Friday
Oct022009
Iran's Nuclear Programme: Big Win for Tehran at Geneva Talks
Friday, October 2, 2009 at 8:13
LATEST Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama’s Balance Wobbles
Latest Iran Video: Nuclear Official Jalili on CNN (1 October)
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Remarks on Geneva Talks
The Latest from Iran (1 October): From Geneva to “Unity”?
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First Things First. We may have underestimated the significance of yesterday's discussions between Iran and the "5+1" power when we wrote (1640 GMT), "The Iranians have achieved their primary objective, which is to avoid an immediate condemnation and the threat of sanctions from a “breakdown” of today’s discussions."
The biggest signal of a breakthrough at the talks was not the declaration, from all sides, that Iran would invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the second enrichment facility at Qom "in the next couple of weeks" (1715 GMT). That was always the likely Iranian concession to "the West": contrary to the exaggerations in the US and British media, Qom is not that significant a plant, serving at this point as potential back-up to the main enrichment site at Natanz. So Tehran can accept inspections, provided its sovereignty is also maintained in an agreement, with the assurance that there's nothing illegal to be seen at the second facility.
No, here was the white smoke of a larger deal: "the Western media continues to miss the announcement, enthusiastically proclaimed by Press TV, that officials from Iran and the “5+1″ powers will have technical talks on 18 October on 'third-party enrichment'" (1935 GMT). A couple of hours later, McClatchy News Service put out the news:
This morning, The New York Times headlines, "Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia", and The Washington Post also picks up on the development. Perhaps most importantly, President Obama slipped the news into his statement last night, "Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step towards building confidence that Iran’s program is in fact peaceful."
Of course, this is far from a done deal. The head of Iran's delegation, Saeed Jalili, was cautious when he appeared on CNN last night, saying that the matter would not have to be discussed by the "experts" in the IAEA, rather than the 5+1 Powers. Press TV's website, in contrast to the network's excited declaration of the technical talks on 18 October, is now silent on the matter.
Yet make no mistake. At this point the outcome is a victory for the Ahmadinejad Government. A week ago, President Obama, flanked by the British and French leaders, was loudly declaring that the US would be punishing Iran economically if Tehran did not concede on the "secret nuclear plant". The White House scrambled last night to keep the stick on the table, with Obama putting out boilerplate warnings, Talk is not substitute for action. Pledges of cooperation must be fulfilled....Our patience is not unlimited." An official added the specific caution to The New York Times, "[This] would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit. If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow."
Now, however, that stick would have to be waved in the face of not one but two tracks of conversations. There are the technical talks, and there is the next meeting of the 5+1 powers with Iran, flagged up for the end of October. So, unless the US is prepared to pull the plug suddenly on both processes (or unless the Iranian Government is foolish enough to abandon the discussions), there is no pretext for further sanctions before the end of the year, even if Tehran draws out the talks with the IAEA over access to the second enrichment facility.
And even then, Washington's stick has been a limp one. Juan Cole enthuses this morning, "Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and got more concessions from Iran in 7 1/2 hours than the former administration got in 8 years of saber-rattling," but the Obama Administration probably could have had the same result that it got yesterday had it kept its collective mouth shut last week. Instead, the President and his advisors raised the stakes with threats and then found, in the 72 hours leading up to Geneva, that they could not deliver if necessary: neither Russia nor China was on board, and the European Union as well as the IAEA signalled their preference for genuine discussions.
This alone would be excellent reward for Tehran, but President Ahmadinejad's victory --- and this will be the unnoticed side-effect of the discussions --- is even greater. For over the last week, the "Western" powers have given him the legitimacy for which he has struggled at home. Have no doubt: the President and his advisors will be proclaiming loudly that they have defended Iran's sovereignty, upheld the rights of other peoples with their insistence on discussion on wider political and economic issues, and forced the US, Britain, and France to back down. Last night Jalili was already denouncing the "media terrorism" which tried to humiliate Iran and refusing to acknowledge a question from an Israeli reporter.
In other words --- I doubt you can find many non-Iranian commentators who will note this, although The Guardian has noted somewhat clumsily, "An Islamic regime involved in rape...is more of an issue in Tehran than the nuclear one" --- the Geneva discussions were the second theatre for the Ahmadinejad Government. What it needed, even more than the disappearance of the sanctions threat and space for its nuclear programme, was the drama and spectacle of recognition to take back home.
