There is growing pessimism about the chances of an agreement with Iran over the nuclear issue. Those who have been mistrustful of Iran’s intentions all along believe it never really wanted a deal and was merely playing for time. A more sophisticated analysis suggests that Iran’s Supreme Leader and its President do indeed want an agreement – to give their beleaguered regime a foreign-policy success ? but their domestic critics and opponents have so far managed to block it. The implication is that the regime may be too weak to clinch a deal.
Iran may, of course, be hoping it can re-negotiate the deal reached in Geneva at the beginning of October. But the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the proposal won’t be changed (a position that provoked some surprise in European quarters). The Americans are signalling that, in the absence of a deal by the end of the year, the “ five plus one ” (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) will prepare the ground for a fourth round of international sanctions.
These will not, however, be the “ crippling ” sanctions the Obama administration had repeatedly threatened to introduce if negotiations led nowhere. In the words of the experienced Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau, the Europeans and the Americans have had to accept that “ Moscow and Beijing … will not let Iran’s economy be crippled ” .
If this is how events unfold, it will be a troubling outcome, for three reasons:
This last point is worth elaborating since, in the absence of any resolution of the nuclear issue, the regional malaise looks set to deteriorate.
Iran’s involvement over the last few years in three sensitive arenas – Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories – has led many in the region to believe a proxy war is under way between Sunnis (led by Saudi Arabia) and Shi’a (led by Iran). It is a dangerous simplification of the region’s problems. But now events in a fourth arena, Yemen, are being invoked in order to further the argument.
Yemen’s problems are, in reality, home-grown. Local grievances are rooted in poverty, unemployment, water shortages, corruption and maladministration. But the recent Saudi intervention in the north – with intense air bombardment of Shi’ ite rebels there – is now threatening to turn a local problem into a regional crisis. Evidence that Iran is arming or funding the rebels – as opposed to merely supporting them rhetorically – has always been flimsy. But at a time of tension between Riyadh and Tehran over a range of issues (including the upcoming annual pilgrimage to Mecca ), a war of words has erupted over Yemen, with Saudi clerics attacking the Iranians for their alleged interference and a senior Iranian general lambasting Saudi Arabia for “ Wahhabi state terrorism ” against the Shi’ite rebels.
At the same time, the Saudis are discussing nuclear co-operation with France, thereby sending a clear message to Iran that it is not alone in its nuclear pretensions.
In short, deadlock over the Iranian nuclear issue will not come without a cost.
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