9 July 2015
NEGOTIATIONS? WHICH NEGOTIATIONS?
by Neil Tidmarsh
Protracted and deadlocked negotiations between Western powers and an obdurate ‘rogue’ state drag on in a European capital. A deal to bring the state back into the international fold should have been signed this week but a deadline was missed and the talks have been extended yet again. The rogue state continues to dig its heels in, making unreasonable and unrealistic demands in the hope that the Western powers will compromise and swallow a bitter pill for the sake of stability, security, openness and other civilized values which they hold dear. But there are dissenters among the powers, and more than one voice on the sidelines warns that they are playing an irresponsible and dangerous game which could lead to a world war and a nuclear apocalypse.
World war? Nuclear apocalypse?
No, we’re not talking about Greece and Brussels and the EU. We’re talking about the negotiations in Vienna between Iran and the US-led international team which includes Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China (P5+1). President Obama is offering to drop international economic sanctions against Iran if Iran abandons its atomic weapon programme. And Iran is proving even more tricky and stubborn than Tsipras and the Greeks. P5+1 suggests, quite sensibly, that sanctions should be fazed out gradually as and when Iranian compliance is proved; but Iran insists that all sanctions must be dropped as soon as a deal is signed. P5+1 understandably wants Iran to give weapon inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to all Iranian military sites; impossible, Iran says. And so the talks drag on, past last week’s deadline, past this week’s deadline…
These talks are highly controversial. Iran has been widely condemned over the last decade or two as a terrorist state. It sponsors groups such as Hezbollah in Palestine which have launched terrorist attacks against Israel, and Shia militias in Iraq who have fought against Western soldiers there. Only this week, security forces in Jordan arrested a man armed with 45kg of explosives in Jerash who they accuse of being a member of Iran’s elite al-Quds force on a terror mission. Iran has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel, and as the region’s leading Shia power it is engaged in proxy wars against Saudi Arabia (and other Sunni powers) in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Iran’s obstructive non-compliance with inspectors from the IAEA in the past does not bode well for the future.
Some are willing to give Obama credit for at least encouraging Iran to the negotiating table and trying to bring this dangerous maverick back into the world community; others are appalled that he should be even talking to it. His Republican opponents think it’s wrong to attempt any kind of entente with this most committed enemy of the USA’s traditional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Even his own advisors are worried that he will be tempted to give too much away in order to achieve a historic agreement.
Israel is saying that the compromises already made by P5+1 mean that any deal will make it easier for Iran to complete its nuclear weapons programme, not harder. Israel would be the prime target for Iran’s atomic bomb, and President Netanyahu has threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in recent years. Israel is also worried that an Iran enriched by the lifting of economic sanctions would have billions more dollars to spend on Hezbollah and other militant groups on Israel’s border.
Saudi Arabia is equally incensed that its ally the USA is talking to its enemy Iran rather than bombing Iran’s proteges in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The recent dynastic and political re-shuffle in Saudi Arabia was prompted by a disenchantment with the USA and a focus on the sectarian struggle against Iran as much as by anything else. King Salaman made his feelings clear by dropping out of the planned face-to-face meetings with President Obama at Camp David earlier this year.
If Iran is negotiating in good faith and can be trusted to deliver what it promises, then a deal will undoubtedly make the world a safer and better place. But Obama’s critics claim that Iran cannot be trusted, that making it richer by dropping sanctions will only make it more powerful and hence more dangerous, that it has no intention of abandoning attempts to develop nuclear weapons. These are very worrying claims indeed, with armed conflict in the Middle East escalating along sectarian lines – Iran on one side facing Saudi Arabia on the other – and with Israel insisting that it cannot tolerate Iran coming any closer to achieving its nuclear ambitions. The suggestions that world peace hinges on what kind of a deal is finally signed in Vienna might not be melodramatic overstatement after all.
Meanwhile, the negotiations in Brussels… How and why have the Greek talks managed to overshadow the Iranian talks? The Greek crisis is not news – it’s simply business as usual for that part of the Balkans. Check out the history of Greece since 1827 – the history of the country of Greece as we know it – and count how many times the country has gone bust, how many times its currency has failed. You’d be surprised. Well, actually, you probably wouldn’t be, not now. As the EU is currently discovering, while Classical Greece is indeed the cultural foundation of Europe, modern Greece is not a modern European country and never has been. Its most recent crisis proves that it doesn’t belong in Europe. It’s a Balkan country, it belongs outside Europe in that region sitting between Europe and the Middle East. Alexis Tsipras knows this, President Putin of Russia knows this; why has it taken nearly 200 years for everyone else to realise this? Now, perhaps, it is about to find its true place and let’s hope for the sake of the suffering Greek people that it proves a more comfortable one.
For most of the world the Greek crisis must seem a very provincial affair. But in Vienna, the idea of an atomic arms race in the Middle East, of world war and nuclear apocalypse, is casting a very dark shadow indeed over the whole globe.
