I first read about this last week in a Time article about Obama's diplomacy efforts. It looks like Iran is ready to do a deal that would have them send all or most of their nuclear stockpile to Russia for further enrichment to be used in their medical research reactor. This uranium would be very difficult to weaponize.
Everyone gets to claim a political victory. Ahmadinejad gets to claim that he won the recognized right to produce uranium domestically, and that the West is going to enrich it for them. And Obama (as well as the UN) gets to claim credit for diplomatic deals that remove Iran's stockpile.
I wonder how the Republicans will react to this.
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I think they'll react calmly and reasonably, noting that this move will make America much safer, and accepting that Obama's background and experience helped make this deal happen.
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I'm pretty cynical about this. I hope the Iranians hold to this deal, but I don't expect them to be without nuclear weapons forever or even in the near future.
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Peter Feaver has a has a stringofposts over at Foreign Policy where he argues for a position of unified sanctions before negotiation, making real compromise more imperative for Iran. His post today is a reaction to the Iranian's counter proposal (counter proposal in that it sets lower thresholds on the Iranians than does the P5+1 proposal). Feaver's post references another Republican reaction, an OpEd piece in the Post by Robert Kagan who was a foreign policy advisor to McCain. The gist of both Feaver and Kagan's reactions is that the Iranians are simply using negotiations to delay any impactful actions in the hope of getting as far as possible down the enrichment path (and maybe all the way to the finish line).
Personally I think the Iranian's "cooperation" is more an indication of internal realization that making a nuclear weapon is going to be really hard, particularly with the quality of the uranium they have (there was a report about a month ago about the probability that Iran's uranium stores are inherently unsuited to developing a significantly destructive nuclear weapon). I see the negotiations as a way to ease international focus (and avoid sanctions) until the time they can get the recipe right. That's a little different than Feaver and Kagan, but I still think the negotiations (and Iran's proposed compromise) are diversionary tactics rather than substantive shifts in policy.
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Evidently negotiators from Britain, France and Germany agree with Republicans that it's a delaying tactic. Ahmadinejiad's full quote at the end is telling; his hand is only extended if the Iranians are allowed to proceed with high-level enrichment activities in Iran itself. Otherwise "our response will be the same as we gave to Bush and his cronies."
I will give serious props to the Obama team's negotiation skills if they manage to get Iran to agree to the P5+1 proposal (which I'm not a big fan of to start with), especially since Russia's and China's strategic interests align with Iran's in favor of long, insubstantial negotiations.
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China wants to see a nuclear Iran? Having three nuclear neighbors is bad enough, you'd think they'd want to limit the local membership.
quote:From that article: "It's like playing chess with a monkey," said one diplomat close to the talks. "You get them to checkmate, and then they swallow the king."
This is my new favorite metaphor.
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China wants to continue reaping economic benefits from its relationship with Iran for as long as possible. I don't think it is overly concerned with a nuclear Iran; certainly not as gun shy as France, Germany, Britain and (especially) the US. Which gives it (and Russia) a stronger hand in the negotiations. Unless we can threaten (or promise) something they care more about than their economic relationship with Iran.
There were two significant concessions to Russia (missile shield) and China (dissing the Dalai Lama) right after the Iranians' secret enrichment facility at Qom was revealed. I think that was our play to get Russia and China on board with a muscular negotiation, and I think it failed (at least I see no evidence of its success, other than some rumblings about sanctions from Russia which it then immediately took back). And without significantly more buy in from them, I don't see any realistic pressure being brought to bear on Iran to accept even the light restrictions put in place by the P5+1 proposal.
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quote:I think they'll react calmly and reasonably, noting that this move will make America much safer, and accepting that Obama's background and experience helped make this deal happen.
You know, sarcasm really doesn't work well on the internet.
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