Representatives of the P5+1 and Iran meet in Geneva (AP)
For the first time in years, talks are scheduled for today between Iran and the P5+1. What are the objectives of these talks for the different parties and what do you think is realistically achievable?
Well, first, the talks are quite significant because it has been three decades since the United States and Iran had a substantive, serious and sustained conversation about any issue. Consider the stakes involved: Iran, the leading supporter of terrorist groups in the Middle East; Iran, a decisive factor in Iraq; and now Iran seeking a nuclear weapons capability. It is vital that we have the opportunity to begin negotiations, that may or may not be successful, but that might give us a much better understanding of Iranian government views. In that respect, I very much support President Obama’s strategy. I think his belief that engagement is a necessary first step is correct. A lot of people, including myself, are skeptical that these talks will succeed. It is more likely that the talks will break down because of Iranian intransigence in the coming weeks or months. The international community, led by the United States, will then have to undertake a very tough sanctions regime. But I do think starting with the talks makes sense. The stakes are very high. The Iranians start these talks on the defensive, because of their brutal treatment of their own population in June and July following the disputed and stolen election and because of the revelation that President Obama, President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Brown made last week. I think that the Iranians will have to be prepared to answer a lot of questions and hopefully agree to submit to much more intensive scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran has resisted negotiating for several years. What do you think made them change their mind and agree to negotiate?
I think that President Obama took away their excuse. I was part of the Bush administration’s effort to try to negotiate with Iran. Secretary Rice made a very forward-leaning proposal to them in June of 2006. She offered negotiations with one small condition: that they suspend their enrichment activities temporarily for the life of those talks. They turned that offer down.
Why, three and a half years later, are they accepting talks? Because President Obama has offered to talk to them unconditionally and for Iran not to show up at talks when nothing is being asked of them ahead of time would reduce their international credibility and would raise even greater suspicions about the reasons for their research programs. So I think Iran had to come to the table. I assume that other countries encouraged them to come to the table. But they come to a table which is going to be a very difficult one for them.. The French and the British are very strongly aligned with the United States, as is Germany, on this issue. And last Friday, the Russian government issued a fairly tough, at least for Russia, statement of concern about this revelation made by President Obama. The Chinese government even offered a mild rebuke. So I do think the Ahmadinejad government is on the defensive.
Here again, I would just credit President Obama. I know that there are critics, particularly on the right, who say that engagement isn’t going to work and that it has been a waste of time. I very strongly disagree with that. I think President Obama made clear from the very first moments of his presidency, from the clenched fist reference in his inaugural speech, through his Nowruz message to the Iranian people and then through his offer to negotiate unconditionally—I think he turned the tables on the Iranians. He has helped to put them on the defensive. I do think these talks start with the Iranians in a difficult position.
And how do you think that the internal turbulence has affected their calculations?
That is hard to say. We know so little about Iran. We don’t have American academics or journalists or businesspeople, much less government officials, there. We have no relations. One can only guess at the internal dynamics inside the country.
But I would say this—in the aftermath of the elections you did see publicly the acute divisions inside the Iranian political elite—divisions between some of the clerics and the Ahmadinejad government, certainly divisions between figures like Rafsanjani and Khatami and the Ahmadinejad government. Whether or not the Iranian government is in a strong position to make decisions at the negotiating table because of these internal divisions is an open question. It all depends on who they send to the talks and whether that person is going to be speaking for the Supreme Leader as well as for Ahmadinejad—I don’t think you can assume that to be the case. The officials from the United States, of course, and Europe and Russia and China will be qualified to speak for their countries. Whether the Iranians at the table will actually be authoritative enough to be able to commit their country is a question. We’ll soon know the answer to that question, but it’s an open question.
And how do you interpret their mixed messages in the lead up to the talks in terms of the softer tone versus the missile test and the different actions in the past few weeks?
I think this is classic Iranian negotiating tactics. They are obviously in a belligerent mood, or else why would they have ordered these missile tests that they made so public. Ahmadinejad tried a charm offensive with the press when he was in New York; I think he failed in that mission. And so, they are trying to send and are sending mixed messages, I think in part because they are not very good at this game of public diplomacy. They come from a dictatorial system, and they are divided at home as well. And that’s why we’re hearing different things from different people in the Iranian political system.
So what would you recommend, from your experience, to the Obama administration as they go into these negotiations?
