Opinion | Columnists
US is being too soft on Iran
By shying away from enforcing UN resolutions, Obama is emboldening the hawks in Tehran.
- By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:51 September 29, 2009
- Image Credit: Luis Vazquez/Gulf News
Diplomats call it US President Barack Obama's first major international test, while pundits see it as a diplomatic version of the gunfight at the OK Corral. I am, of course, talking about tomorrow's scheduled meeting in Geneva between Iran and the 5+1 group - that is to say, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. However, once you look past the hype, tomorrow's meeting might appear less dramatic.
To start with, it is not clear what the meeting is about. Iran's chief negotiator Saeed Jalili says he is going to Geneva to talk about a range of issues: eliminating world poverty, saving the environment and shaping a better future for mankind. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy 'czar', sees the encounter as the latest in a series of "exchanges with Iran" that started 30 years ago.
Obama, however, has a more modest goal. He wants Iran to use the occasion to "demonstrate its peaceful intentions". He says he is "committed to building a relationship with Iran" and that his offer of "a serious, meaningful dialogue" remains open.
In other words, the talks cover everything except what they really ought to be about: persuading Iran to comply with three mandatory resolutions from the United Nations' Security Council. With the advent of the Obama administration, it has become impolite even to mention the resolutions that order Iran to stop its uranium enrichment programme and honour its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
As on some other foreign policy issues, the Obama administration is setting itself the lowest possible goals and then failing to achieve them. (On the Arab-Israeli issue for example, the goal set was for a freeze on Jewish colonies in the West Bank.)
Thus, if we listen to Obama, tomorrow's talks are not about Iran's compliance with the UN resolutions but persuading it to show "significant cooperation" within the next three months. But how to measure that "significant cooperation"? Obama's definition is simple: by the end of this year, Iran should open its newly discovered 'secret' centre for uranium enrichment to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
One might wonder why we need to wait three months for the IAEA inspectors, who are present in Tehran, to go to the new site, an hour's drive away, and have a look. Do we need to give Iran three months in which to sanitise the site to make sure the inspectors won't find anything incriminating?
It is clear that both sides want to buy time. Iran is happy to drag out the process until it has assembled the wherewithal for building a bomb. Obama has already given Iran an extra year, during which time the number of Iranian centrifuges for uranium enrichment will reach 10,000, compared to just 800 when the new US administration was formed.
The headline of a recent editorial in the daily Kayhan, the mouthpiece of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said it all: "Talking for the sake of talking!" The more talks there are the more time Iran will have to complete a programme that, it argues, is perfectly legal and peaceful.
Obama is also anxious to buy time because, having distanced himself from the UN resolutions, he cannot return to them without offering a strategy for forcing a defiant Iran to comply. The Obama administration's confusion about the issue is illustrated by recent remarks from Defence Secretary Robert Gates. He said that "Iran has the intention to build a nuclear arsenal", but added that it is not clear that "the decision to build the bomb has already been taken".
So, how does Gates expect Iran to prove that it does not have "the intention" to build the bomb? Iranian leaders have always said they have no such intention and were supposed to have proved it by signing the NPT almost 40 years ago. Six years ago, Iran also promised to adopt a new set of additional protocols designed to strengthen the NPT. However, Ahmadinejad reneged on that promise because he realised that the 5+1 lacked the backbone to enforce the UN resolutions.
With Obama in the White House, Ahmadinejad is unlikely to offer the kind of concessions that his predecessor Mohammad Khatami offered in 2003 when he feared that the US, having toppled Saddam Hussain in Iraq, might turn its attention to regime change in Tehran.
Obama faces a terrible dilemma.
He must know that, unless Iran stops uranium enrichment in accordance with the UN resolutions, there can be no guarantee that Iran will not become a nuclear armed power. At the same time, he knows that if Iran refuses to scrap its enrichment programme the US and its allies may have to use force to impose the UN resolutions.
Obama has a dire choice: accept a nuclear-armed Iran, whenever that happens, or go to war to prevent it. Unfortunately, his perceived softness, demonstrated by his willingness to ignore the UN resolutions, may have encouraged those in Tehran who argue that the 5+1 is bluffing.
In a sign that he expects the Geneva talks to fail, Obama is already talking of imposing "new and tougher sanctions". Sanctions allow an indecisive leader to buy time while considering what to do next.
Iran has an excellent chance of becoming a nuclear power on Obama's watch.
Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.
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