Day: February 16, 2012
More thunder, no lightning
The UN General Assembly today passed a resolution supporting the Arab League plan for Syria, which would have Bashar al Assad step aside from his presidency and turn over power to his vice president, who would form a broad coalition government and initiate a democratic transition. The vote was 137 to 12, which is pretty lopsided even in the UNGA, where lopsided votes are common.
The opponents were: Belarus, Bolivia, China, Cuba, DPRK, Ecuador, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. This is a crew that needs a name: something like the antidemocrats, but snappier.
So what practical effect will this have? Hard to say, but the legal effect is nil. UNGA resolutions are like preseason football: the games may be well played and show off talent, but they have no direct impact on the standings. Only UN Security Council resolutions have legal effect.
But legal effect isn’t everything and doesn’t guarantee implementation either. The important thing is that the “international community” has made an appropriate noise in response to Bashar al Assad’s military assault on Syria’s citizens. This will weaken Bashar’s position both internationally and within Syria and give inspiration to his opponents, who will also bemoan international community ineffectiveness.
The real question is what should be done now. Some will want to resort to military intervention or arming the Syrian Free Army. This is a serious error in my book. The worst outcome for the U.S. is a prolonged civil war in Syria, which could have a destabilizing impact on Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and more widely. “Safe areas” and “humanitarian corridors” would, in the absence of Syrian government cooperation, require major military intervention.
As Mona Yacoubian, Randa Slim and Aram Nerguizian were at pains to make clear this morning at a Stimson/Middle East Institute Event, there are diplomatic and political courses of action that still need to be played out:
- The U.S. should lead on getting a “Friends of Syria” group up and running;
- The Arab League and Turkey should lead on pressing the Syrian opposition to unify;
- Sanctions implementation needs to be tightened, especially by the Arab League;
- The U.S. and Turkey need to court Russian support, on grounds that their interests require a good relationship with whatever comes after Bashar;
- The Syrian opposition has to work on peeling away Sunni and Christian merchant, as well as military, support for the regime.
As Randa Slim noted, what helps the regime is fear of instability on the one hand and Islamism on the other. These fears would get worse with military intervention, not better. We need more thunder, no lightning.
PS: Somehow this “Dancing and chanting around an independence flag in Qudaysa, Damascus” tweeted by @LeShaque and retweeted by Robert Mackey grabs me this morning. It is a lot more expressive than the important, if dull, session of the UNGA yesterday and reminds us of what the resolution is really about:
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Hard choices
My friends at Reuters published today my reaction to Dennis Ross’ New York Times piece yesterday on negotiating with Iran under the heading “What does Iran want?”:
Dennis Ross, until recently in charge of Iran in the Obama White House, has outlined why he thinks strengthened sanctions have created an environment in which diplomacy may now work to block Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons. At the same time, it is being reported that Iran has finally responded to a European Union letter requiring that renewed talks focus specifically on ensuring that the Iranian nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.
These are important developments, but they leave out half the equation. What can Iran hope to get from nuclear talks with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China — plus Germany? Iran will certainly seek relief from sanctions, which have become truly punishing. But they will want more.
It is clear that Tehran’s first priority is an end to American efforts at regime change. This is not an issue Americans know or think much about, but it obsesses the Iranians. They believe that Washington has tried to bring about regime change in Tehran for decades. Iranian officials can entertain you for hours with stories about American (and Israeli) assistance to Azeri, Baloch and Kurdish rebels. The Arab Spring uprisings took their inspiration in part from Iran’s own “Green Movement,” which protested fraud in the 2009 presidential elections before being brutally repressed. While some in Congress view President Obama as insufficiently supportive of the Greens, the regime in Tehran thought the Americans were behind the whole movement.
The nuclear program, in addition to beefing up Iran’s military muscle and regional prestige, is also intended to end attempts at regime change, as it is thought in Tehran that the U.S. will not attack a nuclear weapons state for fear of the consequences. To those looking for it, there is ample supporting evidence: Witness the contrast between North Korea, a severely repressive regime that has obtained nuclear weapons, and Libya, which gave up its nuclear efforts and suffered a NATO air war that brought about regime change.
So the question becomes this: will the Americans be prepared to take regime change off the table if the Iranians are prepared to give ironclad and verifiable assurances that their nuclear program is entirely peaceful? The answer to that question is not obvious. While it is barely possible to picture Washington recognizing Tehran and re-establishing diplomatic relations after a 32-year hiatus, it is far harder to picture a bilateral agreement promising mutual noninterference in internal affairs. Certainly an agreement of that sort would not find ready approval in Congress.
Another key question is whether the U.S. is prepared to accept Iran holding on to sensitive nuclear technology, in particular, uranium enrichment, even if Tehran can use that technology only under tight international controls. Many countries have this arrangement: No one took uranium enrichment or reprocessing technology away from Argentina and Brazil when they mutually agreed to back off the development of nuclear weapons. Japan, South Korea, Sweden and many others are presumably no more than a couple of years (and probably far less) away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
Iran, however, is not Sweden. It isn’t even North Korea, a country far more readily sanctioned and bribed back into line and unable to produce more than a few relatively primitive atomic bombs. Iran, once it has the capacity to enrich uranium to bomb grade (90 percent or more), will be no more than a few years from getting an arsenal of nuclear weapons. In the meanwhile, it will presumably continue to develop and deploy longer-range missiles that could target Israel and Europe, if not the U.S. Can the United States, and Israel, live with that short a fuse?
The hard choices in dealing with Iran on nuclear issues are not only up to the Iranians. There are hard choices for the U.S. as well.
P.S. Anyone who doubt that the U.S. will have trouble signing on to a diplomatic solution should read this from Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post.
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