Europa: Mao's 'Fight Talk' Strategy is a Winning One for Iran

Richard Bernstein, The New York Times:

Judging from the statements at last week's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, an international consensus is growing over the necessity to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Or at least the three European Union countries handling the matter, with the support of the United States, say they need "the widest possible international agreement on how to deal with this file," as Britain's representative, Peter Jenkins put it. And to get that, attention is now focusing on giving the heretofore uncooperative Russians a major role.

The next phase in this saga is expected to center on talks based on what are called "the Russian ideas," and, if those talks don't succeed, the chances seem far stronger than before that, with critical Russian support, Iran's activities would at last be reported to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Not lost in all this is an interesting development in trans-Atlantic relations. Gone are the days when the United States reflexively repudiated the European preference for patient negotiation over direct action, and searched high and low for somebody else to run the IAEA besides its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. The United States and Europe speak with an indistinguishable voice on Iran these days, and ElBaradei and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seem to have cordial relations and common understandings.

Why then, if all is going so well, does Iran seem, slowly, to be winning the game? Why do the chances that Iran will somehow be persuaded, or forced, to give up its nuclear ambitions seem so slim?

In the years right after World War II, when the United States was striving to negotiate a deal between the Nationalist government of China and the insurrection, the Communist leader Mao Zedong formulated the strategy known as "fight fight talk talk." It was a brilliant success.

The idea was that even as you seek opportunities to make gains on the battlefield, to expand your territory and gain in strength, you keep on negotiating even though you have no interest in a compromise solution and intend to win complete victory. The talk-talk part of the strategy gives mediators the sense that they are doing something useful, while, by holding theoretically to the possibility of a negotiated solution, you deter great- power military intervention in support of your adversary. Iran seems to be following a similar strategy, and it has been working for the simple reason that the European/American plan provides no way effectively to counter it.

Part of the reason the United States has signed on to the European approach in the first place is an awareness that there is no very good military option on Iran, Especially with American forces so thoroughly bogged down in Iraq, which was vastly "easier' as a military target than bigger, more heavily defended Iran would be. READ MORE

Even the country that would most immediately be affected by an Iranian nuclear program, Israel, accepts the European approach, at least in this phase of the matter. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel "cannot accept a situation in which Iran would be in possession of nuclear weapons," but he also said that Israel is not spearheading any campaign," even as Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz endorsed what he called "the diplomatic track" as "the correct way to deal with the Iranian nuclear policies."

The Europeans are right, in other words, but the very reason they are right - that there is no feasible alternative to negotiations - is the reason Iran in the end will probably become a nuclear weapons power, because if there is no alternative to a diplomatic solution, then diplomacy is much less likely to work.

Certainly in recent weeks Iran has scored a considerable gain via a combination of fighting and talking. Even as negotiations were under way last summer, the Iranians suddenly announced that they were resuming uranium conversion at their nuclear installation in Isfahan.

The Europeans rightly considered this an abrogation of the deal struck in Paris some months earlier by which the Iranians would suspend all conversion and enrichment of uranium as long as the talks were going on. The Europeans, having made a generous offer of economic benefits if Iran gave up its nuclear activities, broke off the talks, angrily accusing the Iranians of bad faith and unreasonableness and threatened the dreaded report to the Security Council, which Iran certainly would like to avoid.

The Iranians' point in this - and it is a point that scores heavily with China and the members of the nonaligned movement, whose support would be necessary to bring the file to the United Nations - they have a legal right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to produce nuclear fuel for civilian purposes (they avow no military intent), and just to be sure that the world got this point, they began to convert a new batch of uranium in Isfahan just a few days before the atomic watchdog agency's meeting in Vienna last week. This was fight fight.

What was the European/American response? It was to agree to hold off on a move to the Security Council and to give some new ideas a chance. They would concede to Iran what the United States and the EU-3 said they would never concede: the right to convert uranium. In exchange, it is hoped, the Iranians will agree that the next step in the nuclear fuel cycle, the enrichment of uranium into a form that can be used only in a power plant, would be handled in Russia, and the product re-exported to Iran, so Iran would gain no independent enrichment capability of its own.

"The red line would be moved from under conversion at the facility at Isfahan to just above that facility and below enrichment," a diplomat close to the UN nuclear agency said. "The key," the diplomat continued, "is that Iran is not being asked to give up the rights that they do have in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."

But what if the diplomatic efforts to get the Iranians to accept the new red line fail, and Iran has already made clear that it has the same right to enrichment as it does to conversion?

The European/American answer to that question is that, at long last, Iran would be hauled before the Security Council where, assuming that Russia agrees and China goes along, some sanctions would be enacted. But the Europeans have been saying all along that, in any case, sanctions by themselves won't stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. That's been one of their main arguments for sticking with the current negotiations.

Again, the Europeans are right. The Security Council is a weak alternative, and there's no realistic military option either - partly because of the drain on U.S. resources committed in Iraq and partly because of the logistical complexity of mounting any action, even by air, against Iran. But if that is true, then it would also seem true that, barring a change in regime or a change of heart in Iran (and a change of regime or heart is what the Europeans and Americans are really hoping for) a few more years of talk talk fight fight and the Islamic Republic is going to have the bomb.

E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com