Overcoming Iran Nuclear Impasse:
A Year after the Tehran Declaration
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Panelists:
Trita Parsi
President, National Iranian American Council
Barbara Slavin,
Non-resident Senior Fellow, the Atlantic Council
Matias Spektor
Director, Center for International Relations, Getulio Vargas Foundation
Kadir Ustun
Research Director, The SETA Foundation
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Event Summary
by Daniel Ritchie&Maggie Simon
On May 17, 2010, Iran, Turkey and Brazil signed the joint “Tehran Declaration” in an effort to achieve a breakthrough in nuclear negotiations with Iran. The Turkish and Brazilian initiative to incorporate Iran into the international community was dismissed by Washington, which considered it a ploy by Iran to stall sanctions. During the subsequent June 2010 UN Security Council move to impose sanctions on Iran, both Turkey and Brazil voted “no” arguing that sanctions would impede diplomatic efforts.
To revisit this issue by discussing the reasons why the Tehran Declaration failed and the circumstances surrounding it, the SETA Foundation hosted a panel of distinguished experts to discuss the matter.
Barbara Slavin from the Atlantic Council opened the discussion by labeling the 2010 Turkish/Brazilian diplomatic push a “noble effort that was basically doomed to fail,” asserting that the Obama administration, under pressure from Congress and Israel, shifted towards sanctions after giving Iran a year to agree to a confidence building measure (ending in late 2009). Thus, while the US encouraged Turkey and Brazil to keep making efforts with Iran after the failure to reach an agreement in 2009, the administration had already chosen its path.
“Where are we now? Neither side is showing any flexibility,” stated Slavin. “The United States and its partners are… not prepared to say up front that Iran has a right to enrich uranium…and Iran has made it clear that this is a precondition for serious negotiations.” She added that the political climate within Iran and the US makes further negotiations very difficult, stating that the nuclear program has become a defining domestic issue for the current Iranian government, so to give up the program, or make any substantial concessions, would be perceived negatively in the eyes of Iranians. On the US side, she argued that there is a complete loss of willingness to negotiate, and it is now heavily geared towards sanctions.
“As for Turkey and Brazil,” stated Slavin, “I think both of them got burned by the Tehran Declaration when they saw the reaction from the West and what happened after the UN Security Council vote.” Arguing that the only hope for a way out of the current impasse is to get China more engaged in Iranian nuclear diplomacy, citing China as Iran’s largest trade partner and critical investor in its energy sector. “Working on the China angle [is] our best hope right now.”
SETA’s Kadir Ustun followed by stating that the Turkish approach in brokering the Tehran Declaration correlated with its “neighborhood policy,” which is based on economic and political integration, the free-flow of goods and services, and proactive diplomacy. He stated that Turkey had the following specific incentives to try and achieve a breakthrough on the Iranian nuclear issue: Turkey’s own security, Turkish belief that Iranian compliance cannot be achieved through a sanctions regime, that sanctions run counter to Turkey’s aspirations of regional integration, and the belief that the diplomatic track had not been exhausted. “There is no doubt that there was political gain for Turkey in acting as a serious negotiator,” stated Ustun, “through brokering the Tehran deal, Turkey wanted to demonstrate that it could act as a serious dealmaker in the region.” He added that an additional incentive for brokering the deal was the establishment of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East, stressing that in condemning Iran vis-à-vis Israel’s nuclear capabilities, Turkey argues that Iranian cooperation could be sustained in the long run only if Israel is part of the nuclear-free zone.
He went on to state: “The Tehran deal was rejected by the US administration for not being comprehensive, and failing to satisfy the main concern of the international community.” However, Ustun maintained that the nuclear swap deal was precisely a confidence building measure and was never meant to be a comprehensive solution, and that the subsequent “no” vote at the Security Council was the product of Turkish frustration at the Washington’s rejection of the deal. “Turkish foreign policy is much less constrained by domestic politics, which makes it easier for Turkey to reach out to Iranians,” he stated, maintaining that Turkey is also nervous about Iran’s nuclear program and that there remains room for US and Turkey to cooperate on this issue. “Overcoming the nuclear impasse will have to involve a serious Turkish contribution… I think China… would be a roundabout way of going about it.”
Director of the Center for International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation Matias Spektor spoke to the Brazilian perspective, specifically why, if it was doomed to fail, did they invest their political capital in the deal. “If we want to understand what happened, I think we need to try and try a little exercise in empathy,” Spektor stated. He provided some background on the matter by pointing out that “Brazil used to be even worse than Iran,” being that it also had a secret nuclear program, and only in the 1990s did it sign on to the NPT and create very active nuclear diplomacy. Spektor asserted that Brazil sees itself as a responsible stakeholder within the NPT, and that the countries that are failing the NPT are those countries that are not living up to chapter six of the NPT. He highlighted that Brazil will not sign on to the additional protocols not because Brazil has anything to hide, but because if Brazil signs on, the disarmed countries will have no tool to push and shove the nuclear countries to disarm.
Speaking to the issue directly, Spektor said “when Obama comes and begins to signal that there might be something shifting in American nuclear policy towards a greater emphasis on disarmament, Brazilians don’t believe it.” He maintained that the Brazilian perspective is the same as the Turks: sanctions are counterproductive and ineffective. However, the Brazilians went even further by saying that the problem with sanctions is that they will toughen the Iranian regime. Furthermore, Spektor stated “The Brazilians thought that in the context of the American presidential race when one of the leading candidates was singing ‘Bomb Iran,’ sanctions were a prelude to intervention.” He highlighted the Brazilian belief that they possessed moral authority because they are the only BRIC country that willingly relinquished the possibility of a nuclear weapon. From this position, Brazil could speak to the Iranians in ways that no other country could with the exception of Turkey. So the implicit argument is that the Brazilians can empathize with Iran and can understand what drives the Iranians.
