This post also appears at The Washington Note.

Iranian Petroleum Minister Masoud Mirkazemi’s visit to Turkey last week highlighted Turkey’s multifarious equities vis-a-vis Iran.

A new article by Kadir Ustun, “Turkey’s Iran Policy: Between Diplomacy and Sanctions” in the current issue of Insight Turkey offers a Turkish perspective on Ankara’s relations with Tehran in the context of the nuclear issue and relations with the United States.

Several conclusions can be drawn from the piece.

First, while Ustun does not say this explicitly, he indicates that Turkey must keep some distance from the United States in order to maintain its credibility in the Middle East. During the Cold War, many Arab countries viewed Turkey with suspicion due to its close ties with the United States and Turkey has no interest in allowing anti-Americanism to prevent Ankara from exerting regional influence. This sentiment is understandably unpopular in Washington, but it is a fact of life for Turkey.

Second, Turkey sees itself as a natural candidate to mediate regional conflicts. Turkey’s leaders relish this role both because they view the resolution of local conflicts as in Turkey’s national interests and because mediation raises Turkey’s international profile and is popular at home. Effective mediation requires maintaining positive relations with all sides. Therefore, Ustun says that “Turkey saw no choice but to vote ‘no’ to the sanctions [on Iran] in order to protect its reputation as an honest broker.”

It is noteworthy that while Turkey has been (rightly) subjected to vehement criticism in Washington for its over-the-top reaction to the Gaza Flotilla crisis, many of those same people have criticized Ankara for seeking to maintain friendly relations with Tehran. The fact is that Turkey is most valuable as a partner when it enjoys friendly relations with all of the Middle East’s major stakeholders.

With that goal in mind, Ustun’s major theme is that Iran simply believes that diplomacy, rather than sanctions and threats, is the best way for the international community to engage the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is the crux of the problem between Turkey and the United States and will remain so until either the United States engages in more vigorous engagement or Turkey determines that diplomacy has failed and that a more confrontational policy is necessary.

– Ben Katcher

The New America Foundation/Iran Initiative will host Shireen Hunter today at 12:15pm EST. Hunter will discuss her new book, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order.

– Ben Katcher

The New America Foundation/Iran Initiative is hosting an event today featuring Stephen Kinzer, who will speak about his new book, Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.

Race for Iran Publisher Flynt Leverett will moderate the event, which will stream live here from 12:15pm – 1:45pm EST.

– Ben Katcher

Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook, writing in Foreign Policy, suggests that the Flotilla incident is the latest evidence that dreams of a “model partnership” between the United States and Turkey are mere fantasy. Cook suggests conceiving of Turkey as something closer to a “strategic competitor” with interests that sometimes converge but often diverge from those of Washington, particularly in the Middle East.

Cook says:

The Obama administration has yet to grapple with the ways the structural changes in the international system have affected U.S.-Turkey relations. All the talk about strategic cooperation, model partnership, and strategic importance cannot mask the fundamental shift at hand. The stark reality is that while Turkey and the United States are not enemies in the Middle East, they are fast becoming competitors. Whereas the United States seeks to remain the predominant power in the region and, as such, wants to maintain a political order that makes it easier for Washington to achieve its goals, Turkey clearly sees things differently. The Turks are willing to bend the regional rules of the game to serve Ankara’s own interests. If the resulting policies serve U.S. goals at the same time, good. If not, so be it…

Given the mythology that surrounds the relationship, the divergence between Washington and Ankara has proved difficult to accept. Once policymakers recognize what is really happening, Washington and Ankara can get on with the job of managing the decline in ties with the least possible damage. Obama’s goal should be to develop relations with Turkey along the same lines the United States has with Brazil or Thailand or Malaysia. Those relations are strong in some areas, but fall short of strategic alliances. “Frenemy” might be too harsh a term for such an arrangment, but surely “model partnership” is a vast overstatement. It’s time to recognize reality.

I agree with much of Cook’s analysis. He is certainly correct that Turkey and the United States are on opposing sides in the Israel-Palestine issue. The United States remains steadfastly committed to Israel, while Turkey under Prime Minister Erdogan has clearly distanced itself from the Jewish state and embraced the Palestinian cause. I also can see how disagreements between Washington and Ankara over Syria are likely to widen in the event of another conflict along Israel’s northern border.

On the other hand, there are areas of significant cooperation including, most significantly, in Iraq. Ankara’s influence there is widely considered constructive.

