CER/SWP/Brookings Daimler forum on 'World order and global issues'

13 May 2008 - 14 May 2008

Speakers included: Ivo Daalder, Phil Gordon, Susan Rice (all Brookings) & Jim Steinberg, LBJ School, UT Austin.

Location info

Paris

Iran, elections, and nuclear weapons

Written by Tomas Valasek, 10 July 2009

by Tomas Valasek

What the future holds for Iran's theocratic regime is hard to read. True, the government has ensured its own survival by suppressing last month's protests there with brutal force. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will remain in power despite a contested election. But the authority of the regime has suffered. The president has lost legitimacy in the eyes of millions of Iranians. The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who urged force against the protestors, has lost much of his popularity. The events of June 2009 could turn out to be the beginning of a deeper challenge to the Islamic republic: Iran observers point out that the country's 1979 revolution was preceded by a long build up of low-level agitation.

What is clear is that the violence around the presidential election bodes ill for western diplomacy to end Iran's nuclear ambitions, in at least two ways. First, Barack Obama will be under pressure to rethink the offer of 'engagement grounded in mutual respect', which he extended to the government in Iran in April 2009. On the other hand, the US will now find it easier to convince the Europeans to toughen the sanctions regime on Iran, thanks to Tehran's heavy-handiness.

Iran's nuclear programme is run directly by the country's supreme leader, not the president. The recent political turmoil will have had little effect on it. Even if the challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi had won the presidency, Iran would have almost certainly continued to enrich uranium. Mousavi said during the campaign that he would not abandon "Iran's right to nuclear technology". Some Iran watchers have speculated that Mousavi would build enrichment facilities but not nuclear weapons, lest he put Iran in even deeper isolation. In reality, the president's views have little bearing on the nature of the nuclear project.

The West has long been worried that Iran is building a nuclear bomb, or at least acquiring all the necessary ingredients. However the more immediate concern now is the prospect of an Israeli military strike on Iran. US officials say they fear that Israel may try to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities this autumn, before Russia delivers a batch of modern anti-aircraft missiles recently purchased by the Iranian regime.

To prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – and to keep Israel from attacking – Barack Obama launched a new diplomatic push in April 2009. He has promised to join the European-led talks with the government in Tehran. US negotiators are rumoured to be considering dropping a key western condition for the talks, namely that Iran shut down its enrichment programme before the negotiations start. Obama also recorded a video statement to the Iranian people, in which he has offered a partnership between the US and Iran. The idea was to win the Iranian regime's goodwill by showing it the respect it craves, and to spur the Iranians into pressuring the leadership to pursue a less confrontational line with the US.

The second pillar of the US strategy has worked very well. While most Iranians support the nuclear programme, many of the young ones are increasingly frustrated with the country's pariah status. Mir Hossein Mousavi, surged ahead in the polls after he accused president Ahmadinejad of leading Iran into the 'indignity' of international isolation.

But Mousavi failed to win – or was prevented from winning – and the post-election protests have undermined the overall strategy. Iran cannot negotiate because the government is 'too busy locking people up', said one EU official working on the Iran dossier. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei do fully consolidate power, this will create another headache for the West: how can Barack Obama speak to a regime which has likely rigged elections and brutally suppressed democratic protests? Obama is already under fire for being "soft" and "naive" regarding Iran. Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently urged him to take a harsher line, noting that Iran's nuclear programme was progressing whatever the domestic situation there. Even if Obama starts talks with Tehran, he may feel compelled to satisfy Mullen, and others, by employing tougher rethoric. This would likely cause the talks to collapse prematurely.

If, as is likely, engagement does not generate a generous response from Tehran, the US will want to tighten existing sanctions on Iran. Some governments like the German and Italian ones, have been known to be sceptical about the need for further sanctions; the Italian foreign minister published an article in early June calling for the West to be nice to Iran. But the violence in Tehran has made the doubters more inclined to penalise the Iranian government, EU officials say.

