Washington appears out-manoeuvred as Iran strikes with others the nuclear deal the West only recently offered, writes Mustafa El-Labbad* Last week, Turkey and Brazil moved to defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis. Taking up their initiative, Iran has agreed to hand Turkey 1,200 kilogrammes of its low- enriched uranium in exchange for 120 kilogrammes of uranium fuel rods enriched to 20 per cent, which Iran needs to power its medical research reactor. The deal, virtually the same in substance to that which Western powers offered to Iran in October, took the White House by surprise. After voicing scepticism, Washington pressed ahead with its drive to secure a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran. Why are Western powers so reluctant to accept a uranium swap along the lines they themselves proposed to Iran? What motivated Iran, Turkey and Brazil to conclude the deal? How will the deal affect US-Iranian relations in the short to mid-term? Once again Tehran has deftly tossed the ball back into the US court. At the height of talks amongst the six permanent members of the UN Security Council on imposing harsher economic sanctions on Iran, Iran unveiled the fuel swap agreement signed with Turkey and Brazil. In response, Western powers are suggesting that the situation is no longer the same as it was seven months ago when they proposed a similar deal. Unless Western nations are competing over the business of enriching uranium for others, it now appears that their purpose was to strip Iran of most of its stock of low-enriched uranium. In October, when the West made the offer for a uranium fuel rod swap, 1,200 kilogrammes accounted for about 75 per cent of Iran's uranium stock. Since then, Iran has been continuing its uranium enrichment activities and has succeeded in producing quantities enriched up to 20 per cent. If Iran has been producing about 4.5 kilogrammes of uranium per day, as estimates indicate, then the 1,200 kilogrammes it has agreed to hand over accounts for only around 40 per cent of its stock. But this is only one reason why the West reacted so coolly to the Iranian-Turkish-Brazilian agreement. The agreement underscored Iran's right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Although the right is protected under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a state party, Western powers have been determined to prevent Iran from exercising it, towards which end they passed UN Security Council resolutions 1696, 1737, 1747 and 1803. In addition, the US has also insisted that Iran halt all uranium enrichment activities as a precondition for bilateral negotiations -- a condition Iran has refused. Another sticking point is that the agreement does not oblige Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium up to 20 per cent, a process it began only a few months ago. In addition, the agreement states that Western nations would have to approve the agreement before Iran would start delivering its stocks to Turkey, that the stocks would have to remain in Turkey, and that if Iran does not receive the enhanced fuel rods within the space of a year the stocks would have to be returned in full. The deal thereby gave Tehran several possible outs. The agreement works to Iran's advantage in other ways. It strengthens its negotiating position with respect to the West and enhances its international image. In striking the deal, Iran comes across as the rational party, eager to reach a solution and capable of a certain degree of flexibility towards that end. In rejecting the plan, based on a previous proposal, the West comes across as rigid and unreasonable. If Iran has gained from the deal, Turkey has undoubtedly scored a diplomatic coup. Ankara has significantly enhanced its profile as a regional authority capable of resolving the intractable crises of the Middle East. But its intercession in the Iranian-Western standoff was motivated by other factors. On the one hand, a nuclear Iran would skew the historic regional rivalry between Tehran and Ankara heavily in favour of the former. On the other hand, an Iran debilitated by a military strike would create a power vacuum in the Iranian vicinity that would probably be quickly filled by India in the Gulf and Russia in the north, specifically the Caucasus, the locus of Turkey's four- century-old regional rivalry with Moscow. Brazil can also count itself among the winners from the Iranian-Turkish deal. In brokering the deal, the Brazilian president catapulted his country out of its relative isolation on the other side of the Atlantic to the centre of one of the world's most crucial affairs. On the basis of a close and accurate reading of international balances of powers, Lula da Silva succeeded in elevating his country from a South American regional power to an international mediator and mouthpiece for the Third World. On the way to producing the uranium deal with Turkey, Brazil and Iran agreed to raise their trade from its current level of $1.2 billion to $10 billion. In addition, under the banking agreements they signed, Brazil will export food products to Iran and, more significantly, open branches of Brazilian banks there. Brazilian banks would offer Iran an avenue for accessing Brazil's banking networks in the Americas. This would undermine the efficacy of any sanctions targeting the Iranian banking sector. Theoretically at least, Brazil will also be able to invest in mining in mineral-rich Iran. This investment would prove a boon to both sides. Nor would Brazil be at risk of violating international sanctions, for the draft resolution before the UN Security Council does not touch mining activities in Iran. The Obama administration is in a predicament over Iran. It needs Iran's help in order to be able to withdraw its forces from Iraq and in order to turn the tables on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet neither can it induce Iran to change its behaviour through negotiations, nor is the military route towards this end an option. Washington's image in the Islamic world has yet to recover from the disastrous Bush era while the three chief regional trouble spots (India/Pakistan, Iran/Iraq, Palestine/Israel) are not resolvable by military options. Now with the tripartite agreement, Iran's negotiating position is stronger and Washington's weaker. Perhaps the Obama administration still has a card up its sleeve. Under the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009, the US could impose sanctions on firms that sell gasoline to Iran or that offer shipping, financial, technical or other services to the Iranian gasoline sector. Iran imports 40 per cent of its gasoline from abroad, yet the draft UN Security Council resolution does not contain provisions prohibiting exporting gas to Iran. The US bill is still under review in Congress, while there is every possibility that Obama will use it as a means of leverage, especially if the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq gets underway. As a final note, we should add that the tripartite agreement is not so much a signal of Turkish-Brazilian sympathy or solidarity with Iran as it is a reflection of current balances of power. Had Canada and Japan, for example, intervened instead of Turkey and Brazil they would not have been able to obtain better conditions for the US. The Obama administration appears to have overlooked a strategic rule in international relations: if you cannot get what you want through threat of force, you will not be able to do so via the negotiating table. * The writer is director of Al-Sharq Centre for Regional and Strategic Studies.
