The Latest from Iran (21 April): Getting It Right on Politics and Nuclear Talks

0600 GMT: We start this morning on the nuclear front and, unusually, with a first glance at Washington rather than Tehran.

There is a buzz among Washington journalists and commentators, possibly fed by President Obama's officials, that the Islamic Republic is serious about reaching a deal over its nuclear programme. The catalyst is a column on Wednesday from the Washington Post's David Ignatius, a leading channel for US Government spin:

Iran is following the script for a gradual, face-saving exit from a nuclear program that even Russia and China have signaled is too dangerous. The Iranians will bargain up to the edge of the cliff, but they don’t seem eager to jump.

The mechanics of an eventual settlement are clear enough after Saturday’s first session in Istanbul: Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium to the 20 percent level and to halt work at an underground facility near Qom built for higher enrichment. Iran would export its stockpile of highly enriched uranium for final processing to 20 percent, for use in medical isotopes.

Shrewder analysts took apart Ignatius's cheerleading, but the column got a boost on Friday with the reception of the Tehran Friday Prayer from "hard-line" Ayatollah Jannati. The head of the Guardian Council emphasised that the Supreme Leader's fatwa against nuclear weapons was not an illusion and that the West should recognise this to reach an agreement.

Even though Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa is years old, it has been put out in Washington as a recent signal that the Iranians are moving towards an accommodation, and the Islamic Republic's own publicists are happy to encourage that impression. Thus the dramatic shift in US received opinion: whereas Tehran was portrayed only weeks ago as intransigent, or at best playing for time, now the emphasis is on a possible Iranian moderation.

So what's wrong with this picture? Well, just as the earlier vision of an Islamic Republic hell-bent on conflict was too narrowly framed, so is this rosier vista. 

Consider this major error in Ignatius' report, and thus the outlook of those circulating it:

The Iranians expect to be paid, in “step-by-step” increments, as they move toward a deal. At a minimum, they will want a delay of the U.S. and European sanctions that take full effect June 28 and July 1, respectively. That timetable gives the West leverage, too — to keep the threatened sanctions in place until the Iranians have made the required concessions. 

Every statement out of Tehran --- from the Supreme Leader's top advisor on foreign affairs to the Foreign Ministry's spokesman --- is that the Islamic Republic expects an initial concession on sanctions before any move over Iran's enrichment of uranium. 

Ayatollah Jannati clearly re-stated that on Friday. Indeed, that was the emphasis in his sermon: 

The West must lift sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran so that the Iranian nation believes they do not seek to continue their enmity....If they insist on sanctions and then say they will negotiate with Iran, it is clear that such negotiations will be called off.

Perhaps, in well-hidden private discussions in advance of the next public talks on 23 May in Baghdad, the Iranians are telling US and European counterparts that there can be a linked announcement of a reduction in sanctions and new arrangements for the processing of 20% uranium. So far, however, we have not had a whiff of such a breakthrough.

There is, however, one shift in Tehran which is clear. As our Iranian correspondent brings out in a separate analysis, there has been a 180-degree turn in the players for a deal.

Allies of the Supreme Leader stepped away from the October 2009 talks in Geneva and Vienna, just as they were offering the prospect of agreement --- an agreement which was being pursued by President Ahmadinejad and his circle. This time, it is the President who stands to lose from a bargain in which he has no visible role --- so it is his outlets putting out doubt while the Supreme Leader's spokesmen portray as a cleric willing to reach an honourable settlement.

That is the ground for seeing the possibility of a deal. But only the possibility: the talks turn not just on the players, but on the proposals. And until there is clarity over the sanctions and the status of enrichment, predictions such as those of Ignatius should be treated as PR rather than clairvoyance.

from EA WorldView: EA Iran

Posted via email from lissping