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Iran tests America's grasp of
reality...
By Pepe Escobar
In Election 2012's
theater-of-the-absurd "foreign policy" debate, Iran came up no less than 47
times. Despite all the fear, loathing, threats, and lies in that billionaire's
circus of a campaign season, Americans were nonetheless offered virtually
nothing substantial about Iran, although its (non-existent) WMDs were
relentlessly hawked as the top US national security issue. (The world was,
however, astonished to learn from candidate Romney that Syria, not the Persian
Gulf, was that country's "route to the sea".)
Now, with the campaign
Sturm und Drang behind us but the threats still around, the question is:
can Obama 2.0 bridge the gap between current US policy (we don't want war, but
there will be war if you try to build a bomb) and Persian optics (we don't
want a bomb - the Supreme
Leader said so - and we want a deal, but only if you grant us some measure of
respect)?
Don't forget that a soon-to-be-reelected President Obama
signaled in October the tiniest of possible openings toward reconciliation while
talking about the "pressure" he was applying to that country, when he spoke of
"our policy of... potentially having bilateral discussions with the Iranians to
end their nuclear program."
Tehran won't, of course, "end" its (legal)
nuclear program. As for that "potentially", it should be a graphic reminder of
how the establishment in Washington loathes even the possibility of bilateral
negotiations.
Mr President, tear down this wall
Let's start
with the obvious but important: on entering the Oval Office in January 2009,
Obama inherited a seemingly impregnable three-decade-long "Wall of Mistrust" in
Iran-US relations. To his credit, that March he directly addressed all Iranians
in a message for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, calling for an "engagement that
is honed and grounded in mutual respect". He even quoted the 13th century
Persian poet Sa'adi: "The children of Adam are limbs of one body, which God
created from one essence."
And yet, he was crippled from the start by a
set of Washington misconceptions as old as that wall, and by a bipartisan
consensus for an aggressive strategy toward Iran that emerged in the George W
Bush years when congress ponied up US$400 million for a set of "covert
operations" meant to destabilize that country, including cross-border operations
by special forces teams. All of this was already based on the dangers of "the
Iranian bomb."
A September 2008 report by the Bipartisan Policy Center,
a Washington think tank, was typical in assuming a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran
as a fact. It was drafted by Michael Rubin from the neo-conservative American
Enterprise Institute, the same AEI that had unashamedly promoted the disastrous
2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Several future Obama advisers
"unanimously approved" the report, including Dennis Ross, former senator Charles
Robb, future Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Anthony Lake, future UN
ambassador Susan Rice, and Richard Clarke. The 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate by all US intelligence agencies stating that Iran had ended any nuclear
weapons program in 2003 was bluntly dismissed.
Mirroring the Bush
administration's "all options are on the table" approach (including cyberwar),
the report proposed - what else? - a military surge in the Persian Gulf,
targeting "not only Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional
military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response." In fact, such
a surge would indeed begin before George W Bush left office and only increase in
scope in the Obama years.
The crucial point is this: as tens of millions
of US voters were choosing Barack Obama in 2008, in part because he was
promising to end the war in Iraq, a powerful cross-section of Washington elites
was drafting an aggressive blueprint for a future US strategy in the region that
stretched from North Africa to Central Asia and that the Pentagon was then still
calling the "arc of instability." And the key plank in this strategy was a
program to create the conditions for a military strike against Iran.
R.e.s.p.e.c.t.?
With an Obama 2.0 administration soon to be in
place, the time to solve the immensely complex Iranian nuclear drama is now. But
as Columbia University's Gary Sick, a key White House adviser on Iran during the
Iranian Revolution and the Tehran hostage crisis of 1979-1981, has suggested,
nothing will be accomplished if Washington does not start thinking beyond its
ever-toughening sanctions program, now practically set in stone as "politically
untouchable."
Sick has proposed a sound path, which means that it has no
hope of being adopted in Washington. It would involve private bilateral
discussions by credible negotiators for both sides based on a mutually
agreed-upon agenda. These would be followed by full-blown negotiations under the
existing P5+1 framework (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -
US, Russia, China, France, and Britain - plus Germany).
Considering the
frantic post-2009 seesawing of sanctions, threats, cyber attacks, military
surges, and colossal mutual incomprehension, no one in his right mind would
expect a pattern of "mutual respect" to emerge easily out of Washington's "dual
track" approach.