On Iran, yes there are differences between the Turkish and American positions, particularly in light of the recent uranium fuel-swap agreement. But Turkey can be forgiven for seeking to chart its own path given that U.S. policy toward Iran has failed for decades. I think Turkey is sincere that it does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon and time will tell whether there is, in fact, less distance between the Turkish and American positions than may appear at the moment.

Cook’s full article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

Former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA Graham Fuller has a provocative op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor on the uranium fuel-swap agreement reached among Iran, Brazil, and Turkey in the context of the United States’ posture toward rising powers.

Fuller is critical of the Obama administration’s dismissal of the agreement and suggests that Washington will actually benefit from the emergence of rival power centers with diverse interests and perspectives on global political issues.

From Fuller’s piece:

After the Lula-Erdogan success, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton immediately proclaimed her own success at garnering Russian and Chinese support for enhanced sanctions against Iran – a stunningly insulting response to the remarkable accomplishment of Brazilian and Turkish negotiation. These states are, after all, immensely important to US regional and global interests. To blow them off like that was a major blunder, not just in terms of Iran, but in broader global strategy. The rest of the world has surely taken further negative note that Washington’s game remains depressingly familiar.

But do we really believe Clinton has in fact garnered Russian and Chinese support? Just as Tehran had every incentive to accept a proposal from “equals,” offered with respect instead of bluster and threats, so too Russia and China have every reason to welcome this initiative from Brazil and Turkey. Yes, the terms of the agreement do matter somewhat, but what is far more important for them is the slow but inexorable decay of US ability to deliver international diktats and to have its way. This is what Chinese and Russian foreign-policy strategy is all about. Neither of these countries will, in the end, permit the US hard-line approach to win out over the Brazilian-Turkish one in the Security Council, even if the Brazilian-Turkish deal requires a little tweaking. Russia and China champion the emergence of multiple sources of global power and influence that chip away at dying American unipolar power.

China and Russia, of course, represent the alternative polarity in the emerging struggle to end American hegemony in international affairs. But of greater moment, they now witness the political center in international politics shifting away from Washington as well. These two countries that defied American wishes are not just some Third World rabble-rousers scoring cheap points off the US. They are two major countries that are supposedly close friends of the US This makes the affront even crueler.

You can read the entire article here.

– Ben Katcher

This post also appears at The Washington Note.

The New York Times, among others, is reporting that Turkey, Brazil, and Iran have agreed “in principle” to a nuclear fuel-swap that the three countries hope can placate the United States and its P5+1 partners at least enough to avoid a new round of Security Council sanctions on Iran.

More details will be available tomorrow, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The deal was reached after Turkey Prime Minister Erdogan – who said on Friday that he would not attend the talks in Iran this weekend due to insufficient progress in the negotiations – canceled a trip to Azerbaijan and joined his Brazilian and Iranian counterparts in Tehran today.

This is big news and geopolitical drama at its highest – but questions remain: “What precisely is the agreement – and is it something the United States will support?”

If the Obama administration considers the agreement merely what Steve Clemons has called a “political backdoor” that allows Iran to halt the momentum toward further sanctions without making meaningful concessions on its nuclear program, then there will be a very interesting divide between the Western P5+1 powers and the emerging power centers in Ankara and Brasilia.

Given the close coordination between Turkey Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I would be surprised if Davutoglu reached a deal with Tehran that the United States cannot accept. On the other hand, Clinton’s prediction on Friday that he Brazilian effort would fail perhaps suggests otherwise.

More soon.

– Ben Katcher

From Slavin’s piece:

Throughout the long Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, journalists from both countries interpreted each other’s policies and helped domestic audiences see adversaries as human beings. What’s more, Russian journalists based in the U.S. came to understand the strengths of the U.S. political system. That sort of experience should be available to Iranian journalists, particularly those who work for hard-line outlets that routinely denigrate the United States.

The situation for journalists in Iran has never been easy and has deteriorated significantly since fraud-tainted presidential elections in Iran last year. More than 30 Iranian journalists remain in prison and foreign reporters based in Tehran must exercise care for fear that they will also face prison or be expelled. Still, U.S. officials who rightfully criticize Iran’s crackdown should jump at the chance to allow Iranian reporters to experience U.S. freedoms.

Let the Islamic Republic of Iran News Agency open a Washington bureau, let its reporters go to White House and State Department briefings and have President Obama and other top U.S. officials give interviews to its editors and writers. That would make it harder for Iran to censor information about U.S. policies and make it easier for U.S. media outlets to demand reciprocal rights in Tehran. At a time when confrontation appears to be building again between the two countries, the more access their journalists have to each other, the better.

You can read the entire article here.

