The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

by Vali Nasr

  In other words, the Iranians were too suspicious to countenance a deal and too divided to make any decisions.41 The naysayers claimed that they were defending Iran’s sovereignty, keeping its options open, and preserving its leverage. Khamenei took their side, and killed the deal by saying publicly that its backers (Ahmadinejad and Jalili) were naive and misguided.

  With the collapse of the Geneva swap deal, Obama reacted to criticism from allies and Congress by shifting back to sanctions. Iran tried to revive the swap deal not long after, but Washington no longer seemed interested. It was happy to use the narrative of failed talks in Geneva to get to sanctions faster.

  The Treasury Department redoubled its efforts to sanction Iran’s financial institutions as U.S. diplomacy focused further on getting the UN Security Council to pass sanctions against Iran. The White House wanted to show Iran that there was a cost to walking away from the table. Obama also wanted to stay ahead of Congress, which was preparing its own, stiffer sanctions bill, one sure to affect global trade and raise the ire of important allies.

  Getting China and Russia to agree to UN sanctions was the main challenge.42 During the Bush years, Beijing and Moscow had always fought sanctions. One Asian foreign minister told me, “Moscow and Beijing have an understanding: on North Korea, Russia hides behind China, and on Iran, China hides behind Russia.” Both Russia and China value stability and will cooperate with the United States and push Iran to do enough to achieve that. But that should not be confused with agreement with U.S. policy or leadership. America has had to resort to threatening war and instability combined with generous payoffs in order to get Russia and China on its side.

  When America talks to Russia about Iran, it is all about nuclear Iran’s threat to peace. Russia does not appear to imagine that it may itself one day be a target of Iranian nuclear weapons. In fact, Russia seems less worried about Iran than about America. Russia and Iran have some common strategic interests, foremost among them keeping America out of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Iran is Russia’s bridge into the Middle East—Moscow has far more strategic common ground with Iran than with Turkey, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. This became clear when Russia found itself on Iran’s side during the Syrian crisis, and King Abdullah hung up the telephone in anger on Russian president Dmitri Medvedev over Moscow’s unflinching support for the Assad regime.

  In the 1990s, Iran had provided Russia with badly needed foreign currency in exchange for its work on the Bushehr reactor. During the Bush years, Russia had supplied Iran with weapons and sophisticated military systems, and some in Iran even contemplated allowing Russian bases on Iranian soil as part of a strategic alliance against the West.

  The Russia-Iran partnership predates the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was still holding on to the idea of the communist union when Moscow and Tehran agreed that they should jointly manage the vast region that lies between them from the Black Sea to the Ural Mountains. Back in the nineteenth century, Russia had taken most of this region from Iran, and for most of the next century Iran worried that the USSR would take the rest of Iran as well. But with the Soviet Union faltering and revolutionary Iran obsessed with America, Tehran saw less reason to worry about Russia and so cooperated with Moscow in steering the Caucasus and Central Asia toward independence and away from American influence.43

  None of this is to say that Iran and Russia lack disagreements, or that Iran has forgotten the abuse that it suffered at Russian hands.44 Russians still challenge Iran over control of the Caspian Sea. And Russia views Iran as a rival seller in the natural gas market. In particular, Russia would like to keep Iranian gas out of Europe, which depends heavily on Russia for energy. When Russian strongman Vladimir Putin went to Tehran in 2011, he offered support against American pressure in exchange for Iran staying away from the proposed Western-backed pipelines to carry gas from east to west. Russia has encouraged Iran to sell its gas eastward, to the vast populations of a rapidly developing Asia, offering to finance a gas pipeline that would run from Iran to Pakistan for starters, but which could readily be extended to India and China.

  But the most important fact for Moscow when it comes to Iran is that it is the goose that lays the golden egg. Washington is so obsessed with the Iranian threat that it forgets about Russia’s own threat to the West, and so is ready to pay almost any price to secure Russian help. Russia sees its Iran posture as a valuable commodity that it can make America pay for dearly.

