Source: Pro et Contra
For anyone who cares deeply about U.S.-Russian or European-Russian relations, the August 2008 events in Georgia are a great tragedy, as they are for the inhabitants of that beautiful and besieged country—Ossetians, Abkhaz, and Georgians alike. On the back of this “summer war,” the agenda for cooperation is certain to be thrown into doubt for a long time to come.
Therein the great tragedy, because the United States, Europe and Russia are major players in the international arena, and so much depends on their ability to work together to solve critical problems. Moreover, in the last half of 2008, U.S. and European policy-makers will have to decide quickly about how to interact with Russia. President Bush, although a lame duck, has urgent issues that he is resolved to continue working until his last day in office in January 2009. Russia is a player on many of them, especially the conflict with Iran over its nuclear program. Barrack Obama and John McCain, the U.S. presidential candidates, will face increasing questions about Russia as the debate season opens and they are forced to articulate their foreign policy priorities. It will not be enough, as McCain sometimes does, simply to bash the Russians.
The entire nuclear weapons agenda must remain safe territory for cooperation, whether we are talking about the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran or North Korea, the threat of thefts of nuclear material anywhere in the world, or the necessity of achieving further nuclear reductions in the United States and Russia. These nuclear issues are so urgent, and the threat of nuclear catastrophe is so great, that priority attention is warranted. Nuclear weapons have nearly always been a haven for continued diplomacy while U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated. This was true when the Soviet Union still existed, and it has been true through the almost fifteen years of Russian power.
This article focuses on the first of these topics, how to advance toward a solution of the nuclear problem with Iran. For purposes of this analysis, it is assumed that the six parties to the negotiations with Iran, i.e., the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany and China, will continue their fast-track efforts to work the Iran problem while resolving the conflict between Russia and Georgia on a separate track. Although it is inevitable that the summer war will have an effect on many negotiations and interactions between Russia and its Western partners, the urgency of nuclear threats, including the Iranian nuclear problem, generates the necessity for progress on a track that is kept more or less “walled off” from other issues.
Can the U.S. and Russia Work Together on Iran?
There has been a lot of talk in the United States about whether the Russians are with us or against us on Iran. This question is not new. In the 1990s, it was easy to answer: the Russians were selling centrifuges to Iran, and laser isotope equipment, and other technologies that would hurry Iran toward a nuclear enrichment capability. At the time, the Russians claimed they’d keep an eye on Tehran to make sure that none of their sales went to a weapons program, only toward development of peaceful nuclear energy.
The Clinton administration did not believe them, and for good reason. At the time, Vice President Gore negotiated a deal with his counterpart, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, to shut down the sale of centrifuges, but Washington and Moscow continued to tangle over other nuclear technology sales to Iran well into the Bush administration. Then something happened.
When news about Iran’s hidden nuclear program came into the open at the beginning of 2002, Russia’s attitude began to shift. Russian officials in private conversations began to talk about how the Iranians had doubled-crossed them, building an enrichment program far exceeding anything the Russians had thought possible. The Iranians essentially blew apart the Russians’ self-satisfied notion that they could ride the tiger of Iran’s nuclear ambition.
The Russians’ shock and annoyance quickly translated into concrete policy. They soon had completed negotiation of a nuclear fuel deal for their reactor project for the Iranians at Bushehr. Under the terms of the agreement, Russia insisted that it would deliver fresh fuel for the reactor and take back any spent fuel to be dealt with in Russia. The Iranians would have neither need to enrich fresh fuel nor need to reprocess spent fuel for the reactor—and would thus avoid acquiring nuclear weapons useable material.
President Bush has been treating this shift in Russian policy as proof that the Russians are with the United States on Iran—but others, and particularly on Capital Hill, are unconvinced. They point toward the rough game that Russia played in the negotiations about sanctions in the U.N. Security Council, constantly pushing to water down the impact that the sanctions resolutions would have. Three resolutions later, Russia could not have been that intent on avoiding sanctions against Iran, but the impression remains otherwise in the U.S. Congress.
So we will have to look elsewhere for evidence of Russia’s seriousness in countering Iran’s nuclear program. One fascinating piece of evidence is Russia’s behavior with regard to North Korea.
In June 2008, North Korea dramatically dynamited the cooling tower of the Yongbyon plutonium reactor, which had long been the symbol of its illicit weapons program. One year earlier, this step would have been difficult to imagine. The six-party talks among North Korea, the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea had arrived at a bizarre impasse: North Korea had agreed to resume shutting down Yongbyon, but not before the United States lifted sanctions against the Banco di Macao, releasing $25 million in North Korean assets that had been frozen because of counterfeiting and money-laundering violations by Pyongyang.
