[Mb-civic] Opening With a Trap Door - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Opening With a Trap Door
How Best to Manage The Talks With Iran

By Jim Hoagland
The Washington Post
Thursday, March 23, 2006; A23

Ask administration hard-liners about Iran's sudden acceptance of the 
U.S. offer to talk about stability in Iraq and you hear this reaction: 
It's a booby trap. These hawks are right.

Put the same question to moderates on the Bush team and this is the 
response: It's an opening in the confrontation and a necessary step 
toward an exit strategy for Iraq. The remarkable thing is that these 
doves are right, too.

President Bush must treat the Iranian decision to open discussions in 
Baghdad as trap and opportunity. It is both. The administration should 
pursue this small opening in the Iranian wall with discipline and 
attention to maintaining a united front with its European and Asian 
partners. They are Iran's immediate targets.

The Iranians will certainly suggest to Europe, Japan and India that the 
United States is dealing behind its allies' backs to protect its 
interests in Iraq. The Iranians are masters at playing on others' 
divisions, often by inviting them to exploit simulated divisions on the 
Iranian side. Thus the endless arguments over Iran's "moderates."

The Bush team must make the Baghdad talks one insulated part of a 
coordinated three-pronged approach to Iran. Contacts with Iran must be 
managed as hard-nosed diplomacy that will go to the brink -- but not be 
carried over it by bluster and inflexibility.

The White House rightly insists that the Baghdad talks be limited to 
practical steps for defusing the crisis in Iraq. Discussion in Baghdad 
of Iran's nuclear ambitions, now under scrutiny in the U.N. Security 
Council, or other broad topics would undermine the allied unity that has 
brought the complaint against Iran this far.

The State Department hopes to get a declaration from the Security 
Council in about two weeks that ostensibly gives the Iranians a final 
chance to suspend their nuclear enrichment program and return to 
negotiations with the European Union and Russia.

The statement is in fact a necessary step toward new U.N. negotiations 
over a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. "The Europeans need to 
show their publics that they have jumped through all the hoops" before 
threatening sanctions, a U.S. official says. Washington is cooperating 
in this approach.

To reduce the danger that Iran will use the Baghdad talks as a divisive 
ploy, the United States should now join -- and lead -- the negotiating 
effort over enrichment. After the move to talk to Iran in Baghdad, the 
Bush administration cannot remain a silent, outside partner at the top 
rung of the negotiating ladder. And U.S. direct involvement provides the 
only hope of getting the Iranians back to the table.

The threat of sanctions has already triggered a counterthreat from Iran 
to use oil as a weapon. Washington must lead in establishing a credible 
international emergency energy-sharing program to confront that bad-case 
scenario. "We have to say to the Iranians together that we will endure a 
cold winter or two but they will be harmed even more by an oil boycott," 
says a senior European politician who has studied Iranian negotiating 
behavior extensively.

U.S. officials recognize that U.N. action might not be sufficient or 
even forthcoming. They now speak of a "diplomatic coalition of the 
willing" to pursue sanctions and other measures against Iran if the U.N. 
effort falters. But that coalition must be forged through diplomatic 
leadership and the sharing of the negotiating burden.

Such sharing can be reinforced in a third layer of contacts in this 
policy of engaging Iran, with intense skepticism. The United States 
should support efforts by the U.N. special representative to Iraq, 
Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, to establish a contact group of regional states 
that would meet regularly -- in Baghdad.

Regional "meetings outside Baghdad don't work at this stage," Qazi told 
U.S. officials he visited this week in Washington in a refreshing burst 
of candor. Having senior diplomats from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other 
Persian Gulf countries -- including Iran -- wrestle concretely with 
Iraq's daily problems could usefully supplement the U.S.-Iranian talks.

The experts say that Iran is six to nine months away from mastering the 
centrifuge process of enrichment, the key step in a 5- to 10-year 
process of building a nuclear bomb. Talking to the Iranians at three 
interlocking levels is the best way to determine whether there is any 
realistic hope of deflecting them from enrichment or deterring them if 
they get the bomb -- and what happens if the answer to both is no.

Bush must reshape Ronald Reagan's attitude toward Mikhail Gorbachev: 
Don't trust, do verify at every step of the way. First, there must be 
something to verify.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/22/AR2006032202168.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060323/9689dc6f/attachment.htm