  When Russia got on board with UN sanctions after the Geneva talks failed, Obama was elated. His administration portrayed Russian support as a singular victory, a proof that Obama’s Iran policy was working, and a sign that Obama was better than George W. Bush at foreign policy. But in reality, this was less a victory for diplomacy than the result of a straight-up business deal—one in which the Russians took us to the cleaners. To get Russia to say yes to sanctions, Obama stopped talking about democracy and human rights in Russia (until 2012, when Russians took to the streets to protest Putin’s ham-fisted victory at the polls), abandoned any thought of expanding NATO farther eastward, washed his hands of the missile-defense shield that had been planned for Europe (Moscow hated the shield), and betrayed tiny Georgia (which Russia had attacked in the lopsided war of 2008). While Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was telling Holbrooke, “You sold us to the Russians,” Obama was lifting sanctions against weapons sales by arms makers associated with the Russian military.45 Even after all this, it took additional “concessions” (bribes would be a better word) from Germany, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to turn the Russians.

  China was not happy with Iranian obduracy, fearing that it made war more likely.46 Washington told Beijing that if it wanted to avoid instability it had better support economic pressure. But the real lever was Saudi oil, on which the Chinese depend more than they depend on Iranian oil. A combination of enticements in the form of long-term contracts at concessionary prices and threats of reductions in Saudi oil shipments got China to “yes” on sanctions as well.47

  The Chinese have an enormous and vastly growing thirst for oil—8 million barrels per day currently, and expected to rise to 15 million barrels by 2015. Of course China would say yes to lucrative Saudi oil contracts. But it is unlikely that it will give up on its option on Iranian oil. Iran has vast proven oil reserves and, more important, none of them are controlled by American oil companies. China could build a global company on the back of Iranian oil. Since 2009, while supporting sanctions, publicly calling on Iran to cooperate on the nuclear issue, and warming up to Saudi Arabia, China has expanded its trade with Iran and welcomed Iranian manufacturers who wish to escape the effects of sanctions by moving production to China and shipping their finished goods back to Iran. Western sanctions led by the United States have pushed Iran further into China’s bosom, and China is far from unhappy about that.

  Here is the heart of the problem with our Iran policy: America got Russia and China on the hook for Iran, but at what cost? Is Iran, a country whose economy is not all that much bigger than that of Massachusetts, a larger threat to U.S. interests than China or Russia? Is Iran so severe a danger that America should subsidize China’s economic rise by pushing the Saudis with all their oil right into China’s lap (where Iran is already sitting)? Does it make sense that America spends blood and treasure to keep the Persian Gulf secure while China gets cheap oil—at our behest? Should we be worried more about Iran or a Russia armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, beating its chest with nationalist bravado, and invading small neighbors? The price for Russian cooperation from here on will likely be facilitating Russian domination over energy supplies to Europe—abandoning support for pipelines taking Azerbaijani or Turkmen gas to Europe. For much of the Cold War we worked hard to keep Western Europe from becoming dependent on Russian energy; now we seem to be encouraging it, all to pressure Iran into submission.

  When the dust settles, this is what we will have accomplished: Iran will be weaker than it is now—maybe its economy will s
hrink to the size of Cape Cod’s—and instead of getting a single bomb in five years and a credible arsenal in perhaps twenty, they will get a bomb in ten and an arsenal in forty. But by then China and Russia will have gobbled up Central Asia, cornered Europe’s energy markets, and planted themselves smack in the middle of the Middle East. They will have emerged as global giants challenging America’s place in the world and perhaps the primacy of the U.S. dollar as the currency of international exchange. And once that happens, it will be all but impossible to reverse. We would then face global threats, threats on a scale we encountered during the Cold War, threats that dwarf whatever danger Iran can ever pose. Is it really smart to contain Iran’s threat by subsidizing China’s and Russia’s rise to the top? Before we get things backward, perhaps we should ask if we should be thinking of Iran as a player that can help contain Russia and block China’s encroachments into the Middle East.

