Iran working diligently towards regional supremacy

Iran courts the US at Russia's expense

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Iran's relations with the Arab world have taken a dramatic turn for the better, in light of Iran's overtures toward the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, as well as in President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's announcement that Iran is prepared to resume full diplomatic relations with Egypt.

That announcement was made on Monday as Ahmadinejad visited the United Arab Emirates and received a rousing official welcome. Widely interpreted as Iran's timely response to US Vice President Dick Cheney's tour of the region and his warning that the United States will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons or to dominate the region, Ahmadinejad's arrival in Dubai coincided with an Iranian olive branch toward not only Egypt but also the US. This is illustrated by Tehran's announcement that it has accepted the United States' invitation for direct talks between American and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad.

"Iran's foreign policy is moving in the direction of constructive engagement on all fronts," a member of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, announced, adding that the resumption of relations with Egypt will have "positive effects on the whole region".

It is now up to Egypt to bury the hatchet and respond to Ahmadinejad's significant policy announcement. According to some Tehran political analysts, however, there are some voices within the Egyptian government who prefer the status quo, whereby Egypt can capitalize on foreign assistance as a result of its role as a counterweight to Iran, given the growing reliance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on "out of area" Egypt.

On the other hand, Iran's GCC policy, of pushing the arch of the common or collective security arrangement by all the Gulf states based on the principle of self-reliance, undermines Egypt's attempt to insert itself in the region's security calculus. Similarly, the US is disquieted by official GCC pronouncements that echo Iran's call for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the region.

Should Iran remain consistent on the present pattern of regional policy and succeed in helping with the security nightmare in Iraq, then the US/Israeli policy of creating a Sunni-led anti-Iran alliance in the Arab world would vanish into thin air. The process of confidence-building between Iran and the GCC states, which are in dispute with Iran over the three islands of Abu Moussa and Little and Big Tunb, is a long one, however, and Tehran must be careful not send any "mixed signals" that would eradicate the present gains. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Dialogue with the US and Iran's new realism
Reflecting a new level of sophistication and diplomatic prowess, Iran's latest moves show that it has not been unreceptive of earlier criticisms at home and abroad about the deleterious impact of a one-dimensional foreign policy. Steadily moving up the learning curve, the Ahmadinejad administration may also have a freer hand to set policy within Iran's complex, concentric circles of power.

One thing is becoming clear: Iran's nuclear and non-nuclear, ie regional and security, policies are gelling together, and that is a definite step forward and a sign of qualitative improvement.

Doubtless, that does not mean that all is well on the foreign-policy front, given the meetings of the United Nations Security Council's permanent five plus Germany plotting tougher sanctions against Iran, perhaps as early as next month, in response to Iran's defiance of UN resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium-enrichment activities.

At a recent meeting in Vienna on the future of the non-proliferation regime, after much haggling, Iran finally managed to create a cognitive "group think" with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), consisting of some 118 countries. This was by watering down a final statement that weakens calls for tighter norms under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, particularly regarding non-proliferation and access to nuclear technology. A mere week ago there was a threat of a dangerous rift between Iran and NAM countries, so this is a major foreign-policy plus for Iran that strengthens Tehran's hand as it prepares to meet the US face-to-face in two weeks.

In the context of this coming US-Iran dialogue, both sides need to agree on a limited agenda that does not extend to trans-Iraq, eg nuclear, issues, and an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson has made this point abundantly clear. Yet even an incremental improvement in the hostile climate between the US and Iran is bound to have ripple effects on the other issues. And, vice versa, a premature UN move to toughen sanctions on Iran could torpedo the diplomatic engagement on Iraq.

There is an "indirect linkage between the issues that forms the background to the meeting in Baghdad" between US and Iranian
representatives, according to a Tehran analyst.

Again, the issue of a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq has the potential to be a divisive issue. In Dubai, Ahmadinejad forcefully called for the US exit from not only Iraq but also the entire region, and such tight coupling of the two issues, whereby the US withdrawal from Iraq would be interpreted as a first stage of a more comprehensive withdrawal, runs contrary to the United States' Middle East policy. This is particularly so as there are winds of a "new cold war" with Russia.

Concerning the latter, Russia continues to oppose the United States' planned stationing of an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, and has at the same time delivered a blow to Washington's Eurasian policy by persuading Kazakhstan to use its pipelines to export oil to Europe, instead of the US-backed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.

A shrewd "geo-economic" master stroke by Moscow, this and other energy-based initiatives aimed at making Europe rather helplessly dependent on Russia as a main energy provider undermine the United States' post-Cold War global strategy, and this is precisely where the resolution of the Iraq crisis and possibility of a detente between Iran and the US play a key role.

It is, in fact, instructive that not everyone in Moscow is thrilled about that possibility, and that may explain why Russia may be inclined to stall on a nuclear compromise, in light of alarmist commentaries by various Russian experts about the threat of a nuclear Iran. The question, then, becomes: Who has more to fear of a nuclear-armed Iran, Washington or Moscow? The answer depends to some extent on developments on the US-Russia front - will they take a turn for the better or worse?

Lest we forget, Moscow is designing a new Middle East policy and has been trying to get closer to the GCC states, and this is not necessarily in harmony with Iran's foreign policy either. From Tehran's vantage point, Russia's refusal to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran and to complete the Bushehr power plant, or to enter Iran's bidding for new power plants, has left a bitter taste with the Iranians for a long time to come, and the damage cannot be undone overnight.

The trick for Tehran is how to exploit the Washington-Moscow rift to its maximum advantage and pursue its own regional security objectives, eg, by building timely bridges with the Arab world, without sacrificing anything.

Given the UN sanctions and the continuing nuclear standoff, the answer to this question is not simple or straightforward, and the absence of the slightest balance or delicate nuance might backfire on the whole edifice of Iran's foreign policy. Iran must move all its chips on the multiple tables of diplomacy - with Arab and non-Arab neighbors, Russia, Europe and the US, in tandem with one another.

This is an exceedingly difficult task, akin to playing multiple games of chess simultaneously, with each move impacting the picture on the other chessboards. For now, there is a growing consensus that Tehran has overcome some of the basic deficiencies of a "one-dimensional" foreign policy under former president Mohammad Khatami, which pushed the arch of cooperation without adequate resort to Iran's hard power and attendant tough diplomacy.

The challenge for Ahmadinejad as he re-embraces some of the wisdom of the Khatami era by putting the accent on peaceful co-existence and dialogue is how not to recycle either that past or the more recent past of his incipient months in office, when unreconstructed sloganism appeared to have gained the upper hand.

The dictates of Iran's survival in the tough international milieu have imposed a new realism that is beginning to generate a new harvest of foreign-policy pluses for the country.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

Original article posted here.