Giving pause

Nuclear talks in Geneva with Iran ended without an agreement and will reconvene November 20.  The P5+1 (that’s US, UK, France, China, Russia+Germany) are mostly exuding confidence that an agreement can be reached.  The talks did not break down, they paused.  What blocked agreement?  Reuters reports:

Diplomats said the main stumbling blocks included the status of Iran’s Arak heavy-water reactor of potential use in making bomb-grade plutonium, the fate of Iran’s stockpile of higher-enriched uranium – both acute issues for France – and the extent of relief from trade sanctions demanded by Tehran.

The first two are critical issues for the P5+1.  Their purpose is to prevent Iran from accumulating all the material (either highly enriched uranium or plutonium) it needs for a quick or undetected sprint to build nuclear weapons.  The third is Iran’s main concern.  It desperately needs sanctions relief for its battered economy.

Criticizing from the sidelines is Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who wants Iran’s ability to produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium destroyed completely and sanctions lifted only when that ambition is fulfilled.  His hostility to an agreement that delivers anything less appears to have motivated France’s hard line in Geneva.  While the press is treating this intransigence as a surprise, French President Francois Hollande is on the record saying:

We must be intransigent when it comes to Iran, whose nuclear program is a danger to Israel and world peace.

The nuclear P5+1 negotiation with Iran is looking increasingly like a negotiation between Israel and Iran, mediated by the P5+1.

So the key question now will be “what are Iran’s and Israel’s best alternatives to a negotiated agreement?”   That’s called BATNA in conflict resolution parlance.  It determines how much “leverage” each side has.  If neither one can do better by walking away, we can expect white smoke November 20.  If one or the other concludes that it can do better in achieving its aims by other means, there is likely to be no agreement.

For Israel, the alternative to an agreement is war.  Either it will have to conduct a difficult raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own, or it will have to convince the US to do it.  The US isn’t likely to be so inclined if it perceives Israel as blocking a decent agreement.  President Obama clearly prefers to do what he can to pause the Iranian nuclear program now, in hopes of achieving a more permanent agreement within the next six months or so.  If Israel acts on its own, it should expect Iran to respond vigorously.  Netanyahu, who talks a hard line, has not in the past taken Israel to war.  Doing so now would be a big gamble, one inconsistent with his past performance.

For Iran, no agreement means not only war with Israel but also no sanctions relief.  President Rouhani, who was elected in part because of his linked promises of better relations with the rest of the world and an improved economy, would have to take Iran down the road to further isolation and hardship.  This would be out of character for him and strengthen his domestic opposition.  He has been inclined toward moderation and compromise, claiming that Iran has no intention of building nuclear weapons.  He has avoided the belligerence of his predecessor.  Going to war with Israel now would be an enormous strain on Iran, which is already heavily engaged militarily in Syria.

A dispassionate analysis thus suggests that both Iran and Israel have reason to avoid war.  But the issue will not be decided by dispassionate analysis.  Rouhani’s negotiators will return to an Iran where hardliners are trying to reassert themselves.  America’s will return to Congressional hardliners unwilling to lift sanctions and concerned about any agreement that Israel finds unacceptable.  The next ten days will see furious lobbying in both Tehran and Washington, as well as in European capitals.

The nuclear talks with Iran have been an exclusively governments-to-government affair.  While Congress has held hearings, there has been little or no effort on the American side to engage the broader public.  Only President Rouhani’s September visit to the UN generated some public interest.  There are a few Track 2 conversations between American and Iranian non-official scholars and former officials, but their reach into society on both sides is limited.  The same is true in all of the countries involved, so far as I can tell.  Tehran has tried to temper anti-American sentiment, but there has been no serious engagement of its citizenry.  After all, if your republic is one run by sage ayatollahs, what can the public possibly contribute?  Ironically, the broadest exchanges with Iran are by Israel, which houses close to 50,000 Iranian Jews.

Failure to produce an agreement in ten days time will make war far more likely, but not inevitable.  Tehran has been savvy about unilateral efforts to relieve anxiety about its nuclear program.  It is cooperating these days with the International Atomic Energy Agency and has converted some of its 20% enriched uranium to metallic form, which would have to be reconverted to gas for further enrichment.  It could delay commissioning of its plutonium-producing reactor.  Such unilateral actions are not a good substitute for an agreement, but they could conceivably suffice while a more permanent accord is negotiated.