Tag: United Nations
This John Kerry should have been president
Here is John Kerry today at the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Iran nuclear deal. I’ve added some related comments below.
Congressman Royce put his finger on a critical point: will lran in a permanent agreement be able to enrich? Kerry ducks, but the answer is yes, as the President said to the Saban Forum just the other day. There is simply no way to remove the knowledge of how to enrich uranium using centrifuges from Iranian minds. That is the price we have to pay for failure over the past ten years to stop Iran from acquiring enrichment technology. It will make no difference if ultimately we are able to get a permanent nuclear deal that verifiably and irreversibly limits enrichment to Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. Read more
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Fascinating but lopsided
Few think tanks can assemble the President of the United States, the Secretary of State and a Prime Minister (via video link) for a serious discussion of issues like the Iranian nuclear program, the Israel/Palestine peace process and the war in Syria. That’s what Brookings’ Saban Forum did this weekend. Even more impressive is that they said interesting things. As the Israeli daily Haaretz noted:
…if you piece together the details and principles that were set forth matter-of-factly by Obama and much more forcefully by Kerry, and if you mix in a bit of reading between the lines, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in negotiating a “framework agreement” that will include elements of a final status agreement but will be carried out in stages.
And that there will be an interim period in which Israel maintains security control of some of the West Bank. And that the United States will play a major role in providing security along the border with Jordan. And that there will be a declaration of principles that will be based on various peace formulas discussed in the recent past, from the Clinton Parameters of 2000 and onwards.
And, most significantly, that Israel is well aware that the reference points for such a declaration will include the 1967 borders, a Palestinian presence in Jerusalem and a mutual recognition of each other’s “homeland.”
This is pretty hefty stuff. You wouldn’t want to try to cash the check written on this account yet, but you would be wise to hold on to it. Read more
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The other shoe
I just caught wind this morning of the right-wing angst about the State Department’s decision to move the US Embassy to the Vatican into the same complex with the US Embassy to Italy, albeit with a separate entrance. Maybe the perspective of a former deputy chief of mission (DCM) and charge’ d’affaires at the embassy to Italy will enlighten, or more likely stir up even more protest.
I was DCM at the embassy to Italy 1990-93. The embassy to the Vatican had a separate ambassador, DCM, political officers and premises then, but it got its administrative services from the much larger and well-established embassy to Italy. The natural state of the relationship between the two embassies (as well as the mission to the UN organizations in Rome) was mildly contentious. The ambassador to the Vatican often felt ill-served and disrespected. He competed for Washington’s attention. The physical separation made things worse, not better, as it deprived the two embassies of casual daily interaction.
The DCMs of the three embassies, all then in separate premises, tried to meet regularly to sort things out. This was more useful than our ambassadors knew or cared. Most of what we talked about were the trivia of daily embassy existence, but sometimes more important things got done. The Vatican embassy DCM, Cameron Hume, and I decided that he would handle the then on-going negotiations to end the civil war in Mozambique, mediated by a Catholic organization known as the Community of Sant’Egidio. It was an Italian nongovernmental organization rather than a Vatican one, but I had my hands full with the first Gulf War and its aftermath so we happily decided Cameron would take on Mozambique. He did a great job supporting Sant’Egidio and wrote a fine book about it.
The notion that moving the Vatican embassy into fabulous quarters on the via Veneto constitutes a demotion in stature will amuse generations of diplomats. The Vatican itself is all right with the arrangement. The administrative and security savings are said to be only $1.4 million (per year of course), but that does not count sale of the Vatican embassy property, which according to its website the US government purchased in 1994. The savings in terms of staff time and energy will be far greater. The ambassadors might even learn to get along a bit better. But if they don’t the DCMs will try to smooth things out.
More interesting is the State Department’s assertion that staffing will not be reduced. It should be, at both the embassy to Italy and the embassy to the Vatican. These are vastly overstaffed for current requirements. Embassy Rome is back up to 800 people (about half Italian and half American). When I was DCM we cut it back to about 720, which was hard to do because there were 36 different agencies of the US government represented. Most of its 63 diplomats are servicing non-State agencies, who are there because of legacy and inertia rather than current requirements. I today think 50 Americans would suffice in Embassy Rome; there are 400 there today.
The Vatican embassy occasionally takes on enormous significance, but presidential visits and the like have always required the Rome embassy to pitch in. That will be much easier once the two embassies are co-located. Day to day business is usually pretty tame. The Vatican doesn’t do a lot of radical policy change and instant reaction. So the Vatican embassy could also do with a slimming down. Its staff of seven diplomats is more than twice what it was when I was DCM twenty years ago. Has the Vatican doubled its significance since then? Has technology improved productivity at all? We’ve got to take a much harder look at our diplomatic presence abroad and cut it back to more reasonable dimensions.
