It is clear today that the agreement signed in Tehran on the 17th of May
in the presence of Presidents Lula and Ahmadinejad and of Prime Minister
Erdogan has been the result of a negotiation specifically supported by
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the 20th
of April, the American President, in a letter since made public [1],
was thus writing to his Brazilian counterpart : “For us, Iran’s agreement to
transfer 1,200 kg of Iran’s low enriched uranium (LEU) out of the country would
build confidence and reduce regional tensions by substantially reducing Iran’s
LEU stockpile… I would urge Brazil to impress upon Iran the opportunity
presented by this offer to “escrow” its uranium in Turkey while the nuclear
fuel is being processed.”
And on the 13th of May, the Turkish Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Ahmet Davutoglu, had a conversation on the same subject with Mrs.
Hillary Clinton. The spokesman of the State Department reported on the exchange
on the same day[2] :
“regarding the Tehran Research Reactor, it was put on the table last fall to
build confidence with the international community about the true intentions of
Iran’s nuclear program... Iran has to either respond or face the consequences
of a UN Security Council resolution”.
Iran answered positively four days later. It was nevertheless struck by
a fifth resolution of the Security Council, hardening the former sanctions. And
it will also be soon impacted by additional sanctions coming from the United
States and the European Union. How could all of this happen?
First, because people in charge in the West were totally convinced that
the Turks and the Brazilians would fail like themselves in dealing with Iran.
These two countries were receiving lip service encouragements to negotiate as
they were expressing their urge to do so, but everybody had mentally closed the
file opened by the stretched hand of Barack Obama in the summer of 2009. The
idea at the time was to drop hope to solve in one stroke all the problems
raised by Iran’s behavior, and rather to engage Iran on a limited subject in
order to build confidence on a first success.
And to everybody’s amazement, Mr.Ahmadinejad had immediately expressed
his interest for the proposal. But the Iranian President had soon to meet with
the resistance of his own environment. And the Western diplomats, confronted to
Iran’s procrastination, gladly returned to their usual practice :
negotiating about Iran between themselves and with the whole world, excepting
Iran. Never mind if such a practice had, over the years, reinforced, not
weakened, the Iranian regime, and had been unable to curb the development of
the Iranian nuclear program. Of course, Tehran was simultaneously offered to
negotiate on nuclear affairs, but the prerequisite attached to the offer ̶ the
suspension of its enrichment activities -̶ was too conspicuously similar to
the West’s objective : the complete surrender of such activities. And the
tripartite Tehran agreement was signed just at the moment when Hillary Clinton
had finally succeeded in convincing the Russians and the Chinese to sponsor a
new resolution at the Security Council. Two trains which were never supposed to
meet collided spectacularly.
A set of circumstantial arguments had to be immediately deployed :
a few days before, Iran’s refusal to send its uranium abroad was hinting at its
evil intentions, its acceptance was now presented as a new trap for the
International Community, in which two credulous countries had fallen. The
Tehran agreement was criticized for leaving aside the problem of Iran’s
enrichment activities, forgetting that the original proposal did not touch,
even remotely, upon the subject. People were reminded that the 1,200 kg of
uranium to be sent abroad represented 80% of the whole amount of Iranian
low-enriched uranium at the time of the first proposal, but only 50% by May
2010, leaving in Iran enough material for a possible nuclear bomb. The figures
were right, but they would have been the same had the agreement been signed in
the fall of 2009. Finally, it was underlined that the new Iranian program of
enrichment up to 20% was against the spirit of the original proposal. The
assumption was correct but the problem could be solved among the numerous
questions of implementation to be addressed on the wake of the Tehran
agreement. To make it brief, the Turks and the Brazilians were wrong all along
the line.
But the sudden change of mind of the United States will long be
remembered in Brazil and Turkey. In Iran, people opposing any kind of
arrangement with the Americans can feel comforted in their assessment of
America’s duplicity. And finally, one cannot but feel that Barack Obama has
been defeated in this affair by his own Administration : at least the
first Obama, the one who believed in the possibility of restoring the
relationship between Iran and his country. We have seen him being brought back
by his own troops, Hillary Clinton leading, to the position of George W.Bush,
for whom the only solution to the Iranian hurdle was a Regime Change. Will he regain the will and the strength to impose
his own vision?
Looking at the familiar attitudes in which people on both sides have
settled anew, one comes to wonder if the present situation is not somehow
convenient for a large range of actors. It could be indeed a fairly comfortable
situation if, everything being well considered, the Iranian nuclear threat had
not the intensity usually attached to it. For twenty years people have been
crying wolf on the basis of a constant flow of revelations. Perhaps the time
has come to admit that the dark horizon of the Iranian Bomb recedes as we go
forward. Most certainly, Iran has made great progress in the highly sensitive
field of enrichment. But he still meets problems in fully mastering this
technology which could give it access to the prime material of a nuclear
arsenal. From what we can see and presume from observations of all kinds, Iran
does not yet possess the full array of skills, touching a very diversified
range of fields, necessary to put together a credible bomb. Finally, if Iran
were to reach this point, all of this would become visible. Means of detection
have made immense progress. Experience gathered on the last thirty years
demonstrate that such complex programs, when they come close to maturity,
cannot remain clandestine, on the condition of course that the World is fully
awakened to the risk.
In waiting for such a moment, if it ever comes, international tension
cultivated around this file gives to the Iranian regime a permanent leverage on
its population to keep it united against the outer world. And the Regime does
not meet much internal opposition on this matter of national pride and
sovereignty. Thus, even the isolation inflicted upon the Islamic Republic helps
it keeping hold of its own country. Israel, too, can find some benefit in such
a situation. Each verbal attack coming from Iran, each announcement about some
new missile experiment, reinforce the credibility of an existential menace on
which the Israeli government can lean to rally not only its population but also
and foremost all Israel’s friends abroad, and degrade to second priority the
solution of the Palestinian question. The States of the Arabic Peninsula can
find in such a subject an easy and welcome matter for agreement between
themselves and for wooing American support. As for the United States, they find
here a good opportunity to tighten their camp around their case for
non-proliferation, and to feed some legitimacy into their anti-ballistic
programs facing South. The main victim of this convergence of opposites could
well be the Iranian people, caught in some kind of crossfire. Pressed on one
side by the sanctions, on the other side by the whole power structure of the
Regime, it is a miracle that they still stand up and keep hope.
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