UPDATED Iran's Nukes: Obama's Team Buys Time for Engagement

UPDATE 1110 GMT: Cole also has posted the text of the IAEA resolution, which bears out both his analysis and that of EA.

UPDATE 1050 GMT: Another useful analysis, this time from Juan Cole. Cole first offers a detailed background with his "breakout" thesis on Iran's nuclear programme:

Tehran genuinely does not want to actually construct and detonate a nuclear device....But having a rapid breakout capability --- being able to make a bomb in short order if it is felt absolutely necessary to forestall a foreign attack --- has a deterrent effect. So Iran would have the advantages of deterrence without the disadvantages of a bomb if it could get to the rapid breakout stage.

Cole's immediate reading of the current position is hit-and-miss: he's on shaky ground with his analysis that the Revolutionary Guard has vetoed the Supreme Leader's acceptance of an enrichment deal (I don't think anyone except Ayatollah Khamenei knows what he will do), but Cole is invaluable in reading the non-Iranian politics: don't expect BRIC (Brazil-Russia-India-China) to accept a move towards harsh economic measures agianst Tehran.

And Cole's conclusion hits the bull's-eye:

Bottom line: Friday's vote was likely symbolic and a signal to Iran from the international community that there is discomfort with its secretiveness and lack of transparency, and that many are suspicious of its motives. In China's case, it may have been a warning against actions that could harm the Middle Kingdom's burgeoning economy. What it likely was not was a harbinger of tougher international sanctions against Tehran or a sign that BRIC is softening on that issue

UPDATE 0950 GMT: A ray of journalistic light --- Sharwine Narwani offers an excellent analysis, "Eleventh-hour CPR On Iran Nuclear Talks": "Our core problem is not with Iran's enrichment program or it's recently revealed Fordow nuclear plant buried under a mountainside. The central issue clogging up our hotlines is that we do not trust Iran. And they do not trust us."

Looking once more at yesterday's International Atomic Energy Agency resolution on Iran's nuclear programme, it is a most impressive two-card trick by the US Government.

Impressive initially because the first trick is on the media. So far, every major journalist whom I've read or listened to has been taken in by the magician's display of a united "hard line" against Tehran. CNN headlines, "U.N. watchdog urges suspension of Iran nuclear facility", never realising that the 2nd enrichment facility at Fordoo is now just a distraction. The New York Times, in print and in podcast, follows the same sleight-of-hand, adding the flourish that the "sharp rebuke that bore added weight because it was endorsed by Russia and China".

Iran’s Nukes: IAEA Non-Resolution on Enrichment Means Talks Still Alive

How did the White House pull off this trick?

Easily, with a sustained effort in Washington as well as Vienna, to put out the distracting message. Beyond the official statement trumpeting the "broad consensus" behind the resolution, "a senior administration official" added:

What happened in Vienna today is a significant step, and it’s a sign of the increasing seriousness of the international community [and its] growing international impatience....Time really is running out. We hope that the board of governors [vote] reinforces the message that, you know, we’re committed to putting together a package of consequences if we don’t find a willing partner.

How then to uncover the trick and reveal the real strategy of the Obama Administration? Well, the unnamed official offered a sneak peek in those final words "if we don't find a willing partner". At this point, at least some key members of the Obama Administration are still pursuing "willingness".

To be blunt, because that seems to be necessary to knock professional observers out of their wide-eyed daze: the White House has not closed off the talks for a deal of Iran's nuclear enrichment.

Those officials who want a deal, primarily those in the State Department but also I suspect the President, are not willing to give up on months of effort, and they certainly do not want to face both the diplomatic difficulties of pursuing tough sanctions --- watch how quickly it becomes near-impossible to maintain that line of "broad consensus" --- and facing the consequences. It will no longer be a question of losing possible co-operation with Tehran in areas like Afghanistan but of facing possible Iranian counter-moves in the region, including Iraq.

At the same time, those pro-deal officials are fighting a contest against Administration colleagues who just want to go through the motions of negotiations to set up the increased pressure of harsh economic measures. Those colleagues (to find them, go to the National Security Council and follow the path to a Mr D. Ross' office) are the ones spinning newspapers like The Washiington Post that this IAEA resolution is the symbolic step to a sanctions regime which will include Russia and China. (They also are the ones willing to play up the "Israeli military action" that would follow if sanctions are not adopted.)

So the IAEA magic-show pulls out two tricks: it holds the Obama White House together while setting a very real line on the discussions with Iran. The Ahmadinejad Government and the Supreme Leader are being told publicly that "third-party enrichment" has to occur outside Iran; no swaps of uranium inside the country. This is getting close to a take-it-or-leave-it declaration to the regime.

