Page 2 of 2 US dangles tempting bait for
Iran By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
press
being on a 20-day vacation, it is difficult to
gauge the dominant sentiments in Iran.
A
report from the Christian Science Monitor cites a
divergence in Iran's streets over the crisis with
Britain, offering a glimpse of viewpoints. Many
Iranians support the government's action and are
at the same time apprehensive about the
backlashes, particularly on the economic front.
This in light of the European Union's solid
backing of London and a dire warning of taking
further action. A general
war-weariness among Iranians is also discernable
that factors in the government's response,
articulated by Larijani and Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki.
At the same time, Iran
sees itself encircled by US power, and there is a
siege mentality in reaction to the "psychological
warfare" reflected in the daily bombardment of
news regarding an impending US strike on Iran. Per
a report in the Jerusalem Post, Russian military
leaders have even pinpointed the exact date: Good
Friday, April 6.
Many political analysts
in Iran are not particularly sold to this kind of
news and take it with a pinch of salt, some even
dismissing the possibility of US military action
against Iran in the foreseeable future. This is
not universally shared by government policymakers,
however, and pronouncements by Iran's military
leaders indicate a readiness for defense against
imminent attack.
So, in this volatile
environment, if the United States' intentions
toward Iran are non-antagonistic, as officially
claimed, then the release of the Iranian diplomat
must be backed by words of assurance by
Washington. It must state that this is not a
clever trap and the US is, in fact, eager to see
an amicable, face-saving exit by both Iran and
Britain in the crisis over the sailors.
The absence of such explicit signals
simply reinforces the plethora of Iran conspiracy
theorists who see the hidden hands of Vice
President Dick Cheney, National Security Council
staff and White House adviser Elliott Abrams more
than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her
Iran officer, Nicholas Burns, in the shrewd move
in Baghdad.
The chances are the US
government is equally riveted by a spirited debate
about the whole thing, with one faction in the
State Department pushing for the path of dialogue
and reconciliation and another for the exact
opposite, and both wanting to use the Iran-British
crisis to their advantage. For its turn, Tehran
can do a lot to assist the moderate US faction
that looks forward to the security summit in
Istanbul as a further ice-breaker.
Should
the release of the British sailors be delayed
further, then the Istanbul summit can conceivably
be used by both sides to use the intervention of
the Iraqis, the Turks and so on for a mutually
satisfactory settlement of the dispute.
Simultaneously, Iran could release the
sailors on "bail" and put them in the custody of
the British Embassy in Tehran, following the
guidelines of international conventions on the
laws of the sea.
An ideal alternative,
however, is an immediate end to this controversy
in which the sailors would be freed after an
explicit pledge by the British government not to
trespass into Iranian territory. That is not such
a high price to pay for a peaceful settlement of a
potentially dangerous crisis with so many trigger
points, and it can be hoped that the logic of
crisis prevention will prevail in both Tehran and
London before it is too late.
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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