The President and his advisors may have been playing to the Western galleries, but they recognise that the primary theatre is still at home. So now the question arises: can the regime use the nuclear talks to push aside the challenges to its authority or will other issues --- detentions, abuses, Constitutional manipulations --- now return to centre stage?
Latest Iran Video: Nuclear Official Jalili on CNN (1 October)
Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Remarks on Geneva Talks
The Latest from Iran (1 October): From Geneva to “Unity”?
Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis
First Things First. We may have underestimated the significance of yesterday's discussions between Iran and the "5+1" power when we wrote (1640 GMT), "The Iranians have achieved their primary objective, which is to avoid an immediate condemnation and the threat of sanctions from a “breakdown” of today’s discussions."The biggest signal of a breakthrough at the talks was not the declaration, from all sides, that Iran would invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the second enrichment facility at Qom "in the next couple of weeks" (1715 GMT). That was always the likely Iranian concession to "the West": contrary to the exaggerations in the US and British media, Qom is not that significant a plant, serving at this point as potential back-up to the main enrichment site at Natanz. So Tehran can accept inspections, provided its sovereignty is also maintained in an agreement, with the assurance that there's nothing illegal to be seen at the second facility.
No, here was the white smoke of a larger deal: "the Western media continues to miss the announcement, enthusiastically proclaimed by Press TV, that officials from Iran and the “5+1″ powers will have technical talks on 18 October on 'third-party enrichment'" (1935 GMT). A couple of hours later, McClatchy News Service put out the news:
Iran agreed in principle at high-level talks here to ship most of its enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim measure, to ease concerns over its nuclear development.
Under the tentative deal reached here, Iran would ship what a U.S. official said was "most" of its approximately 3.300 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia where it would be further refined. French technicians would then fabricate it into fuel rods and return it to Tehran, to insert into a nuclear research reactor that is used to make isotopes for nuclear medicine.
This morning, The New York Times headlines, "Iran Agrees to Send Enriched Uranium to Russia", and The Washington Post also picks up on the development. Perhaps most importantly, President Obama slipped the news into his statement last night, "Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step towards building confidence that Iran’s program is in fact peaceful."
Of course, this is far from a done deal. The head of Iran's delegation, Saeed Jalili, was cautious when he appeared on CNN last night, saying that the matter would not have to be discussed by the "experts" in the IAEA, rather than the 5+1 Powers. Press TV's website, in contrast to the network's excited declaration of the technical talks on 18 October, is now silent on the matter.
Yet make no mistake. At this point the outcome is a victory for the Ahmadinejad Government. A week ago, President Obama, flanked by the British and French leaders, was loudly declaring that the US would be punishing Iran economically if Tehran did not concede on the "secret nuclear plant". The White House scrambled last night to keep the stick on the table, with Obama putting out boilerplate warnings, Talk is not substitute for action. Pledges of cooperation must be fulfilled....Our patience is not unlimited." An official added the specific caution to The New York Times, "[This] would represent a major accomplishment for the West, reducing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon quickly and buying more time for negotiations to bear fruit. If Iran has secret stockpiles of enriched uranium, however, the accomplishment would be hollow."
Now, however, that stick would have to be waved in the face of not one but two tracks of conversations. There are the technical talks, and there is the next meeting of the 5+1 powers with Iran, flagged up for the end of October. So, unless the US is prepared to pull the plug suddenly on both processes (or unless the Iranian Government is foolish enough to abandon the discussions), there is no pretext for further sanctions before the end of the year, even if Tehran draws out the talks with the IAEA over access to the second enrichment facility.
And even then, Washington's stick has been a limp one. Juan Cole enthuses this morning, "Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and got more concessions from Iran in 7 1/2 hours than the former administration got in 8 years of saber-rattling," but the Obama Administration probably could have had the same result that it got yesterday had it kept its collective mouth shut last week. Instead, the President and his advisors raised the stakes with threats and then found, in the 72 hours leading up to Geneva, that they could not deliver if necessary: neither Russia nor China was on board, and the European Union as well as the IAEA signalled their preference for genuine discussions.
This alone would be excellent reward for Tehran, but President Ahmadinejad's victory --- and this will be the unnoticed side-effect of the discussions --- is even greater. For over the last week, the "Western" powers have given him the legitimacy for which he has struggled at home. Have no doubt: the President and his advisors will be proclaiming loudly that they have defended Iran's sovereignty, upheld the rights of other peoples with their insistence on discussion on wider political and economic issues, and forced the US, Britain, and France to back down. Last night Jalili was already denouncing the "media terrorism" which tried to humiliate Iran and refusing to acknowledge a question from an Israeli reporter.
