How Power Works: Iran Negotiations

Each week I look at one major international event and try to explain the structures of power behind it — the actors, ideologies and assumptions shaping events.

Today’s post will be relatively short. Negotiations in Pakistan between the US and Iran have ended overnight. What can we now expect? Some observations based on the limited information we now have.

Military

The ceasefire was agreed to last until 21 April. We can therefore hope that full-scale military action will not resume until then and only then if there has been no progress in reaching a longer-term agreement - postponements, further short ceasefires etc are all possible. But sporadic attacks will probably continue. The Straits of Hormuz will remain blocked. And now Trump has announced a US blockade of the Straits (for Iranian ships) which in a sense could be seen as a counter-move to the Iranian blockade, perhaps thereby increasing US leverage to have that lifted but, as explained below, I don’t think the blockade issue will be resolved until everything else is agreed, further increasing the agony for the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that Israel intends to continue its bombardment of southern Lebanon but also northwards including Beirut even though Iran has stated that the ceasefire also applies to Lebanon. Israel is also intent on permanent occupation of a large chunk of southern Lebanon. How do we know this? Its defence minister has announced it. The IDF is busy blowing up entire villages on the grounds that these constitute Hezbollah ‘military infrastructure’.

Diplomatic

Back to US/Iran. We do not know what was on the table in Islamabad. However, Vance has said that Iran refused American demands, suggesting that the proposals flowed one way across the table, from the US to Iran (it does not appear that Pakistan offered any of its own proposals or, if it did, they didn’t last long). Vance has called the US demands ‘final’ i.e. non-negotiable and that Iran must accept them in toto or face renewed conflict. From this, we can deduce a couple of things:

• Both sides intend that the negotiations should continue, but for the Americans only in the narrow sense that Iran must now agree to the US proposal without amendment, or else. But see below.

• Both sides still want an agreement. Neither has said it wants a return to war, though both sides of course blame the other for last night’s breakdown. Although Trump has said he doesn’t care whether Iran agrees to a deal or not, it is clear that in reality he does want a deal. Otherwise, Vance would not have been sent to Islamabad in the first place. The ‘I don’t care’ line is pure negotiating bluster, a technique designed to put further pressure on Iran, a transparently obvious tactic no doubt learned in some shabby deal over a tacky New Jersey casino.

• In negotiation, a proposal is very rarely the ‘final’ offer. Calling a proposal such is obviously a way to try to pressure the other side to agree without further discussion - another obvious tactic. However, if Iran were now to revert to the Americans with a ‘yes, but’ response and various proposals to amend the US proposition, it’s hard to see the US refusing to consider their proposals, especially in light of the no doubt desperate and ceaseless phone calls from Saudis, Kuwaitis, Europeans, Indians etc, begging Trump that this nightmare end.

• It’s notable that despite their fulsome involvement in the conflict, Israel is not at the table. Presumably, the Americans consult them but that’s far from the same as having a veto on what’s agreed. But, as their bombing of Lebanon makes clear, Israel does not necessarily see itself as bound by any agreement made by the US.

A side note on the diplomacy around Lebanon. Trump has told the Israelis to dial down their bloody assault on Lebanon, presumably to give the American agreement with Iran a better chance. He has also told them to ‘talk’. So, under US auspices, Israelis and representatives of the Lebanese government are due to meet next week in Washington. Although such a meeting has not taken place for decades, as neither country recognises the other, I expect very little from the encounter, if indeed it takes place at all.

The Lebanese government does not include and cannot control Hizbollah, with whom of course Israel is mainly fighting (I say ‘mainly’ because its targets range far beyond Hizbollah military positions to include civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, ambulances, ordinary homes etc). So Israel/Lebanon talks are irrelevant. Perhaps they are being performed for the benefit of the Americans, or the world, to fulfil the pretence that Israel wants peace. Israel’s plans for southern Lebanon are very clear - occupation and perhaps eventual annexation (as Israel’s security minister, Smotrich, has stated), which requires the civilian population to be driven out. That is achieved by destroying their homes, villages, bridges etc. and making the territory uninhabitable, much as Israel did in Gaza. Hizbollah attacks on Israel also continue, thus providing the rationale for Israel’s assault.

Content of any US/Iran agreement

The main ‘sticking point’ issues have been widely reported - Iran’s nuclear program, transit through the Straits of Hormuz, return of Iran’s frozen assets, Lebanon (perhaps). I have seen no mention of restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missiles, even though this was once earlier announced as an American war aim, presumably now forgotten. And no mention of ‘regime change’ or anything about democracy, or the treatment or human rights of Iran’s population. Also forgotten, it seems.

Of these, the nuclear issue is by far the hardest to agree, for a variety of technical and political reasons. My expectation is that the other issues will be agreed rapidly once this core issue is successfully addressed. Hormuz is basically binary: open or closed. It is also Iran’s most powerful leverage, by far: essentially a stranglehold on the world economy. Not a bad bit of leverage to have. This leverage is why the Americans have come to the table at all. Iran will not give up this leverage and agree to open the straits until everything else is agreed.

Books have been written about the nuclear issue. I will try to describe the main points of contention briefly:

Technical issues: Iran insists it has the right to a civil nuclear program, which indeed, as a signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, it does. The US now demands that Iran give up any attempt to build a nuclear weapon. The devil is the detail between these two positions.