It took Ambassador Hossein Mousavian, research scholar
at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs and spokesperson for the Iranian nuclear negotiating team from 2003 to
2005, to finally explain it all last August in a single sentence: "The history
of Iran's nuclear program suggests that the West is inadvertently pushing Iran
toward nuclear weapons." Chas Freeman, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia,
agrees, suggesting in a recent speech that Iran now "seems to be reenacting
Israel's clandestine weapons development program of five decades ago, developing
capabilities to build and deliver nuclear weapons while denying that it intends
actually to do any such thing."
What makes these developments even more
absurd is that a solution to all this madness exists. As I wrote a few weeks ago
(see War fever as seen from Iran, Asia Times
Online, August 22, 2012), to satisfy the concerns of the West regarding Iran's
20% stockpile of enriched uranium:
A mutually acceptable solution for the long term
would entail a "zero stockpile". Under this approach, a joint committee of the
P5+1 [the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany] and
Iran would quantify the domestic needs of Iran for use of 20% enriched uranium,
and any quantity beyond that amount would be sold in the international market or
immediately converted back to an enrichment level of 3.5%. This would ensure
that Iran does not possess excess 20% enriched uranium forever, satisfying the
international concerns that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. It would be a
face-saving solution for all parties as it would recognize Iran's right to
enrichment and would help to negate concerns that Iran is pursuing nuclear
weapons.
Time to hit the New Silk
Road(s)
The current US strategy is not exactly a raging success.
Economist Djavad Salehi-Esfahani has explained how Tehran's theocratic rulers
continue to successfully manage the worst effects of the sanctions and a
national currency in free fall by using the country's immense oil and natural
gas wealth to subsidize essential imports. Which brings us to the bedrock
question of this - or possibly any other - moment: will Obama 2.0 finally admit
that Washington doesn't need regime change in Tehran to improve its relationship
with that country?
Only with such an admission (to itself, if not the
world) are real negotiations leading to a Wall of Mistrust-blasting deal
possible. This would undoubtedly include a genuine detente, an acceptance of
Iran's lawful pursuit of a peaceful nuclear program, guarantees that the result
would not be a covert weapons project, and a turning away from the possibility
of a devastating war in the Persian Gulf and the oil heartlands of the Greater
Middle East.
Theoretically, it could also include something else: an
Obama "Nixon in China" moment, a dramatic journey or gesture by the US president
to decisively break the deadlock. Yet as long as a barrage of furiously
misinformed anti-Iran hawks in Washington, in lockstep with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government, deploy a relentless PR offensive
burning with incendiary rhetoric, "red lines," deadlines, and preemptive
sabotage of the P5+1 negotiations, such a moment, such a gesture, will remain
the faintest of dreams.
And even such an elusive "Obama in Tehran"
moment would hardly be the end of the story. It would be more like a salutary
twist in the big picture. To understand why, you need to grasp just how crucial
Iran's geopolitical positioning is. After all, in energy and other terms that
country is the ultimate crossroads of Eurasia, and so the pivot of the world.
Strategically, it straddles the supply lines for a sizeable part of the globe's
oil and gas reserves and is a privileged hub for the distribution of energy to
South Asia, Europe, and East Asia at a moment when both China and India are
emerging as potential great powers of the 21st century.
The urge to
control that reality lies at the heart of Washington's policy in the region, not
an Iranian "threat" that pales as soon as the defense spending of the two
countries is compared. After all, the US spends nearly a $1 trillion on
"defense" annually; Iran, a maximum of $12 billion - less, that is, than the
United Arab Emirates, and only 20% of the total defense expenditures of the six
Persian Gulf monarchies grouped in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Moreover, the Iranian nuclear "threat" would disappear for good if Obama
2.0 ever decided to push for making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Iran
and the GCC have endorsed the idea in the past. Israel - a de facto (if never
officially acknowledged) nuclear power with an arsenal of up to 300 warheads -
has rejected it.
Yet the big picture goes way beyond the strategic
gaming of the US and Israel about Iran's possible future arsenal. Its position
at the ultimate Southwest Asian strategic crossroads will determine much about
the future New Great Game in Eurasia - especially whose version of a modern Silk
Road will prevail on the great energy chessboard I call Pipelineistan.
I've argued for years that all these intertwined developments must be
analyzed together, including Washington's announced Asian military "pivot" (aka
"rebalancing"). That strategy, unveiled in early 2012 by President Obama, was
supposed to refocus Washington's attention away from its two disastrous wars in
the Greater Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region with a special focus on
containing China. Once again, Iran happens to lie right at the heart of that new
policy, given how much of its oil and natural gas heads east to China over
waters patrolled by the US Navy.
