Tehran, August 6th. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the oath of office this morning in the Islamic Republic before the Majlis, or parliament, in a ceremony broadcast live on national television. The news of the day before his official swearing in was that Iran had received the thirty page EU proposal on a nuclear agreement on Friday afternoon (Friday is the weekend in Iran and there are no papers), and the news after the swearing in was that Iran was going to, according to the Foreign Ministry spokesman, reject the proposal either this evening or on Sunday (the Western holiday, when plenty of papers are published and some even read).
Whether the EU proposal, which the Iranians thought was due on July 31st or August 1 (end of July or beginning of August according to the Europeans but translated as specific days according to the Iranians) was timed to coincide with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s oath or not (he was in fact the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran as of Wednesday when he was confirmed by the Supreme Leader, a fact that confused not only many in the West but also many Iranians in Tehran), he didn’t specifically allude to the proposal in his speech but spoke generally about Iran’s refusal to bow to international bullying.
It cannot come as a surprise to the Europeans that Iran has indicated that it will reject the proposal, even if the Bush administration and the New York Times think it a fair one. Iran has always signaled that any agreement on its nuclear plans must include and recognize Iran’s right to a full fuel cycle, and for the Europeans to specifically exclude that right means that Iran, in the eyes of most Iranians, could hardly take it seriously as a step forward towards a comprehensive agreement. To the Iranians, the offer by the Europeans to sell nuclear fuel to them (as long as the spent fuel is given back) smacks of old colonial attitudes to the Middle East: ‘you want something, we’ll sell it to you, but you can’t do as you please’ and ignores their fierce determination to be respected as an independent nation. The Iranians don’t want to be beholden to the West for their future energy needs, as the West is now beholden to the Middle East for theirs, and have made that as clear as possible in the months of negotiations.
It is hard to say what the next steps are; the IAEA has called for an emergency board meeting next Tuesday to discuss the issue, and the Iranians are still threatening to re-start uranium conversion activity at their plant in Isfahan even though they claim that they are willing to continue negotiations.
For the Europeans to not recognize that Iranian pride would not allow for them to close their heavy-water plant at Arak and to permanently cease all nuclear fuel cycle activities is rather astonishing from the ground here in Tehran, and can only mean that the proposals were either meant to be rejected or are a reaction to earlier Iranian threats to resume conversion activities. All three European powers involved in the negotiations have rather large staffs in even larger embassies (it takes ten minutes to drive around the British Embassy in downtown Tehran and just as long to drive along the walls of the uptown British bagh, or residence grounds), and it is inconceivable that the diplomats, even hidden from Iranians’ view, could imagine that the Iranian regime (to say nothing of many of the people) would agree with them that their proposal was fair. The question of whether they, along with the U.S., mean to move on quickly to the U.N. Security Council and then let the U.S. take the lead on either strategic strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities or the imposition of punitive sanctions, or whether they have borrowed the Iranian style of diplomacy (which involves aggressive demands to be softened later) remains to be seen.
The U.S., and now the Europeans, seem to believe that if Iran is allowed a small measure of independence in the nuclear fuel cycle that it will end up with a bomb, even with the most intrusive international inspections (which Iran would in all probability accept) and perhaps they are right. Iraq, however, disproved the Bush administration’s theory that inspections are ineffective, but apparently that is not germane to Iran’s case. While it is easy to think that Iran should just give in and accept what to us seems perfectly reasonable, it is important to consider what the consequences might be if they don’t and talks break down altogether. Isolating Iran was ineffective in the past, and a military strike against Iran might very well inflame an already very hot Middle East. One hopes that somehow, somewhere, cool heads are preparing to get back to the negotiating table. In the meantime, Tehran’s population of some 12-15 million people went about their business today as is nothing was terribly different from a week ago, when their president was Mohammad Khatami and the big question was whether the beginning of August meant August 1st, or something a little more vague.