Strangling The Night Watchman: Iran, Turkey And Brazil
Nuclear Deal
31 May 2010By Sami Moubayed
An old Arabic proverb says, "Do you want the grapes,
or just to fight the night watchman?" Clearly from its
reactions to the dramatic breakthrough on the Iranian
nuclear file, the U.S. is more interested in fighting
the night watchman than wrestling grapes out of Iran.
Shortly after Iran, Turkey and Brazil announced their
high-profile deal last week, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said that the five permanent members
of the UN Security Council (including Russia and
China), and Germany, have all agreed on a fourth set
of sanctions against Tehran, throwing dust in the eyes
of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had
hammered out the agreement with Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The agreement calls for swapping
with effect from next June, 1,200kg of low-enriched
uranium with Turkey for higher-enriched nuclear fuel
for a medical research reactor in Iran.
Immediately, the Iranians fired back furiously through
Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, threatening to call
off the agreement altogether if further sanctions were
imposed by the UN. The Iran-Turkey-Brazil agreement,
however, is very significant. First, it is testimony
to the rising influence of emerging nations like
Brazil and regional heavyweights like Turkey, and to
the waning clout of the United States, given that the
deal was debated, reached and announced in complete
independence from the U.S. In fact, it was the
Russians who were consulted at various stages, during
President Dmitri Medvedev's recent visit to Turkey,
after having visited Brazil last April, followed by
Lula da Silva's stopover in Moscow en route to Tehran.
Medical purposes
The agreement, reached after 18 hours of negotiations,
is not new, having been raised in a slightly different
form in October 2009. Back then, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called on Iran to hand
over 2,640 pounds (1,196kg) of low-enriched uranium
and receive from abroad 260 pounds of uranium enriched
up to 20 per cent for use in the Tehran Research
Reactor for medical purposes. What is new is that the
Iranian fuel will be shipped to Turkey rather than
Russia.
The Iranians claim that regardless of the swap
agreement, they have a natural right to continue
enriching to the 20 per cent level. Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the new agreement one
of the most important diplomatic decisions taken by
Tehran since 1979, while his Russian counterpart
Sergei Lavrov told Clinton that although his country
remained committed to a serious approach against Iran
— in principle — the new agreement forced everybody to
take a step back and have a long look at the
situation.
The Americans, however, are clearly unimpressed.
First, they were not consulted on the recent deal.
Second, they are furious with their Latin American
neighbour for stepping into a territory that
historically has been handled solely by the U.S.
Third, success of the deal exposes U.S. failure in the
Iranian nuclear file — success by third parties in a
domain where the US has reaped nothing but failure.
Fourth, it embarrasses U.S. President Barack Obama,
who went to great lengths to appease the Russians to
secure their support for new sanctions against Iran,
hoping that this would shake the Iranian government
and deprive it of the support of an international
heavyweight like Russia.
Arms embargo
The new set of proposed sanctions would include an
arms embargo on eight categories of conventional
weapons, including tanks and combat aircraft, ban on
overseas activities like uranium mining, and subject
ships and planes heading out of Iran to international
inspections, based on suspicion of carrying illegal
material. Ironically, Saturday marked the 31st
anniversary of the US economic siege on Iran, imposed
by then-president Jimmy Carter who froze around $12
billion (Dh44 billion) worth of Iranian assets abroad,
three months after the Islamic Revolution.
Unlike every U.S. president, from Carter to Obama,
Russia, Turkey and Brazil prefer to wrestle the grapes
out of Iran rather than fight the night watchman.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran is
the 16th largest economy in the world, and has
consistently been enjoying healthy growth rates and
trade balances, and in turn, a low national debt. For
10 years its unemployment rate has stood at
approximately 12 per cent, not bad for a country with
one of the youngest populations in the world.
Petrochemical exports have grown 15-fold since 2000,
while steel and car manufacturing are strongest in the
entire Arabian Gulf, in addition to the fact that
Tehran is the only capital in the entire region to
have mastered nanotechnology, nuclear technology and
space exploration.
Such a country, they claim, should not be marginalised
by sanctions under the watchful eye of the
international community. This is the axis that is
emerging — a coalition of small and large states that
collectively takes the wind out of U.S. sails. For
them to continue to be taken seriously, however, to
prove they are strong and able — they need to make
sure that the first mega-achievement of their
alliance, the swap deal, sees the light of day.
-- Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward
Magazine in Syria.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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