Well as I said, I very much support President Obama’s strategy. I think he’s been smart and skillful. I think what he’s been able to do is win back credibility for the U.S. by taking the high road and agreeing to negotiations. And I would recommend that having launched the engagement strategy, he now turn towards a more tough-minded strategy—that would be engagement and inspections and sanctions—and ratchet up the pressure on Iran. By sitting down this week, we will be able to see if the Iranians are serious. But, obviously, I would recommend that we move quickly towards IAEA inspections of all the facilities in Iran—Natanz and this new facility that President Obama talked about. I would then also prepare for very tough sanctions. It’s likely these talks will not succeed, and when they do not succeed, the United States and the other countries should have a list of sanctions to promote. I think President Obama will be in a stronger position to advocate for sanctions because he will have tried diplomacy.
I see this as a transition point in the Obama administration’s policy. They have correctly launched nine months of engagement strategy, now they need to move to inspections, and ultimately, sanctions. If we want to avoid a military conflict with Iran, and everyone should, then we need to make the negotiations, inspections and sanctions all succeed together. That’s why I think it’s important to support what the President is doing.
What, in your view, are the benefits of the sanctions and what do you think will be the challenges of implementing them?
Well, I don’t think any of us should be naïve about sanctions; I’m certainly not. I think sanctions are going to be an enormously difficult enterprise, because for sanctions to succeed they have to be nearly universally applied. And, the leading trade partner with Iran is China, which has been unwilling to agree to tough sanctions on Iran, and hasn’t wanted to talk about energy sanctions, obviously. Russia is the leading exporter of arms to Iran. So, if sanctions are going to be successful, then Russia and China are going to have to be brought on board, as well as some of the Gulf states, like the United Arab Emirates, which is an enormous trading partner with Iran, as well as countries like Japan and South Korea, which also trade in oil and gas and other products with Iran. So, it’s going to be a tough upward battle for sanctions, but it’s a necessary one. President Obama has on his side the three UN Security Council resolutions passed between 2006 to 2008, which Iran is not abiding by. He has already agreed to negotiations.. So, I think that Obama will be in a stronger position to argue for those sanctions. And perhaps, if sanctions can be imposed that are tough, it might conceivably change the negotiating behavior of the Iranian government.
If that does not happen—if negotiations fail and sanctions fail—then I think the United States is left with a profoundly difficult choice. One option would be the use of military force. I don’t think that is a winning proposition. I am highly skeptical that the use of military force would achieve the purpose of stopping Iran’s nuclear efforts. I also think it might invite a counterattack, perhaps even by unconventional means, through some of the terrorist groups that Iran is allied with, like Hezbollah and Hamas. In addition to the option of military force, another possible option for the United States would be to build a containment regime and essentially to try to isolate Iran: To try to build up our military relationships with Iran’s neighbors, and also with Israel, to provide security assurances to them, to make it clear to Iran that we will limit and contain Iranian power in the Middle East. We did that successfully for over five decades during the cold war against both the Soviet Union and Maoist China. There’s no reason why we couldn’t construct a credible containment regime that would be short of the use of force and short of a war, but would limit Iranian power. And I do think that, if sanctions and negotiations fail, rather than say that the president has one option—the use of military force—we ought to be talking about this other option of containment.
What is your assessment of President Medvedev’s statements last week? Some people think it’s a shift, others do not.
I think it’s an open question as to whether or not the Russian government will be serious in pushing the Iranians in a very tough way and eventually agreeing to tougher sanctions. An open question because I know the Russians fairly well, and I’m fairly cynical about their behavior. They voted for these three sanctions resolutions between 2006 and 2008, but they were extremely difficult negotiating partners—they dragged their feet for many, many months before each of them, and they delayed initial action. They continue to be the leading arms exporter to Iran, and they continue to be helping Iran to construct this civilian nuclear plant in Bushehr. I don’t see the Russians right now as part of the solution. I would hope that President Obama would be able to convince the Russian government to take a different point of view, but I don’t think we heard enough from the Russian government last week to say that Russia has now turned the corner in a better direction. Medvedev had that rather veiled statement where he talked about the possibility of additional sanctions, but the Russian foreign minister made a statement that essentially, I thought, contradicted it a couple of days later. So we’ll have to wait and see what the Russians do here. But I see that Russia and China have been largely unhelpful in this effort, rather than helpful over the last several years.
What role do you see for other countries, specifically countries in the region?
