Amir Taheri
'The Rixos Victory": So Tehran's official media have dubbed the latest round of talks on Iran's nuclear program with the "5+1 group." Rixos is the name of the luxury hotel in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where the Iranian team this week met a delegation of senior officials from the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany led by the European Union's foreign-policy spokeswoman Catherine Ashton.
This round of talks (the sixth the two sides have held since 2003) ended, as usual, with an agreement on holding other rounds, starting with one in Istanbul next month. But this was the first time that the Iranian team has described the results as "positive."
AFP/Getty Images
The big winner: Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili not only got his way in the talks, he's now a top contender to win the presidency in June.
The leadership in Tehran had three objectives.
First, it wanted to buy time in which to push its nuclear program further along. By agreeing to "technical talks" lasting at least six months, the 5+1 Group has acquiesced.
Next, Tehran wanted to boost the prestige of "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei by claiming that his direct control of the talks secured the victory that three successive presidents, the latest being Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had failed to achieve. That, in turn, will strengthen Khamenei's hand in choosing the next president in June.
Finally, it wanted the prospect of an end to the pressures inflicted by economic sanctions.
An extra bonus could go to the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is emerging as Khamenei's favorite for the presidency. This week, the Tehran daily Kayhan (which is published by Khamenei's office) called him "a hero of Islam."
"He is resolute, uncompromising and loyal to the revolutionary ideology of Islam," the paper's editorial said. "He could be considered as the genuine fruit of our Islamic revolution."
A veteran of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Jalili lost one leg in combat and is described as Iran's own "blade-runner." The "Rixos Victory" could help launch his candidacy with Khamenei's tacit support — crushing Ahmadinejad's hopes of installing Esfandiar Masha'i, one of his aides, as president.
Why, then, does the 5+1 group also call the talks "encouraging"? Well, in a sense, it too achieved its goals. Yet these were a mixed bag, at best.
The Russian and the Chinese have never worried about a nuclear-armed Iran because they assume (wrongly, I believe) that the mullahs will never threaten them.
And the European powers are divided, as usual. The British and the French are still urging for tougher action to stop the Iranian program, in accordance with five UN Security Council resolutions. But Germany is ambivalent while other European powers, notably Italy and Austria, see the whole thing as a side-show.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, is the most Iran-friendly the United States has seen since Jimmy Carter, with Vice President Joe Biden now joined by Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
This administration sees relations with Tehran through the prism of the introduction to the film "Argo," in which Iranians are portrayed as victims of American treachery and thus implicitly justified in seizing US diplomats as hostages. Since last November, the message from Washington to Tehran has been one of possible reconciliation: Now that he is re-elected, President Obama can be more flexible!
Yet Obama still needs a fig-leaf to cover what his critics might describe as a shameless surrender to the mullahs.
That fig-leaf is under construction, with three parts. Iran has already scaled back its uranium enrichment. It has also agreed (in principle) to convert the bulk of the uranium already enriched to fuel rods, so they would be unsuitable for weapons-grade enrichment. Finally, Tehran may also agree to transfer some enriched uranium to an as-yet-hypothetical International Uranium Bank for safe-keeping in a time schedule to be fixed later.
In short, Iran and the 5+1 concocted a "big fudge." First come six months of "technical talks," after which the two sides can fix another round of high-level negotiations to establish a "timetable for implementation" over the next three to four years. Should events actually reach this stage, Tehran would demand that its every step in implementation be rewarded with the lifting of some sanctions, en route to their total end.
But the Iranians are right to claim victory. Gradually, the core issue — Iran's nuclear ambitions — is being kicked into the long grass.
"They have concluded that they should change their behavior," Jalili said on his triumphal return to Tehran.
To encourage that "change," Iran will do some zigging and zagging. But the "nuclear train," which Ahmadinejad once said has no reverse gear, won't stop — because no one is really willing to stop it.
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