Spektor maintained that anti-Americanism was not a driving force behind the “no” vote: “I know it sounds strange here in Washington now,” Spektor stated, “but Lula was actually thinking that in pursuing the Tehran Declaration he was facilitating things.” Lula unfortunately interpreted the situation the way he wanted to. Spektor stated that “we learned that environments of low mutual trust require very deep communication,” and asserted that Brazil’s mistake was its insufficient communication with Washington, Tehran and Ankara.
Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council, addressed the following question: Why did the Brazilians succeed with Turkey on something that the Europeans and Americans had failed? “The Brazilians and the Turks at the end of the day managed to get something that was quite coveted at the time,” Parsi stated, “which was to get an Iranian signature on a document.” He maintained that because of the trust gap between Iran and the West, there is no guarantee that Iranians can give what would ever be acceptable to the United States, and vice versa. Furthermore, he highlighted that the domestic political climates in Iran and the US do not allow for a chance at trust building. Parsi asserted that Turkey was an acceptable broker for the Iranians because there is some form of rapport between them, highlighting that they are two ancient countries with a long mutual history. “But also because Iran feels like it has some leverage over Turkey, which it does not have over any of the other states in the P5-plus-1. This gave the Iranians a little more sense of comfort that they would be able to go forward with this,” he stated.
“Brazil and Turkey engaged in more direct diplomacy with Iran than all of the P5-plus-1 combined,” Parsi stated, “Furthermore, even though the main interlocutor ended up being Ahmadinejad, both the Turks and the Brazilians did engage extensively with almost all other power centers in Iran.” He pointed out that, like in Washington, you cannot get an agreement by just going to the White House, and that Iran, albeit in different way, tends to work somewhat similarly. Parsi claimed that this was critical to the Turks’ and Brazilians’ success, calling it “proper diplomacy.” Also critical to the success, according to Parsi, was the Tehran Declaration’s admission of Iran’s right to enrich nuclear material, something that the United States is so far not willing to admit.
Trita Parsi is founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian politics, and the balance of power in the Middle East. He is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press 2007), silver medal winner of the 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. Parsi studied for his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In addition to his PhD, he holds a Master's Degree in International Relations from Uppsala University and a Master's Degree in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics. He has served as an adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He is currently an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute. Parsi has followed Middle East politics through work in the field and extensive experience on Capitol Hill and at the United Nations. He is frequently consulted by Western and Asian governments on foreign policy matters. He is fluent in Persian/Farsi, English, and Swedish. Parsi's articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the national and international media.
Matias Spektor is an Assistant Professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil, where he directs the Center for International Relations and runs an IR book series. He has a keen interest in the connections between international theory and history. Dr. Spektor worked for the United Nations before completing his doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2007. He was a visiting fellow with the London School of Economics (2009) and with the Council on Foreign Relations (2010). He has published a book on Kissinger and Brazil (2009 in Portuguese; US edition forthcoming). His next book, on Brazilian strategies to deal with the United States, will come out in 2011. At the moment Dr. Spektor is also working on a study of trust building between nuclear rivals (with Prof. Nicholas Wheeler) and a history of emerging countries in international society.
Barbara Slavin is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center. Ms. Slavin is an expert on U.S. foreign policy and the author of a 2007 book on Iran entitled Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation. A contributor to AOLNews.com and Foreignpolicy.com among other media outlets, she was Assistant Managing Editor for World and National Security of The Washington Times from July 2008 through December 2009. Prior to that, she served for 12 years as senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY where she covered such key issues as the U.S.-led war on terrorism and in Iraq, policy toward "rogue" states and the Arab-Israeli conflict. She accompanied three secretaries of State on their official travels and also reported from Iran, Libya, Israel, Egypt, North Korea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Ms. Slavin, who has lived in Russia, China, Japan and Egypt, has also written for The Economist and The New York Times. She is a regular commentator on U.S. foreign policy on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and C-Span. She wrote her book on Iran, which she has visited seven times, as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2006 and spent October 2007-July 2008 as senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she researched and wrote a report on Iranian regional influence, entitled Mullahs, Money and Militias: How Iran Exerts Its Influence in the Middle East.
Kadir Ustun is the research director at the SETA Foundation at Washington DC. He received his M.A. degree in History from Bilkent University. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Middle East Studies at Columbia University. Mr. Ustun has taught numerous undergraduate classes on history, politics, culture, and art in the Islamic World as well as Western political thought at Columbia University and George Mason University. He is currently the Assistant Editor of Insight Turkey, an academic journal published by SETA Foundation. His research interests include civil-military relations, social and military modernization in the Middle East, US-Turkey relations, and Turkish foreign policy.
Michael Adler is Public Policy Scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is an American who has worked for Agence France-Presse news agency since 1980 with postings in Paris, Bangkok, Kuwait, Sarajevo, Bonn, Berlin and Vienna. He covered the uprising in Burma in 1988, the reconstruction of Kuwait after the first Gulf War, the war in Bosnia, the moving of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin and the fall of Mobutu in Zaire. He is currently a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, writing a book on the diplomacy in the Iranian nuclear crisis. Michael covered this crisis extensively while in Vienna from 2002-2007, where he reported on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has its headquarters in the Austrian capital. He also did reporting in Tehran, Geneva, Brussels, Berlin, New York, Tripoli and other key cities on the Iranian issue. Michael went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and to the University of Paris (Sorbonne).