iran offered to stop "any material support to Palestinian opposition groups [Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc] from Iranian territory" and to put "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967."  And it even offered to "take action on Hezbollah to become a mere political organisation within Lebanon."

The 2003 proposal thus made it clear that, in the end, Iranian support for Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel represented valued bargaining chips to be played in ultimate negotiations with the United States.

Finally, the secret proposal revealed what Iran hoped to obtain in return for giving up its negotiating chips. The list of Iranian aims included an end to US "hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the US," including its removal from the "axis of evil" and the "terrorism list," as well as an end to all economic sanctions against Iran. It also sought "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region" and Iran's right to have an "appropriate defence capacity" -- presumably meaning the deterrent capability conferred by ballistic missiles.

Ultimate aims

The demands for an end to official US enmity towards Iran and for a seat at the table in future regional security discussions have continued to be the ultimate aims behind Iranian efforts to maneuver the United States into serious negotiations.

The Bush administration remained hostile to serious negotiations with Iran. Negotiations with the British, French and German governments could only advance Iran's interests if the Europeans were willing to press the United States on direct talks. But the Europeans offered only narrow economic benefits in return for ending Iran's uranium enrichment and refused, at the insistence of the Bush administration, to talk about Iran's broader security interests.

By mid-2006, after Iran had resumed uranium enrichment, Khamenei and his advisers were convinced that Iran's diplomatic leverage had increased significantly. Khamenei's top foreign-policy adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran's foreign minister from 1981 to 1997, offered a rare glimpse of Iran's strategic assessment at a seminar in Tehran on May 18, 2006. Addressing the evolution of Iran's bargaining position in relation to the United States, he said: "We have at no time until now had such powerful means for haggling."

Velayati referred specifically to "the influence we have now in Iraq and Palestine."

What he did not say was that Iran was seeking to rapidly increase the number of centrifuges at Natanz in order to create "facts on the ground" that would give the US a motive to come to the negotiating table. As top officials of Iran's Supreme National Security Council told one observer in Tehran, the stockpile of low-enriched uranium Iran would be accumulating were bargaining chips to be used in the eventual negotiations with Washington.

Velyati was not coy about drawing the policy conclusion. "Now that we have the power to haggle," he said, "Why don't we haggle?"

Failed diplomatic triumph

The Obama administration's failure to grasp the logic underlying Iran's negotiating strategy ensured the failure of the first round of US-Iran negotiations in October 2009. The US proposal for a swap of roughly three quarters of all the low-enriched uranium Iran had accumulated to fuel Iran's Tehran Research Reactor was aimed at stripping Iran of most of its low-enriched uranium.

For the United States, that was viewed as a diplomatic triumph. But all of Iran's political factions united in objecting to the demand on the grounds that it would deprive Iran of the leverage it had gained from its LEU stockpile. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's rival in the June 2009 presidential election, expressed that complaint indirectly, observing that if Iran agreed to give up so much of its LEU, the efforts of thousands of scientists would "go up in smoke."

After no agreement was reached on a fuel-swap plan, Iran began enriching uranium to 20 percent, to serve as fuel for its research reactor. That was regarded by the West as a big step closer to weapons grade enrichment, partly on the ground that Iran could not fabricate the fuel rods needed for the reactor. But Iran was really accumulating more bargaining chips for the negotiations it still hoped to have eventually with Washington.

In the present negotiations with the P5+1, Iran is still pursuing the same objectives with the same hope of cashing in its accumulated negotiating chips. That is why Syed Hossein Mousavian, who was spokesman for Iran's nuclear negotiating team between 2003 and 2005 and foreign policy adviser to the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, has warned that the "piecemeal approach" so dear to the hearts of US officials is a formula for diplomatic failure. 

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Gareth Porter (born 18 June 1942, Independence, Kansas) is an American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst on U.S. foreign and military policy. A strong opponent of U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, he has also (more...)
 

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