Unthinkable (22 page)

Perhaps of greatest importance, there is no sign that the Supreme Leader has changed his mind about negotiations with the West. Khamene'i has consistently and publicly indicated that the sanctions will never change his mind about the nuclear program. At the darkest hour, when the rial was collapsing in the fall of 2012, Khamene'i announced that Iran would not change its course. He dismissed the currency slide as the mistakes of Iranian bureaucrats, and told the West that their economic problems were far worse than Iran's: “The West's economy is
frozen. You are worse off and you are moving towards collapse and recession. These problems cannot bring the Islamic Republic to its knees.”
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In early 2013 he ruled out direct talks with the United States to end the impasse, saying, “Talks will not solve any problems. . . . You are holding a gun against Iran saying, ‘Talks or you'll fire.' The Iranian nation will not be frightened by such threats.”
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Echoing the Supreme Leader's position, President Ahmadinejad warned the West, “You think that by resorting to oil and currency issues, you are able to press the Iranian nation and stop it from its path? You are wrong. Maybe this works like a quick tap on the brakes in driving, but the Iranian nation will find its way quickly and will continue.”
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In all of the hubbub over the December 2012
Kayhan
piece, what seems to have been overlooked is that the article's principal point was that the Supreme Leader (as well as
Kayhan
) was uninterested in compromise. It notes that the moderate position has been opposed by “a hardened, uncompromising, combater of Arrogance [i.e., Western/U.S. hegemony] that is demanding perpetual resistance against the West and endurance against the pressure of sanctions.
This is the current backed by the Supreme Leader
” (emphasis added). It argued:

Sanctions are the subterfuge of the worn out revolutionaries to prevail on society and the Supreme Leader to accept their beliefs. By exaggerating the effects of American and European Union financial and economic sanctions, they constantly emphasize this point that the pressure of the superpowers has reached intolerable levels and they can't be resisted any longer. . . . It seems that the worn out revolutionaries at this sensitive point have the intention with their engineered targeting of the conditions of country and application of pressure from all directions to the Supreme Leader, to force him of his own volition to drink the poisoned chalice and retreat; withdrawing from revolutionary positions and [thus initiate] negotiations with America. . . . They want to inflame and make insecure the political atmosphere by offering incorrect analyses and relating all the problems to foreign sanctions and thereby provoke public emotions, so
that the Leader has no other choice but to submit to their demands for the preservation of the interests of the country and the revolution.
⁵⁵

None of this writing reads much like the words of a leader ready to make an about-face. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian ambassador and member of its Supreme National Security Council, explains that Khamene'i's “mind-set is that under threat and pressure, to show flexibility or compromise would be seen as weakness. Therefore under such conditions, he consolidates and hardens his position. This is critical in understanding the position of Iran on nuclear negotiations.”
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Khamene'i and the hardliners have always emphasized Iran's willingness to sacrifice to achieve its paramount goals.
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Moreover, Iran's hardliners have argued that the experience of both Pakistan and North Korea shows that the West may try to pressure Iran to desist before it has acquired nuclear weapons, but once it crosses the nuclear threshold, the West will be forced to accept reality and lift the sanctions.
⁵⁸

Iranian officials can also point to signs that the sanctions are already beginning to erode.
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In December 2012, South Korea—which had been the first Asian nation to cut Iranian oil purchases—resumed its import of Iranian crude, along with Taiwan. Likewise, Japan offered to cover the insurance for Iranian oil shipments, skirting the EU ban on maritime insurance for Iran.
⁶⁰
India too is setting up a fund to back local insurers that import Iranian oil.
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Iran also found creative ways to get around the sanctions to export its oil. During the summer of 2012, Iranian oil exports had dipped to an average of just 400,000 tons per month, but were up to nearly 650,000 tons per month during the fall.
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During the first quarter of 2013, Iranian fuel oil exports rose a further 12 percent over the last quarter of 2012.
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Meanwhile, Russia and China have been lukewarm to the idea of further pressure on Iran, and in October 2012, Russian deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov stated, “Any additional sanctions against Iran would be perceived by the international community as an instrument for regime change in Tehran.”
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All of this hesitation may help bolster Khamene'i in his beliefs that Iran can withstand the sanctions,
and that it must do so, lest it fall to the nefarious plots that he assumes the United States is spinning to subvert the Islamic Republic.

