Articles
Waging Peace, Pages 49-50
Can Diplomacy Work in Iran?
THE FOUNDATION for Middle East Peace hosted a Nov. 20 discussion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by renowned Iran scholar Trita Parsi. Despite the impasse at the P5+1 (U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany) negotiations in Geneva, he noted, “significant progress was made” insofar as there was “an agreement in principle.” Tehran’s failure to ratify or to issue “a formal response” to the proposed deal, Parsi added, “has been extremely disappointing for the P5+1.”
Were it to be accepted by Iran, the deal would transfer roughly 75 percent of Iran’s low-enriched uranium (LEU) for reprocessing in France and Russia, he explained, thereby “winding back the nuclear clock” and reducing “Iran’s breakout capability by 12 to 18 months.” While the deal holds obvious appeal to concerned Western states, it also holds significant value from an Iranian perspective.
The negotiations not only brought the “U.S. to the table without preconditions,” Parsi pointed out, but also yielded an “agreement [that] implicitly...seems to accept that there is enrichment activity taking place on Iranian soil, which has been the Iranian red line.”
Iran’s reluctance to respond to such an agreement must be viewed in light of the events of this past summer, Parsi argued. Persistent and widening divisions within the Iranian political elite present a significant challenge to Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad vis-Ã -vis the P5+1 agreement. “Almost every element opposed to Ahmadinejad is taking the opportunity to oppose this deal from various different angles in order to get back at him politically for what [he] did this summer,” Parsi noted, referring to the June presidential elections. Reformists and conservatives alike have criticized the deal, leaving Ahmedinejad virtually no room to move forward.
Ahmadinejad’s paralysis and the political atmosphere that caused it put the Obama administration in a difficult position. “If the problem really isn’t with the deal itself, but it is actually with the political infighting in Iran,” Parsi asked, what option is left for the Americans? If the political environment is the inhibiting factor, then changing the deal is unlikely to deliver the results desired by Washington or the rest of the P5+1.
Another problem facing the negotiations, Parsi continued, is the limited timeline in which to advance a diplomatic solution. Obama’s engagement strategy could not begin in June due to the controversial elections, but instead had to wait until October—leaving a very short window of opportunity to test the effectiveness of a diplomatic approach. Such a narrow time frame, Parsi reasoned, means that the administration “can hardly afford a single bump in the road in the negotiations.”
Not only does the time horizon threaten the success of negotiations, he said, but the agenda itself also poses a significant challenge. The P5+1 negotiation is a one-variable negotiation, focusing solely on the nuclear issue. However, according to Parsi, “The nuclear issue is not the only thing that separates the U.S. and Iran.” Given what occurred this past summer in Iran both during and after the elections, “it does come across as somewhat odd if there isn’t a human rights component in the diplomacy between the United States and Iran.” The agenda’s focus solely on uranium enrichment has lead to increasing skepticism among reformists and the Iranian public that Washington may be attempting “to strike a deal with Ahmedinejad in Iran’s moment of weakness at the expense of the pro-democracy aspirations of the Iranian people.”
Parsi concluded, however, that a broadening of the agenda is feasible. The Iranian government, remarkably, has already expressed some desire to do so. In agreeing to the P5+1 negotiations, Tehran indicated a willingness to include a discussion of the economic crisis. If the parties could have such a dialogue, Parsi argued, then there is no reason that the agenda should not expand to include a human rights dimension. “If the United States wants to move toward a more constructive relationship with Iran in the long run,” he concluded, “then we have to have a balance between the relationship that exists between the people of Iran and the U.S. as well as between the two governments.”
—Andrew Blakely
