News of Iran’s imminent return to the negotiating table has allayed concerns of further instability in the Middle East. The talks, which are being forced through by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are expected to take place on December 13 in the country’s capital, Tehran. The talks are being held side by side with separate discussions involving Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the United States, and are also aimed at defusing the rather complex Middle East powder keg.
The IAEA’s attempts to inject some calm to the tense proceedings have so far been met by strong Iranian resistance. Iran continues to assert that its nuclear intentions are pure and that its purpose for acquiring nuclear capability is non-military. Iran’s return to the negotiating table has surprisingly been met with anything but elation and optimism which most certainly owes to the fact that too many proclamations of a ‘new dawn’ have been sounded out in the past but without progress on the ground commensurate with previous shades of optimism. Dare I say that the present debacle is rather akin to the parable of ‘the boy who cried wolf’.
Matters are not made any easier by the country’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who appears to revel in the attention directed by the international media towards his region of the world, albeit for the wrong reasons. Needless to say his latest pronouncements that “the Iranian nation is not seeking an atomic bomb, nor do they need to build an atomic bond” was not only met with silence which it deserved but also derision. To many, Ahmadinejad will continue to fail in his attempts to pull the wool over the watching world’s eyes if he, on the one hand states that the country’s nuclear enrichment programme is geared towards peaceful aims, but at the same time, prevents the IAEA from visiting alleged nuclear enrichment sites and also, continues to threaten the state of Israel, for all their faults, with eternal damnation.
The restrained pronouncements in light of the latest developments by leading global figures perhaps tells its own story and buttresses the writer’s earlier assertions. Catherine Ashton, the Foreign Policy supremo of the European Union cautiously asserted that the talks “could be an initial step on the path to resolving outstanding issues.” The United States, via its State Department Spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, offered: “In the past Iran has been unwilling to do what it needs to do despite the best efforts of the IAEA. But we commend the IAEA for keeping at it and we call on Iran to do what it needs to do to meet the international community’s concerns.”
The announcement comes a week after the Pentagon reported that Iran had fired at an unarmed American drone thereby risking an international incident with the capacity to morph into a major conflict. Nonetheless and in spite of the air of pessimism which pervades, the agreement to return to the table is encouraging and signals a climb down from the ‘chest puffing’ which the conflict’s main protagonists – Iran, Israel and the United States – have so far been engaged. Liberals will argue that the sanctions regime has been effective at forcing Iran to utilise diplomatic channels to resolve the dispute while ‘hawkish Republicans’ and Benjamin Netanyahu’s – the Israeli President - supporters will state that Iran is utilising the talks as a smokescreen whilst it completes its nuclear programme. Although President Obama’s victory most certainly means that the United States will only engage militarily against Iran as a last resort, the writer however believes the threat of an Israeli pre-emptive strike still looms large and has not been allayed by Iran’s sudden and unexpected move.
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