Teheran offer is genuine, but fleeting
US President Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York today is not expected to generate much excitement. Battered by his uneven handling of Syria, no bold foreign policy initiatives are likely.
Instead, the undisputed diplomatic rock star of the gathering will be Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani.
In his first six weeks in office, the cleric has carried out one of the most aggressive charm offensives in the 34-year history of the Islamic Republic. And the Obama administration responded on Thursday, saying the president would be open to having a meeting in New York.
If Mr Obama and Mr Rouhani, who will both address the assembly today, simply shake hands in public, it will be the seminal event of the gathering’s first day.
‘‘More than any words he might say, Rouhani’s greatest gesture would be shaking hands with President Obama,’’ said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ‘‘It would be one of the most significant geopolitical handshakes in years.’’
For both Mr Obama and Mr Rouhani, the stakes are high. The war in Syria is metastasising into a regional Sunni-Shia conflict. A Middle East conflagration could derail a tepid US economic recovery. And sweeping Western sanctions have devastated Iran’s economy.
Each leader also faces bitter opposition from domestic conservatives — ready to pounce if either president blinks in the three decade cold war between the two nations.
Despite the risks, now is the time for Mr Obama and Mr Rouhani to launch the first direct bilateral negotiations since the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. From Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to the conflict in Syria, the US-Iran rivalry is helping fuel instability in the region.
For Mr Obama, a bold move on Iran would be out of character. After his lurching response to the Aug 21 sarin gas attack in Syria, critics are declaring Mr Obama’s second term listless. A cautious president who focuses largely on domestic issues would have to take a major foreign policy risk on talks with Iran, a nation whose leaders have vexed US presidents for decades.
To be fair to Mr Obama, the onus for talks to begin lies with Mr Rouhani. For years, Teheran has rejected signals from the George W Bush and the Obama administrations that they wanted direct talks.
And despite all the promising rhetoric from the new Iranian leader, it is still unclear what concessions, exactly, Teheran is willing to offer in regards to its nuclear programme.
Mr Obama should keep in place the economic sanctions until a comprehensive agreement is reached that ends Iran’s enrichment of uranium. He should begin talks, but remain firm. In the long term, negotiations will aid Mr Obama, even if they fail.
As he has argued in Syria, exhausting diplomatic alternatives would make it easier to gain public support to use force, if needed.
George Perkovich, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the US and Iran should begin bilateral talks focused on a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Talks through the P5 plus 1 — the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — will, he says, become bogged down.
‘‘We should push for a big, comprehensive deal as soon as possible,’’ Mr Perkovich said, ‘‘rather than the incremental step-bystep approach. Obama doesn’t have the political capital to reduce the sanctions step by step, and Rouhani inevitably will lose political capital’’.
Mr Perkovich argued that Mr Rouhani and his new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, are moderates who have won support for talks from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — for now. Mr Perkovich, who has met both, says they have concluded it is not in Iran’s strategic interest to develop nuclear weapons.
‘‘They see that it would totally mobilise the Saudis and everyone else against them,’’ he explained, ‘‘and ultimately it doesn’t benefit them.’’
Sceptics argue that Mr Rouhani, in fact, represents no change in the regime. They say his call for renewed talks in letter exchanges with Mr Obama, an NBC News
Over time, it is far wiser to have Iranian moderates, not Americans, challenge Iran’s hardliners.
interview and an editorial piece in The Washington Post are ploys. They also dismiss to the foreign minister posting a Jewish New Year greeting on Twitter.
Mark P Lagon and Mark D Wallace, two former Bush administration officials, believe the new tone is a ruse to give Iran more time to develop a nuclear weapon.
‘‘It is imperative that the international community not fall for this trick,’’ they wrote in Foreign Policy last month. ‘‘No real change will occur under this theocracy. Cosmetic change is not a reason to give the regime economic relief, and the time it needs to finish its nuclear programme.’’
Scepticism is understandable. But given Iranian hardliners’ track record of using lethal force to crush uprisings, there is little chance of Mr Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guard backers being toppled.
And the debate over striking Syria showed that another US military intervention in the Middle East would be enormously unpopular in the United States.
Mr Obama should gamble that Mr Rouhani is what he says — a moderate trying to outflank his country’s conservatives. Not rewarding the bold public steps Mr Rouhani has taken will undermine his fleeting authority in Iran.
If there is one lesson from Afghanistan and Iraq, it is that American military interventions allow nationalists to blame the US for the plight of their country. Iranian conservatives will use Washington as a foil to bolster their own standing and discredit moderates.
Over time, it is far wiser to have Iranian moderates, not Americans, challenge Iran’s hardliners. In the end, it will be Iranians who discredit their nation’s theocracy, not foreigners. REUTERS