All things considered, it seems unlikely that the status quo will produce the outcome that we desire. Still, the current policy has produced many positive developments for the United States, from the unification of the international community around sanctions to placing enormous pressure on the Iranian regime by means of those sanctions. For that reason, the first possibility we ought to consider in terms of a new Iran policy that can move beyond the status quo is whether it is feasible to take the current policy and enhance it. If it is pursued with more vigor and more resources, will it achieve our goal? Given how far the current policy has already taken us, why not see if we can tweak it in the hope that it can get us the rest of the way to our goal?

As in 2009, when the Obama administration first took office, a revamped carrot-and-stick approach should start with a new offer of reconciliation to the Iranians. The second Obama administration has already done that. This is important because the only way that this policy will succeed is if we can convince the Iranians that we are serious about finding a negotiated solution. The United States will have to persuade Tehran, and specifically Khamene'i, that we will take “yes” for an answer from them. That means that if Iran agrees to make the kinds of extensive concessions on its nuclear program that the United States seeks (and quite likely, similar compromises on terrorism and Iran's other mischief-making in the Middle East), the United States and the wider international community will end their efforts to isolate and punish Iran.

However, it is important to understand that the process of reconciliation and engagement will almost certainly not be enough to convince Tehran to change its behavior. It simply hasn't worked so far: not with Obama, not with Clinton, not with Bush 41, not with Reagan. Every time that the United States has made a good-faith offer of reconciliation with
Iran and promised to lift the extant sanctions, it has failed to move Tehran. The Iranian leadership does not seem to believe that it needs a better relationship with the United States and its allies, and Iranian hardliners fear that such a process would be a cover for America to undermine and overthrow the Islamic regime. In Karim Sadjadpour's words, “For Khamene'i, the carrots
are
the sticks.” This is why the Obama administration's offer of engagement had no impact on Tehran, and why a new effort needs to go well beyond it.

If a renewed effort to make this policy work is to succeed where it has failed in the past, it will need to go further than what was tried in the past. That does not mean abandoning the offer of engagement—quite the contrary. The United States should continue to hold out the prospect of a normal, peaceful relationship as our preferred end state. However, Washington will have to go well beyond the vague offer of an eventual rapprochement and put a more attractive and tangible set of benefits for Iran on the table than successive American administrations have so far been willing to do. It will mean offering Iran concrete benefits tied to specific Iranian actions that could be taken in an incremental and reciprocal fashion. We do something that the Iranians want in return for their doing something that we want. The specific incentives would need to be determined through a process of negotiation with both Iran and America's allies. In many cases, they are likely to be complex. However, most will probably fall into four broad categories: nuclear energy and technology, economic inducements, security guarantees, and political incentives.

NUCLEAR ENERGY AND TECHNOLOGY.
This set of incentives is complicated. Let's start with the easy part. On the nuclear front, previous offers during the Bush 43 administration included attractive terms to allow Iran to build light-water reactors to generate power and arrangements for Iran to participate in an international program to master enrichment technology. Light-water reactors can be more easily monitored, are harder to convert to military purposes, and spent fuel would be returned
by arrangement to the providing country so that it could not be employed for bomb making. Since Iran has insisted that it wants only technology and energy from its nuclear program, Tehran would have to be offered this opportunity regardless of whether its claims are genuine.

