By Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs | October 21, 2013
“Other optimists claim that the likes of Goldberg et al would not be trying so hard to position this as a victory over Iran unless the US did in fact plan to reach a deal with Iran this time around. In other words, they’re pre-emptively trying to prepare the public for a deal with Iran…”
I am greatly amused by efforts of our chattering classes to rewrite the history of the past 10 years to pretend that the reason for the lack of progress thus far in the US-Iran nuclear debacle has been Iran’s intrasigence. The Leveretts point out that much of the media coverage starts out with the assumption that it is Iran’s burden to make compromises to meet US demands, not vice versa, as if the obstacle to the resolution of the standoff thus far has been Iran and not the US with its excessive demands that Iran abandon enrichment. Joel Rubin of Politico claims that the negotiations are “the result of years of painstaking efforts by the Obama administration and lawmakers to pressure the Islamic Republic … to pursue diplomacy” and furthermore he writes, “Now that Iran has made a clear decision to engage seriously in diplomatic negotiations with the West over its nuclear program…” Then there’s former Israeli border guard Jeffrey Goldberg who claims that Iran is only now “ready at least to have a facsimile of a serious discussion about its nuclear program” because supposedly “The crippling of the Iranian economy by the U.S. sanctions regime is the only reason Iran is even negotiating at all.”
It would be only natural for the proponents of the sanctions policy thus far to claim that any progress on the nuclear file must be attributable to the “success” of these sanctions — when in fact such progress happened despite the sanctions, not because of them. Though a crowing rooster takes credit for the rising sun, the truth of the matter is that the sanctions regime on Iran has already started to falter, and Iran’s economy is already expected to start growing in 2014. It is certainly doubtful that the sanctions are hurting Iran enough that the government is willing to give up the sovereign right of enrichment, as the US demands, because they know that the Iranian people massively support their nuclear program and would consider such a concession to be traitorous. It will be hard enough selling any sort of deal with the US in which Iran somehow ends up being treated differently than any other NPT signatory.
Furthermore, European courts have already started the process of dismantling the sanctions on Iranian banks too. The sanctions were always illegal anyway, as they violated the terms of international trade rules that prohibit secondary sanctions. The only reason why European and Asian trading partners with Iran did not mount a legal challenge to these extraterritorial sanctions at the World Trade Organization is because of a poltical agreement not to do so, and that can last only so long before the floodgates break. After all, China and India need Iran’s oil and aren’t about to make their economic development indirectly subject to US veto.
And then there’s the NY Times, typically promoting nonsense and inaccuracy as news as usual. They have the usual load of hot, steaming bullshit posing as a “Q&A” about Iran’s nuclear program entitled “Examining the Status of Iran’s Nuclear Program and Talks” — in which they promote the usual propaganda lines: Fordo was a “secret facility” (never mind that Iran declared it to the IAEA first, and before it was legally required to do so) and Iran has “refused to allow inspectors to visit Parchin” never mind that Iran allowed it twice in 2005 and nothing was found then, and never mind that Iran is not under any legal obligation to allow any such “transparency” visits which are themselves illegal and outside of the NPT. The NY Times also claims that the Arak heavy water reactor “could be a source of plutonium, another fuel for a weapon” — when in fact practically EVERY nuclear reactor “could be” a source of plutonium since that’s what’s produced in the highly-irradiated fuel rods for reactors in Iran or anywhere else — however removing and using the plutonium is an extremely complicated process called reprocessing, and Iran has no such facilities as the IAEA itself has noted repeatedly and has no interest in developing – a fact left out of the NY Times version of reality.
But here’s the bigger picture issue I want to deal with: what does all the speculation and spin around the Iran nuclear negotiations indicate about the substance and direction of those negoiations, if anything? naturally we’re seeing some jostling even on the part of Iran hawks like Jeffrey Goldberg to spin the recent news of Iran-US negotiations as being attributable to an Iranian shift. The consistency of this narrative is such that it suggests a metaphorical “talking points memo” has been issued amongst the chattering classes, emphasizing the need to put this spin on the news: Iran has shifted, therefore the US can now potentially compromise with Iran.
This is of course total bullshit, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out. Iran has been making the same compromise offers it is now making for a very very very long time. Better ones, in fact. The problem had always been the US insistence on Iran giving up enrichment, a demand that was deliberately used by the US to kill off negotiations and to ensure that there could be no peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue as long as the regime is still in power in Iran (the nuclear issue as always been just a pretext for regime-change, just as “WMDs in Iraq” was always just as pretext) Even former IAEA head Elbaradei concluded as much.
So the question is, are these talks any different than the previous occasions when there was a lot of hype and speculation, but no progress because the US continued to insist on nonsensical demands on Iran? Has the US really started to deal seriously with the nuclear issue now for once instead of pulling the rug out from under their own negotiators as they did to the Turks/Brazilians (because of an additional demand that Iran also give up enrichment which the US added after Iran had said yes to the deal) and the EU-3 prior to that? Has the US given up on regime change, or is it simply shifting tactics?
Well, according to Trita Parsi, these talks are different in the sense that the US has finally conceded to negotiating an “end state” – in other words, telling Iran what it hopes to achieve in the end with negotiations (specifically the question of concern to the Iranian side is whether the US concedes that Iran has a practical right to enrich Uranium or not). This would be important for the Iranian side since they know what they’re finally negotiating in the first place: a US recognition of Iran’s enrichment rights, or Iran’s gradual and practical repudiation of those rights.
Other optimists claim that the likes of Goldberg et al would not be trying so hard to position this as a victory over Iran unless the US did in fact plan to reach a deal with Iran this time around. In other words, they’re pre-emptively trying to prepare the public for a deal. This view actually has some merit, but as an argument it is speculative. There are multiple other reasons why the likes of Goldberg would be engaged in such spin, entirely on their own and not because of any actual expected ”progress” at the negotiations. In the meantime, apart from trying to read tea leaves and engage in speculation, we won’t know if the US is serious or not until after the final deal is announced. In the meantime, there is absolutely no reason why we should assume these negotiations to be anything more than a set-up, as in the past.
So in the end, I’d rather wait to see the actual shape of a deal at the end before I get my hopes up. Wendy Sherman’s testimony before Congress suggests that the US is still not willing to recognized a right to enrichment by Iran. She tried to pull some bullshit stunt by making a distinction between enrichment versus the right to enrichment — as if a right that is only exercisable upon the arbitrary approval of outside powers is still really a right. That’s not encouraging and suggests that they’re still trying to finesse the issue instead of coming to terms with it — and they’re insulting our intelligence on top of it all which is what really annoys me. AIPAC of course is making their usual noise, but as far I can tell it is just noise, thus far, which suggests to me that they’ve got something up their sleeve. Perhaps they’re just giving the Obama administration enough rope to hang himself with, knowing that any deal with Iran is DOA in Congress anyway.
In the meantime, Dear Ms. Wendy Sherman: We’re watching, Wendy. We can see what’s going on. Don’t try to pull any bullshit ‘cuz we’re not buying it.