Beyond the bluster: Iran at a crossroads :Iran News
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The international nuclear standoff with Iran, which is likely to culminate in United Nations sanctions given the present state of affairs, now has the distinct possibility of pushing Iran back to where it was in the early and mid-1980s, that is, international isolation.
This possibility is already foreshadowed by the draft resolution that was circulated at the UN Security Council, calling on the world community to prevent the transfer of goods, material and technology that "could contribute to Iran's [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and missile programs".
In light of Russia's recent announcement of its intention to sell two new nuclear power plants to Iran, the pertinent question is, of course, whether or not President Vladimir Putin will be able to continue the Russia-Iran nuclear cooperation when such a cooperation would put him at odds not only with the Security Council but with the United States, Europe and the "international community."
The draft resolution calls on Iran to halt all uranium-enrichment-related activities as well as the construction of a heavy-water plant and threatens to take "additional steps" if necessary. It gives the International Atomic Energy Agency chief another chance to seek Iran's compliance with its, and the IAEA's, demands. And even if China and Russia as permanent members to the Security Council block a formal UN resolution, the chances are that the US will seek to put together a "coalition of the willing" to impose its own sanctions.
Assuming that Iran ignores the UN - "doesn't give a damn", as President Mahmud Ahmadinejad put it - the road ahead is rather straightforward, that is, the resort to Chapter VII of the UN Charter, declaring Iran's behavior a threat to international peace and security, barring all member states from any nuclear cooperation with Iran, as well as "targeted sanctions".
Implications for Iran's foreign policy
Iran is fairly well equipped to deal with the rather toothless sanctions posed by the US that date back to the hostage crisis of 1979. Short of an oil embargo, Iran can financially withstand any lesser sanctions such as travel bans, a freeze on assets of leaders and the like.
On the other hand, the Iranian economy will suffer grievously should foreign investors stay away, foreign contracts be canceled or put in indefinite limbo, and the bills for foreign imports skyrocket, translating into higher unemployment and economic stagnation. That would come on top of a war economy where more and more of the government's budget is swallowed up by defense spending. At a minimum, it will slow Iran's economic growth, about which Ahmadinejad boasted recently.
Thus, looking ahead, a year or so from now, with Iran under international isolation, the picture that emerges is rather bleak - an Iran turned into a Middle Eastern version of isolated North Korea. That is hardly what Iran's foreign-policy establishment aimed to achieve during the past two decades.
The pressure on Iran could, of course, worsen if there are additional punitive measures such as the exclusion of Iran from international sports, cultural and scientific events, as advocated by certain hawkish politicians in the West. The very stigma of becoming a pariah state is unwelcome news to Iran's foreign-policy decision-makers who have, over the years, expended considerable energy in cultivating Iran's foreign ties, regionally and internationally. Without doubt, the negative repercussions of UN actions against Iran would be far-reaching, adversely impacting the whole edifice of Iran's foreign policy.
To avoid or minimize the regime's vulnerabilities, Iran's behavior has been characterized by a fluid, mixed response, evincing the tough line in public - "we don't give a damn" - with an increasingly finessed diplomatic approach geared toward stalling the US-EU march to sanctions.
This might explain why Iran rebutted the recent statement by a military leader, regarding Iran's intention to attack Israel in case of an assault by the US, saying it was not "valid". The pendulum had swung too far in the direction of bellicose rhetoric supplanting diplomacy, and as Dr Hassan Rowhani, the former chief nuclear negotiator, has candidly stated, Iran welcomes dialogue and diplomacy.
The subtle diplomatic approach by Rowhani and his increasingly prominent role in formulating Iran's response to this dangerous crisis suggests that Iran is actually in the throes of a serious soul-search and quite another lurch "back to the past", that is, back to the prudent nuclear diplomacy prior to Ahmadinejad, dictated by the survival prerogatives of the regime and Iran's national interests.
It is not too late to prevent Iran's descent to another dark era of international isolation, bringing misery and deprivation to the Iranian people, who have already sacrificed so much. To demand from the present generation that it make another historic sacrifice, as it did during the eight-year war with Iraq (which might have ended sooner without the resistance from hardline politics), is asking too much, and it is doubtful that the educated middle-class Iranians would go for it.
