The love triangle
ONE thing is clear. Dr Henry Kissinger could not have negotiated the Iranian nuclear deal. His Jewishness would have come in the way.
Admirers of Dr Kissinger’s legendary tenacity should now applaud the stamina of his successor Secretary of State John Kerry, who, despite a broken leg, persevered until he was able to conclude the Joint Action Comprehensive Plan (JACP), signed in Vienna on July 14, 2015. The brevity of the final document — 109 pages, five annexes — is deceptive, like the Ten Commandments. Iran has been warned: ‘Thou shalt eliminate your stockpile of medium-enriched uranium’, ‘Thou shalt reduce your centrifuges to a third’, and ‘Thou shalt not, until the year 2030, enrich uranium over 3.67pc or construct any heavy-water or any new uranium enrichment facilities’.
Iran agreed to these conditions, conceding, as T.E. Lawrence once wrote, “There could be no honour in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat”. For this, Iran is to be admired. Alone and isolated, it has endured debilitating sanctions, international ostracism, and selective victimisation. No other nation in the world has undergone such a trial by a Star Chamber of UN member countries.
Survival is not a matter of fitness, but of fortitude.
Iran faced a seven-member bench comprising five Security Council members (US, UK, France, China and Russia) supported by the European Union and Germany (which conveniently forgot the seminal role its own defecting scientists had played in the development of America’s nuclear capability post-1945). And yet Iran has emerged, bowed but not broken.
During the final stage of the negotiations, Kerry demanded an assurance from the Iranian Foreign Minister M. Javad Zarif that, whatever might be agreed between them in Vienna, the consensus would have the blessings not only of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani but also of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Zarif displayed an Aryan patience. He abstained from referring (as Diana, princess of Wales admitted when discussing her marriage) to the invisible third person at these nuptials: Israel.
Israel, once an ally of an imperial Iran, reacted to the JACP with predictable vehemence. It rattled its radioactive sabres. It derided President Obama’s policies as ‘soft’. It came as close as it could to breaking John Kerry’s other leg. Unlike Kerry, though, it does not have even one leg left to stand on.
Today, the Iranian leadership and their tie-less technocrats have demonstrated to nations of Iran’s size that survival is not a matter of fitness, but of patience, of fortitude. In this, Cuba qualifies as another example of supine endurance. Both countries have been subjected to US sanctions for decades. Both have survived, and both are talking to their once implacable antagonist.
American presidents often find it easier to make history than to read it. In office, they learn the Aristotelian truth: ‘This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past’. They have the power, however, to rectify it. President Richard Nixon ended China’s isolation in 1971 and the Vietnam War in 1973. A second-term President Barack Obama has made overdue peace with Cuba and Iran. It is not inconceivable that he may order a complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan before he leaves office.
Meanwhile, while Israel and Saudi Arabia decipher the fine print of the JACP, international businesses are looking at the bigger picture, at a world in which sanctions have no role in international commerce. Trade sanctions have been proven to be an imperfect tool. The embargo on Japan in the 1940s by the ABCD countries (including America, Britain, China and the Dutch) only precipitated the militarisation of Japan. The Cuban embargo forced US millionaires to pay more for their illicit Havana cigars. Sanctions against Iran benefited the Saudis; they could not subjugate Iran into submissive insolvency.
Whoever imagines that the JACP will bring about an immediate lifting of sanctions against Iran should be prepared for a long wait. Action on sanctions by the US and its allies is dependent upon compliance with the JACP by Iran, and continuous verification of such compliance. It will take months, at the earliest; years, if anti-Iranian hawks have their way.
Will regional cooperation with Iran again lurch westwards to embrace Iran and Turkey, as it did during the heady days of the Regional Cooperation for Development? Can we in Pakistan expect a surge in Pak-Iran trade? A spurt in the Iran-Pakistan pipeline?
It has been more than 15 years since the Iran-Pakistan pipeline was conceived. In that period, we could have built it seven times over. The Iranians have watched us vacillate. They have heard us parrot our irrevocable intent. They humoured us by attending the sham ceremony in 2013, pretending that we had begun our end of the pipeline. The Iranians know too well that we, like Kerry, stand on crutches. We are not part of JACP’s love triangle.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2015
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