However, fresh UN sanctions may be blocked by Russia, and possibly China. Both are members of the UN Security Council and oppose a harsher line on Iran. If the US and the EU apply unilateral sanctions, these will be less effective. Meanwhile, Israel may decide to attack, or Iran may race to acquire a full nuclear weapon. So the furore over Iran's presidential election – by throwing up new obstacles to diplomacy – has made the job of resolving tensions over its nuclear programme harder. That may prove the deadliest legacy of the events of the last few weeks.

Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.

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The dangers of Karzai’s re-election

Written by Tomas Valasek, 10 September 2009

by Tomas Valasek

The final result of the Afghan election may not be known until the end of September, but it looks as if President Hamid Karzai will have done well enough to avoid a second round of voting. This is causing dismay in some western capitals, where some senior figures now view Karzai as a key obstacle to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. If he stays in power, people in many European countries are likely to become increasingly disenchanted with the ‘mission impossible’ that their soldiers are undertaking, and that would increase the probability of European forces being withdrawn.

A senior UK diplomat recently described the problems posed by Karzai’s government for western attempts to reconstruct Afghanistan. “Our game plan is to use foreign troops to create enough breathing room for the Afghan government to assert its authority throughout the country,” he said. “But if the government whose authority we help to assert is widely viewed as corrupt and incompetent, we have no chance of succeeding.”

Karzai’s government has earned its inglorious reputation for several reasons. Washington suspects that some of its top officials are involved in the drug trade, including the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, as well as the defence minister, Karzai’s running mate and the potential future vice-president, Mohammad Fahim. Corruption extends downwards through the bureaucracy. Western troops say that many Afghan policemen steal valuables during searches of houses. Local leaders complain they have very little effort from the Kabul government to rebuild roads or resuscitate the economy; it is the western governments and NGOs that deliver the little progress that there is.

In his early years as president, Karzai offered hope for a new future and was genuinely popular. In 2005, 83 per cent of Afghans approved of president Karzai and 80 per cent approved of the national government overall. Today those figures have dropped to 52 and 49 per cent, respectively. Those are still solid numbers that some western leaders would envy. But the support has been on a constant slide for the past four years because more and more Afghans have given up hope that the current government will deliver stability or prosperity.

The US, the UK and other key troop-contributing governments worry that a Karzai victory heavily tainted by allegations of fraud will further disappoint the Afghans and embolden the Taliban. And in the western countries that send the troops his re-election could also fatally undermine public support for the mission. The latest opinion polls show that about two-thirds of Britons want UK troops out of the country – not only because of rising casualties, but also because of the perception that Afghan politicians are using their authority, which rests on the support of western troops, for self-enrichment.

The US, for now, has little choice but to stay put. The US public is as fidgety as that in Britain but President Obama has made success in Afghanistan a key plank of his foreign policy and he will not want to give up so soon. The US may send more troops if General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, requests reinforcements.

The situation is different in other NATO allies. The Dutch are scheduled to leave next year, and the Canadians say they will withdraw in 2011, though NATO is working hard to get both governments to change their mind. That may prove impossible unless events in Afghanistan give the public some reason to believe that NATO is managing to turn around its flagging mission. Even the British presence cannot be taken as guaranteed, if public support for it continues to slide.

The prospect of European troops departing brings two risks. One is to the security of Afghanistan itself. Together, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands supply the bulk of the troops that keep a semblance of order in three of the volatile southern provinces (though the US is reinforcing its presence in the south). NATO and the EU are busy training new Afghan soldiers and police to replace the western troops. But on the evidence of the past few years, the central government is unlikely to have enough properly trained replacements to take over from the Europeans anytime soon. Some local Afghan leaders say that if the Europeans withdraw in the next year or two, they will leave the country too, or strike deals with the Taliban. Either way, the government in Kabul would lose out. The second risk is to NATO itself. Why should Washington take the alliance seriously if it finds itself manning the ramparts in Afghanistan alone?