– Ben Katcher

Richard Weitz, writing at World Politics Review, provides an assessment of the Obama administration’s “game plan” for this week’s Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

According to Weitz, the Obama administration is seeking to differentiate itself from its predecessors and enhance American non-proliferation credibility by focusing on all three goals of the Treaty: disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

One of the administration’s objectives seems to be to brand the United States as not simply an enforcer of existing rules, but as a creative, forward-looking sculptor of those rules.

It is clear that the Obama administration is trying to build momentum behind an array of nuclear efforts. From Weitz’s piece:

In terms of tactics, the Obama administration has sought to build momentum in support of its NPT strategy by securing a cascade of nuclear successes, including several last month. In addition to the recent signing of the New START Treaty, the White House released a new Nuclear Posture Review that reduces the number and role of nuclear weapons in U.S. policies, including by imposing greater restrictions on when the United States will threaten to use nuclear weapons against other countries. From April 12-13, moreover, Washington hosted the first Nuclear Security Summit, which adopted proposals aimed at strengthening the security of the most dangerous nuclear materials and technologies within four years to prevent their misuse for nuclear terrorism.

Weitz’s full article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

Another nuclear conference is on the horizon. That’s right – the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – a once-every-five-years gathering of the nearly 200 parties to the treaty – begins next week and lasts through May 28.

New America Foundation Senior Research Fellow Robert Wright has posted an informative post at the New York Times on the conference’s likely outcomes.

Wright’s entire piece is worth reading, but one theme I want to highlight is Wright’s emphasis on the harmful legacy of the Bush years – a problem particularly acute in the nuclear non-proliferation arena.

In particular, Wright takes aim at the Bush administration for its nuclear agreement with India (a non-signatory to the NPT) and its opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Here is what he says:

In 2006 President Bush reached a deal with India — which had refused to join the treaty and built nuclear weapons instead — that actually gave India American nuclear technology!

Though the assistance was to the civilian part of India’s nuclear program, the deal frees up resources for India to build more nuclear weapons should it decide to. So the message from Bush was: If you stay out of the treaty so you can build nuclear weapons, we’ll help you build even more — so long as you’re our friend. And, since the India deal remains intact, so does that message.

The Bush administration also opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would keep us, and the rest of the world, from setting off nuclear explosions for test purposes (and which, notwithstanding hawk hysterics, wouldn’t erode the strength of our nuclear arsenal). This is one reason that the last nonproliferation treaty review conference, in 2005, collapsed in acrimony. (For a fuller sense of how thoroughly Bush undermined the 2005 conference, read the third paragraph of this.)

With reference to Iran, Wright also calls for a more principled American position on nuclear weapons:

But, believe it or not, not everyone shares America’s views of which nations seem responsible and restrained. Some Indians aren’t sure Pakistanis are responsible stewards of nuclear weapons (and might say, as we say about Iran, that Pakistan sponsors terrorism). Among some Pakistanis the feelings are mutual. And there are Arabs who consider Israel manifestly capable of disproportionate response to provocation.

The point isn’t that these Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs are right. The point is that if you’re serious about international laws and norms, you have to make their application independent of judgment calls like this. Otherwise you wind up looking as if you’re just saying that your friends can have nukes and their friends can’t, which leads to annoyance.

Wright’s full piece can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

Nixon Center President Dimitri Simes has an important article in Time Magazine that raises questions about the START follow-on treaty signed by Presidents Obama and Medvedev earlier this month and casts doubt upon the Obama administration’s efforts to enlist Russian support for serious sanctions against Iran.

Here is what Simes says about Russia’s position on sanctions:

Whether the treaty will really help to get tough sanctions on Iran is another matter entirely, however. There is no mystery of what might make Moscow more cooperative on Iran. Far-reaching sanctions would cost Russia billions. To compensate Russia, Washington would need to facilitate greater economic cooperation, and as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has stressed on several occasions, this would require canceling the Jackson-Vanik amendment and helping Russia gain membership in the WTO. However, these moves would face opposition in Congress. The administration has indicated that this would be the right direction to take but has not yet made an effort to make that happen.

Although United Nations Security Council sanctions seem increasingly likely (even the Bush Administration succeeded three times at that), there is a difference between getting a deal and getting results. The new arms control treaty demonstrates that it is easier to produce nice-sounding diplomatic documents than to take major steps toward advancing American security. Iran will be the key test of U.S.-Russian relations and, unfortunately, watered-down sanctions from a divided Security Council are unlikely to move Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Simes’ suggestion that the Obama administration may be exaggerating Russia’s willingness to support serious sanctions on Iran echoes arguments made by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett on this blog. (see here, here, here and here).

– Ben Katcher