The United States continued talking, and in four months announced it had reached agreement with North Korea: the funds could be transferred, and Pyongyang would resume denuclearization steps. However, international banks were reluctant to handle the transfer, because they were concerned about attracting sanctions under the USA Patriot Act—this despite the government-to-government agreement between Washington and Pyongyang.
At this point, Russia stepped in. Moscow asked the United States for full guarantees that Russian banks would not face Patriot Act penalties if they helped with the transfer. Washington gave those guarantees, and shortly thereafter, the Russian Central Bank received the funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve and transferred them to the North Korean Foreign Trade Bank. North Korea thereafter resumed the shut-down of Yongbyon—leading to the destruction of the reactor’s cooling tower in June.
Of course, in September 2008, North Korea began to restart its plutonium program, objecting to alleged U.S. delays in fulfilling its side of the bargain. Despite this setback, the Banco di Macao example still holds. Moscow’s role in this diplomacy was unique. Although Russia did not itself impose financial sanctions against North Korea, it was willing to take a crucial risk to bring about an important nonproliferation goal. The situation is probably no different with Iran.
At the moment, the United States and Russia are at loggerheads over Georgia, and Russia has been refusing to participate in ministerial talks concerning Iran. This diplomatic hiccough is likely to continue until the new U.S. President enters office. Nevertheless, the outlines of Russia’s position have long been clear. Moscow may not be keen on sanctions, but it could play a unique role to bring Iran back to the negotiating table. Indeed, aside from the six-party package, the only other diplomatic gambit on the table now is Russia’s.
Reintroducing the Angarsk Proposal
In 2006, the Russians first proposed that instead of building indigenous facilities, the Iranians should suspend their enrichment of uranium and join the newly announced international fuel services center that Russia was opening at Angarsk in Siberia. In this way, the Iranians would be relieved of their perceived need to enrich uranium, but they would also escape the expense and environmental burden of dealing with spent fuel and nuclear waste. At the time, the Iranians rejected the proposal, but they seemed to leave the door ajar for discussions in the future. The Russians in the months since have repeatedly reiterated in public forums that the proposal remains on the table, and they are willing to discuss it with the Iranians.
Now is a good time to take a new look at the proposal, for three reasons. First, nobody has many new ideas at the moment. At the beginning of August 2008, Russia refused to agree immediately to further sanctions when Tehran gave an ambiguous answer to the latest proposal regarding economic incentives from the six parties to the negotiations, which also include the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and China. At the time, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said, "We have some negotiating opportunities, and rather than focus almost entirely on sanctions we should focus on what those opportunities should be." In this way, the Russians have already invited questions about what new negotiating opportunities might be available.
In addition, the Russian concept of a fuel services center has matured significantly since January 2006, when then-President Putin first announced the idea during a speech in St. Petersburg. Finally, the concept of international fuel services centers has gained broad international support, with a significant number of countries as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressing willingness to participate in such centers. Iran itself has expressed the aspiration to be the location of a center in the future.
Reintroducing the Angarsk proposal to Iran would give Russia the opportunity to play a leader in the negotiations at a time when confidence in its good will has been shaken by the conflict with Georgia. The United States and the European countries participating in the negotiations should welcome evidence that Russia is willing to take significant responsibility for trying to advance the negotiations. They will certainly not abandon the notion of pursuing additional sanctions against Iran, but another live negotiating track with Russia in the lead could help to advance the goal of the negotiation. Russia will, however, have to pursue this track with full-scope communications and transparency with its other partners. It will be no good if Russia is perceived to be going its own way in the negotiations, undermining other efforts to reach agreement with Iran. Russia, therefore, will have to make good use of its diplomatic skills and experience to ensure all parties remain linked and coordinated throughout the talks.
But the basics of a deal are out there: The Russians would invite Iran to join the Angarsk international fuel services center as a “founding partner.” This partnership would enable the Iranians to understand the functioning of such a center from the ground up, so that in ten to fifteen years they could host a fuel services center in the Middle East. In order for that goal to become a reality, however, Iran would have to rebuild the trust and confidence of the international community, including the states in their neighborhood who would presumably become its customers for such a center. For that reason, Iran should be willing to eschew fuel cycle activities—beginning with enrichment—for a confidence-building period.
