What doesn’t happen counts

Sometimes what matters in diplomacy is what doesn’t happen.  That was certainly the case with Saturday’s defeat of the Arab League effort to get the UN Security Council to approve its plan for Bashar al Assad to begin a transition in Syria.  Carne Ross, Independent Diplomat’s chief, suggested in a tweet that it was a non-event:

But in end it was non-event – no resolutn, just reaffirmation of division. Much talk; Effect on the ground, sadly, nil.

Far from it:  the Syrian regime has taken it for what it was:  a sign that the international community is not united in asking him to step down and he can therefore proceed for the moment to try to finish off his opposition using military force. The residents of Homs know what I mean.

The notion, purveyed most recently by Senator Lieberman, that Bashar al Assad’s end is “inevitable” is comprehensible only if you understand the peculiar American meaning of that word.  Most dictionaries think it means that something will happen no matter what.  But in the American diplomatic lexicon it means that we have to do something to make it happen.  And Lieberman clearly intended the second meaning, as he immediately began talking about assistance to the Free Syria Army.  Secreteary of State Clinton has been less clear, but she is talking about forming a multilateral contact group for support to the Syrian opposition.  If the failure of the UNSC resolution triggers an intensified crackdown and military assistance to the Free Syria Army, it will certainly be an important event in the Syrian uprising.

Something else hasn’t happened lately, but no one has noticed:  the P3 plus 1 (US, UK, France and Germany) meeting with Iran long rumored to take place in Turkey in late January seems not to have occurred, or if it did happen some place else no one reported it.  This may be even more important than the non-resolution on Syria of the Security Council, but it is hard to know how to interpret it.  President Obama in his Super Bowl interview yesterday seemed almost nonchalant in saying that Iran has to make it clear that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.  According to press reports of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency visit to Tehran, this they have not done, but another visit is scheduled for this month.

There was of course an implied “or else” to what the President said.  He made it clear the military option is still on the table.  But while sounding belligerent for the domestic American audience, it seems to me he was also offering an olive branch to the Iranians, essentially saying that they can keep their uranium enrichment and other technology so long as the world can reliably verify that they are not using it for weapons purposes.  This is the deal many other countries have:  anyone who thinks Sweden, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Argentina and a couple of dozen others don’t have the technology they require to build nuclear weapons within a year or two is living in a different world from mine.

The problem of course is that Iran is not one of those relatively reliable countries.  There is ample evidence that it has begun to do high explosives research that is only useful in the context of a nuclear weapons program.  If we get to summer without a clear and verifiable commitment on Iran’s part, that will be another non-event that matters.  By then, talk of an Israeli attack will have quieted.  That will be the clear signal that it is imminent.  It’s not only what isn’t done that matters, it’s also what isn’t said.