36 Days

For my International Security class, we had to write an Op-Ed. This is mine...it is, predictably, about Iran/sanctions/nuclear weapons. Thoughts, concerns...?

36 Days

In the fall of 1962, John F Kennedy had 13 days to head off a nuclear crisis in Cuba. While we might not be looking nuclear disaster in the eye, there are now, in the spring of 2012, 36 days before the next round of talks with Iran regarding their nuclear program. Recent writing by Elliott Abrams on his Council on Foreign Relations blog would lead you to believe that nothing substantial has happened and that Iran is nefariously playing the West. Laura Rozen, on the other hand, writes that Lady Ashton, The EU’s Foreign Policy envoy has deftly used diplomacy to build rapport and trust among the parties and that the recent meetings in Istanbul were an important first step. In the spring of 2010, I was a part of the team that worked to implement new, more stringent United Nations sanctions on Iran. If this process taught me nothing, it taught me that diplomacy is hard work and requires patience, compromise, and a distinct lack of ego. Perhaps this is what unfolded in the closed-door meetings in Istanbul. So the question then becomes how can we see more progress in 36 days?

Before addressing what will happen on May 23, perhaps it would be a valuable exercise to explore further how we got to this situation in the first place. Certainly not all states possess nuclear weapons, why does Iran feel that it needs them? According to copious writing on the topic by Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, political scientists from Stanford and the University of Chicago respectively, there are four main reasons why a state would pursue the technically difficult path of nuclear weapons. States build nuclear weapons for security concerns, internal politics, prestige, and scientific capability. In the case of Iran, we can see almost all of these elements playing out in Technicolor. Iran has legitimate concerns regarding its security, the nuclear energy program was – until recently – remarkably politically popular, and Iran feels that it would gain a great deal of prestige from the completion of its nuclear endeavors.

While Waltz would argue that the spread of nuclear weapons could actually make the area safer – the logic being that two nuclear-armed states have never gone to war – no one could accurately predict how the addition of a viable nuclear energy/weapons program would change the region. This is the heart of the matter, the uncertainty. Due to actions by both Iran and the United States, there is a dearth of trust and rapport, without which any kind of diplomacy is that much harder. It has been noted through various outlets that the US Intelligence community is uncertain about the interest of Iran in actually making nuclear weapons or if they are simply interested in a nuclear energy program as they proclaim. It is because of a lack of trust and transparency that the P5+1 has to be so cautious in treating Iran’s legitimate right to nuclear energy as a potential nuclear weapons program.

Once trust is built, the real work can begin. This work starts with identifying common ground including: Ceasing enrichment at the Fordo facility and continuing to enrich uranium at lower levels within Iran. These are the points that the P5+1 and the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization can agree on and should provide a valuable stepping-stone to a solution. It is the pressure brought by international sanctions that have made these recent negotiations possible and the gradual lifting of sanctions by the UN, US, and EU will allow for them to continuing serving as both stick and carrot. For example, lessening the sanctions imposed on Iran’s central bank as their supply of 20% enriched uranium is sent to another country.

There are certainly many, like Abrams noted above, that feel that the talks are not going to succeed and that Iran is just buying time to further some reprehensible nuclear goal. Matthew Kroenig famously wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that now is the time to strike Iran. Kroenig’s argument that attacking Iran was the “least bad option” was quickly countered by Colin Kahl (both of Georgetown University), in the pages of the same magazine. Instead of focusing on the ‘least bad option’ everyone involved in the process should be focusing on the best possible outcome of what could be a dangerous situation. Simply experiencing diplomatic failures in the past does not ensure them in the future.

The fact remains that disabling the nuclear progress that Iran has made would be extremely difficult. When Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear facility, as Kahl notes, it made them more determined to have a nuclear weapons program and they became even more secretive. The technology and nuclear know-how of Iran would remain long after the smoke cleared and the civilian deaths were tallied. The US, and all of those calling for an attack, need to learn from history instead of attempting to add to its blunders.

Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, citing a recent Gallup poll, notes that Iranian public support for the nuclear energy program has dropped by 30% since 2010. This shows that the sanctions’ effects have started to impact Iranians more directly and they’re becoming much more concerned about trade and inflation than a nuclear program and national pride.

Sanctions work when patiently and emphatically enforced, providing for the changing of a regime’s calculus around a specific issue. They are not intended to force a country to stop their nuclear weapons program (or shelling civilians or crimes against humanity, etc). Rather, they are intended to extend the timeline for the development of nuclear capability, allowing diplomacy to reach a solution. It is this diplomacy that the P5+1 and Iran is rightly working towards now and the recent meetings in Istanbul provide a valuable foundation for further progress. It is diplomacy that will work to keep the Obama administration from confronting its own ’13 days’.