The move of the US embassy to the Vatican into glorious via Veneto quarters should be seen as a first step in the right direction. Listening to people who complained about inadequate security in Benghazi advocate keeping another facility separate from a well-protected embassy would be funny if it weren’t sad. I hope the administration has the gumption to drop the other shoe: cut staff back to what we really need.
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Video duelling
Secretary of State Kerry took to video yesterday to explain the nuclear deal with Iran. He does a good job, at a junior high school science level. He seems well-suited to the role.
Meanwhile Iran’s President Rouhani put out a “yes we can” version of his inaugural address:
I’m still looking for a subtitled version but Max Fisher has helpfully published some excerpts.
No one should conclude that the Iranians are better at video duelling. Their Foreign Minister’s soppy video last week was far from fully successful with the Western audience it was intended to impress, despite his many years living in the United States (he was Tehran’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations).
Video duelling is certainly preferable to the military kind, but the content quotient is so thin it is hard to imagine this Youtube diplomacy* will have much impact. The US Congress will continue to fulminate, but not pass new sanctions that go into effect before the six month duration of the deal wraps up next April. Hardliners in Tehran are more tight-lipped, as they need to be careful to toe the Supreme Leader’s line of support for the deal.
I continue to believe that we need a broader peace process between Iran and the United States, one that gets our parliaments, thinktanks, universities and media talking with each other. A more permanent agreement will have to allow Iran some nuclear technology but prevent a rapid breakout to nuclear weapons. It will also have to lift some sanctions (others in place because of human rights violations may need to stay in place). I don’t see how that can be done unless there is much broader mutual understanding, in addition to tight verification provisions. Videos are not going to suffice.
*Note that the State Department doesn’t actually post its video to Youtube, presumably to prevent it being tampered with.
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When it rains
When it rains, it pours, or so it seems with diplomatic initiatives. Yesterday it was the six-month Iran nuclear deal. Today it is the United Nations announcement of a date for Syria peace talks: January 22, in Geneva.
Neither one faces easy implementation, but the Syria peace talks are the dicier proposition. A lot of things are still unclear, including who is invited and how they will be represented. But Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was at pains to be clear about the purpose:
“full implementation of the Geneva Communique of 30 June 2012,” including the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers, including over military and security entities.
This is word for word what the Syrian Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (Etilaf) requires.
It is a tall order for Bashar al Asad, as it implies that the meeting aims to remove him from power, if not from Syria. Friends in Etilaf doubt the regime will show up for a meeting with this purpose. I think it more likely it will, but with people who cannot make serious commitments for Bashar al Asad, whatever their nominal titles. It is very unlikely that a one-day meeting is going to move us more than a millimeter closer to a negotiated settlement in Syria. I’ll be delighted if it does that much.
How, you should ask, are the two news items related? Did the nuclear deal pave the way for the Syria talks? Or vice versa, did some sort of unannounced side deal on Syria pave the way for the nuclear deal? Or are these two developments unrelated?
There are certainly some who have hoped that a nuclear deal would open the door to a broader rapprochement with Iran. That’s possible, but unlikely in such a short timeframe. Syria is no less vital to Iran and its “resistance axis” (which also includes Hizbollah and Hamas) today than it was before the nuclear agreement was reached.
It is far more likely that Iran and Russia, the Asad regime’s key allies, are hoping to find the Americans pliable on Syria and even willing to accept half a loaf now that they’ve had their top priority at least temporarily met. The Americans and their European partners (including Turkey) are worried about the rampant proliferation of extremists in Syria, reliant on Bashar al Asad to complete implementation of the chemical weapons agreement, and aware that things are going badly for the opposition military forces. It is not a good moment from Etilaf’s perspective to be negotiating an end to the regime.
There is, however, virtue in talking, if the UN can manage to get both the regime and opposition to Geneva with credible delegations. If, as I expect, the regime is nowhere near ready for Bashar al Asad to step aside, the obvious subject to discuss is the protection of civilians. The international norm against military attacks on civilian populations is at least as important as the international norm against the use of chemical weapons. It is violated in Syria on a daily basis.
The regime’s use of artillery, aircraft and missiles against civilian population centers should be ended. Moscow and Tehran have the leverage to make this happen. Without their financing and weapons supplies the regime wouldn’t last a month. Even if the Geneva meeting is unable to achieve its avowed purpose of creating a transitional government, it would be doing something worthwhile if it provides an opportunity for the Americans and Europeans to get Russia and Iran to pressure Asad to end attacks on civilians.