In greater detail, the Russian proposal to Iran could entail the following steps:
The Iranians would be invited to join the Angarsk fuel services center as a prelude to opening a regional fuel services center on Iranian territory in the future. If they are to succeed in that aspiration, they will have to understand how to structure and manage such a center—not only the physical premises, but also the financing system, regulation, safety and security requirements, transport arrangements, etc. Learning how to do it right could be a process of ten to fifteen years, and getting in on the ground floor of the Russian center would give them a big head start in the competition with other countries aspiring to provide international fuel services.
Before the Iranians could ever be successful at running such a regional center, however, they would have to have not only the business acumen and logistical understanding, but also the technical ability to provide fuel services. To acquire such technical ability, in turn, they must have the trust and confidence of the international community—and not only the big powers such as the United States and Russia, but also their regional neighbors. Therefore, they should be willing to use the ten-to-fifteen year period of partnership with the Russians at Angarsk to rebuild international trust and confidence in their nuclear program.
As a first step in that direction, they should be willing to pause their nuclear enrichment program and continue working hard to resolve the remaining questions of the IAEA. However, it should be stressed that the pause is not a permanent halt to the program, but a confidence-building interregnum. As long as mistrust and lack of confidence continue to be a problem for the Iranians, they should not expect to have access to enrichment technology. However, once trust and confidence is reestablished, they could resume that access. The possibility should be held out that if Iran is cooperating fully and completely with the international community, then it should be able to cooperate in international projects involving enrichment and other fuel cycle technologies, including at the Angarsk facility. It must be mentioned, of course, that the current Russian official position is that countries should not have access to enrichment technologies as an aspect of their partnership in the Angarsk facility. Therefore, giving Iranians eventual access, after they have satisfied the concerns of the international community, would require a change in the Russian official position.
Because the trust and confidence of the United States will be paramount to satisfying these concerns, the United States should plan to join fully in cooperation with the Russians at the Angarsk facility, as foreseen in agreements between the Russian and U.S. presidents. However, and this would be a big step for the United States, it should be willing to be present in cooperative activities with the Iranians, first to understand the structure, management, financing and logistics of the Angarsk Center, and later to participate in projects involving enrichment technologies. This evolution would only occur, it must be stressed, if the Iranians re-build trust and confidence within the international community.
Iran would be trading off its hard-won indigenous program temporarily, for the promise of a much bigger role in the global nuclear power market of the future. At this precise moment, such a trade seems impossible. However, one year ago, it seemed impossible that the North Koreans would explode the Yongbyon reactor. As with the North Koreans, the Russians could play a big role in communicating to the Iranians that their interests do not permanently lie in defiance of the international community.
The approach outlined above, reintroducing the Russian proposal for Iran to join the Angarsk enrichment center, is squarely in the nuclear policy arena and therefore can be pursued in a fairly straightforward manner with the United States and the European partners of Russia in the negotiations with Iran. Once again, the nuclear arena is a kind of “safe haven” for policy even in troubled periods—and the aftermath of the summer war in Georgia will most certainly be a troubled period in Russia’s relationship with the United States and Europe.
Can the Agenda Be Broader, and Non-Nuclear?
A significant question is, can other policy initiatives also be pursued with Russian cooperation, initiatives not so directly related to the nuclear issues? U.S. and European experts who have been involved with “Track 2” discussions with Iran over the past five years have noted that the nuclear policy arena is becoming more and more difficult to pursue with the Iranians, as Iranian politics have limited the scope for action on the nuclear front. Some Iranian experts, stalwarts of the Track 2 dialogues, have been arrested in Iran and even jailed, which has cast a pall over these efforts.
As a result, many Track 2 organizers are looking for different avenues to pursue, establishing dialogues on subjects that are of special interest to the Iranians, such as anti-narcotics programs, earthquake warning and mitigation, and agricultural and water policies. The notion behind such Track 2 efforts is that they will maintain engagement that has been pursued with great difficulty, and continue the arduous process of building up a dialogue with the Iranians that clearly conveys one message: Iran faces a strategic choice. That choice is stark: either continued isolation, or developing a pathway toward resolving the questions about its nuclear program and rejoining the international community. This also is the logic of the proposal broached by Javier Solana, i.e., to try to broaden out the discussion with Tehran, to show the Iranians that their national interests lie in reengaging with the international community across a spectrum of issues embracing economics, politics, energy, agriculture, the environment, and other topics.