First step: Acknowledging a crisis
Several months ago, Ahmadinejad questioned the applicability of the term "crisis" for the nuclear issue. Yet today there is no doubt that there is a crisis with the potential for war, something that Iran's former envoy to the UN, Deputy Oil Minister Hadi Nejadhosseinian, openly admitted in his recent trip to India.
His expressed concern about a possible war with the US is clearly shared by nearly all the top-ranking Iranian officials, many of whom are unhappy about the adverse impact it would have on their respective programs, be it oil, gas, trade, communication or construction.
By acknowledging that Iran faces a formidable international crisis, the government can brace for the consequences better by preparing the population, as well as search more energetically, and diplomatically, for a formula out of it, since the present endeavors have not had the desired results - at least not yet.
By definition, a crisis is a moment of opportunity as well as danger, and to a large extent its evolution depends on the acumen, imagination and will of the political leaders to chart a course leading away from danger. That means seizing on the nuclear crisis's opportunity to reach a modus vivendi with the US, to make more transparent their singular commitment to protect Iran's national interests and define the limits of their commitments to purely religious and/or ideological values in conjunction with national-security interests.
For the moment, the chances of achieving a positive outcome are held back by the crisis's powerful momentum toward a complete breakdown - of Iran's relations with the West, with the UN and, indeed, with much of the international community. This is connected to a related breakdown in Iran's foreign-policy priorities and interests.
Post-populist politics
On a broad level, what Iran may need to pull itself out of the present crisis is a political housecleaning following the parameters of a yet-to-be-defined post-populist politics commensurate with Iran's needs and priorities unblemished by the ideological "noise" marring the picture of what Iran's national and security interests dictate both in the short and long terms.
The problem with this scenario unfolding is that, perversely, the present crisis fuels the very basis of populist politics in Iran, by forcing the government to increase its reliance on its mass base of "citizen soldiers". Yet a clue to the riddle of Iranian politics, as long as this pattern of politics continues, is how long Iran will keep on playing to the standards of what we may aptly refer to as the "heroic society".
To leapfrog to a "post-heroic" society is, however, what is precisely needed for Iran to come back down to earth and stop acting as it if speaking on behalf of the entire Muslim world, and limit its rhetoric to Iran's national concerns and priorities. The movement aspect of the Islamic Republic must be preceded by the strictly state aspect.
The dual revolutionist-statist orientation of the state has caused certain inconsistencies that must now be addressed, along with the serious side-effects of the new trend toward a greater emphasis on ideology.
This is exceedingly difficult given the multiple sources of populist politics in Iran epitomized by Ahmadinejad. It involves a politics of identity and "symbol-wielding" reliance on the linguistic reservoir of the revolution that makes any shrinking from the ideological and public commitments of the state problematic today.
Iran is caught on the horns of a dilemma: the very process of distancing itself from the core fundamentalist values, without having anything to replace them, has today caused a "restorationist" politics that, in the realm of foreign policy at least, amounts to a vicious circle.
Still outstanding after all these years is the answer to the question of which approach Iran should have to today's age of globalization, to the international system and to international relations. Iran's leaders have called for a long-term, 20-year economic policy, yet the foreign-policy dimension of this is hitherto absent and requires serious attention.
This aside, to call for a post-populist politics is not to be mistaken for jettisoning all those populist reservoirs of power in Iran, rather to reconstruct the state-making process along new lines whereby the harmful effects of "politics from below" are kept in check and rational decision-making is not put in jeopardy by political rhetoric.
Ahmadinejad and his circle of policymakers have repeatedly criticized the one-dimensional "politics of appeasement" under former president Mohammad Khatami, and their corrective militancy has not been entirely without positive aspects, such as in reasserting Iran's regional role, among others. But, as called for by various policy analysts and pundits in Iran today, a "balancing act" is required, and that inevitably means re-embracing some of the foreign-policy prescriptions of the Khatami era.
Iran's foreign policy is today at a critical crossroads, where there are alternative roads to the past, one being the isolationism of the 1980s and the other the integrationist approach of the 1990s. The worse remedy is a mixed approach that would seek in vain to retain elements from both eras. The way forward is to continue, in main essentials, the path of the Khatami era.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He is also author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
The international nuclear standoff with Iran, which is likely to culminate in United Nations sanctions given the present state of affairs, now has the distinct possibility of pushing Iran back to where it was in the early and mid-1980s, that is, international isolation.
