More on the EU-3 spinelessness...
Iran nuclear talks: It's time to shut up
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
BERLIN - The nuclear talks between Iran and the so-called European three (EU-3 - Britain, France, and Germany) are due to resume May 23 in a crisis atmosphere filled with accusations and counter-accusations, with each side blaming the other for not sticking to the terms of their agreement signed in Paris last November.
Described as a "last ditch" effort to salvage the nearly two-year-old talks once characterized as a "landmark" in European diplomacy, Iran-EU-3 diplomacy has by all indications reached a critical threshold where it may actually be in the interests of both sides to discontinue it, at least within the present framework, or more accurately, lack of framework.
Lest we forget, these talks began at the initiative of the foreign ministers of the EU-3, who took on themselves the arduous challenge of finding a diplomatic solution to the perceived growing crisis over Iran's nuclear program. Through a flurry of activities, including exchange of letters, visits to Tehran and several rounds of talks in various European capitals, the EU-3 hoped to achieve a breakthrough in the brewing crisis engulfing the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) beginning in 2002, after the disclosure of Iran's clandestine nuclear activities.
Since early 2003, Iran has pursued two-track diplomacy, through the IAEA and with EU-3, with the latter acting as a timely catalyst to resolve the nuclear standoff at the IAEA sessions discussing Iran, culminating in the Paris Agreement whereby Iran agreed to temporarily halt its uranium enrichment and conversion activities as a "confidence-building measure" as requested by an IAEA resolution.
However, the problem was, and remains, the absence of a proper framework for the Iran-EU-3 talks, in contrast to Iran-IAEA talks, which follow the parameters set by the non-proliferation regime. As a result, almost anything goes in Iran-EU-3 talks, and one can clearly see in the Paris Agreement the conflation of nuclear and non-nuclear issues, the rigidities of strong "linkage diplomacy" self-fettering into a boxed position, whereby today the EU-3 foreign ministers are forced to send an ultimatum to Tehran that they will seek UN Security Council action against Iran if it acts on its recent declarations that it will resume enrichment activities.
Hence, if the upcoming round of talks fails to reach an agreement, such as postponing the talks until after Iran's June 17 presidential election, then the EU-3, and indeed the EU as a whole, may have no choice but to proceed with its ultimatum, without necessarily having thought through the consequences of such an action.
A chronology of events may prove useful here: the EU-3 had no sooner signed the Paris Agreement when it began undermining it, first by inviting a leader of an opposition group, People's Mujahedin, to address the European parliament, despite the fact that in the Paris Agreement this group is explicitly referred to as a terrorist organization.
The next big blow to the Paris Agreement came a little later when President George W Bush announced, on his European trip, his explicit support for the European nuclear talks with Iran, to the point of even stating that "Europe is representing us" in these talks. On returning to the US, Bush went one step further and announced his official endorsement of the talks and offered "economic incentives" to Iran, including Iran's entry to the World Trade Organization, in exchange for Iran's willingness to scrap its enrichment program altogether, adding that if Iran refused to do so, he had the support of Europe to take the matter to the Security Council.
For the first time in nearly three months, the EU-3, in their recent strongly-worded letter to Tehran, explicitly endorsed Bush's position, thus raising the ire of Iran's hardline politicians who, in turn, passed a parliamentary resolution mandating Iran's resumption of its enrichment program in tandem with its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rights and obligations.
The question is, of course, why Europe agreed to the position of the US president when they had signed an agreement with Iran, ie, the Paris Agreement, which the US press, including the New York Times, had decried as "deeply flawed" since the agreement recognized Iran's NPT rights and the "implementation" of those rights, in contrast to the US's consistent opposition to the idea of a future resumption of Iran's enrichment program.
After all, the Paris Agreement was a serious blow to the US's stance toward Iran, and, therefore, it was impossible for Europe to make common cause with the US on Iran without either the US changing its position, which it did not, or Europe revising itself, which it did by, for all practical purposes, burying the Paris Agreement the moment they agreed to Washington's recipe for Security Council action if Iran failed to heed their warnings.
Who killed the Paris Agreement? Well, at the moment it is not quite dead, only a short step from its coffin, which is wrapped in virulent political rhetoric and the Europeans' duplicity of maintaining the facade of "let's save the Paris Agreement" while, in effect, doing everything possible to undermine it, and moreover, trumping it with newer developments sought after by Washington.
This, in turn, might explain why the EU-3 has not given serious consideration so far to Iran's offer of an objective guarantee that it seeks only contained, low-grade enrichment for peaceful purposes under full IAEA monitoring. Instead, their new argument, in sharp contrast to the Paris Agreement, is that the only objective guarantee is the full and permanent suspension of Iran's enrichment program.
In other words, Europe has exchanged sincere talks and honored agreement for diplomatic chicanery, as if such shenanigans that rekindle Old Europe's Middle East colonial game (eg, the Sykes-Picot agreement) can be somehow overlooked and deemed defensible from the prism of New World diplomacy. Too bad for Europe, even UN chief Kofi Annan has explicitly warned that the Security Council would be deadlocked if Iran's nuclear issue were raised there, implicitly sending the message that China, and perhaps Russia, would perhaps veto any sanctions on Iran in the absence of any smoking gun on Iran's alleged nuclear weapon program, and in the light of Iran's adoption of the IAEA's Additional Protocol allowing unfettered inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities by the IAEA.
But, sadly, old habits are hard to kick, and one can see this in Tony Blair's upping the ante against Iran with his harsh statement that "all options are on the table", while in the same breath insisting that the idea of attacking Iran "is absurd". In the post-Iraq absurdist politics of Great Britain, whose government spokesman candidly admits that recent revelations about the US and Great Britain manufacturing evidence against Iraq in early 2002 "is nothing new", instead of admitting the horrendous failure of public trust reflected in such revelations, Blair may have learnt the wrong lesson from the Iraq fiasco - that Orwellian power politics work and one needs only to fine-tune them for the next gambit.
Notwithstanding the European lack of consistency and their diplomatic zig-zags dumping their autonomous diplomacy firmly in the laps of Washington, one wonders about the protean value, if any, of Iran's continuous dialogue with Europe, which has adopted a more demanding posture vis-a-vis Iran than the governing board of the IAEA. The initial Iranian rationale for separate talks with Europe, namely, the need to have a power bloc as nuclear interlocutor and catalyst in the brewing crisis, may have run its course, and the advantages, for both sides, of discontinuing the talks may appear to be overwhelming the disadvantages, for the following reasons:
First, the EU-3 have clearly negated the terms and spirit of the Paris Agreement and forfeited their independent atomic diplomacy by their united front with Washington. Second, if Iran drops its EU talks without at the same time resuming enrichment activities and, instead, focuses its diplomacy on the IAEA only, then the whole spectrum of Iran-EU trade and economic relations may have been saved from the potential backlash of the European nuclear reductionism discernible in the Paris Agreement's linkage diplomacy.
Third, various European leaders, such as Blair, have thrown down the gauntlet with their thinly disguised threat of military action, thus depriving themselves of the validity basis of bilateral negotiations, namely, the ethics of civility and soft power diplomacy, showing instead the ugly teeth of Old Europe resurrecting its hard power mentality.
Fourth, at this juncture, with the EU having publicly committed itself to sharply contrasting positions with the White House on one hand, and the Paris Agreement on the other, there may be no middle ground left for Europe. Hence, notwithstanding these and several other considerations, a damage-control approach by both sides may be none other than salvaging their relations by discontinuing their present talks.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003. He teaches political science at Tehran University.
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