To prevent European support for the war in Afghanistan from collapsing, the governments need to take two steps. First, those capitals that have done little to drum up public support for the mission need to step up. In the UK, Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a major ‘why we fight’ speech on September 4th. More effort of this sort is needed. Second, assuming that Karzai is declared the victor, the West needs to find ways of making clear to is government that it needs to do more to fight corruption. This could include withholding EU and national aid from the most corrupt parts of the Afghan government.

Getting the Kabul government to change its ways will not be easy: when the US special representative, Richard Holbrooke, recently suggested that Afghanistan might have to deal with complaints of ballot-rigging by holding a second round of elections, Karzai walked out of the meeting; he later told a French newspaper that the US wanted him to be more “docile”. But the European governments and Washington are right to try. The government in Kabul and its western partners need to find ways of changing the perception that the Karzai government is failing, or public pressure may force European troops to withdraw sooner than is good for the country.

Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.

Comments

Added on 16 Sep 2009 at 20:37 by anonymous

Probability that the mission will be successful is in my opinion very weak. Karzai and his "mafia" are going to stay in power. Population in the western countries as well as population in Afghanistan will not see any difference after years of troops trying to finish the reconstruction after the Taliban regime. We have to be honest to ourselves and say we are not getting any progress.
Julia

Added on 03 Nov 2009 at 11:06 by Michel

The problem is the tribal mentality of the Afghan people. Remember that the taliban are as Afghan as the normal Afghani. Of course the rich nomenclatura of Afghanistan hate the taliban. But it's in essence a clash between rich and poor. The poor tribal people who dont have any money feel more obliged to join the Taliban. Obstructed of creating wealth themselves they fall back on extremist Islam groups. Keep in mind that the illiteracy rate in Afghanistan is 90% in the tribal area's. (3/4 of the country)

Also people must not forget Pakistan which is also a major blockage to get to the un-talibanization of Afghanistan. If Pakistan does not get a larger army to control the borders and to fight and catch extremist (Mullah Omar/Mehsud, etc)., and put rule of law first in Pakistan, this all is going to be in vain.

A last recourse is maybe to make an own Pashtunistan for the Pashtuns living in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe they are the biggest ethnic group, (2th the Kurds) without an own country. Since most Taliban's are Pashtun people , I think the Taliban looses his fanbase because most people want peace and are sick and tired of constant fighting

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Is Turkey Iran's friend?

Written by Katinka Barysch, 04 November 2009

by Katinka Barysch

Is Turkey really Iran’s “friend”, as Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed in a recent interview with the Guardian newspaper? Erdogan’s visit last week to Tehran suggests so. He met not only President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but also Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a rare honour. He announced plans for energy and commercial co-operation with Iran and defended the country’s right to civilian nuclear power, calling its energy programme “peaceful” and “humanitarian”. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, thanked Erdogan for his critical stance on Israel.

Policymakers in the West are getting worried that Turkey’s growing ties with Iran – by lessening that country’s sense of isolation – may frustrate diplomatic efforts to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear bomb.

Turkey’s official line is that it fully supports international efforts to persuade Iran to stop its enrichment programme, backed by the threat of tougher sanctions. The Turkish government claims that it is using closer ties with Iran to pass on tough messages to the leadership there. However, Turkish political leaders and high officials have been very cautious in their public pronouncements about Iran. “Iran does not accept it is building a weapon”, Erdogan is quoted as saying by the Guardian. “They are working on nuclear power for the purposes of energy only."

Erdogan has often mentioned Iran in the same sentence as Israel, perhaps implying that if one country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons it might be unfair to prevent other ones from building them too. Following his Tehran trip, he referred to western pressure on Iran as ‘arrogant’ because it came from countries that themselves had nuclear weapons. It would be preferable, he said, to have a nuclear-free Middle East and a nuclear-free world.

