How worse Iran-West nuclear diplomacy could get?

It couldn’t be better time to ask both Iran and Western powers this question: Do you really want to talk?

Latest acts from both sides show that even they don’t know what the answer to this question is. International diplomacy abhors uncertainty and no matter what type of government rules a nation, states want a stable authority that it can rely on its words. Unfortunately, neither Iran nor the Western decision-making machine is closer to that.

Whenever these two sides want to talk, there comes an incident that derails these nuclear negotiations and deepen already high running mistrust between the two nations. Trita Parsi here explains how in the past the West scuttled nuclear talks and downplayed Tehran declaration Turkey and Brazil facilitated in 2010, a move Turkey said opened a window of opportunity to diplomacy if it did not entirely address Western concerns.

On Wednesday, an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a daylight assassination in Tehran, a development that most likely aimed at sabotaging nuclear talks the sides scheduled to have in seven weeks in Istanbul. The professor was reportedly working in Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility. Here is the picture: International Atomic Energy Agency confirms that Iran has started enriching uranium in a hidden underground bunker to 20 percent, a level where it can be quickly upgraded for use in a nuclear weapon. A day later, a nuclear scientist working in the uranium enrichment facility is killed.

Flashback to past couple of days, Iran and West could be seen in unprecedented wrangling, issuing threats and trading blames. The planned nuclear talks in Istanbul also come at a time when the EU prepares to ban importing Iran’s oil exports. Iran considers this casus belli, a cause of war and vows to shut down Strait of Hormuz to disrupt 35 percent of world’s oil supply, which in effect will bring world economies upside down.

Americans insist that “two-track Iran policy” – pressure and diplomacy – could work but I can’t help but surprise how talks could yield constructive results when both sides try to undermine each other.

Besides Iran’s bad record of reneging its promise in international affairs, Iran’s internal political rift and Israel will make nuclear talks more complicated than ever.

Several hardliner officials of Iran issued threats to Turkey weeks earlier yet Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi refused to associate his administration with those remarks. Similarly, some circles in Iran’s ruling establishment wanted to botch UK’s embassy in Tehran but later the Iranian foreign minister acknowledged that the incident was not welcomed. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Iranian government to pursue independent foreign policy and uncertainty over Tehran will further consume credibility of Iran in the eyes of the Western powers for its flips and flops.

In the Western camp, while the US administration and the EU are content with almost crippling sanctions on Iran, Israel is the short-tempered and uncompromising child. Assassination of scientists and diluting nuclear talks between Iran and the Western powers are effective ways to bury diplomatic efforts both sides rarely revive. And Israel is very good at that.

For serious diplomacy on Iran, there must be firm, stable positions on both sides and the promise of diplomacy will fail to walk its talk without it.  

States fake their foreign policies are moral

Domestic developments in a number of Middle Eastern countries now a subject of discussion among foreign ministers, international platforms and foreign affairs forums. It is an extraordinary period in which domestic ideologies and policies affect foreign dealings of states. It is very rare in history, if any, and to my knowledge, I remember no single event when states harmed their relations with other countries based on domestic policies.

Today, the Arab Spring taught us that states improve or kill their relations with nations based on degree of human rights records. Turkey lost its friends such as Syria and Libya as their cruel leaders started killing their own people. France and the U.S. were also forced to severe their ties with old friends like Tunisia and Egypt after feeling pressure from their citizens. These developments have challenged an orthodox view that states behave based on their national security interests, not morality, or principles. Even a claim that “instability elsewhere affects us” does not ring true. It is certain that unrest in Syria or Libya does not necessarily detrimental to U.S. or Saudi interests but both states heavily invested to replace hardliner decrepit leaders that killed their own people daily to maintain their seats.

It is always easy to sell hawkish foreign policy to people if values of an adversary stand in contrast to your country’s principles. Both Soviet and American leaders harangued to their people for decades how evil the adversary was – the most effective way to uninterruptedly sustain bellicose rhetoric in foreign policy. But conduct of both Soviets and Americans in foreign affairs purely rested in their national interests: the U.S. supported any type of government that was anti-government during the Cold War. Even U.S. President Richard Nixon and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger embraced Chinese mass killer Mao Zedong in the heyday of Cold War, who was ruling his country with communist iron fist.

The Middle East is an important region for Russia, China, Europe, Turkey and the U.S. because the region is a primary source of energy to world’s most advanced industrial spots. Independent variable here is energy, dependent variable is who is securing the flow of energy. For other nations, it is not important who is providing them strategic goods such as oil and gas – it is important that they make sure the oil and gas is flowing uninterruptedly.

But isn’t it immoral foreign policy practice if nations stand by any type of government that is a source of stability in the region? It is indeed. And the reason why states lash out against regimes that are brutally massacring their own people is to avoid being seen as calculating pragmatist states.

Many challenged realists in the face of the Arab Spring that states, as a matter of fact, do care about morality. For reasons mentioned above, to save their ties with other dictators, nations are forced to abandon and forsake leaders that have gone astray.

Lucky those states whose national interests also go hand in hand with moral principles.