They will be biting their fingernails in Israel as the focus in the Iranian nuclear controversy shifts to bargaining now that, apparently, Iran has agreed to another round of talks on its nuclear program.
On the one hand, Iran has a clear treaty right to develop and use nuclear technology for civilian energy purposes. On the other, it has failed to satisfy the IAEA (to say nothing of the intelligence agencies of a great many countries) that it is operating its nuclear program within the treaty’s conditions. The question is, what comes next?
While both Israel and the US would ideally like for Iran to agree to forgo the exercise of that right, a military strike against a country exercising treaty rights to which the US had agreed would be on very weak ground. What all parties (even the Israelis) would prefer is an agreement that kept Iran’s nuclear activities well short of anything that could lead to a bomb, and under an inspection regime thorough enough so that (with the help of intelligence information), the world can be confident that Iran is in fact observing its treaty obligations even as it exercises its treaty rights.
That sounds simple in outline, but in practice the details of such an arrangement would be fiendishly difficult. It would require a clear agreement on the level of enrichment of uranium to be carried out in Iran, a clear agreement on a more intrusive and systemic inspections program than Iran has in the past been willing to accept, and more transparency in the financing and management of Iran’s nuclear activities.
The Iranian negotiating style favors taking refuge in these complications, putting forward partial proposals and then perhaps pulling them back again, offsetting a concession here by making new demands over there, and refusing to reveal a bottom line until the eleventh — or even the twelfth — hour. Mixed signals from Iran in the run up to the new negotiations suggest that this style will be very much in play.
For those concerned that Iran is simply playing for time, this negotiating style reinforces suspicion. Dragging out the negotiations, hinting and evading, alternating between hard and soft approaches would all be natural strategies for a country playing for time as it edged closer to a nuclear threshold.
At the same time, unless very carefully handled, the substance of the negotiations can throw the US and its partners into disarray. Iran could make an offer that satisfied the Obama administration, for example, but left Israel feeling insecure. It could make an offer that failed to reassure Germany and the Europeans, but gave Russia and China cover to oppose new sanctions at the UN. It can make an offer that brings sympathy from important non-nuclear signatories to the NPT (non-proliferation treaty) like Turkey and Brazil, significantly increasing the political cost to Washington of further confrontation. It could make an offer that at least temporarily satisfied the IAEA bureaucracy but left others still suspicious.
One thinks of Abraham bargaining with God over the fate of Sodom. How many righteous men must be found in the city for God to decide to spare it: 100? 50? 10? 5? What is the level of uranium enrichment that Iran can pursue without triggering a military response? 90%? 20? 18? 10? 3.5? 0?
Balanced against that is another question: what is the top oil price that recession-wracked Europe and the US can tolerate as the sanctions bite and the negotiations drag on — $100 a barrel, $150, $300? And for President Obama in the months before the election, still another question comes into play: what is the tipping point between American war-weariness and American fears for Israel and of Iran?
There are other complications. Would, for example, the Iranians give ground on the nuclear issue to keep Assad in power? Is this a trade that others would accept? The US withdrawal from Iraq has reduced the ability of Iran to use Iraq as a bargaining chip in its relations with the US, but Iran might be able to divide the US and the EU from the Arab League by a mix of offers over Syria and Iraq that played to what many in the region see as the real issue: Sunni-Shiite relations. This conflict affects Turkish-Iranian relations and puts the Gulf Arabs in the camp of Iran hawks — a factor that plays a larger role in the stand of some European countries than is generally understood by a press that has a hard time looking beyond Israel.
Israel — which will not be part of the negotiations — faces the toughest questions of all. Many Israelis believe Israel will soon lose the ability to create a significant setback to the Iranian program through military means. Quite a few Israeli experts believe that in effect that point has already been reached — that Israel today could not inflict enough damage on Iran’s nuclear program to justify the risks and costs of a military strike. If Iran can take Israel out of the military picture through playing for time at the negotiating table with the six powers handling the file (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany), it will have gained some significant breathing space, and handed a significant political defeat to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
One important consideration will be the degree of trust that the Israelis have that Washington is committed to rejecting any settlement that Israel absolutely cannot live with. US and Israeli interests are not identical on the Iranian question: while both countries do not want Iran to get the bomb and in the last analysis seem willing to act to stop it, the level of concern, the military capacity to act and the trade-offs between action and inaction at various stages of Iranian preparedness are all different. Israel naturally wants to pull the US toward its position; the US administration equally naturally from its point of view does not want the tail to wag the dog.
An additional complicating factor: ideology. One core element of Zionist ideology, present from the beginning of the modern movement but significantly strengthened by the events of the 1940s, is that Israel must ensure that the vital, life-and-death decisions affecting Jews are made by Jews. The Jewish people must have the same kind of sovereign right to determine their fate that other peoples do. The question of the Iranian nuclear drive is clearly a vital one for the state of Israel; it would be painful and difficult for committed Israeli Zionists to accept that the US rather than Israel has the final say over what happens on this issue. Letting Iran pass the point where Israel could decide this issue on its own would, in this view, be a betrayal of one of the core principles of the Zionist movement. From both a personal and a political standpoint that is something no Israeli prime minister, and especially for one from Likud, would do lightly.
There are many situations in which people outside government cannot keep track of all the moving parts in a complex and at least partially confidential negotiation. This is one of them: if these negotiations prove to be substantive enough to continue past a first meeting, there will be a lot of empty commentary and speculation from the press. But some of the key moves and key calculations will be hidden from outsiders.
To make sense of what’s happening, keep your eyes on the following:
- the enrichment numbers being floated in Iran, Washington, Israel and Berlin
- the discussion over the nature of the inspection regime that Iran will accept
- the discussion in Israel over whether and when to strike
- American polling numbers on the economy, Iran and the 2012 vote
- relations between the US and Israeli governments
- regional developments from Turkey, Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and the Gulf in the Sunni-Shiite war
- the price of oil.
This focus won’t tell you what is going to happen in the crisis and when, but it will help you grasp whether negotiations seem to be making progress and how the calculations of the various players may change. Right now war before November does not seem likely, but that calculation could change.