The US and Iran are talking. But are they negotiating?
Daniel DePetris
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Saudi Arabia has been on a diplomatic blitz this year, building bridges with traditional adversaries and bolstering ties with regional neighbors. Iran, however, isn’t far behind.
The Iranians reopened their embassy in Riyadh after a seven-year chill between the two Middle Eastern powers. Tehran has sought to improve relations with the United Arab Emirates and is close to reestablishing diplomatic relations with the small island monarchy of Bahrain. Iran’s defense relationship with Russia is as tight as it has been in a very long time. Tehran has been building and transporting one-way attack drones to Moscow, which needs all the help it can get as it defends the approximately 20% of Ukrainian territory it still occupies.
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The diplomacy extends to the United States as well. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. and Iranian officials have been in discreet, indirect talks for months in an attempt to find a way to deescalate the situation between their two countries. Washington and Tehran used their respective U.N. missions in New York to kick-start discussions in December. White House officials have traveled to Oman at least three times since then, where they have passed messages back and forth (through the Omanis) with Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani. The latest meeting, confirmed by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, occurred last month.
The Biden administration insists these sessions aren’t necessarily negotiations. Rumors of an interim nuclear agreement with Iran, in which Tehran stops enriching uranium to 60% purity in return for a partial lifting of U.S. and U.N. sanctions, are “false and misleading.” As U.S. officials tell it, the proximity talks are more about sending Iran a stern message to be careful about taking additional steps up the nuclear ladder than about resurrecting a deal President Joe Biden declared “dead” last year.
“Certain actions by Iran could lead us to a very, dangerous situation, Iran and the world knows that, so we’ve been clear they should avoid escalatory actions to prevent a crisis,” a senior Biden administration official said. “It is no secret that we have also been concurrently urging Iran to take a deescalatory path after several months of negative developments.”
Diplomacy certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing at the moment. While any arrangements with Iran will cause heartburn on Capitol Hill and likely be a political headache for the White House, allowing domestic politics to run your foreign policy can be a dangerous game. While Biden doesn’t want Tehran to acquire a nuclear weapon, he also (wisely, in my view) doesn’t want to reach the point that a messy, bloody war is the only way to avert it. Negotiations have always been the administration’s first, second, and third choices, even if negotiations thus far have been about as painful as a root canal without a numbing agent.
The reason for keeping the diplomatic route open is simple: Every other option on the table resides somewhere between temporary and foolhardy. A military strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has the high risk of blowing up into a conflagration that gets out of hand (the Iranians will obviously respond to any military action, just as they responded to the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani more than three years ago). A stronger economic sanctions regime could plug some of the leakages in the current system and deprive Tehran of cash, but sanctions without a reasonable diplomatic process attached to them won’t convince the Iranians to be more constructive. Sabotaging Tehran’s existing nuclear facilities has proven effective over the short term, but at the long-term cost of the Iranians building more impregnable enrichment and centrifuge production plants.
Talking, therefore, is not only the least risky option for the U.S., but it would also produce more than any military option could. A U.S. strike would at best degrade and delay Iran’s nuclear progress for a few years — even this may be a generous estimate. A diplomatic accord, however, comes with stringent inspection protocols, meticulous monitoring mechanisms, and measurable restrictions on what Iranian scientists can (and can’t) produce and the type of equipment they can (and can’t) operate. And you can bet that all of those terms would last longer than one or two years.
What we have between Washington and Tehran isn’t negotiations, at least not yet. But if the confidence-building steps are actually implemented, the room for real negotiations may just get wider.
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Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.