In other words --- I doubt you can find many non-Iranian commentators who will note this, although The Guardian has noted somewhat clumsily, "An Islamic regime involved in rape...is more of an issue in Tehran than the nuclear one" --- the Geneva discussions were the second theatre for the Ahmadinejad Government. What it needed, even more than the disappearance of the sanctions threat and space for its nuclear programme, was the drama and spectacle of recognition to take back home.
The President and his advisors may have been playing to the Western galleries, but they recognise that the primary theatre is still at home. So now the question arises: can the regime use the nuclear talks to push aside the challenges to its authority or will other issues --- detentions, abuses, Constitutional manipulations --- now return to centre stage?
Reader Comments (7)
RE: " ... the Geneva discussions were the second theatre for the Ahmadinejad Government. What it needed, even more than the disappearance of the sanctions threat and space for its nuclear programme, was the drama and spectacle of recognition to take back home."
Hooman Majd has written a wry review of the Ahmadinejad Government's strong performance leading up to these talks that's in line with your take: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/iran-mania_b_302198.html
When the post-election protests started in Tehran 2 months ago I wondered about missing positive reactions from my German friends. Their usual reaction was disbelief in a genuine democratic change, especially because of Mousavi as an outspoken representative of this system. Even though I had to agree with this perception on principle, I tried to persuade them that the protest movement wants more than just maintaining this regime. Perhaps I am wrong and too optimistic, yet I stick to this conviction for historical reasons. Iran's modernization process, which started with the Constitutional Revolution (Mashruteh) in 1906, was often stopped in the 20th century, but has never been forgotten.
In any case many of us have learned an important lesson since: When you struggle for freedom, you have to do it yourself. There is no saviour, Mahdi or Messiah from inside or outside, it is you to take action.
Imho many Iranians inside the country are slowly getting aware of that, and with every new mass demonstration they get more and more convinced of being capable to do so.
It does not mean that expatriates or foreign supporters should stop their support, the opposite is true, but we have to accept that fundamental changes can only be pushed forward from inside. The good news is a kind of national reconciliation between insiders and expatriates, which has even spread to former apolitical layers of society. Continuous psychological warfare, civil disobedience and boycotts in Iran, news coverage (thanks to EA), outspoken protests and constant pledges for human rights abroad may proove as comparable effective weapons to reach freedom in the long term.
[...] America’s judges the talks a win for the Iranian government: What it needed, even more than the disappearance of [...]
FYI
Big Win for Iranian Human Rights: OTP-CR-777/09
The ICC (International Criminal Court) in The Hage (not to mix up with UN court) has issued the above file number for complaints against the IRI according to the Statute of Rome. Filing law suits against incriminated members of the IRI depends on further investigations, the German comment sounds positive.
http://maryamnamazie.blogspot.com/2009/09/islamic-republic-case-opens-in.html
http://hpd.de/node/7640
[...] 2. Oktober 2009 — Thomas v. der Osten-Sacken Eine gute Analyse auf Enduringamerica. Must Read. Veröffentlicht in Hintergrund. Kommentar schreiben [...]
Iranians were ringing epersianradio.com phone lines off the hook the past two nights following apparent success of AN government in Geneva Nuke talk. Iranians from Iran, European nations and North America were calling and unanimously expressing their anger and disappointment with the Obama administration and European governments for giving legitimacy to AN government by engaging in negotiation. They were angry with the West for ignoring the shameful deeds of Iranian regime and forgetting the price Iranian people have paid and continue to pay. At the same time they were resigned to the fact that they were alone in their struggle and they could not depend on 5+1 or any other nation for that matter. A couple of callers even addressed the Western government in English and one reminded U.S. that this time a hollow apology will not do if U.S. government chooses to impede democratic movement in Iran by standing with AN government. Other callers were stating that Western governments will soon realize that they have been deceived by Iranian regime again. One person claimed there was an active Nuke site in Tehran and even gave its address. Since, I do not know Tehran landscape well, I did not pay much attention to the address and am not in a position to comment on the veracity of such claim. Another caller said if Obama does not get tough with the current Iranian regime, they will add Down with Obama to their chant repertoire soon.
I had mixed emotions. I was happy to hear Iranians unified and determined in bringing down the current regime. I was sad to hear people wishing for failure of nuke talks acknowledging that they knew well they will be at the receiving end of such failure either through sanctions or strike but were prepared to pay the price if that led to the demise of the current regime.
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