Now that Iran has officially missed the UN Security Council deadline for stopping its uranium enrichment work, Western leaders have decided on a deliberately muted response. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in meetings in Berlin Wednesday with European, Russian and United Nations diplomats, is sticking to the agenda — easing Israeli-Palestinian tensions, and keeping her remarks low-key. Her European counterparts also hope to pass the day without a drama over Tehran's defiance. The reason is purely tactical." We don't need a war of rhetoric," says a European diplomat.
Iranian leaders have been making conciliatory noises lately. Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, in Vienna to meet with International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed El Baradei, said Tuesday that Iran was "looking for ways and means to start negotiations." Still, avowed radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was willing to freeze its enrichment program and return to talks only if the US and the other members of the nuclear club also stopped enriching uranium." Do you believe that's a serious offer?" White House spokesman Tony Snow scoffed.
As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prepares to release a report which confirms Iran's non-compliance, Rice and her European counterparts have sworn off strident words that that could play into Tehran's hands, since its strategy has been to portray the big industrialized powers as heavy-handed, unjust and biased against developing nations that aspire to the nuclear club. Iran, says former State Department proliferation chief Robert Einhorn," has been reasonably effective in driving wedges" between the industrialized and developing worlds.
That's why, when she emerged from a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rice tried to extend the olive branch to Tehran, stressing her desire to meet face to face with the regime's representatives. "In May of last year we offered, the Bush Administration offered, to reverse 27 years of American policy to engage in the context of the six with our Iranian counterparts," she told reporters. "I've said I would meet my Iranian counterpart anyplace, anywhere, anytime should the Iranians decide to suspend their activities. And so that and the fact that there is a very positive package that the six countries have put together that should incent Iran to engage in a positive way with the international community. I think we're all still hopeful that the day is going to come when the Iranians decide to pursue that course, rather than one of confrontation."
Despite the muted voices, US and Western diplomats have already begun discussing a second sanctions resolution to be tabled in the Security Council. It won't be sweeping or harsh: last winter, Russian and Chinese objections to stringent sanctions proposed by the US and Europeans locked up the Security Council for two months of agonizing debate. A watered down resolution finally passed Dec. 23.
But it passed unanimously, and to the Western nations, that's far more important than what it actually said. Officials involved in the process say that this time, they've learned to avoid the perils of over-reaching. So the strategy hammered out by the Rice team and its European counterparts is to propose very modest, incremental sanctions that will have little actual economic impact on Iran. "What we don't want to do is have a repeat of last time," says a European diplomat." After much pain, we kept the international community together, which is one of the most powerful levers that we have."