Following the 2008 summer war with Georgia, the opportunity to engage Russia in pursuing a wider range of cooperative projects with Iran is likely to be limited. Although nuclear policy may very well be held a safe haven for cooperation, there is likely to little enthusiasm for a broader agenda of work with Russia. In some cases, there actually might be legislation or sanctions put in place in Washington that would constrain bilateral cooperation with Russia in particular areas, whether involving Iran or other countries.
Despite this real possibility, it is worth considering what other policy arenas might be tapped for joint initiatives that could involve Russia in helping to solve the nuclear problem with Iran. The first category to be considered involves measures that were developed in the Cold War to regulate the U.S.-Soviet relationship. The second involves issues that have been successfully pursued in recent years on the U.S.-Russian agenda, but have not so far engaged Iran.
In May 1972, the United States and Soviet Union signed the Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Prevention of Incidents on and over the High Seas. Known as the “Incidents at Sea” or “INCSEA” agreement for short, it did much to regulate dangerous confrontations between the U.S. and Soviet navies at the height of the Cold War. Whereas such incidents averaged over 100 per year in the 1960s, they had dropped to 40 per year in 1974.
The agreement has perhaps been most notable, however, for being a quiet success story. The U.S. and Soviet, later Russian, navies have remained committed to its implementation for over thirty years, which they have pursued through a well-established annual series of review meetings. When incidents come up, every effort is made to keep them out of the diplomatic and media limelight, and to handle them in a routine manner.
INCSEA regulates dangerous maneuvers at sea and restricts other forms of harassment such as shining search lights onto the bridges of vessels, or shooting flares at them. It also provides for increased communication at sea—including advanced notification of naval exercises, and regular consultations and information exchanges between the navies.
Naval incidents have been precisely an area of sharp tension between the United States and Iran for many years, in the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz. In January 2008, for example, U.S. media reported that Iranian speed boats were threatening to ram U.S. naval vessels, and were even moving toward them at high speed. The United States has not been alone in tangling with the Iranian navy. The previous year, the Iranians went so far as to seize the crew of a British naval vessel, holding them for nearly a week before their release.
Because naval incidents provide so much in the way of publicity for the Iranian regime, the Iranians may have no interest in engaging in an “incidents at sea” negotiation. However, they might be interested, in the first instance, in understanding how the United States and Russia have been able to cooperate in this area. The U.S. and Russia could develop a joint briefing based on the history of the agreement’s implementation, emphasizing each of the categories covered—dangerous maneuvers, harassment, pre-notification of actions at sea, and information exchanges. They could also talk about the procedures developed for implementation, and in particular, the routine process of annual review.
At the strategic level, the rationale for making such an offer to the Iranians would be to engage them as a state with the potential to be a responsible international actor rather than an international outlaw. The fact that the United States and Russia would make the offer together, as the two former superpower adversaries, would lend particular weight and perhaps cachet to the effort, and indicate to the Iranians that they were being taken seriously.
A danger, of course, is that the Iranians would feel that they had achieved some kind of “parity” with their two interlocutors, which they could brag about to some advantage on the “street” in the Middle East. Although this risk would indeed be present, it could be balanced by the fact that the Incidents at Sea Agreement has been kept very low-key throughout its history. It never reflected superpower trappings, but rather a sound, common-sense approach to ensuring that expensive naval vessels would not damaged in needless games between the two countries.
With the Iranians, the first incentive for joining the discussions might be the legitimizing function of engagement with high-level interlocutors, the United States and Russia. In the end, however, the common-sense, low-key approach of the agreement might also prove attractive, leading to a negotiation that could have some real benefits to security in the Persian Gulf, raising confidence levels among all participants in the negotiations with Iran. Eventually, such negotiations, if they lead to an agreement, could have a broader impact on security in the region.
As far as the United States and Russia are concerned, the very fact that the INCSEA agreement is such a routine success of Cold War diplomacy may enable both countries to use it as a mechanism for joint cooperation on Iran, despite the hangover from the summer war in Georgia. The naval communities involved in implementing the agreement include a wealth of experience on both sides, including many senior retired naval officers who would make responsible and serious interlocutors with the Iranians.
A second category involves issues that have been successfully pursued in recent years on the U.S.-Russian agenda, but have not so far engaged Iran. Here, the issue of anti-narcotics projects in Afghanistan immediately comes to mind. The United States and Russia have been deeply involved in projects to counter heroin smuggling out of Afghanistan, through Russia to Europe. Organizations that are usually thought of more in adversarial terms than as partners, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), have been quietly involved in this cooperation and have apparently accomplished some continuing success in working this problem with the Afghan government.