Turkey’s rather friendly stance on Iran may be understandable and acceptable at a time when the West’s diplomatic efforts are making at least some progress. But what if current negotiations fail? Would Turkey support the tougher sanctions that the US and most EU countries are threatening?

When asked this question, a top Turkish diplomat (at a recent EDAM roundtable in Bodrum) was evasive: “We would have to first see the content of the resolution. And we would have to make sure that we bring Russia and China on board.” This answer implies that Turkey may support sanctions in the (unlikely) event that they are backed by the United Nations Security Council but not if they are unilaterally imposed by the Americans and the Europeans. Another Turkish diplomat (at the ‘Istanbul Forum’, a big conference focusing on Turkey and the Middle East in October) summed up Turkey’s stance on Iran’s nuclear programme as “diplomacy, more diplomacy and even more diplomacy”.

Many Turks fear the impact of tougher on their own economy. Turks say that the 1999 sanctions against Iraq resulted in the loss of what had then been their second most important trading relationship, and that European sanctions on Serbia in the 1990s cut off one of Turkey’s most important transport artery to the EU.

Trade between Turkey and Iran has been growing fast in recent years, to reach an estimated $ 6 billion in 2008. Politicians from both sides say they want to see that figure double or even triple over the next 5-10 years. Iran is also Turkey’s second biggest gas supplier after Russia. Many Turks think that Iranian gas will be essential if Turkey is to fulfil its ambition of becoming a regional energy hub. Further sanctions would therefore harm Turkey’s economic interests. Already, US pressure forced Turkey to put on ice a $3.5 billion investment deal in the Iranian gas sector signed in 2007 – although Erdogan confirmed that Turkey still wanted to go ahead with such energy deals during his recent Tehran visit.

More importantly, perhaps, Turkish support for tougher sanctions would end the recent rapprochement between Tehran and Ankara and could even lead to retaliation. “We have no choice but to have good relations with our big neighbours”, explained one Turkish parliamentarian at the Istanbul Forum. “This conviction stood behind our decision in 2003 not to allow the Americans to march into Iraq from our territory. We knew we would have to live with Iraq afterwards, no matter what the outcome of the war.”

The Erdogan government values its relationship with Iran as part of its ‘zero problem’ neighbourhood policy. Having been more or less isolated in the region only 20 years ago, Turkey now has flourishing political and trade links with most of its immediate neighbours, as well as many countries of the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. There are even plans to open the border to Armenia, closed since 1993. Ankara is proud that it is one of the few countries that ‘talks to everyone’. This strategy has entailed links with Hamas and, more recently, visa-free travel and trade liberalisation with Syria.

Iran is one of Turkey’s most important neighbours and therefore crucial for the perceived success of the ‘zero problem’ strategy. Turkish politicians like to point out that the current Turkish-Iranian border dates back to 1639 and that the two countries have not been at war since. Since the implosion of Iraq, the two countries have worked together more closely on security issues, in particular to prevent Kurdish separatism and terrorism, which threatens both countries.

As ties with Iran thicken, Turks see the country’s nuclear programme as less of a threat. A third of Turks now think that a nuclear armed Iran would be acceptable, according to the latest Transatlantic Trends survey from the German Marshall Fund. Two years ago, the share was half that, at 17 per cent. In the US, only 5 per cent say they could live with a nuclear armed Iran. Turkish leaders hardly ever say explicitly whether they consider a possible Iranian bomb as a threat. When asked whether he was worried about such a prospect, one official at the EDAM roundtable responded: “We are under Nato’s nuclear umbrella.”

This apparent confidence, however, hides some deep-seated anxiety and mistrust. Turkey and Iran may not have been to war with each other for centuries, but they are natural rivals in a volatile region. Arguably, much of Turkey’s recent regional diplomacy has been designed to contain Iran’s growing influence, from Turkish efforts to help stabilise Iraq to building closer links with Syria. Neither the Americans nor the Iranians took up Ankara’s offer to mediate between the two, preferring to deal with each other directly. At the Istanbul Forum – which devoted a lot of time to discussing Iran – not a single Iranian official showed up.

