THE Iranians and the Americans are still posturing over the nuclear issue but in recent days, their positions have been noticeably less threatening, the rhetoric markedly less uncompromising. Political observers sense that there is change in the wind; that Tehran and Washington are actually getting on some sort of improved terms. The analysis of what may have been happening is interesting.
While both sides have excoriated each other in public, privately, the Iranians have made an important difference in Iraq. The Shiite militias have been reined in. Tehran is not calling every shot with people like Moqtada Sadr and the Mehdi Army, but such militants want to keep on the right side of the Iranians and have, therefore, bowed to political pressure from across the border. Iran did not do this to help out the Americans. Rather, by pushing the militias to stand down and toe the Maliki government line, they demonstrated the extent of their power and influence in Iraq and laid claim to a role in sorting out a stable future for this country, which has been plunged into chaos by the US-led invasion. It is also certain that Tehran came to realize that a volatile and unstable neighbor was not in its own long-term interests.
Washington has, however, been extremely grateful for what the Iranian government has achieved with the militias. It has largely removed one ingredient of the violent disorder and also allowed the Sunni community to feel more secure. The Americans probably do not care about Iran’s motives, but just grab the benefits of the change of tactics. However, it will not have escaped even an administration as dense as the Bush White House that if the US persisted with its saber-rattling over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, the Iranians could very easily once again unleash the Shiite militias and plunge Iraq back into turmoil.
The recent US intelligence assessment that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 seemed to wrong-foot Bush and his team. There was some vapid bluster from the White House but it was clear that, at a stroke, Bush’s excuse for threatening military action against Iran was dead. After Saddam’s nonexistent WMD, nobody was going to be fooled into war a second time. The announcement indeed could not have been better timed to herald a renewed Russian commitment to complete the construction of the Bushehr nuclear station and make the first delivery of nuclear fuel to it. Now all that remains to be done is for Iran to open up its nuclear program to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections and it can press on with its nuclear fuel-enrichment for peaceful use at Bushehr and indeed the 19 other nuclear power stations that were heralded in the Iranian Parliament this week.
The moderation inherent in the softer US approach suggests that this change of tone did not originate from the White House, but from the diplomats at the State Department. It is being matched in Tehran. This development is long overdue and hopefully, from hereon, grown-up diplomacy can recommence.
