The case for negotiating with Iran
By Fred Kaplan
slate.com, April 17, 2006
The Iranians' call for more nuclear talks is probably a snare, designed to knot up the West in fruitless diplomacy while they accelerate their drive to build atomic bombs. Yet President Bush should take them up on their offer—should, in fact, come to the table with a full negotiating agenda—not as an act of appeasement but as a hard-headed security calculation.
A week has passed since Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that the White House is contemplating the use of nuclear bunker-busters to attack Iran's underground nuclear facilities—and the idea is looking less practical, to say the least, with each passing day. The obvious drawbacks are compelling enough (an attack would strengthen the mullahs, alienate most of the world, incite terrorist reprisals, and, for all that, merely set back Iran's nuclear program by a few years). Last Thursday, the military option was dealt another blow. Ahmadinejad let drop that his scientists are conducting research on the P-2 centrifuge, a device that can spin, and therefore enrich uranium, much faster than the conventional P-1 model. If the claim is true, it suggests that Iran has a second, secret nuclear program separate from its main nuclear facility at Natanz (which had also been secret until an exile group revealed its existence a few years ago). If we don't know of the existence, much less the location, of crucial nuclear facilities, even an otherwise well-executed campaign of air strikes will have little effect.
The one thing that Iran's leaders genuinely seem to fear is economic sanctions. They sprinted to the bargaining table, and opened more facilities to international inspectors, only after France, Britain, and Germany—which had always tolerated Iran's nuclear deceptions in order to protect their trade relations—joined in with the Bush administration's criticisms and pledged to support United Nations sanctions if Iran continued to enrich uranium.
Western Europe, Russia, and China may depend on Iran for oil, but Iran depends at least as much on them for capital investment. The United States isn't involved in either side of this equation—we've been boycotting Iranian imports and exports ever since Ayatollah Khomeini's "students" took our diplomats hostage—which is why our sudden engagement in face-to-face talks, after all these decades, would make quite an impact.
The other nations involved in this showdown—England, France, Germany, Russia, and China—would rather not impose sanctions. Their economic interests favor continued open trade with Iran. At the same time, they're deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Economic interests, in this case, have a natural tendency to trump security interests. The former are tangible and immediate, while the latter are hypothetical and off in the future. To turn this picture around—to elevate security interests above economic interests—requires deliberate action. To do so under the pressure of George W. Bush—in the wake of his false warnings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and that subsequent disastrous war—also requires political courage. (One difference between the present confrontation and the lead-up to the war in Iraq is that virtually nobody disputes the finding that Iran really is seeking nuclear weapons.)
To get the other countries to unite around some sort of sanctions (or the threat of sanctions, which may be all that's necessary), President Bush not only has to threaten to penalize Iran for bad behavior but also has to reward Iran for good behavior. They will not go along with this pressure campaign—they will not undermine their economic interests—unless there are carrots as well as sticks. In other words, Bush should commence direct talks with Iran not because they offer a hopeful chance for peace and good will, but because they're a necessary prelude to an international campaign of economic pressure—and because more drastic military pressure would likely backfire. There are two likely outcomes from serious American efforts to negotiate, both good. First, if Iran cooperates with the talks, then it might suspend its nuclear program in exchange for economic benefits. Second, if Iran doesn't cooperate, then the Bush administration will have made its case to China, Russia, and Europe that the regime is dangerous and untrustworthy. At that point it will be much easier to impose the economic sanctions that will scare the Iranians into better behavior.
Another reason to hold talks: There was something a bit bizarre about the fanfare surrounding Ahmadinejad's boast of finally enriching uranium last week. "We are a nuclear country!" he proclaimed—although, even if his claim were true, he still needs tens of thousands of additional centrifuges to enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon. There's also this statement today from First Vice President Parviz Davoudi, reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," he said, "stood up to all international pressures bravely. … With such a spirit, the Iranian youth can successfully overcome all obstacles that the country will encounter."
It's reasonable speculation that Ahmadinejad's bluster has been, at least in part, for domestic consumption—to rally the increasingly alienated "Iranian youth" around long-popular nationalist sentiments. Could it be that, having secured his putative "right" to enrich uranium, the Iranian president is now prepared to make a deal—to accept controls, for the right price?
out of me. He's a pathological character in charge of a prosperous country.
