A deal not to make a deal?

Eric Shu, jack of all trades around peacefare.net, offers another write-up, this time of Monday’s Carnegie Endowment event on Negotiating with Iran: Istanbul and Its Aftermath.  Eric becomes available next month when his Middle East Institute internship expires.  Anyone out there need a fine Mandarin-speaking assistant with an excellent Brown education?

Over the weekend of April 14-15, Istanbul hosted negotiations between the P5+1 (United States, China, Russia, France, Britain, and Germany) and Iran, the first official meeting since the talks broke down in January 2011.  Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief and lead representative of the P5+1, stated afterwards that the talks were “constructive and useful.” No concrete agreements were reached other than to schedule another meeting on May 23 in Baghdad.

What does this mean for the players involved? Is this a success or another ploy by Iran to drag out the negotiations, giving itself more time to enrich uranium?

At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Monday, April 16, Karim Sadjadpour, associate at Carnegie and author of Reading Khamenei, moderated a discussion that focused on the nuclear negotiations with Iran and the political ramifications of the meeting.

Vali Nasr, newly appointed Dean of JHU-SAIS and former senior advisor in the State Department, began the discussion with an argument for “maintaining the status quo.” He viewed negotiations with Iran as an issue that the Obama Administration should not deal with until after the November elections. Obama’s supposedly off-mic comment to Medvedev last month regarding missiles is also relevant here: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Nasr then pointed out that it would be difficult to justify a war with Iran, especially during this election season. He closed his opening remarks with a question: can they make a deal about not making a deal?

Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and former State Department official, provided a similar evaluation of the recent negotiations. Takeyh argued that inconclusive diplomacy is beneficial as it provides space for diplomatic conversations to continue. In this case, the talks led to a scheduled meeting at the end of May for more serious negotiations. Takeyh also pointed to the difficulty Iran has in giving up its nuclear weapons aspirations. As a country with multiple adversaries in the region, it is in its own strategic interests to acquire these nuclear weapons capabilities.

As the director of the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie, George Perkovich focused his statements on Iran’s nuclear program. He opened with a description of how Iran pursued multiple pathways to developing the capacities needed for a nuclear program, rather than committing at the start for a weapons program.  Perkovich also pointed out that Ayatollah Khamenei recently stated that “the Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons” and considers it a “big sin.”  Regardless of how much truth is in the statement, it provides space for a negotiated compromise.

At the end of the discussion, the panelists were asked for historical templates that might be applicable to Iran. The speakers all mentioned North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, but agreed that historical frameworks were unlikely to work. The context, leaders, and factors of each situation are different.  Deals and negotiations are “living organisms.”

The Istanbul meeting was essentially a talk about talks. The speakers expect the status quo to hold through November, but the Baghdad meeting in May provides some possibility for positive developments.