This possibility is already foreshadowed by the draft resolution that was circulated at the UN Security Council, calling on the world community to prevent the transfer of goods, material and technology that "could contribute to Iran's [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and missile programs".
In light of Russia's recent announcement of its intention to sell two new nuclear power plants to Iran, the pertinent question is, of course, whether or not President Vladimir Putin will be able to continue the Russia-Iran nuclear cooperation when such a cooperation would put him at odds not only with the Security Council but with the United States, Europe and the "international community."
The draft resolution calls on Iran to halt all uranium-enrichment-related activities as well as the construction of a heavy-water plant and threatens to take "additional steps" if necessary. It gives the International Atomic Energy Agency chief another chance to seek Iran's compliance with its, and the IAEA's, demands. And even if China and Russia as permanent members to the Security Council block a formal UN resolution, the chances are that the US will seek to put together a "coalition of the willing" to impose its own sanctions.
Assuming that Iran ignores the UN - "doesn't give a damn", as President Mahmud Ahmadinejad put it - the road ahead is rather straightforward, that is, the resort to Chapter VII of the UN Charter, declaring Iran's behavior a threat to international peace and security, barring all member states from any nuclear cooperation with Iran, as well as "targeted sanctions".
Implications for Iran's foreign policy
Iran is fairly well equipped to deal with the rather toothless sanctions posed by the US that date back to the hostage crisis of 1979. Short of an oil embargo, Iran can financially withstand any lesser sanctions such as travel bans, a freeze on assets of leaders and the like.
On the other hand, the Iranian economy will suffer grievously should foreign investors stay away, foreign contracts be canceled or put in indefinite limbo, and the bills for foreign imports skyrocket, translating into higher unemployment and economic stagnation. That would come on top of a war economy where more and more of the government's budget is swallowed up by defense spending. At a minimum, it will slow Iran's economic growth, about which Ahmadinejad boasted recently.
Thus, looking ahead, a year or so from now, with Iran under international isolation, the picture that emerges is rather bleak - an Iran turned into a Middle Eastern version of isolated North Korea. That is hardly what Iran's foreign-policy establishment aimed to achieve during the past two decades.
The pressure on Iran could, of course, worsen if there are additional punitive measures such as the exclusion of Iran from international sports, cultural and scientific events, as advocated by certain hawkish politicians in the West. The very stigma of becoming a pariah state is unwelcome news to Iran's foreign-policy decision-makers who have, over the years, expended considerable energy in cultivating Iran's foreign ties, regionally and internationally. Without doubt, the negative repercussions of UN actions against Iran would be far-reaching, adversely impacting the whole edifice of Iran's foreign policy.
To avoid or minimize the regime's vulnerabilities, Iran's behavior has been characterized by a fluid, mixed response, evincing the tough line in public - "we don't give a damn" - with an increasingly finessed diplomatic approach geared toward stalling the US-EU march to sanctions.
This might explain why Iran rebutted the recent statement by a military leader, regarding Iran's intention to attack Israel in case of an assault by the US, saying it was not "valid". The pendulum had swung too far in the direction of bellicose rhetoric supplanting diplomacy, and as Dr Hassan Rowhani, the former chief nuclear negotiator, has candidly stated, Iran welcomes dialogue and diplomacy.
The subtle diplomatic approach by Rowhani and his increasingly prominent role in formulating Iran's response to this dangerous crisis suggests that Iran is actually in the throes of a serious soul-search and quite another lurch "back to the past", that is, back to the prudent nuclear diplomacy prior to Ahmadinejad, dictated by the survival prerogatives of the regime and Iran's national interests.
It is not too late to prevent Iran's descent to another dark era of international isolation, bringing misery and deprivation to the Iranian people, who have already sacrificed so much. To demand from the present generation that it make another historic sacrifice, as it did during the eight-year war with Iraq (which might have ended sooner without the resistance from hardline politics), is asking too much, and it is doubtful that the educated middle-class Iranians would go for it.
