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EU-3, Iran, U.S.: Talks Clear the Way for Military Action?
StratFor Subscription Content - no link available.Summary The United States has indirectly joined the ongoing European-Iranian nuclear talks. Far from representing a policy change for the Bush administration, however, the change indicates that the talks have failed and the path to direct U.S. action against Iran is clearing. Analysis Various leaks March 11 indicate that the United States has agreed to indirectly join ongoing European-Iranian negotiations and offer economic incentives to defuse Iran's nuclear program. Washington has agreed to throw its support behind Iran's World Trade Organization bid should Tehran fully and permanently abandon its uranium enrichment program -- a condition that Tehran is unlikely to agree to. In exchange, the United Kingdom, France and Germany (EU-3) have agreed to refer the case to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) for possible sanctions or military action against Iran should Tehran refuse to drop its enrichment program. In essence, the talks have failed and the path to potential U.S. military action against Iran is being cleared. The core problem with the European-Iranian negotiations is not so much that everyone approached the talks from different positions and with different outcomes in mind, but that all sides did not consider discussing the nuclear issue to be the point of the exercise. For Iran and the United States, the talks were an indirect means of debating the future Iranian role in Iraq. Tehran wanted at best to achieve dominance there -- after all, Iraq does have a Shiite majority -- or at least secure its western border. The ups and downs of U.S.-Iranian relations were mirrored in the ups and downs of the Iranian-European dialogue. For the EU-3, the negotiations were about, well, themselves. France and Germany had just seen their efforts to forge a common European policy go up and smoke. Stymied by an inability to challenge the United States independently, they decided to pool their efforts with the United Kingdom in order to prove that Europe could still matter on the international stage. Berlin and Paris felt it was critical to demonstrate that Europe could successfully negotiate away a problem without resorting to force, U.S.-style. For them, it did not really matter what the topic was, so much as that they were seen at the forefront of dealing with it. Such disparate views of what was important have led to the talks' failure. The United States has now decided that it does not need Iran much at all. In an effort to force Washington back to the table, Tehran declared March 8 that it has been hiding a nuclear program from international inspectors for 18 years. The EU-3, which now realizes that the Iranians did not care a whit for its belief that this was all really about Europe's place in the world, was embarrassed, to say the least. So, the EU-3 has changed its position. The next few steps are almost locked in stone. Iran is extremely unlikely to give up its nuclear card. For Tehran, this is about Iraq and regime survival. In order to maintain a strong bargaining position, Iran must keep the United States on its toes -- thus the admission that it has had a nuclear program for two decades. Tehran already knows that the Iraqi strategy of hide-and-seek will not dissuade Washington from pulling the trigger, so it needs to try something else. That something else means the Europeans almost assuredly will agree to refer the case to the UNSC. They realize that they have been played the fool and are looking to come out of this with as little egg on their faces as possible. They path they have chosen is to ask the United States to indirectly join the "negotiations." The Bush administration, satisfied so long as the path leads to the UNSC -- and to possible military action -- was happy to oblige. The White House, hoping to thaw recently frigid U.S.-European relations, also is being uncharacteristically gracious about "accepting" the European strategy of negotiations. The EU-3 can show the world that it can bring the United States on board. The United States can show Europe that it can be "reasonable" and engage in "negotiations." Once the issue reaches the UNSC, however, all bets are off. The Chinese and the Russians are as likely to veto any call for action against Iran as they are to abstain, and the Europeans certainly do not want to see the United States run roughshod over another Middle Eastern state -- particularly such a large one whose market they would like to tap. But for the United States, simply having the issue on the UNSC table will be enough. On March 7, Washington appointed John Bolton to be the top U.S. dog at the United Nations. Bolton is a firm believer that the United Nations should put up or shut up. Iran's activities have had the effect of moving the country outside of the U.N. system and so, in Bolton's view, making the issue one not just of Tehran's nuclear program, but of the credibility of the United Nations itself. The Bolton/U.S. argument will be that if the UNSC will not take steps to rectify such defiance of international norms, the United Nations' time has passed. That will leave the Bush administration having achieved two foreign policy goals. First, the United States will either have made the United Nations an arm of U.S. policy, or it will have freed the United States from needing to deal with it at all (the White House will be happy with either path). Second, the United States will have partially cleared the way for Washington to deal with Tehran as it sees fit -- a way which could possibly involve military action. Such action would most likely involve airstrikes against key nuclear facilities, such as the heavy water reactor site at Arak, Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the Bushehr nuclear power plant. As to time frame, it will likely be at least several weeks before the Europeans agree to forward the case to the UNSC, but the United States could be working to speed things along a bit. Two U.S. aircraft carriers, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Carl Vinson, already are in Atlantic and Indian Oceans, respectively, steaming their way toward the Middle East. They potentially will join the USS Harry S. Truman, which already is in the Persian Gulf. The United States does not put multiple carrier groups in close proximity lightly. Posted by: .com 2005-03-14 |
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