What to remember before talking to Iran

Posted By Michael Singh Friday, January 16, 2009 - 11:07 PM Share

By Michael Singh

When it comes to Middle East policy, the unspoken theme of Secretary-designate Clinton’s confirmation testimony -– as well as recent interviews given by President-elect Obama -– is continuity. The clearest substantive break with the Bush administration that both Obama and Clinton have sought to emphasize, however, is on engagement with Iran, as Chris discusses here. The merits of engaging with Iran will, I’m sure, be much-discussed in the coming months, on this blog and elsewhere. It is worth, as a prelude, framing the issue a bit.

It’s worth noting that the general diplomatic approach advocated by the President-elect and Secretary-designate –- mixing incentives and sanctions while offering dialogue –- is precisely the approach that the United States and its allies have taken for the past several years. (The details of the so-called “incentives package” are available in Annex II to UN Security Council Resolution 1747, and Bill Burns' recent description of U.S. policy on Iran is available here.) The new administration will need to decide what new sanctions and what new incentives it wishes to enact and can convince allies to support.

This leads back to the question of engagement. It is vital to keep in mind that engagement is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Its utility as a diplomatic tool is a function primarily of two things:

1. The expected benefit: This in turn depends largely on both parties’ objectives, the rationality with which they negotiate, and most importantly, leverage –- who has it, and how much. You get leverage through sanctions, incentives, and other means; you use leverage through diplomacy, one manifestation of which is engagement.

2. Potential downsides: The benefits of engagement must be weighed against its costs. In most circumstances the cost of talking is negligible; however, when the other party is a regime like Iran’s or Zimbabwe’s, the cost is undeniably higher.

One detail lost in the public debate on engagement with Iran is the fact that every U.S. administration since 1979 has reached out to Iran in one way or another, as Secretary Gates pointed out in the Q and A after a recent speech at the National Defense University. This includes the Bush administration –- the United States and Iran engaged in trilateral talks (with Iraq) at the ambassadorial level regarding security in Iraq, and the United States (as a member of the “P5+1”) offered to talk to Iran about its nuclear program in a multilateral setting after Iran suspended its enrichment of uranium.

There has been little explanation offered by the new team of how the innovations they have suggested -– offering the Iranian regime bilateral negotiations and dropping preconditions –- will either increase the likelihood of success of talks on Iran’s nuclear program or mitigate their downsides. This is the question that the Obama administration will need to answer: whether and how their particular approach to engagement fits into an overall strategy to build and employ leverage to accomplish U.S. objectives in the short time available.

EXPLORE:MIDDLE EAST, DIPLOMACY, IRAN, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

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SETH EDENBAUM

1:09 AM ET

January 18, 2009

Feh

"when the other party is a regime like Iran’s or Zimbabwe’s,"

Oh Jesus christ. "Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is now the lowest in the world. Zimbabwe is a combination of a crime and a disaster. If you want to compare Iran to another state we have to deal with compare it to Saudi Arabia, though the latter's more unreliable, unstable, and dangerous. Zimbabwe is a failed state. If you want to imagine a failed state with nukes, think Pakistan.

It's barely overstating to say I don't give a damn if Iran gets nukes. The only reason I care at all is that I'm opposed to their existence anywhere. But life's made me a realist.

Here's more fun from the Saudis. And it's a year old

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.
Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government. ...

JJACKSON

1:01 PM ET

January 20, 2009

Double Standards

Thank you Seth.

I too could not believe the attempt to try and equate Iran with Zimbabwe and also think of Iran and the KSA as equivalents - if you ignore the Shia/Sunni thing and that Iran is a democracy (again using it in the loose sense of the term).
I also take exception to the implication to that the US has been regularly holding out olive branches. The insistence that Iran abandon its full fuel cycle as a pre condition to talks when it is a perfectly reasonable aspiration within its commitments to the NPT and IAEA inspections hardly smacks of even-handedness. If you are looking for states to embargo for NPT infringements how about the US of A for attempting to transfer nuclear technology to India who has breached the NPT and developed a bomb. If you really want to expose the absurdity of the US policy in its dealings with nuclear and, would be nuclear, states try replacing the word Iran with the word Israel and then look for a consistency of position. The US is not interested in curbing nuclear proliferation only in trying to make Iran an international pariah.

Read the NPT: It called for the nuclear ‘have nots’ to forego their right to try and join the ‘haves’ for a commitment on the part of the ‘haves’ to freely transfer peaceful nuclear technology AND a commitment to work towards a removal of their weapons. There was a window of opportunity for the haves to make this deal work in the early years while the technological hurdle was so high it was well beyond the likes of India & Pakistan without a Manhattan Project scale commitment. While the ‘haves’ failed to live up to their end of the bargain the technology gap closed and now any nation with decent universities and industrial base can join the haves if they have a mind to, and there is nothing we can do about it short of invading another sovereign state. The fact we invaded Iraq, on unfounded charges of a weapons program, and repeatedly threaten Iran and call for ‘regime change’ (AKA the overthrow of someone else’s elected government – not something we would view as acceptable if done to us) has not been lost on the likes of Syria, Iran, Venezuela etc. If they have any commonsense they should all be looking at nuclear weapons programs as the only means of protection against an aggressive, hostile & overwhelmingly militarily superior state. Obama may try and undo some of the harm done by some of the recent US regimes but that will not be enough. The fault lies with the American people; unless the world – allies and enemies alike – can trust the US electorate not to vote for another bunch of neo-cons in four, eight or twelve years who will revert to some pax American like ideology then America will continue to be viewed as having the potential to go ‘Third Reich’; imposing its world view for the benefit of the un-enlightened. Ironic when you consider the outgoings regime’s chosen enemy was trying to impose a Global Caliphate also for the benefit of the un-enlightened.

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.