But what if Ahmadinejad and/or Khamenei says "Leave It"? Then, I suspect, you'll see the magic evaporate. For while Ross and others wanting a showdown may get it, I'm not sure they have thought through their next tricks.

Iran: Josh Shahryar on Fictions & Realities of "Revolution"

Iran: A Response to “What If the Green Movement Isn’t Ours?” (The Sequel)
Iran: A Response to an American Who Asks, “What if the Green Movement Isn’t ‘Ours’?

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First of all, I must say that I admire and respect Roger Cohen. He has a been a vital asset for the international community in discerning truth from fiction when it came to the ongoing crisis in Iran. However, his recent article in The New York Times angered me not because it is ridiculously flawed – it is not – but because I did not expect Cohen to be so shallow in thought on protest and "revolution".

In his article, Cohen asks a question that confounded me:

In 1989, the revolutionary year, the Tiananmen Square massacre happened in Beijing and, five months later, the division of Europe ended with the fall of the Wall in Berlin. Could it have been otherwise? Might China have opened to greater democracy while European uprisings were shot down?

We cannot know any more than we know what lies on the road not taken or what a pregnant glance exchanged but never explored might have yielded.

Well, I respectfully beg to differ on the comparison between Eastern Europe and China. We do know: the respective outcomes of the movements in 1989 could not have been otherwise. For what Mr. Cohen fails to mention is that the political situations in China and Eastern Europe were worlds apart.

The Eastern Bloc, along with the USSR, was economically feeble, with rampant problems plaguing it for decades. The governments had lost trust to the point where 99% of the people of Poland voted for the anti-communist Solidarity party in the 1989 elections. At the same time, authoritarianism had waned considerably in the region.

Eastern Europe had been steadily opening up its approach to popular dissent among its citizens. Glasnost and perestroika, Gorbachev’s policies that radically opened up Soviet society, had been in effect for years. The USSR had relaxed its intervention in the internal affairs of Eastern European countries, and governments were more ready for peaceful negotiations than for massacres.

This was not the case in the People’s Republic of China in 1989. The country’s political elite had been strengthened by the West so that China could be used as a pawn against the USSR in the Cold War. Domestic policy was pretty much the same as it was under Chairman Mao.

Furthermore, the West was not really that interested in negotiations with the Chinese over human rights issues as they were in the case of Eastern Europe, and China’s government was not being pounded as much as its less fortunate Communist counterparts by internal problems. While the Eastern European economy had gone from relatively good to very bad, the Chinese economy had improved significantly since Mao’s disastrous utopian schemes.

These differences are the key to understanding why the 1989 revolutionary wave failed in China and succeeded in Eastern Europe. Yet, to go further and to arrive at the heart of Cohen's analysis and our discussion, both these revolutionary waves are inapplicable in the current Iranian situation. Unlike Eastern Europe, the Greens do not form an almost uniform majority of the populace, but unlike China, their numbers are much higher and they are distributed across the country more uniformly.

The position of the Iranian Government is neither absolutely safe nor absolutely vulnerable like Eastern Europe 1989. There is growing dissent among former members of the government and the elite's clerics. Finally, the Government’s policies on access to information are neither open like those during the Eastern European uprisings nor utterly closed like those in China. Although pro-Green media have been largely blacked out now, before the protests the anti-establishment faction of the population had relatively good access to news and analysis.

Given these circumstances, the best way to describe the situation in Iran is that of stalemate. The government cannot possibly attempt to repeat the Tiananmen Square suppression of 1989 because it could bring undesired results. It would alienate the already-raging opposition clerics, politicians within the government who are sympathetic to Greens, and supporters of the government within the population. This could prove disastrous.

The Greens, on the other hand, do not have a quick victory in sight. Even if Mir Hossein Mousavi marched his supporters and took over government buildings, the Revolutionary Guard would step in and massacre them. The idea that three million protesters are unstoppable because no one can halt millions is naïve.

There is an old fable in Persian: If 20 sparrows are perched on a tree and you shoot one, how many sparrows remain? The answer is none. You don’t have to kill a million people to scatter two million. You only need to kill a thousand or so, and the government of Iran seems to have the power to do so if it is pushed too far too soon.

So, for now, both sides are reluctant to escalate the situation further because neither is prepared or ready to strike a killer blow. Tomorrow’s 13 Aban protests throughout Iran will be yet another replay of strategies. The protesters will attempt to isolate the government further, and the government will attempt to emerge with minimal casualties inflicted upon the populace and minimal damage to its grip on power. Both sides will likely retire after the showdown to prepare for forthcoming rounds. Unlike China and Eastern Europe in 1989, we are in for a very long haul.