  Just when Obama was claiming that talking had had its turn and it was time to toughen sanctions, diplomacy found a new lease on life in the form of an unexpected Brazilian-Turkish initiative. Admittedly, Brazil and Turkey seemed an unlikely duo to take charge of one of the most delicate matters on the world agenda. They were not part of the P5+1 group (the permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) that sat across the table from Iran in Geneva. That the Turks and Brazilians tried their hand at fixing a crisis that the global bigwigs could not resolve was a testament to the “rise of the rest”: middle-ranking powers with fast-growing economies and a yearning to leave their mark on global politics.48

  Turkey in particular was keen to step up as a regional problem solver and bolster its “street cred” as a local power and a bridge between east and west. Brazil had no clear stake in the Middle East, but it too thought a great power ought to be able to solve great problems, and not just in its own neighborhood. Also, Brazil once had a robust nuclear program and, thinking that it one day might want to go back to it, was not quite comfortable with the precedent the Iran crisis could set for handling future aspirants to nuclear status.49

  Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, had hosted Ahmadinejad and Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gül, and premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu had visited Tehran on a number of occasions. Lula and Ahmadinejad were both populists, while Turkey wanted to sell Iran on a different view of Islam in the modern world—democratic, economically open, and engaged in globalization. Davutoglu told me that he spoke to Khamenei about this vision and explained how Turkey and Iran could create an arc of Muslim power and prosperity stretching from the southeastern corner of Europe to the northwestern corner of South Asia. For Turkey, this could be a new EU. Khamenei listened but did not react. A diplomatic success on the nuclear issue would give Turkey credibility and remove obstacles to Iran’s involvement in the global economy.

  Both Turkey and Brazil had a vested interest in keeping UN and congressional sanctions at bay. In 2009, Brazil did $2 billion in trade with Iran, and it was hoping to increase that number significantly. Turkish companies, too, were doing brisk business in construction, food, consumer goods, tourism, telecommunications, and energy in Iran. Neither Brazil nor Turkey wanted these ties cut. A deal could make sanctions unnecessary.

  Davutoglu joined forces with Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim to revisit the swap deal with Iran. At first Washington was not happy with this meddling and tried to persuade Erdogan and Lula to drop the idea. But later Obama wrote to Erdogan supporting the Turkish and Brazilian effort as a worthy undertaking that might address the international community’s concerns. He even suggested that Iranian low-enriched uranium might stay in “escrow” in Turkey until the higher-enriched fuel pads were in Iran’s hands.50 That showed a high degree of engagement with the Turkish-Brazilian effort and a willingness to compromise to help it succeed. This was an early example of “lead from behind” strategy, which would eventually become the hallmark of Obama foreign policy. Turkey took the letter as a green light to go full speed ahead on negotiations.

  Within Iran, meanwhile, thinking about the swap idea had started to change. The reason was Ahmadinejad. From November 2009 to May 2010, he crisscrossed the country explaining the swap and why it would be good for Iran. As more Iranians heard his arguments, the high-level resistance that had killed the deal began to soften. That Iran ultimately signed a swap deal, with public support from parliament, was a victory at home for Ahmadinejad.51

  Erdogan and Lula went to Tehran in May 2010 and after two days of intense negotiations got a deal. The Tehran Declaration was the first time Iran actually signed something regarding the nuclear issue.52 At the heart of the deal was a swap of 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium for 120 kilograms of nuclear fuel enriched to about 20 percent.

  Erdogan and Lula thought they had pulled a rabbit out of a hat, but Washington dismissed the deal for handing Iran too much and getting too little in return. Although the goal of swapping 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium was in Obama’s letter, Washington now claimed that Iran had much more than that, and the swap of 1,200 kilograms would not be as effective in checking Iran’s progress toward a bomb as the sanctions then being pressed in Geneva.