The Geneva meeting might also serve a useful purpose if it fails altogether, forcing the Americans to rethink strategy in Syria (as Fred Hof suggests). But if the Americans do nothing different after such a failure, the damage will be to the credibility of Etilaf and any other groups that go to Geneva. When it rains, it pours, especially on the heads of those who aren’t well supplied with protection.
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It’s the next six months that really count
If you are interested in today’s news about the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, read no further. You’d do better to go to the New York Times for Michael Gordon’s piece on the important details and David Sanger’s on the broader issues of significance and impact on international relations.
My interest is in the prospects beyond six months. Is this
- a step in the right direction towards a broader agreement that ends Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, or
- is it a relatively insignificant pause in a decades-long march that will necessarily end, even if Israel or the US intervenes militarily, in a nuclear-armed Iran?
I don’t think we know the answer to that question. What we need to think about is how to make sure the answer is 1. and not 2. What will Tehran more likely to stop and even roll back its nuclear progress? What would push Tehran in the wrong direction?
Sanctions
There is little doubt that sanctions have brought Iran to the negotiating table, and the propect of lifting them will be a major factor in Tehran’s thinking about whether to continue to pursue a potential nuclear weapons capability. So should we tighten them further, or not?
I depart from the Administration and more dovish colleagues on this question. If this is a six-month agreement, I think there is virtue in Congress making it clear what happens after the six months are up if the negotiations fail to produce a more permanent agreement. Passing sanctions now, with a six-month trigger that the President can renew once or twice if he certifies real progress is being made, makes negotiating sense.
The trouble of course is that the Iranians will see this as pointing a gun at them while they sit at the negotiating table (there was a poster plastered all over Tehran recently with just that picture). The majlis will likely respond with some six-month trigger of its own. I don’t see that as a terrible thing. There is something to be gained by being clear with each other about the consequences of a negotiating failure in the next stage.
There is also something to be gained from clarity about what happens if there is a permanent agreement. The Congress may not like it, but it will need to act to lift sanctions and enable Iran to return from the penalty box we have put it in.
Security
The international community’s failure to respond effectively to India, Pakistan and North Korea as they each went nuclear has given Tehran good reason to believe that we won’t do much if they follow in that path. Even bombing won’t do much more than postpone what it at the same time make inevitable. For understandable and good reasons, we have no record of attacking a regime that succeeds in making nuclear weapons.
So somehow the non-nuclear path has to be made to look at least as secure for Tehran’s rulers as the nuclear path. That’s distasteful, but necessary. President Obama has already gone a long way in this direction by eschewing in his General Assembly speech last fall any intention of pursuing regime change in Iran. If Iran wants more than that, it will need to end the tense relationship with the U.S. it has cultivated and enjoyed for more than 30 years. And we will need to do likewise, reducing the threat of military action.
Rapprochement
That’s what diplomats mean when they talk about rapprochement. No one snuggles with someone they don’t trust. We don’t trust Iran. They don’t trust us. That makes snuggling dangerous.
Building trust is something that requires a far broader effort than what has been going on between us in Geneva in the last month or so. The Iranians understand that. Witness their Foriegn Minister’s unsuccessful Youtube video. We do the same stuff: our virtual embassy has been up and running for years, with little detectable effect on the Iranian leadership.
Trust requires personal contact. Apart from President Rouhani’s fall visit and the Geneva meetings, there is precious little other than the nuclear negotiations themselves. The various Track 2 dialogues (those are unofficial meetings to discuss substantial isses) have been useful, but their reach into Iranian and American society is limited. We need far broader exchanges to build trust: between universities, thinktanks, parliaments, research centers. That is going to take a long time, as it did with the Soviet Union and with China.
Verification
In the meanwhile, we need verification. Even if we decide in favor of rapprochement, we will want to be morally certain that Iran is not violating a permanent nuclear agreement behind our backs. There is good reason to believe that they conducted some nuclear weapons research and development in the past. They have not owned up to that or allowed verification at key sites. This makes trust harder than it would be otherwise, and verification all the more necessary.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been good at verification in the past, and Iran has reached agreement with it on important issues. The IAEA will be the centerpiece of any verification effort. But neither the Americans nor the Israelis will be satisfied with only the IAEA. They will maintain their own national means for verification, but Israel (which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty) will refuse the IAEA access to its own nuclear facilities. NPT parties and non-parties are not equal. Verification will be lop-sided, and therefore difficult to arrange with Tehran, which is highly sensitive to any sign of “disrespect.”
Bottom line
The next six months are more important to resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue than the last six. Getting a permanent nuclear agreement will require progress on sanctions, security, overall rapprochement, and verification that will not be easy.
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