Many Turks fear that a nuclear armed Iran would change the regional balance of power and trigger an arms race in this unstable part of the world. One Turkish politician, when asked what Turkey would do if efforts to stop the Iranian weapons programme failed, said: “We will have to build our own bomb.” It is statements like this that make some people suspect that the reason why Turkey is now starting its own nuclear programme is not only to improve energy security but also to be prepared in case of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Turkish officials deny this categorically. They insist that their country needs nuclear power to satisfy fast-growing energy demand, reduce reliance on imported gas and cut CO2 emissions. Moreover, it could take Turkey a decade to build up a nuclear capacity. Already, the first tender to build a nuclear plant is being reviewed after only one company (from Russia) submitted a bid.

Meanwhile, Turkey is in talks with Washington about buying a missile defence system against short and medium-range missiles. The claim of Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, that this system would have “nothing to do with Iran or any other country” just begs the question.

Turkey’s ambiguous stance towards Iran is symptomatic of the difficulties that Turkey faces in trying to combine its growing regional ties with its traditional orientation towards the West. As a long-standing NATO member and a country negotiating for EU membership, Turkey is expected to align itself with the US and Europe – or at least not do anything that undermines the West’s political objectives in the Middle East. As a regional power, Turkey will want to act independently and avoid antagonising its neighbours. It is not clear how long Ankara will be able to avoid tough choices.

Katinka Barysch is deputy director of the Centre for European Reform.

Comments

Added on 04 Nov 2009 at 20:45 by anonymous

The answer is absolutely NO.

Added on 05 Nov 2009 at 08:07 by anonymous

Greetings
I enjoyed the piece as it addressed political realities in a redressed fashion. However it seems the author failed to see the deep cultural interdependence which exists between two countries. More than 60 percent of Iranians are Turks and more than 40 percent of Turkish nationals are Iranians (i.e. by being Kurds) and 15% of Iranians are ethnic Kurds. Besides, 25% of Turkish nationals are Alevites and Shias while 35% of Iranians are Sunnis ... . In other words, there are great many historical and cultural issues which make these two seemingly divided nations into one people provided the politics of nationality is deconstructed along more realistic lines and this may-be what current politicians are attempting to envision.
best wishes
Dr. Seyed Javad Miri
Visiting Professor of Sociology
Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies
Tehran
Iran

Added on 05 Nov 2009 at 18:27 by Yeappppp

I think countries can not be friend . Countries act accordingly their benefits . Thats why Turkiye co-operate with Iran .

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Last hooray for the EU on Iran?

Written by Tomas Valasek, 25 November 2009

by Tomas Valasek

When the EU's first 'foreign minister', Cathy Ashton, starts work on December 1st, she will find Iran on top of her 'to do' pile. Earlier this week, Tehran turned down a proposal from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would have seen a large part of the country's stock of uranium moved out of the country for further enrichment. Barring a last-minute change of heart in Tehran, the US, UK, France and Germany will soon move to tighten UN sanctions on Iran. This could set the scene for a confrontation with Russia and China, which are unconvinced that tough sanctions would work.

It will fall to Ashton to try to get Iran to reconsider. The country's government has not rejected the IAEA proposals outright; it has offered a counter-proposal, which US and European officials deem unacceptable. The Iranians may simply be buying time but there is a small hope that they are open to compromise. Before the UN Security Council imposes further sanctions, the EU needs to be absolutely sure that Iran does not want a deal.

The trouble is that the chances of a negotiating breakthrough with Iran, never high, have diminished since the fraudulent elections in Iran in June 2009 and their bloody aftermath. For the past five months, the country has been mired in twin crises: one within the regime (a band of clerics versus the former Revolutionary Guard commanders grouped around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) and another one between the regime and the people. The government appears to have become dysfunctional. Tehran wavered for weeks over the recent Western proposals before rejecting them. It is not obvious that in a country as unstable as Iran is today, any centre of power has the courage to push for a compromise with the West (though some Iran watchers have warned that Tehran could be faking indecision while it buys time to develop further its nuclear programme).