  The reality was that Washington never expected Brazil and Turkey to get a deal in Tehran—Obama endorsed their effort expecting that they would fail and in doing so make the case for sanctions even stronger. Now the two upstart nations were undermining the case for sanctions. Washington had invested too much in corralling international support for sanctions—especially getting Russia and China on board—to change course now. Sanctions had become the goal, not the means to getting to a diplomatic resolution. Ironically, the Tehran Declaration had happened because the sanctions threat was so serious—Turkey and Brazil feared them as bad for business. This could have been touted as a kind of bankshot win for the dual-track policy: even the threat of sanctions could have a positive real-world effect! Washington could have gone back to the negotiation table and used the threat of further sanctions to build on the Tehran Declaration and get the diplomatic track going for good.

  Instead, Obama’s administration signaled that it was not really interested in a diplomatic solution; it had wanted sanctions all along. It wanted diplomacy to be tried but then fail; it was not ready or willing to deal with success. The White House thought that sanctions were politically safer. Following up on the Brazil-Turkey opening would be risky and would require the investment of political capital—Israel, Europe, the U.S. Congress, and the Arab states could all be expected to raise complaints. Sanctions were easier. And they would play better at home.

  Israel had never supported diplomacy and saw Brazilian and Turkish intervention as a dangerous distraction. One senior Turkish official told me that Israel’s attack on a Turkish flotilla carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in May 2010 in violation of an Israeli naval blockade was a deliberate shot across Turkey’s bow, a warning to Ankara not to meddle in the Iran affair. Turkey got the message, but the attack inflamed Turkish public opinion and soured Turkish-Israeli relations.

  France too downplayed the Brazil-Turkey deal, arguing that the vote for sanctions at the UN should go forward. The Europeans in general were not happy with being upstaged by Brazil and Turkey. The two had accomplished far more in a few months than the European powers had in six years. They were only too happy to kill the deal.

  Russia and China were also upset. The two had been rewarded handsomely for agreeing to sanctions and were unwilling to give all that up just because Brazil and Turkey had made a breakthrough. Moscow and Beijing also wanted to teach Tehran a lesson: Do not try to go around us. Russia and China were benefiting from sitting between Iran and America, selling their favors to both sides and profiting from the impasse. They were in no mood to see Brazil and Turkey kill their cash cow.

  Russia in particular is sensitive to challenges to its great-power status. From Moscow, Turkey and Brazil’s presumption of equal status in resolving a major inte
rnational crisis looked like a challenge. Russia’s vote for the sanctions resolution at the UN was also about putting Turkey and Brazil back in their place.

  On the eve of the UN vote, Washington tried to persuade Turkey and Brazil to refrain from voting on the sanctions resolution in the Security Council, on which both were then sitting as elected, nonpermanent members. That was too much to ask of the two countries. If they abstained, Washington could claim that the international community was united behind the sanctions, but how could Brazil and Turkey abstain after they had shown a way around the sanctions? Obama called Erdogan and asked him to avoid voting no. When UNSCR 1929 came up for a vote on June 9, 2010, however, both Brazil and Turkey voted no. But the vote passed anyway.

  American policy was now solely one of sanctions. By bringing Russia and China on board, Obama had made Bush’s policy a “success”—in the sense that it now enjoyed buy-in from Moscow and Beijing, not in the sense of it actually solving the nuclear impasse with Iran. Through the whole process, Obama had been very concerned with shielding his right flank so as not to open himself to right-wing criticism. It is not going too far to say that American foreign policy had become completely subservient to tactical domestic political considerations.

  In the end, Obama’s Iran policy failed. He pushed ahead with sanctions for the same reason Lyndon Johnson kept up the bombing of North Vietnam—neither could think of anything else to do (nor wanted to assume the risk of doing it). Obama’s sanctions-heavy approach did not change Iranian behavior; instead it encouraged Iran to accelerate its race to nuclear capability. The secretary of defense, Robert Gates, said as much in a January 2010 memo to Obama: sanctions coupled with engagement (the dual-track policy) plus covert action would not work, and furthermore, “we were not going to go to war to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state.”53 What he was suggesting was that Obama might say no to containment now, but that is the only option his policy has left for the United States. Perhaps it is true after all that “only Nixon can go to China.” A Democratic president may be too vulnerable to public opinion on national security issues to make tough decisions.