In other words, it hardly matters that
Iran is a rickety regional power run by aging theocrats with an only modestly
impressive military. The relationship between Obama 2.0 and Iran is guaranteed
to involve the nuclear question, but also (whether acknowledged or not) the
global flow of energy across Pipelineistan, and Washington's future relations
with China and the rest of Asia. It will also involve Beijing's concerted
movements to prop up the yuan in relation to the dollar and, at the same time,
accelerate the death of the petrodollar. Finally, behind all of the above lies
the question of who will dominate Eurasia's 21st century energy version of the
old Silk Road.
At the 2012 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Tehran,
India, Iran, and Afghanistan pushed for the creation of what might be called a
new southern Silk Road - really a network of roads, railways, and major ports
that would connect Iran and its energy wealth ever more closely to Central and
South Asia. For Delhi (as for Beijing), getting closer to both Afghanistan and
especially Iran is considered crucial to its Eurasian strategy, no matter how
much Washington may disapprove.
India is betting on the port of Chabahar
in Iran, China on the port of Gwadar in Pakistan (and of course a gas pipeline
from there to Iran) as key transshipment hubs linking Central Asia and the Gulf.
Both ports will be key pawns in Pipelineistan's New Great Game, which is quickly
slipping from Washington's control. In both cases, despite its drive to isolate
Iran, there is little the Obama administration can do to prevent these and other
instances of closer Eurasian integration.
Washington's grand strategy
for a "Greater Central Asia" under its control once centered on Afghanistan and
India. Its disastrous Afghan War has, however, blown a hole through its plans;
so, too, has its obsession with creating energy routes that bypass Iran (and
Russia), which looks increasingly irrational to much of the rest of Eurasia. The
only version of a Silk Road that the Obama administration has been able to
devise has been war-related: the Northern Distribution Network, a logistical
marathon of routes crisscrossing Central Asia for bringing military supplies
into Afghanistan without relying fully on an increasingly unreliable Pakistan.
Needless to say, in the long term, Moscow will do anything to prevent a
US/NATO presence in Central Asia. As with Moscow, so with Beijing, which regards
Central Asia as a strategic rearguard area when it comes to its energy supply
and a place for economic expansion as well. The two will coordinate their
policies aimed at leaving Washington in the lurch through the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization. That's also how Beijing plans to channel its solution
for eternally war-torn Afghanistan and so secure its long-term investments in
mineral and energy exploitation. Ultimately, both Russia and China want
post-2014 Afghanistan to be stabilized by the United Nations.
The
ancient Silk Road was humanity's first globalization highway centered on trade.
Now, China in particular is pushing for its own ambitious version of a new Silk
Road focused on tapping into energy - oil and natural gas - from Myanmar to Iran
and Russia. It would, in the end, link no fewer than 17 countries via more than
8,000 kilometers of high-speed rail (on top of the 8,000 kilometers already
built inside China). For Washington, this means one thing: an evolving
Tehran-Beijing axis bent on ensuring that the US strategic target of isolating
Iran and forcing regime change on that country will be ever just out of reach.
Obama in Tehran?
So what remains of the initial Obama drive to
reach out to Iran with an "engagement that is honed and grounded in mutual
respect"? Not much, it seems.
Blame it - once again - on the Pentagon,
for which Iran will remain a number one "threat," a necessary enemy. Blame it on
a bipartisan elite in Washington, supported by ranks of pundits and think tanks,
who won't let go of enmity against Iran and fear campaigns about its bomb. And
blame it on an Israel still determined to force the US into an attack on Iranian
nuclear facilities that it desires. In the meantime, the US military build-up in
the Persian Gulf, already at staggering levels, goes on.
Somebody, it
seems, has yet to break the news to Washington: we are in an increasingly
multipolar world in which Eurasian powers Russia and China, and regional power
Iran, simply won't subscribe to its scenarios. When it comes to the New Silk
Road(s) linking South Asia, Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and China, whatever
Washington's dreams may be, they will be shaped and constructed by Eurasian
powers, not by the United States.
As for an Obama 2.0 "Nixon in China"
moment transplanted to Tehran? Stranger things have happened on this planet. But
under the present circumstances, don't hold your breath.
Pepe
Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times, an analyst for
al-Jazeera and the Russian network RT, and a TomDispatch regular. His latest
book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
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