Bridging Gaps in US-Iran Talks Is Easier Said Than Done

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Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has some advice for US negotiators in advance of Friday’s US-Iranian talks in Oman aimed at avoiding a military conflagration that could spark a regional war in the Middle East.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Fidan suggested that the US tackle one contentious issue at a time, starting with curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, rather than seek a package deal that addresses all US demands.

“My advice to our American friends is, close the files one by one. Start with nuclear. Close it. Then the other, then the other, then the other. If you put them as a package, it will be very difficult for our Iranian friends to digest and really process it,” Fidan said, days after talks with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi.

Turkey, together with Qatar, has played a key role in attempts to avert a military conflagration as President Donald Trump, threatening to attack Iran if the talks fail, amasses an armada in the Middle East.

Negotiations between the United States and Iran over the nuclear issue broke down last June when Israel waged a 12-day air campaign against Iran and the United States bombed three of the country’s nuclear facilities.

Iran insists on its right to enrich uranium to 3.67 percent, as stipulated in the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Trump unilaterally walked away from that agreement in 2018 during his first term in office. In response, Iran gradually enriched an estimated 880 pounds of uranium to 60 percent purity, a short step away from the 90 percent weapons-grade level.

It’s unclear how much of the enriched uranium the US strikes destroyed, despite Trump’s repeated claims that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “obliterated.”

Trump wants Iran to surrender whatever may be left of the highly enriched uranium.

Saving Face and Ballistic Missiles

Fidan’s step-by-step approach to US-Iran negotiations may be an opportunity for both parties to agree on a mutually acceptable face-saving solution, given that compromise on the US’s other demands — including curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for its non-state allies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen — is more difficult.

Iran has long declared that its support for the Lebanese Shiite militia and political movement Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Iraqi Shiite militias, as well as its own ballistic missile program, are non-negotiable issues.

Iran has also rejected a US demand that it release thousands of protesters arrested during the recent weeks-long demonstrations sparked by the country’s worsening economic crisis.

Ballistic missiles, the core of Iran’s defense capabilities, are particularly sensitive, given that the country doesn’t have a credible air force or navy. No Iranian government, whether revolutionary or post-revolutionary, would be willing to limit its missile program.

As a result, neither the United States nor Iran has much room to maneuver beyond resolving the nuclear issue.

Boxed In?

With Trump’s armada on display in the Middle East, in the belief that Iran will either voluntarily, or in the face of superior force, capitulate, the risk is that they each have boxed themselves into a corner from which it may be difficult to escape. 

Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman conceded as much when he seemed to resign himself to the inevitable last week.

Rather than endorsing a US military intervention, bin Salman told a private gathering of think tank analysts and representatives of American Jewish organizations in Washington that the administration had left itself no good options.

“At this point, if this doesn’t happen, it will only embolden the [Iranian] regime,” Prince Khalid said, referring to US military action.

He may have a point, depending on the nature and outcome of potential US strikes — which would likely target, among others, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — or the extent to which Iran bows to US demands to avert intervention.

The IRGC is among the prime targets the US military has presented to Trump.

Without a resolution of at least the nuclear issue, the more likely prospect is that both the United States and Iran are doomed if they do and doomed if they don’t, which enhances the specter of a region-wide war, involving not only Israel and the Gulf, but possibly Turkey and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

With no potential US or Israeli targets within its borders and limited capability to hit US facilities further away, Iran would have to respond to an American attack with strikes against Israel, US military bases and critical infrastructure in the Gulf, and/or international shipping in Gulf waters.

While Iran is unlikely to attack Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase, which hosts the US military’s 39th Air Base Wing, an uptick of ethnic nationalism — particularly among Azeris, a Turkic group who account for between 16 and 24 percent of the Iranian population — could draw Turkey and neighboring Azerbaijan into a wider regional conflict.

Borders Are So Old-World-Order

Proponents of a US attack have advocated targeting Azeri units of the IRGC, which they describe as the Guards’ most brutal. The IRGC was responsible for the government’s violent crackdown on the protesters.

Among Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities, who account for approximately 43 percent of the Iranian population, Azeris are the most integrated and have risen to high government positions. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is part Azeri.

The proponents of US military action  hope that targeting Azeri units will spark widespread unrest among Iran’s other minorities — Kurdish, Arab, Baloch, Turkmen, and Lors — who, like the Azeris, straddle Iran’s borders with its neighbors. Israel and the United States have, at times, supported Kurdish and Baloch militants.

The Trump administration and Israel may not consider a fracturing of Iran as a bad thing. Israel and some in the administration and in Trump’s support base believe that weakening  Israel’s neighbors and enemies by any means enhances Israel’s security — a school of thought that resonates with some within the Washington Beltway.

Discussing recent cases of political and ethnic unrest in Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, scholar Steven A. Cook addressed a fundamental question: In an era of increasing instability in the world order, should the current borders of nation-states be considered sacrosanct? His conclusion: “Sometimes they are, but not always.”

James M. Dorsey is an adjunct senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, contributing editor to WhoWhatWhy, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.