This was going to be another attempt at a serious analysis of what might happen at the talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Istanbul this coming Friday. I was going to cite Alan Cowell’s good piece for the NYT on Iran’s mixed signals, David Dayen’s analysis of those signals as well as the signal sent by sending a second US carrier group into the Gulf at this time, and Jonathan Schell’s excellent but depressing breakdown of how all the “options on the table” have been cleared off that table until we’re left with a binary choice, by Obama’s own words, of Iranian compromise or US-led force.
Then I read the first grafs of Trita Parsi’s latest, and they stopped me in my tracks:
If President Barack Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei do not compromise at the upcoming nuclear talks next Saturday, the region will — in the words of a diplomat involved in the matter — head towards “total war.” For the sake of world peace, both sides must compromise.
Yet, there are some indications that the next round of talks may differ little from previous failed discussions. Driven by limited political maneuverability at home, domestic pressure not to compromise, and a perception of strength that lures the parties to believe they can force on the other a fait accompli, the talks have often been about imposing terms of capitulation on the other.
It has never succeeded.
I think he’s right – that the chances this round of talks doesn’t bring any breakthrough are far higher than the chances of a deal. And that if there’s no deal, there’ll be war instead in very short order. The consequences could be far higher than anyone is willing to admit.
We’ve been a long time coming to this stage. I’ve been writing about Iran’s nuclear program and other accusations against it since about 2005, always trying to see behind the warmongers’ spin and help in any way I could to help head off another war. Over the years, I and others have written that there was about to be an attack on Iran if people didn’t pay attention and speak up in dissent almost as many times as the warmongers have declared Iran just months away from an actual nuke. In all that time, neither the war nor the nuke has come to pass. The number of claims either or both were imminent have become an in-joke among national security and international relations observers.
I don’t think we’re in that place any more.
That’s how I feel sometimes when I try to analyze this situation, but I’ve made it a question because I have some (rather unconventional) thoughts on the subject.
I’ll maunder a bit here and then try to pull things together better for tomorrow’s Special of the Day at Nuclear Diner.
I simply can’t figure out why the two sides seem so intransigent. Yes, I know that Iran has “offered another compromise,” but those “compromises” in the past have had a strong resemblance to Lucy’s holding Charlie Brown’s football. The purpose often seems to be as much to make the other party look foolish as anything else.
Meanwhile, another war seems to be the last thing Barack Obama needs, while US statements seem to rattle the sabers, although I keep wondering, for only one example, whether it was the administration or David Sanger who used the word “demands” as reported in the New York Times yesterday.
It’s clear that all sides (and we may consider France, Germany, Britain, China, and Russia of the P5+1 as well, with Israel kibitizing) have strong internal differences of opinion that are being reflected (surprisingly) in the official statements. Or perhaps the purpose of the inconsistencies is to jerk the other side around for negotiations, “other side” having many possible meanings when we consider, say, Israel.
There is also a dangerous swagger and macho on all sides that seems to require the same from the others. Hard to say where it started, but there is nothing that leads me to believe that Iran will take anything less as anything but defeat for their opponents.
Now for that unconventional flicker of hope that people look at me strangely for. All sides have, at one time or another, blinked. Israel has backed off as many times from its threats to attack as its predictions of an Iranian bomb have proved wrong. The US has managed to ignore various steps of Iranian progress. Iran has blinked the least, it seems to me, although its blinks may have been obscured by the torrent of words and claims coming from parties whose stature to make them is not clear.
So I’ll say that there may again be some blinking rather than war. Or at least I hope there will be, and I hope there will be some on all sides.
In the lexicon of the Obama admin and the United States generally for more than a decade, “compromise” means “do exactly what we say…but don’t expect doing what we say to be the end of it.”
Paraphrasing the great Arthur Silber…
What is going on here is the US is pushing for regime change. All else is sideshow designed to give the impression that there is some other outcome besides regime change which the US would find acceptable. Much as when Saddam called Bush’s bluff and actually let the UN weapons inspectors back in with full and unfettered access, there is no other acceptable outcome. (Go read Silber.)
The pieces are in place for flexibility from the Iranian side – which they have not been for a goodly while and my sense is that although the idiocy of Congress has made things a good deal more difficult, the administration does have the balls to just run them flat over if they get a good enough deal. Seems to me that the state of play does not rule out a “go to China” moment. Potential’s higher than at any point in the last few years.
As to the second aircraft carrier, I know it’s very fashionable for secondary media folks to suddenly wake up to deployment skeds when something political raises it above their detection threshold, but most folks talking about it don’t have any good idea what “normal” is. There have been a lot of times where there have been two carriers (and sometimes more) in the 5th Fleet AOR over the past decade. It’s varied more lately (say the last 2 – 3 years) but two has been pretty much the norm from what I recall over an extended period. For a long time they had one in the Gulf for ops in Iraq and one outside in the Indian Ocean for ops into Afghanistan.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
when I read this morning about the second aircraft carrier, imagining the response from the blogosphere.
Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. ~ Phil Jackson
There’re now 2 in the Gulf and one in the Indian Ocean.
…the Lincoln Strike Group in the North Arabian Sea, the Enterprise Strike Group transiting the Gulf of Aden and the Vinson group in the Bay of Bengal, heading for PACOM and home (San Diego, IIRC): source as USN PA.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
It’s the Special of the Day at Nuclear Diner.
about a NK launch one would think they would be all over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan.
Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. ~ Phil Jackson
Cheryl’s post here.
The one line in either of our posts we can be certain about: “I’ve qualified a lot of the statements above with words like “seems to†and “apparently.†The reason is that what is said may not be the position that is acceptable. Further, the reporting and what those anonymous diplomats say is unreliable.”
I have always believed, as a businessman, that one should approach negotiations as not being a zero-sum game. You’ll get the best out of a deal if you show some enlightened self-interest and offer what you believe is a fair contract rather than one that gives you the most advantage and the other party the least. Haggling then becomes a matter of agreeing what the fairest deal should be between the two parties and both come away happy and with confidence in their business partner. I continue to believe that this kind of gamesmanship is bad business sense, carried on out of institutional habit rather than because it attains optimal results.
Until after the US Pres election.
They need to know which administration will be occupying the White House. It’s too inconvenient for them to change administrations at the same time they are starting a war.
And since this war is on their schedule, they can start it at their convenience. I say it will be in 2013, not before.
…especially the Casus Belli in this happy little movie from Yesteryear.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488