Monitor Iran's centrifuges, and its honor
The Daily Star Middle East | Rami G. Khouri
Beirut
From the "worth noting" department: In the past three weeks, the leaders of Iraq, Syria and Hizbullah have made official visits to Tehran, at a time when Iran is locked in an important diplomatic negotiation with the U.S. and Europe over its nuclear program. This is just one indicator that Iran - rather than Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, or Israel-Palestine - may be emerging as the center of gravity for broad ideological trends and populist emotions in this region, especially in terms of relations with the U.S. and other Western powers.
When its different strands are separated, the tug-of-war with the West over Iran's nuclear industry seems to contain three core issues. The first is Iran's Byzantine-style negotiating manner that is anchored in ancient statecraft and several recent centuries of unsatisfactory relations with American, European and Russian powers. The second is the American-driven pattern of arrogance, accusations and double standards vis-a-vis Arab and Islamic states that Iran challenges head-on, especially since the U.S. now seems slightly befuddled in Iraq. The third is the worldwide implication for the fate of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Iran develops a full fuel cycle for its nuclear industry.
Iran, Syria and Hizbullah have emerged in the past few years - wisely or not - as the principal parties defying American power in this region. This has been, in part, a response to Washington's accusations against them in the fields of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation, and their policies in Lebanon and Palestine-Israel. Their anti-American defiance tends to be primarily rhetorical and political, because none of them is stupid enough to challenge the U.S. militarily, except possibly indirectly in Iraq.
Washington has used both the Iraq and Lebanon situations as instruments to pressure and mildly threaten Syria, with some success. Because Iraq is an evolving situation, local powers like Syria and Iran - with memories of how to engage foreign armies going back several millennia - are carefully calibrating their policies in view of America's combined vulnerabilities, determination, power and perplexity in Iraq. Both leaderships have a track record of engaging, delaying, challenging, waiting and finally consummating deals with external powers that threaten them, as they do today with the U.S. and the European Union.
The very technical issue of implementing the NPT has become deeply entangled with the highly emotional and much bigger issue of who sets the rules in the Middle East. This is now a battle over honor as much as it is about centrifuges. Acknowledging these two parallel dimensions of the dispute, while meeting the legitimate needs of all parties, are the keys to a win-win resolution that is acceptable to all.
For Iran and others in this region, an overriding foreign policy priority is the need to affirm a sense of true sovereignty and national self-assertion, and to be treated equally with other countries. For Tehran this is very much about what it means to be an independent and sovereign state, and to be treated according to the same global laws and rules as, say, Israel, Pakistan and India, whose nuclear industries and arms seem peculiarly exempt from Washington's proliferation worries.
Iran has been careful to work with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and monitoring systems while insisting on its right to operate a full nuclear fuel cycle and its plans to use such fuel for the peaceful production of energy. Washington insists it will prevent Iran from developing a full nuclear fuel cycle or weapons, and Iran in turn replies with defiance. The U.S. and the EU threaten to take Iran to the UN Security Council, but Iran seems prepared to call their bluff, perhaps confident that China and Russia would veto any sanctions resolutions, or perhaps aware that the Iraq-entangled U.S. only has limited military options with Iran.
The importance of the European negotiations with Iran is that they potentially offer a valuable middle ground where the legitimate interests of all parties can be reconciled. The October 2003 and November 2004 European-Iranian agreements did result in several important breakthroughs: a temporary suspension of Iranian nuclear fuel processing, uncovering more information about Iran's nuclear facilities and activities; greater American and Russian diplomatic engagement behind the scenes; and important Euro-American offers to Iran in the fields of nuclear energy, technology, trade, political ties and security.
It should be clear by now that Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and others who share their defiant attitude to the U.S. reflect important sentiments that probably define a majority of people in the Middle East. Perhaps the core sentiment is that people are fed up with being treated like colonial subjects who must calibrate their behavior to suit the interests of the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis, and who feel they are subjected to discriminatory behavior in the field of nuclear energy or implementing UN resolutions.
The Iran nuclear issue now brings together hot emotional sentiments and cold national interests that have swirled in the region for decades. Solving the matter peacefully probably requires an acknowledgement that this is as much about Iran's nuclear ambitions and sovereign rights as it is about the United States projecting its power and trying to set rules in the Middle East and around the world. Reconciling these two sets of concerns will be difficult, but not impossible, if the operative impulse for such an attempt is anchored in humility and the rule of law, rather than revenge and racist double-standards on the part of all concerned.
Rami G. Khouri writes a regular column for The Daily Star.
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