It had been hoped that Barack Obama's entry into the nuclear talks would strengthen the EU's negotiating hand. In the past Iran had made clear to EU diplomats that it would not accept any agreement that did not involve the US. But Obama's charm offensive has had a limited effect. True, it “empowered advocates of engagement inside Iran and transferred the onus of co-operation from the US to Iran”, one Iran expert told a recent gathering of foreign policy thinkers and officials convened by the CER and other think-tanks in Stockholm. Obama's efforts have also made it more likely that Russia will support sanctions. But even after the US had joined the Iran talks and Obama had offered “dialogue without preconditions”, Tehran decided to reject the recent IAEA package.

High Representative Ashton and other western diplomats have few effective tools left to pressure Iran into changing its position, so the world's attention is shifting towards negotiating a new sanctions regime. The EU used to be divided on further sanctions, with France and the UK strongly in favour and Germany more sceptical. But Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent tough language on Iran (in a speech to a joint session of the US Congress) suggests that the new centre right-liberal coalition views sanctions more favourably (this was confirmed by senior German diplomats at the Stockholm event).

The key critics of tighter sanctions are Russia and China, whose top officials have argued on many occasions not only that sanctions would fail to stop Iran's nuclear programme, but also that they would boost the position of radicals within the country. They are right that sanctions are a very blunt instrument. Tougher sanctions almost certainly would strengthen the Revolutionary Guards' stranglehold on the economy and thus, paradoxically, empower the most authoritarian of Iranian political forces and set back the cause of Iran's liberalisation. Sanctions could also prompt Iran to kick out the IAEA inspectors who monitor Iran's nuclear facilities; this would leave the world blind to Iranian nuclear intentions.

But the case for sanctions, on balance, seems somewhat stronger. They discourage other states in the region from following Iran down the nuclear path, and they give the US and - crucially - Israel an alternative to the use of force. Existing sanctions have worked to the extent that they have deprived Iran of some needed technology; the centrifuges used to enrich uranium are said to be crashing frequently. And contrary to what Russia and China say, precedents suggest that sanctions can, under the right circumstances, bring weapons programmes to halt. As one US participant at the Stockholm meeting pointed out, “sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s worked so well that they made the invasion of that country completely unnecessary”. It transpired after the war that Iraq had given up its nuclear and biological programmes years before the US invasion, in large part because it could not obtain the necessary technology.

The two European members of the UN Security Council, France and the UK, along with Germany and the US, will lead negotiations at the UN on further sanctions. But Ashton will still have an important role to play. Sanctions are not meant to replace talks but to complement them; the idea is to inflict hurt on Iran's economy and political classes in order to get the government to accept nuclear proposals from the IAEA. So Cathy Ashton, like Javier Solana before her, will be expected to keep up talks with Iran while the UN debates sanctions, and after the UNSC agrees a new regime. The UNSC is likely to do so: President Dmitri Medvedev has hinted that Russia will swallow somewhat tougher sanctions, while China rarely vetoes UNSC resolutions alone (unless they concern Tibet or Taiwan).

But one wonders if this is the EU's last hooray on Iran. If the combination of sanctions and talks fail, the remaining options would seem to leave little room for EU diplomacy. If Israel strikes Iran's nuclear facilities, Tehran will certainly call off the EU-led talks. The other choice before the world is to start preparing for a nuclear Iran. A strategy of containment would require western governments to focus on making Iran's neighbours feel secure, so as to discourage them from building nuclear weapons themselves. But this will almost certainly be a job mainly for the US, rather than the EU. So while Baroness Ashton will spend a lot of time on Iran at the beginning of her term, the EU may gradually lose its leading role.

Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.