Tag: Iran
A helpful reminder of the Ottoman Empire
Why is this helpful? Because it illustrates how many of today’s enduring conflicts–not only those termed “Middle Eastern”–are rooted in the Ottoman Empire and its immediate neighborhood: Bosnia, Kosovo, Greece/Turkey, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Israel/Arabs (Palestine, Syria, Lebanon), Iraq, Iraq/Iran, Shia (Iran)/Sunni (Saudi Arabia, Egypt), North/South Sudan, Yemen.
Ottoman success in managing the many ethnic and sectarian groups inhabiting the Empire, without imposing conformity to a single identity (and without providing equal rights) has left the 21st century with problems it finds hard to understand, never mind resolve.
In much of the former Ottoman Empire, many people refuse to be labeled a “minority” just because their numbers are fewer than other groups, states are regarded as formed by ethnic groups rather than by individuals, individual rights are often less important than group rights and being “outvoted” is undemocratic.
A Croat leader in Bosnia told me 15 years ago that one thing that would never work there was “one man, one vote.” It just wasn’t their way of doing things. For a decision to be valid, a majority of each ethnic group was needed , not a majority of the population as a whole.
In a society of this sort, a boycott by one ethnic group is regarded as invalidating a decision made by the majority: the Serbs thought their boycott of the Bosnia independence referendum should have invalidated it, but the European Union had imposed a 50 per cent plus one standard. There lie the origins of war.
The question of whether Israel is a Jewish state is rooted in the same thinking that defined Yugoslavia as the kingdom of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and it bears a family resemblance to the thinking behind “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Albania.” If it is the ethnic group that forms the state, why should there be more than one state in which that ethnic group lives?
Ours is a state (yes, that is the proper term for what we insist on calling the Federal Government) built on a concept of individual rights, equal for all. The concept challenges American imaginations from time to time: certainly it did when Truman overcame strong resistance to integrate the US Army, and it is reaching the limits of John McCain’s imagination in the debate over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the march of American history is clearly in the direction of equal individual rights.
That is a direction many former Ottoman territories find it difficult to take, because some groups have more substantial rights than others; even when the groups’ rights are equal, they can veto each other. A lot of the state-building challenge in those areas arises from this fundamental difference.
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The Iranian enrichment gambit gets more explicit
This is from a BBC interview, as reported by Foreign Policy: Hillary Clinton says
We’ve told them that they are entitled to the peaceful use of civil nuclear energy, but they haven’t yet restored the confidence of the international community to the extent where the international community would feel comfortable allowing them to enrich. They can enrich uranium at some future date once they have demonstrated that they can do so in a responsible manner in accordance with international obligations.
In diplospeak, she is clearly floating the idea that there might be a deal if Iran will agree not to enrich too much. This is published under a headline that reads Clinton on Iran: The regime is on the ropes. Nice cover for a soft message to Tehran.
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Can the Lady deliver?
Simon Henderson at the Washington Institute has a sharper eye than I do, as he detected this from SecState Clinton this week: “Iran is entitled to the use of civil nuclear power for peaceful purposes.” In his well-crafted scenesetter, Simon bemoans that “this formulation could allow Iran to continue enriching uranium.”
I doubt we are going to be able to stop that. The best we can hope for is to limit the degree of enrichment and amount of material.
Monday’s P5+1 meeting in Geneva is a big test for the EU. If Lady Ashton can deliver, Brussels will gain serious credibility.
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Pressure and engagement go together in dealing with Tehran
I’ve been hesitating to comment on what the diploleaks tell us about Iran, or more accurately about U.S. efforts to block Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons.
But Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett have provoked me into it. They essentially want engagement without pressure. This is the flip side of the neoconservative approach, which is pressure without engagement. Both are wrong.
We can argue about the right proportions, but Matt Duss is correct in concluding that the leaked cables tell us there really is a concerted diplomatic effort underway, one that depends both on pressure and ultimately on willingness to engage. The question is whether targeted assassinations are part of the pressure, or an independent, parallel effort by Israel. Hard to believe there is not a wink and a nod from Washington. Certainly Arab leaders are unlikely to protest much, given what they had to say about Iran and nuclear weapons in the leaked cables.