First step: Acknowledging a crisis
Several months ago, Ahmadinejad questioned the applicability of the term "crisis" for the nuclear issue. Yet today there is no doubt that there is a crisis with the potential for war, something that Iran's former envoy to the UN, Deputy Oil Minister Hadi Nejadhosseinian, openly admitted in his recent trip to India.
His expressed concern about a possible war with the US is clearly shared by nearly all the top-ranking Iranian officials, many of whom are unhappy about the adverse impact it would have on their respective programs, be it oil, gas, trade, communication or construction.
By acknowledging that Iran faces a formidable international crisis, the government can brace for the consequences better by preparing the population, as well as search more energetically, and diplomatically, for a formula out of it, since the present endeavors have not had the desired results - at least not yet.
By definition, a crisis is a moment of opportunity as well as danger, and to a large extent its evolution depends on the acumen, imagination and will of the political leaders to chart a course leading away from danger. That means seizing on the nuclear crisis's opportunity to reach a modus vivendi with the US, to make more transparent their singular commitment to protect Iran's national interests and define the limits of their commitments to purely religious and/or ideological values in conjunction with national-security interests.
For the moment, the chances of achieving a positive outcome are held back by the crisis's powerful momentum toward a complete breakdown - of Iran's relations with the West, with the UN and, indeed, with much of the international community. This is connected to a related breakdown in Iran's foreign-policy priorities and interests.
Post-populist politics
On a broad level, what Iran may need to pull itself out of the present crisis is a political housecleaning following the parameters of a yet-to-be-defined post-populist politics commensurate with Iran's needs and priorities unblemished by the ideological "noise" marring the picture of what Iran's national and security interests dictate both in the short and long terms.
The problem with this scenario unfolding is that, perversely, the present crisis fuels the very basis of populist politics in Iran, by forcing the government to increase its reliance on its mass base of "citizen soldiers". Yet a clue to the riddle of Iranian politics, as long as this pattern of politics continues, is how long Iran will keep on playing to the standards of what we may aptly refer to as the "heroic society".
To leapfrog to a "post-heroic" society is, however, what is precisely needed for Iran to come back down to earth and stop acting as it if speaking on behalf of the entire Muslim world, and limit its rhetoric to Iran's national concerns and priorities. The movement aspect of the Islamic Republic must be preceded by the strictly state aspect.
The dual revolutionist-statist orientation of the state has caused certain inconsistencies that must now be addressed, along with the serious side-effects of the new trend toward a greater emphasis on ideology.
This is exceedingly difficult given the multiple sources of populist politics in Iran epitomized by Ahmadinejad. It involves a politics of identity and "symbol-wielding" reliance on the linguistic reservoir of the revolution that makes any shrinking from the ideological and public commitments of the state problematic today.
Iran is caught on the horns of a dilemma: the very process of distancing itself from the core fundamentalist values, without having anything to replace them, has today caused a "restorationist" politics that, in the realm of foreign policy at least, amounts to a vicious circle.
Still outstanding after all these years is the answer to the question of which approach Iran should have to today's age of globalization, to the international system and to international relations. Iran's leaders have called for a long-term, 20-year economic policy, yet the foreign-policy dimension of this is hitherto absent and requires serious attention.
This aside, to call for a post-populist politics is not to be mistaken for jettisoning all those populist reservoirs of power in Iran, rather to reconstruct the state-making process along new lines whereby the harmful effects of "politics from below" are kept in check and rational decision-making is not put in jeopardy by political rhetoric.
Ahmadinejad and his circle of policymakers have repeatedly criticized the one-dimensional "politics of appeasement" under former president Mohammad Khatami, and their corrective militancy has not been entirely without positive aspects, such as in reasserting Iran's regional role, among others. But, as called for by various policy analysts and pundits in Iran today, a "balancing act" is required, and that inevitably means re-embracing some of the foreign-policy prescriptions of the Khatami era.
Iran's foreign policy is today at a critical crossroads, where there are alternative roads to the past, one being the isolationism of the 1980s and the other the integrationist approach of the 1990s. The worse remedy is a mixed approach that would seek in vain to retain elements from both eras. The way forward is to continue, in main essentials, the path of the Khatami era.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He is also author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
posted by worldnews at 11:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home