Place Your Bets, Part 3
The foreign ministers of the G-8 countries issued a statement that exerts pressure on Iran to respond to the proposal made by the major powers earlier this month. The proposal offered a set of incentives to Iran to convince them to forego their pursuit of nuclear arms. From the Chicago Tribune:
"We expect to hear a clear and substantive Iranian response to these proposals" at the meeting, foreign ministers from the Group of 8 leading industrial nations said in a statement issued after their meeting in Moscow.
The issue at this point is unrelated to the proposal: the issue currently is about when Iran will respond, not about what that response will be. Iran is claiming that they need time to review the proposal, and that they will respond in August. This directly challenges -- the point, I would think -- President Bush's demand that the Iranian response be given in a matter of "weeks, not months." Now the G-8 countries have formally demanded a response:
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is scheduled to meet Wednesday with Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, and senior diplomats from Russia, Britain, France and Germany to discuss the offer.
"We expect to hear a clear and substantive Iranian response to these proposals" at the meeting, foreign ministers from the Group of 8 leading industrial nations said in a statement issued after their meeting in Moscow.
The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council will meet to discuss the Iranian situation the week following next week's meeting.
Thus far, a positive Iranian response to the proposal seems unlikely. They have repeatedly stated that they will give a response in August and no sooner. Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki has claimed the proposal contains "ambiguities" that must be resolved, and that Iran had not agreed to any date for a response when initially presented the proposal.
It is a tense and tricky standoff because it touches on Iranian nationalism. Iran at times appears on the brink of collapse. Student riots and protests by ethnic minorities against the mullahs make it appear to the West that another democratic revolution might occur. But Iran's President Ahmadinejad is remarkably popular, and threats against the Iranian nuclear program might actually forestall such a rebellion. Big Pharaoh discussed this in a post about Ahmadinejad's popularity:
Second, the West till this day cannot fathom the fact that the vast majority of Iranians support the nuclear program. They even support their country having nuclear weapons. "Why Pakistan and not us? Why India and not us?," this is what Iranians told me over and over again when I discussed this issue with them in chat rooms. AJ has managed to transform the nuclear issue into a national rallying cry and that resulted in him winning the support of those who didn't even vote for him.
My current suspicion is that some action will be taken against the nuclear sites if Iran does not respond in July to the major powers proposal. The delay until August is perhaps just a delay, a bid for time in the hopes that the diplomatic coalition aligned against Iran will break down. But it might also be considered a stalling tactic that will allow Iran time to move their program underground or into the desert. I think the latter interpretation will prevail among the Western powers, and that a military confrontation, or at least open threats of such a confrontation, is possible this summer.
Now that a climax draws near on at least one issue -- the timing of the Iranian response -- we may learn the answer to a question I posed when the major powers accord was first reached: which of the major powers will betray us first, and propose we give in to Iranian demands, even if it means an Iranian nuclear bomb. The choices were shown in the picture below.
NOTE: The caption reads: "Britain's Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett, center, speaks as, from left, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov listen."
No comments:
Post a Comment