Engaging Iran.
Sick, Gary
Senator Chuck Hagel ("At a Dangerous Crossroads," Spring
2008) is a rare and heartening voice of radical moderation in American
national politics. His perspective is crucial at this time of shrill
hyperboles toward Iran that threatens to lock all presidential
candidates into a self-defeating cycle of threats and coercion that has
already been tried and found wanting.
Regrettably, the kind of bargain that Iran would have found
extremely hard to resist in the previous two decades is no longer
available. The price keeps getting higher, and we constantly find
ourselves behind the curve. Perhaps for that reason, the concept of
engagement with Iran has gained currency. What is often unclear is
exactly what would be on the table. Let me offer a few practical
suggestions.
Sir John Thomson and his colleagues at MIT have been working on the
concept of a multinational enrichment facility to be located in Iran, as
a way to respond to Iran's determination to have a fuel source on
its own soil while keeping the process transparent and out of Iranian
hands exclusively. More recently, a version of this idea has been given
greater visibility by former ambassadors William Luers and Thomas
Pickering in the New York Review of Books. The great appeal of this
approach is that the Iranians have already signed on in principle. It
does not eliminate all enrichment capacity from Iranian soil, but in
reality that point was passed years ago and, in my view, is no longer a
realistic goal.
In considering a negotiating agenda with the Iranians, it is worth
remembering the terms of the Iranian 2003 offer to the United States that was ignored. Although that was not an agreement or a firm offer, it
did spell out the nature of arrangements that Iran would be willing to
consider in a final agreement. Iran acknowledged its understanding of
the rather high bar of transparency that the United States would require
on WMD and recognized that it would have to address a number of other
difficult issues. Although this set of proposals would have to be
reconfirmed after a five-year lapse with no discussion, it does offer a
starting place that goes beyond mere surmise.
The opening line of a serious negotiating approach, in my view,
should be to reiterate US agreement to the first article of the Algiers
Accord of 1981. It states "The United States pledges that it is and
from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene,
directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's
internal affairs." That is already US law, though the Bush
administration has deliberately chosen to ignore this article, while
acknowledging the validity of the treaty in court.
The parlous state of Iran's economy is almost universally
acknowledged as the country's most pressing and persistent problem.
Another universal is national pride. A package that started with mutual
respect and went on to offer a series of proposals that would jump-start
Iran's moribund energy and manufacturing sectors with infusions of
technology and foreign investment, is an offer that no Iranian
politician would dare refuse.
Although the tactics could be gamed out in much more detail, it is
really not so hard to get Iran's attention and get them to the
table. However, for some reason we seem to have an inferiority complex when it comes to possible negotiations with Iran. Senator Hagel's
words should be heeded by all presidential candidates. Are these
Iranians really so much cleverer than we are? Let's just get on
with it.
GARY SICK
Adjunct Professor of International Affairs and former director of
the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
