The Race for Iran

(Photo Credit: State Department Photo by Michael Gross)

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

I agree with Barbara Slavin, who argues in a piece for The Washington Note that the United States should grant visas to Iranian reporters seeking to cover the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference in New York this month.

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

(Photo Credit: White House Photostream)

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

(Photo Credit: United Nations Photostream)

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

(Photo Credit: New America Foundation’s Photostream)

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