In addition to the countries that will be at the table—the permanent five members of the Security Council, Russia, China, Britain, France and the United States, and then, of course, Germany as an added country—there are other actors in this drama who could be helpful if they choose to be helpful. The Gulf states and some of the other moderate Arab states have never been in public as aggressively critical of the Ahmadinejad regime as I certainly would like and as many other Americans would like. And if sanctions are to succeed, and if pressure is to be put on the Iranian government, the Arab governments are going to have to join in on those sanctions in a way that they have not elected to do in the past. A more tough-minded approach by the Arab governments would help the international strategy.
I mentioned Japan and South Korea. India and Pakistan are two other countries that have energy and other trade links with Iran. So if we do get to the sanctions phase, it won’t be a question of just the six powers negotiating with Iran adhering to sanctions, it will be these other countries that will be actually critical in determining whether or not the sanctions work successfully.
Do you think there’s room at the negotiating table for Iran’s neighbors?
I don’t think right now that the plan is to have them at negotiating table. Outside the negotiations they have influence and they need to exercise that influence through what they say and what they do. And if it does come to sanctions, then the sanctions would be United Nations sanctions, I assume, and therefore we’d be asking countries to support them because countries have an obligation to support UN Security Council sanctions.
In a marked change of tone, Israel in the past few days has been sending messages of cautions optimism ahead of the talks. In your view, has Israel’s approach on the issue changed?
First of all, I have enormous sympathy for the Israeli public and the Israeli government in trying to deal with a government living nearby, the Iranian government, that regularly denounces Israel, whose leader has denied the Holocaust happened and hoped for the destruction of the Israeli state. These are horrific, extraordinarily negative statements by the Iranian government and I have great understanding for the concern in Israel and great sympathy for the fact that Israel perceives Iran as an important future threat.
Having said that, I do not believe that it is in the American interest for Israel to launch a unilateral attack on Iran. I think that Israel should trust that President Obama is going to defend Israeli interests by negotiating in a tough-minded way and by increasing the pressure on the Iranian government. But I do not believe that the use of force makes sense for either the United States or Israel at the present time because, as I said before, I don’t think it resolves the problem. Iran would be able to continue to engage in scientific research. I also think it would invite a counterattack. It could possibly lead to a general war in the Middle East. And I don’t think the United States can afford a third war in the Middle East at the present time.
The smarter strategy is the patient application of both diplomacy and sanctions pressure against the Iranian government by the Obama administration. I think President Obama has set this up well. This increasing pressure that he is bringing against Iran, to me, is the sensible policy.
There’s another factor that Israelis and Americans need to think about: the Ahmadinejad government is in a very bad situation domestically. They have not lost the support of all the Iranian people, but they have lost the support of a good percentage of the Iranian public. If anybody used force against Iran in the coming months, I think it would provoke a nationalist backlash against the aggressor, in this case the country that used force. It would likely allow Ahmadinejad to centralize his control and to rally the people to him. By not using force, we allow the internal drama to play out in Iran itself. There’s at least the possibility, maybe not a probability but a possibility, that we might see the Iranian government further weakened by events in its own country. The reformers, I think, have a tremendous reservoir of strength; there are millions of people unhappy with the government. And we should not try to interfere in that process by raising the prospect of military force at this stage.
President Obama has been correct in giving diplomacy a chance, in having these negotiations that begin today, because we haven’t had diplomatic contacts with the Iranian government. To think about a military strategy, the possible use of force against Iran, without having tried diplomacy would be unconscionable and very much against American interests. So I think that the president has been right to set this up sequentially as negotiations first, and then if they fail, which is likely, we turn to tougher measures. I think that’s the correct way to think about our future strategic moves in this chess match against the Iranian government.
Why do you think success in the negotiations is unlikely?
I think it’s unlikely because the Iranian government is divided, and we’re going to see that reflected at the negotiating table. I don’t see the Ahmadinejad government, or the Supreme Leader behind it, being willing to make the kind of compromises that the United States and other countries are going to ask them to make. I assume that the United States and other countries are going to ask for very intrusive inspections, they will ask Iran to obey the UN sanction resolutions and to suspend its uranium enrichment program, and if Iran cannot agree to that, there may not be reason to continue these talks. So, I’m skeptical these talks will succeed because of the Iranians—their own internal weakness and the obstreperous and truculent nature of the Ahmadinejad government.