What will be far harder for many Americans and other Westerners to accept is that, as part of any negotiated resolution with Iran,
we are going to have to make concessions regarding the Iranian uranium enrichment program
. It is true that there is no good reason why Iran should need this capability. Iran's intent in acquiring it is almost certainly to create a breakout capability, if not to build a nuclear arsenal itself. But given how much the Iranians have invested in their nuclear program, how much progress they have already made, how committed to it they have become, and how much pain they have endured to hang on to it, it is simply not plausible that they will agree to do away with it altogether. Even the Israelis understand this, with former Israeli Defense Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin and Yoel Guzansky acknowledging that, “(in) any possible deal between the international community and Iran, Iran will be granted legitimacy for enriching uranium.”
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No less an Iran hawk than former defense minister and prime minister Ehud Barak has indicated that he is ready to accept ongoing Iranian enrichment and even possession of a small stockpile—but only up to 3.5 percent purity.
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If we are going to find a negotiated settlement to the current impasse, we are going to have to allow the Iranians to retain certain aspects of their current nuclear program. The key is which aspects.

At this point, we cannot say with certainty that the Iranian hardline leadership is ready to accept any limits on the Iranian nuclear program. A number of Iranian officials have suggested that Tehran would be willing to agree not to enrich any more uranium to 19.75 percent purity (often rounded up to “20 percent”). In October 2012, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, “If a guarantee is provided to supply the 20 percent (enriched) fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor, our officials are ready to enter talks about 20 percent enrichment.”
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A day later, Foreign Minister Salehi confirmed this intent, announcing, “If our
right to enrichment is recognized, we are prepared to offer an exchange. We would voluntarily limit the extent of our enrichment program, but in return we would need a guaranteed supply of the relevant fuels from abroad.”
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These statements suggest several things. First, they imply that the Iranians may be willing to accept some limits on their nuclear program, although just because the foreign minister said they are willing to accept limits does not mean that they are. Second, they indicate that Iran may be willing to agree to limits on the purity to which they are allowed to enrich uranium. While that is not meaningless, it is not as generous as it sounds because the number and quality of centrifuges that Iran retains is as important in establishing a breakout capability as the quality of the LEU it retains. That is why any deal with Iran should also include limits on the numbers of centrifuges Iran is allowed to retain, if not the quality of those centrifuges as well.

However, these statements also reinforce Tehran's constant refrain that it will never agree to give up all enrichment, and must be allowed to continue to enrich uranium to lower levels of purity. That being the case,
any negotiated settlement with Iran is going to leave Tehran with some breakout capability
. As long as Iran is left with the capacity to enrich uranium, the right to perform some enrichment activity, and a stockpile of LEU—all of which the Iranians have stated over and over again are the bare minimum that they would accept—then Iran will have a breakout capability. It could be a breakout window as wide as many months, perhaps even a year, but Iran
will
have the capability to manufacture the fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, at this point in time, that is the best we are going to get. If we are not willing to agree to a deal with Iran that leaves them with such a relatively long-term breakout capability, then there is no point pursuing a carrot-and-stick approach, the ultimate goal of which is to conclude just such a deal.

Because any plausible deal with Iran will leave Tehran with some kind of a breakout capability, even a distant one, it must also include provisions for an intrusive inspections and monitoring regime, to detect any
covert Iranian efforts to evade the terms of the deal, and provide ample warning if Iran decides to break out.
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On this score, there is also some reason for optimism. In 2003 Iran agreed to the Additional Protocol of the NPT, which provides for no-notice, surprise inspections and the ability of IAEA inspectors to go anywhere in Iran—roughly akin to what we had in Iraq in the 1990s. Although at the time we thought that the inspections in Iraq were not working, we learned after the 2003 invasion that they had worked. When coupled with harsh sanctions that Saddam was desperate to see lifted, the inspections kept finding enough of Iraq's hidden WMD programs in 1991–95 that they convinced him to give up his programs altogether sometime thereafter. That should give us confidence that the same kind of inspection regime in Iran would be likely to detect any covert nuclear activities there as well—and probably would deter the Iranians from even trying—as long as they too were tied to harsh sanctions.