First, how much enrichment should Iran be permitted? None, or some, and if so how much? At present, Iran has no uranium enriched sufficiently to build a bomb (which is above 90% enrichment). But it does have - or had, before the bombing - the capacity to enrich to that level. Should it be allowed any capacity? Iran says it has the right to such capacity as necessary for its civil nuclear program. Others argue that it should not have such capacity, whose utility for a military program is disputed.

Secondly, what should happen to the famous 444 kg of 60% enriched uranium that Iran currently possesses? (Note that 60% enrichment is not sufficient to make a bomb, but can be fairly rapidly enriched to the necessary level: it is far too highly enriched for plausible civil use.) In the Oman-hosted talks before the bombing began, Iran reportedly agreed to hand over all this stock for safe keeping in a third country, as well as ceasing all enrichment. Why the US broke off those talks without accepting this concession begs many questions about the real American motives for the subsequent attacks. The scale of the ensuing bombing suggests to me that the US/Israeli motive went much further than destruction of the nuclear program or its supporting infrastructure, instead they sought much wider demolition of Iran’s economy including its oil production, all of which will inflict much harm and misery on Iran’s population. Of course, it’s not clear that Trump even knows why he went to war.

Trump has said that Iran and the US could ‘dig out’ the stock of Highly Enriched Uranium (the 444kg) together. This statement suggests two things: a) that Iran has agreed to hand it over (which it has already apparently offered, in Oman) and b) that it’s buried under rubble somewhere. Either way, it looks like this issue may have been dealt with. Even if not, there is no way the Americans will let Iran keep that stockpile, however deeply it may be buried, and the Iranians must know this.

This leaves the third very difficult technical issue. Assuming the above is agreed, how should compliance be monitored or verified? My guess is that, given well-known Trumpian attitudes towards the UN (or its relevant body, the IAEA), the US proposed that they should conduct such verification themselves. This means American inspectors (who would presumably be military) exercising the right to inspect any suspicious activity or site anywhere in Iran. Unless they can go anywhere - at any time - then verification cannot be 100% credible. Iran, naturally, would assume that such inspectors would also gather targeting data and amongst their number would be Israelis, whether or not Iran had agreed to their participation (US and British spies were among the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, so Iranian suspicions would be well founded). So, the demand would be interpreted as that the US/Israel could inspect any military base, airfield, building, office or shipping container (or bucket) in Iran at any time. It’s perhaps understandable that Iran would refuse such a condition. The verification issue is very difficult overall for it suffers from one basic and vexing characteristic - how do you prove that something isn’t there?

The only agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program under strict monitoring is the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed in 2016 under the Obama administration, and the agreement was also with all the other P5 countries plus Germany i.e. all the most important and powerful countries in the world. Two years of formal negotiation were required for this agreement. If you include the ‘back channel’ and secret negotiations that preceded the formal talks, the duration of the process was six years. It’s therefore not surprising that Iran and the US could not agree a deal within 21 hours in Islamabad. My worry is that the US has demanded something that seems simple - give up the nuclear program, monitored by US inspections - that is in fact very complicated and very difficult for Iran to accept. All this ‘last and final offer’ rhetoric speaks to me of the bluster and bullying of New York real estate dealmaking, the world from which Witkoff, Kushner and of course Trump come, rather than the complicated, patient work of arms control talks.

Then there’s the equally tricky political issues that surround the nuclear program and explain to some extent why Iran is pursuing it. If Israel and the US see fit regularly to bomb Iran, how should Iran deter such attack? Or indeed an attack by its neighbour Iraq, with whom it fought a horrendously bloody war lasting over a decade in the 1980’s, a war that cost Iran two hundred thousand lives, and perhaps half a million wounded? Or a nuclear attack from Israel or the US (a possibility which I’m sure crossed Trump’s unhinged mind in the last few weeks). Why, if you’re Iran, would you disarm yourself of the only capability that might be effective in stopping them? The answer that Iran has hitherto chosen is to maintain the possibility that it might develop or even secretly possess a workable nuclear weapon, much as Saddam Hussein maintained the illusion that he might have extensive stocks of chemical and biological, if not nuclear, weapons - in order to deter attack from Iraq’s enemies, primarily Iran.

From what the Americans have said so far, they seem to be asking Iran to give up this deterrent capability once and for all. That’s not unreasonable, given Iran’s threats to use such weapons, in particular to destroy Israel. But the best way to persuade Iran never to pursue such a program is to assure Iran that you won’t attack it, not actually to attack it, and thereby prove in very material terms the very argument that Iran believes - namely the necessity of some kind of greater deterrent, that might match Israel and the US’s otherwise overwhelming military advantage and that might in some way restrain Israel’s evident and growing tendency to aggression, unlawful as it may be.

This is the basis of past proposals for some kind of regional security agreement covering Iran, the Gulf and Israel, perhaps a kind of non-aggression pact that would, in theory, reduce the chances that any of them would attack any of the others (and in particular that Iran would not attack Israel or vice versa). Such an agreement might be supervised or even guaranteed by other big countries, particularly but not only the US. My guess is that to meet this requirement, the US is offering some kind of non-aggression guarantee or promise to Iran now, but in their eyes (and mine, to be honest) such a guarantee would be worthless given Trump’s lies and deceptions before this and past attacks, of loud commitments to peace and negotiation that turned overnight into cruise missiles.

It’s ironic that Trump’s past lies may now be the undoing of a potential deal with Iran which, as others have argued, he now sorely needs. So much for ‘The Art of the Deal’. Stick to real estate, is my advice.

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