Cross-posted from Digial Dissent
I derive a certain amount of satisfaction from this:
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Friday he was astonished at the unanimity of a call by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog for Iran to halt enrichment activities, calling it a cruel decision.
In a resolution on Thursday, the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) unanimously asked Iran to resume suspension of all nuclear fuel related activities and asked the agency to verify compliance by Tehran.
“It was astonishing and really strange…that eventually what Europeans and America wanted was approved with unanimity. How is it possible?” Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University.
“We didn’t think that an international organization, before the eyes of the whole world, would sanction that Iran should stop everything,” he added in a sermon broadcast live on state radio. “The decision was a cruel one.”
Forgetting for a moment that Rafsanjani is a relic of Iranian politics and is utilizing the nationalist fervor over the country’s nuclear program as a springboard for a future return to a high level post in the Majlis itself (he currently serves as head of the Expediency Discernment Council), this is rather telling in the status of the overall situation. Iran thought it could convince the developing countries on the IAEA Board of Governors to side with it due to the developing countries’ fears over their own civil nuclear plans (I covered that earlier in the week.) That has obviously failed, and the shock and surprise most likely resonates deeper than Rafsanjani into the core of Khamenei’s establishment. One reason why the developing countries caved to the West’s pressure, I believe, is directly related to how the US is dealing with India and its nuclear program. While the India deal is damaging to non-proliferation ventures all the way around (see here), in the short term it’s most likely being used to prove that countries friendly with the US will be allowed to develop nuclear tech for peaceful purposes without the same trouble Iran’s facing currently. The India deal is still dangerous to these talks, mainly because Iran can utilize it to claim double-standard when attempting to bring Russia and China over to its side, but the immediate effects of it seem to be positive for the administration in this particular context.
However, it’s still questionable what Russia and China, especially, will do if Iran is ever brought to the Security Council, which is why the administration will most likely grant Ahmadinejad a visa to speak at the UN in September after all. The initial threat to withhold the visa was little more than a test balloon, one that if pursued in full would have gutted negotiations and caused a chain reaction leading to Iran’s likely referral to the Security Council. Due to the success the US is having at the IAEA currently, the administration has decided to drop any ideas of pushing the issue past the IAEA to the Security Council where it becomes less about international pressure and opinion and more about how Russia and China feel about Iran at any one moment. Due to this it’s likely that the Bush administration will actually push for a diplomatic solution and not jump right over the finer points of negotiation to clamoring for sanctions or firing missiles.