The engagement part will have its next moment Monday in Geneva, when and where the P5 plus Germany, led by the EU’s Catherine Ashton, will meet with Iran. It seems unlikely in the current atmosphere, but I can’t help but wonder if Lady Ashton will be empowered to open up the possibility that Iran might get acknowledgment of its “right” to enrichment while agreeing to limit its quantity and extent.
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The week the world slowed down
Or was it just me? After a week of over-indulging, and 10 hours of driving yesterday, I needed an update. So here is the exercise, intended to get us back into form for the race to December 25:
- Sudan: registration for the January 9 referendum on South Sudan independence extended to December 8; still no agreement(s) on Abyei.
- Iraq: on November 25 (while we were stuffing down turkey) President Talabani formally asked Nouri al Maliki to form a government–he’s got 30 days.
- Afghanistan: warrants issued to arrest election officials who disqualified candidates President Karzai wanted to see elected in the September 18 poll.
- Palestine/Israel: still hung up on the settlement freeze, so far as I can tell. Someone correct me if I am wrong!
- Koreas: the U.S. and South Korea went ahead with naval exercises, China is calling for six-party talks and North Korea continues to sound belligerent.
- Iran: sounding more defensive than belligerent, but offering the Lebanese Army (and Hizbollah) assistance and still thinking about executing a woman for adultery.
- Lebanon: bracing for the Special Tribunal verdict (still), with PM Hariri reaching out to Tehran to cushion the impact.
- Egypt: voting today, after crackdowns and a severe tilt of the playing field towards President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.
- Balkans: Kosovo getting ready to vote for parliament December 12.
I won’t say it was the week the earth stood still, but I don’t feel I missed a whole lot. One more thing to be thankful for. Enlighten me if you disagree!
P.S. In case you were wondering about Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi is still moving cautiously.
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An Iranian enrichment gambit
If New START has fallen into the abyss of partisan politics within the U.S., the issue of Iran’s effort to achieve nuclear weapons capability has fallen into the abyss of U.S.-Iranian relations, which seem capable of oscillating only between bad and worse, with an occasional move towards catastrophic. The Stimson Center and USIP have attempted to fish it out with a study group report advocating “strategic engagement.”
The approach is sagacious: while discounting the likelihood of any regime change stemming from the Green Movement in the near future, the expert group focuses on what can be done to strengthen those conservatives with reason to regret international sanctions and to want them ended, at the expense of hardliners who want nuclear weapons at any cost and have no interest in normalizing relations with the U.S. and the rest of the world. It rightly sees the tightening of sanctions as part of strategic engagement.
The group wants the U.S. (and the rest of the world) to acknowledge Iranian rights to enrichment, in the hope that doing so will enable an agreement that limits the degree and/or quantity of enrichment, hoping even for a phase-out. Here is the key sentence from the report: “Washington should signal its clear—if also clearly conditional—acceptance of Iran’s enrichment rights, providing that Tehran negotiates verifiable limits on the degree of enrichment and on the volume of enriched fuel stored in Iran.”
This is not a new idea, as a quick search reveals Matthew Bunn of Harvard put it out a year ago. Making a virtue of necessity is a tried and true approach in diplomacy. Iran is already enriching, why imagine you can stop it altogether?
It is easy to imagine how this idea will go over in some quarters, where even a substantial cut in Russian nuclear weapons is having a hard time getting a hearing. There are three rational criticisms likely: 1) Iran has lost its “right” to enrichment by violating its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), 2) what reason is there to believe Iran will agree to anything on enrichment once its right is acknowledged, however conditionally? 3) what would prevent Iran from reneging on the agreement and enriching beyond the specified limits, either overtly or covertly?
Iran appears to have agreed to restart nuclear talks December 5. Will the enrichment gambit be tested then?
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