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2 Iran ahead of the game - for
now By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
sailors, the EU may follow suit and
penalize Iran where it hurts most - on the trade
and economic front.
Gains and losses
for Iran According to an Iranian political
analyst seasoned in "threat analysis", Iran's
ability to play hardball with Britain serves the
national interest at a time when Western powers
manipulate the
Middle
East landscape almost at will. "Iran is sending a
clear message that the 'buck stops here'," he told
the author.
Apparently, the message is not
lost on Iran's neighbors, and at the opening
ceremony of an Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi King
Abdullah warned "foreign powers" to stop meddling
in the affairs of the region, since the days when
they could impose their wills on the people of the
region had passed.
Iranian Foreign
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was invited to the
Arab summit at the last moment and only after the
outbreak of the crisis over the British sailors.
In fact, on the eve of the summit, Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi declined to attend and sent a
message that he would refuse to participate in an
"anti-Iran" spectacle aimed at pitting "Sunnis
versus Shi'ites". Both Iranian and Arab papers
have reported on the recent meeting of US
officials with the intelligence chiefs of Egypt,
the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
over forming a new anti-Iran network.
Clearly, Tehran's row with London has had
immediate dividends with respect to Iran's
regional clout, causing pro-Iran sympathies in the
Arab world. Arabs now see in Iran's "heroic"
standing up to "Western imperialists" a source of
much-needed inspiration and hope, in contrast to
their own feckless leadership. "The Arabs of the
Persian Gulf are now less inclined to join the US
and Israel against Iran than they were a mere week
ago," a former Iranian diplomat told the author.
Rising oil prices (more than $65 a barrel)
due to the crisis represent yet another windfall
that compensates to some extent for the economic
losses caused by Europe's backlash. Iran's
"calculated escalation" has not only helped lift
nationalist spirits in Iran, it has also bridged
the gaps between the nuclear crisis and the Iraq
crisis. It has served as a sort of catalytic
convergence of what had hitherto been regarded as
discrete issues, serving notice on their
interconnections and thus putting a premium on the
omnibus of punitive measures against Iran.
Simultaneously, the combined US maneuvers
and London's fiery rhetoric against Iran have made
Moscow and Beijing realize the explosive nature of
the situation, inducing them to draw a red line on
their support for the United States' designs
against Iran.
Thus, in their joint
statement in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese President Hu Jintao warned the US against
making any military moves on Iran. The United
States' painstakingly assembled international
coalition against Iran at the United Nations has
now been put to severe new tests. It is far from
clear that, by the time the Security Council meets
again some two months from now to consider the
Iran nuclear crisis, the coalition will even be
intact.
On the negative side, Iran's
nuclear diplomacy may suffer as a result of the
current tussle with Britain, by alienating the EU
and thus depriving Iran of an important venue to
seek a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear
crisis.
Iran's preference is to re-engage
the EU in direct talks and by indirectly
convincing the US that it should give a nod to
another round of Iran-EU nuclear talks. This
strategy hinges, however, on Iran's ability to
nuance the dispute with London over the sailors in
a purely legal and procedural channel that would
somehow insulate its nuclear diplomacy (as much as
possible).
Whether or not this is likely
or, obversely, we will witness the unintended
consequences of a mini-crisis run wild after
Blair's threat, remains to be seen.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the
author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and
co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear
Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume
XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu.
He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential
latent", Harvard International Review, and is
author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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