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Breaking the Iran nuclear impasse

Praful Bidwai

After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landmark letter to George W. Bush, many in Teheran expect more overtures favouring a diplomatic solution. India must strongly back these moves, not passively tail Washington's hardline agendas.

IRAN'S PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done something no Iranian leader has done since the Islamic Revolution of 27 years ago. He wrote a letter to the President of the United States proposing "new solutions" to "international problems and the current fragile situation of the world." This is arguably the cleanest break anyone has attempted with the all-too-familiar pattern of exchange of hostile rhetoric between the two nations, which have long demonised each other either as the "Great Satan" or as a part of the "Axis of Evil." The break is even more direct and radical than reformist President Mohammad Khatami's abortive call for a "Dialogue Among Civilisations" at the U.N. General Assembly in 2000.

There are two ways of looking at Mr. Ahmadinejad's extraordinary move. One, it's a limited, probably insincere, manoeuvre to secure a temporary reprieve for Iran as it comes under intense pressure at the Security Council thanks to a U.S.-backed resolution moved by Germany, France, and Britain, which asks Iran to halt uranium enrichment on pain of sanctions. In this view, Iran's maximal, and cynical, objective is to drive a wedge between key members of the Council as the European Union prepares a new "package of incentives" to dissuade it from enriching uranium.

Or two, it's a serious, welcome, overture towards Washington and an invitation to a wide-ranging dialogue that could soothe longstanding and rapidly escalating tensions between the two countries. It deserves a response in good faith.

Hard-nosed policy makers in Washington are likely to take the first view. Indeed, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has already dismissed the 18-page letter as too insubstantial to provide a "new opening" for a dialogue on the nuclear issue.

However, from within Teheran, which this writer recently visited, it is the second view that makes more sense. The letter is part of the signals Iran is sending out in favour of dialogue, negotiation, and reconciliation. Among these is a recent statement by the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Hasan Rowhani, that Iran would even be prepared to suspend uranium enrichment for a short time. No less important is the recent visit to the U.S. of a deputy of Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, allegedly for "personal" reasons. Iran has also agreed to talk to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to help stabilise the Iraq situation — a testimony to its cooperative attitude.

A number of security and foreign policy experts whom I met confirm the assessment that Iran is keen on talks, which could lead to a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue. For instance, Professor Nasser Hadian-Jazy, an international relations specialist at the University of Teheran, said: "Most Iranian policy-makers believe that the gap between what Teheran wants and what Western pragmatists will concede on the nuclear issue is not unbridgeable. They would certainly like to avoid a confrontation, with its prohibitively high costs. Iranian policy makers are realistic enough to try to negotiate a compromise."

Others, who insisted on anonymity, believe Iran is pursuing a two-pronged strategy: taking a hardline, "principled" position insisting on Iran's "inalienable" right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to peaceful uses of nuclear energy; and simultaneously, adopting a "soft" approach centred on diplomacy. According to them, Mr. Ahmadinejad's announcement a month ago of Iran's success in enriching uranium to reactor grade level is part of that strategy: a signal that "Iran has achieved what it can, and is now prepared for talks," albeit from a position of strength.

The logic of this view, shared by a cross section of the moderate or liberal intelligentsia, is as follows: Iran's policy makers are acutely aware that pursuit and acquisition of nuclear weapons is likely to make Iran more vulnerable and insecure in the medium and long term. It will "blunt" Iran's conventional edge vis-à-vis its potential adversaries in the region. It is likely to produce a backlash, by inviting hostility from Israel and pushing the smaller regional states towards Washington.

