United States and Europe Differ Over Strategy on Iran

NY Times:

President Bush's second term has barely begun, and Iran is already shaping up as its most serious diplomatic challenge. But conflicting pronouncements by Mr. Bush and his national security team have left Iran frustrated and angry about the direction of American policy, and the Europeans more determined than ever to push Washington to embrace their engagement strategy.

To the outside world, the administration seems divided over whether to promote the overthrow of Iran's Islamic Republic - perhaps by force - or to tacitly support the approach embraced by the Europeans, which favors negotiations and a series of incentives that would ultimately require American participation.

"You need to get everybody to read from the same page, the Europeans and the Americans," said Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an interview in Davos on Friday.

"This is not a process that is going to be solved by the Europeans alone," he added. "The United States needs to be engaged. If you continue to say they are going to fail before you give them a chance, it will be a self-fulfilling policy."

France's foreign minister, Michel Barnier, echoed those remarks in an interview in Paris on Friday. "I cannot explain American policy to you," he said. "That would be French arrogance and I am not someone who is arrogant. But I think that the Americans must get used to the fact that Europe is going to act. And in this case, without the United States we run the risk of failure." ...

Instead of embracing the initiative, Mr. Bush began his second term with a sweeping pledge to defend the United States and protect its friends "by force of arms if necessary" and a refusal to rule out military action against Iran.

In her Senate confirmation hearings as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice did not say no when asked whether the goal of the United States was to replace the Islamic Republic in Iran.

Vice President Dick Cheney, too, has put Iran at the "top of the list" of the world's trouble spots and suggested that Israel might attack Iran militarily because of its nuclear program. ...

At one point in her confirmation hearings, Ms. Rice suggested that the United States implicitly supported the European negotiating approach, saying the Bush administration is "trying to see" if it will produce concrete results, though she and other officials in Washington have bluntly told the Europeans they are skeptical.

Ms. Rice also repeated a threat to ask the Security Council for censure or possible sanctions against Iran, and specified that even a complete halt to Iran's nuclear and missile programs would not translate into American support for a policy of engagement and incentives.

There were "other problems" that precluded such an approach: "terrorism, our past, their human rights record," she said. ...

The Europeans have made the determination that any negotiation that slows and perhaps eventually halts Iran's nuclear program is better than the alternatives proposed by the United States.

"Is this approach free of risks? No," said Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, in a telephone interview. "Does it have a guarantee of success? No. But at this point in time it is the only game in town, no doubt about that. The other options are worse." ...

All of Iran's European negotiating partners have argued that one of the best ways to promote democracy would be to force more transparency into Iran's economy. That could help break the stranglehold of the vast system of government-protected "foundations," most of them the private fiefs of powerful clerics, European officials said.

"You cannot just ask Iran to renounce its nuclear program," said Mr. Barnier. "You have to allow it to be a positive actor, to enter in this constructive logic of stability. It's a 'win-win' deal that we have proposed."

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