America Moves the Goalposts
By ROGER COHEN
NY Times: May 25, 2010
-- NEW YORK -
John Limbert, once a U.S. hostage in Tehran, now charged with Iranian
affairs at the State Department, has given a good description of the
caricatures that bedevil American-Iranian non-relations.
Americans see Iranians as "devious, mendacious, fanatical, violent and
incomprehensible." Iranians, in turn, see Americans as "belligerent,
sanctimonious, Godless and immoral, materialistic, calculating," not to
mention bullying and exploitive.
That's Ground Zero in the most traumatized relationship on earth and the
most tantalizing. Tantalizing because Iran and the United States are
unnatural enemies with plenty they might agree on if they ever broke the
ice. Limbert, a bridge-builder, has spent half a lifetime trying to deliver
that message. It never flies. Poisonous history gets in the way. So do those
that profit from poison.
If all the mistrust needed further illustration, it has just been provided
by the Brazilian-Turkish deal on Iran's low enriched uranium (LEU), the
peevish U.S. reaction to it, and the apparent determination of the Great
Powers, led by the Obama administration, to burrow deeper into failure.
I believed Obama was ready to think anew on Iran. It seems not. Presidents
must lead on major foreign policy initiatives, not be bullied by domestic
political considerations, in this case incandescent Iran ire on the Hill in
an election year.
More on that later, but first let's take a cold look at the Brazilian and
Turkish leaders' achievement in Tehran, how it relates to an earlier
American near-deal, and what all this says about a world undergoing
significant power shifts.
I'll take the last point first. Brazil and Turkey represent the emergent
post-Western world. It will continue to emerge; Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton should therefore be less trigger-happy in killing with faint praise
the "sincere efforts" of Brasilia and Ankara.
The West's ability to impose solutions to global issues like Iran's nuclear
program has unraveled. America, engaged in two inconclusive wars in Muslim
countries, cannot afford a third. The first decade of the 21st century has
delineated the limits of U.S. power: It is great but no longer
determinative.
Lots of Americans, including the Tea Party diehards busy baying at wolves,
are angry about this. They will learn that facts are facts.
Speaking of facts, I must get a little technical here. Iran has been
producing, under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, LEU
(enriched to about 5 percent). It is this LEU that would have to be turned
into bomb-grade uranium (over 90 percent) if Iran were to produce a nuclear
weapon. The idea behind the American deal in Geneva last October was to get
a big chunk of LEU out of Iran to build confidence, create some negotiating
space, and remove material that could get subverted. In exchange, Iran would
later get fuel rods for a medical research reactor in Tehran.
Iran, doing the bazaar routine, said yes, maybe and no, infuriating Obama.
Iran now wanted the LEU stored on Iranian soil under I.A.E.A. control,
phased movement of the LEU to this location, and a simultaneous fuel rod
exchange. Forget it, Obama said.
Well, Turkey and Brazil have now restored the core elements of the October
deal: a single shipment of the 1,200 kilograms of LEU to a location (Turkey)
outside Iran and a one-year gap - essential for broader negotiations to
begin - between this Iranian deposit in escrow and the import of the fuel
rods.
And what's the U.S. response? To pursue "strong sanctions" (if no longer
"crippling") against Iran at the United Nations; and insist now on a prior
suspension of enrichment that was not in the October deal (indeed this was a
core Obama departure from Bush doctrine).
Obama could instead have said: "Pressure works! Iran blinked on the eve of
new U.N. sanctions. It's come back to our offer. We need to be prudent,
given past Iranian duplicity, but this is progress. Isolation serves Iranian
hard-liners."
No wonder Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is angry. I believe
him when he says Obama and U.S. officials encouraged Turkey earlier this
year to revive the deal: "What they wanted us to do was give the confidence
to Iran to do the swap. We have done our duty."
Yes, Turkey has. I know, the 1,200 kilograms now represents a smaller
proportion of Iran's LEU than in October and it's no longer clear that the
fuel rods will come from the conversion of the LEU in escrow. But that's
small potatoes when you're trying to build a tenuous bridge between
"mendacious" Iranians and "bullying" Americans in the interests of global
security.
The French and Chinese reactions - cautious support - made sense. The
American made none, or did only in the light of the strong Congressional
push for "crushing" sanctions. Further sanctions will not change Iran's
nuclear behavior; negotiations might. I can only hope the U.S. bristling was
an opening gambit.