The issue of narcotics trafficking out of Afghanistan has also come up in the offer that was made to the Iranians in June 2008 by EU Foreign Policy High Representative Javier Solana. Specifically, the offer to the Iranians proposed: “Cooperation on Afghanistan, including on intensified cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, support for programmes on the return of Afghan refugees to Afghanistan; cooperation on reconstruction of Afghanistan; cooperation on guarding the Iran-Afghan border.”
Any of these would be possible topics for U.S.-Russian cooperation on Iran, but the drug trafficking issue would seem to be especially ripe for a joint U.S.-Russian approach to Iran. There are three reasons for this. First, all three countries regard heroin trafficking as an urgent national security problem, one that affects public health in a way that may critically damage the state. Second, as mentioned above, U.S. and Russian cooperation in this area is well-developed, but like the INCSEA example, it has been kept out of the public limelight—not advertised or politicized by either side. Third, the lead players in both the Russian and U.S. cases are serious professionals in the crime-fighting arena, not usually associated with diplomatic initiatives.
Thus, a U.S.-Russian initiative to engage the Iranians in fighting narcotics smuggling could be a serious but low-key effort that would quickly show results to the inner sanctum of the Iranian leadership. In turn, this could have a significant confidence-building effect and may open up another important channel of communications with Tehran. It might also serve as an entrée for a steady broadening of the agenda, e.g. into the realm of public health and addiction treatment; and into other areas of illegal trafficking that have been difficult to address, such as small arms and human trafficking.
Both of these categories could produce a different quality of dialogue with the Iranians than that which has been experienced recently. Instead of diplomatic efforts conducted at a high level and in the full glare of the international media, the dialogue in each case would be low-key, technical and directly related to immediate problems that the sides have urgently had to address. If conducted well, the dialogues would immediately build confidence and lead to a broadening of the agenda—coming back, before too long, to touch the nuclear agenda.
Trapped in a Nuclear Corner?
However, it is important to stress, once again, how difficult it will be in the aftermath of the 2008 summer war in Georgia to pursue such broader policy efforts, no matter how low-key they are, or how attached to either recent or long-standing success in the U.S.-Russian relationship. The tendency of policy-makers in Washington will be to consider Russia a hindrance, indeed even an enemy to making progress with Iran. This bald fact will make American policy actors loath even to suggest trying new policy initiatives that would engage Russians, no matter how experienced or successful in their previous projects of cooperation.
As mentioned above, nuclear cooperation has nearly always remained a safe haven for cooperation during even the worst days of the Cold War. One of the most serious occasions when even strategic arms control efforts were shut off was when the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in December 1979—an interesting irony, since now U.S.-Russian cooperation in Afghanistan could evidently provide an opening for working successfully with Iran. Nevertheless, normally nuclear arms control and nonproliferation cooperation have not been linked to other problems in the U.S.-Russian relationship, but have been allowed to go forward as critical to the national security of both countries. Other areas of economic and political cooperation, however, have often been put on hold, and sometimes been constrained by legislation or specific sanctions.
The limitation to working on the nuclear agenda, if it remains strictly in place, could drive the United States and Russia into an unfortunate corner in trying to work the Iran problem. As mentioned above, the whole logic of the proposal broached by Javier Solana is to try to broaden out the discussion with Tehran, to show the Iranians that their national interests lie in reengaging with the international community across a spectrum of issues embracing economics, politics, energy, agriculture, the environment, etc. If these broader areas of cooperation are essentially unavailable in the U.S.-Russian relationship—or for that matter, in the European-Russian relationship, then there will be a significant limitation on how effectively Russia can be engaged to help resolve the Iran problem.
Of course, for some in Russia and abroad, the strategic purpose of the Georgian summer war was in fact be to incite a Russian declaration of intent with regard to the future of its cooperation with the West. For these experts, it is clear that Russia declared its intent not to cooperate further with the United States or the Euro-Atlantic community, either going its own way alone, or trying to reestablish a new sphere of influence and the partners to match it. For those who have drawn this conclusion, the idea of Russia cooperating with the United States and Europe to solve the Iran problem is nonsense.
This analysis, quite clearly, does not portray as nonsense the idea of Russia cooperating with the United States on Iran, or on any other issue of profound interest to the national security of either country. There are still many issues of mutual interest that must be pursued, to the equal benefit of both Russians and Americans. However, in the wake of the 2008 summer war, this view will be difficult to keep in focus, never mind to act on. The nuclear nonproliferation and arms control agenda normally is well-accepted in times of troubles, and so may be turned to once again. It may not be broad enough, however, to solve the key problem of Iran and its nuclear program.