Nuclear weapons pursuit will increase the likelihood of regional nuclear proliferation to non-state actors such as Al-Qaeda, which — contrary to misperceptions about a "natural affinity" between Islamicist political currents — are unfavourably disposed towards Iran for sectarian ideological reasons. Above all, it would heighten the risk of coercive manoeuvres by the U.S., including military attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, for which elaborate plans exist, including, most dangerously, the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

The consensus

There is a broad consensus in Iran that the country should acquire a civilian nuclear capability, not nuclear weapons, indeed not even a nuclear weapons capability. The image of young Iranians joyfully dancing in the streets after the April 11 announcement of uranium enrichment as an index of popular sentiment is highly misleading. Like VHP activists celebrating India's Pokharan-II blasts, it represents a minority viewpoint. There is little evidence that the mass of the people, who labour under an unemployment rate of 12 per cent and rising inflation, have any enthusiasm for a nuclear weapons capability. The intelligentsia certainly has none.

In private conversations, many social scientists, strategic experts, teachers, artists, and social activists pour scorn on the idea that Iran should nurture nuclear weapons ambitions. Some cite Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's view that nuclear weapons are "un-Islamic." A good number are sceptical of the government's claimed nuclear prowess and aware of the assessment by independent experts that Iran is a long way away from mastering industrial scale uranium enrichment.

Iran currently has just 164 centrifuges in a pilot scale plant — when several thousands are needed to produce even reactor grade uranium in significant quantities. Some independent nuclear experts believe that the uranium hexafluoride conversion facility at Isfahan does not generate gas of the requisite purity. Iran, then, is probably five to 10 years away from acquiring a capability to make a crude first generation fission bomb.

The present moment presents an excellent opportunity to negotiate a nuclear restraint agreement with Iran, under which it stays within the Non-Proliferation Treaty framework, and performs pilot scale enrichment under strict international supervision, and within the constraints of the intrusive Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There is an urgent need to follow up on the "Russian formula" of taking Iran's uranium hexafluoride outside the country, enriching it, and returning it for use in power reactors — with the rider that Iranian personnel are fully involved in the process. Iran has had an unpleasant experience with Eurodif, a facility in France, in which it holds 10 per cent equity, but to which it has no access. It cannot accept a Russian Eurodif-II. Nor can it accept the EU's reported new condition that it must completely stop enrichment — and give up a right available to it under an international treaty (the NPT).

In return, the Western powers should offer both "security" guarantees to Iran, including a no-aggression assurance and normalisation of relations, and financial assistance and access to technology for enhancing oil and gas production. (Currently, Iran's gas production is hamstrung by lack of such access.) It is in the world's — and Washington's — own interest that Iran is brought into the ambit of non-discriminatory arrangements and allowed to conduct nuclear activities with strict safeguards to prevent diversion of nuclear material to military uses.

The West, in particular, the U.S., faces a critical test. If it insists on seeing Iran as an irredentist "revolutionary" power and a "rogue" state bent upon altering the strategic political status quo, it will have missed a crucial and fundamental aspect of Teheran's foreign and security policy posture: namely, Iran is not a territorially revisionist state; rather, it is status quo-ist and eager to normalise relations with the rest of the world. The popular grudge is that the U.S. ignores this urge and seems bent upon cornering and isolating Iran. The danger is that such an approach will tend to rally the population behind the nuclear hawks, who are still a minority within the Establishment.

This confronts India with a choice: it can obsequiously follow the U.S., as it did in two recent IAEA votes, and become complicit in Iran's isolation and its targeting for coercion — with all its dreadful consequences for West Asia's stability. Or India can play a pro-active independent role in keeping with its past orientation by calling for direct Washington-Teheran talks, as well as by advocating multilateral approaches to the nuclear crisis. One of these would be to get the U.N. General Assembly to make a reference to the International Court of Justice for its advisory opinion on Iran's rights and obligations under the NPT. This should clarify that Iran does have a right to uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes and elucidate the conditions under which the right is to be exercised.

India enjoys a fund of goodwill in Iran — despite its recent slide towards the U.S. and the nuclear deal with Washington. This goodwill is still palpable. India can press its advantage by striking out for non-coercive diplomacy and negotiation. That is the best way of contributing to a less strife-torn, insecure, and unstable West Asia, and a more peaceful and harmonious world.

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