Last year, at the United Nations, Obama called for a new era of shared
responsibilities. "Together we must build new coalitions that bridge old
divides," he declared. Turkey and Brazil responded - and got snubbed. Obama
has just made his own enlightened words look empty.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
- - -
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/25-4
US Media Censors US Support of Iran Fuel Swap
by Robert Naiman
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy
Published on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Sao Paulo - If you get your information from major U.S. media, and you
follow U.S. foreign policy, then you know that last week Iran, Brazil, and
Turkey signed an agreement for Iran to ship about half of its stockpile of
low-enriched uranium to Turkey, in exchange for subsequent Western supply of
higher-enriched uranium to fuel Iran's medical research reactor - fuel Iran
needs in order to treat Iranian medical patients, fuel to which Iran is
entitled as a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
If you were paying close attention, you might know that the deal is quite
similar to one proposed a few months ago by the United States. An initial AP
story on the Washington Post's website last Monday - which I cited at the
time - said the agreement was "nearly identical" to the deal the U.S. was
pressing for, although by the end of the day the AP article on the Post's
website had been revised to downgrade this comparison to "mirrors." [The
original AP story is still visible here.] U.S. officials have dismissed the
deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey, even though the deal is "nearly
identical" to the one proposed by the U.S. Indeed, according to the
Washington Post, U.S. officials are "thoroughly irritated" with Turkey for
its role in mediating the agreement.
But if you get your information from major U.S. media, here's something that
you almost certainly don't know: Brazil and Turkey say that before they
reached the deal, they understood that they had the backing of the Obama
Administration for their efforts. The available evidence suggests that
Brazil and Turkey had good reason to believe that they had U.S. support, and
that the Obama Administration has taken a 180 degree turn in its position in
the last few weeks, and is now trying to cover its tracks, with the active
collaboration of major U.S. media.
Reuters reports from Brasilia - in an article you won't find on the web
sites of the New York Times or the Washington Post:
Brazil argues Washington and other Western powers had prodded Brazil to
try to revive the U.N. fuel swap deal proposed last October. "We were
encouraged directly or indirectly ... to implement the October proposal
without any leeway and that's what we did," said Amorim.
In a letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva two weeks
ago, U.S. president Barack Obama said an Iranian uranium shipment abroad
would generate confidence.
"From our point of view, a decision by Iran to send 1,200 kilograms of
low-enriched uranium abroad, would generate confidence and reduce regional
tensions by cutting Iran's stockpile," Obama said, according to excerpts
from the letter translated into Portuguese and seen by Reuters.
I haven't seen any reference to this letter from President Obama to
President Lula in the U.S. press - have you? But in Brazil, this letter from
Obama to Lula was front-page news on Saturday morning - I saw it on the
front-page of O Estado de S. Paulo, above the fold.
Note that the Reuters story, dated May 22, says Obama sent this letter two
weeks ago. The deal was announced Monday, May 17. So, about a week before
the deal was announced, Obama told Lula that from the U.S. point of view a
decision by Iran to send 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium abroad
would generate confidence and reduce regional tensions. Note furthermore
that Obama's words - according to Reuters, this is a direct quote from
Obama's letter - actually specify an exact amount of transfer that would
"generate confidence": 1,200 kilograms, exactly what was agreed a week
later. So the U.S. officials and media stenographers (like Glenn Kessler in
the Washington Post - "Iran creates illusion of progress in nuclear
negotiations") saying a 1,200 kilogram transfer would have been great in
October but would be worthless now are directly contradicting what President
Obama himself wrote to President Lula one week before the deal was
announced. But if course you wouldn't know about that direct contradiction
from the U.S. media, because in the U.S. media, the letter from Obama to
Lula apparently doesn't exist.
Morever, Brazil says that before the deal, no-one raised the issue of Iran's
20% enrichment as an obstacle:
"It wasn't on the agenda. Nobody told us, 'Hey if you don't stop 20
percent enrichment, forget the deal'," said [Brazilian Foreign Minister
Celso] Amorim.
So, if Brazil is telling the truth - and there is no evidence that they are
not - then this means that President Obama's letter to Lula did not raise
the 20% objection, and the excerpt provided by Reuters suggests that it
didn't.
So far, I've seen one clear reference in U.S. media to claims by Brazil and
Turkey that they had the Obama Administration's backing in pursuing
negotiations: not in a news article, but in an International Herald Tribune
column by Roger Cohen reprinted by the New York Times, "America Moves the
Goalposts."
Cohen wrote:
No wonder Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is angry. I
believe him when he says Obama and U.S. officials encouraged Turkey earlier
this year to revive the deal: "What they wanted us to do was give the
confidence to Iran to do the swap. We have done our duty."
Cohen's explanation for the Obama Administration's stunning flip-flop?
Domestic politics:
I believed Obama was ready to think anew on Iran. It seems not. Presidents
must lead on major foreign policy initiatives, not be bullied by domestic
political considerations, in this case incandescent Iran ire on the Hill in
an election year.
Last year, the Administration concluded that Iran wasn't ready to negotiate
with the U.S. because of Iranian domestic politics. Now, it seems, the
United States isn't ready to deal because the Obama Administration is afraid
of Congress.
It's a shame we don't have a leader in the White House right now who is
ready to lead on this issue. If only we had elected this guy:
No comments:
Post a Comment