Obama Hones Iran Strategy

WASHINGTON: During the US presidential campaign, Barack Obama argued that to deal with Iran’s push to acquire nuclear weapons, the US needed “bigger sticks and bigger carrots.” Now, some two months into his presidency, he has launched a series of foreign policy initiatives to bring these instruments to bear by cautiously moderating the hard-edge, go-it-alone policies of his predecessor. The success of this ambitious, multi-pronged effort will determine whether a major crisis in the Middle East, with consequences far beyond, can be defused.

Washington is principally concerned about Iran’s uranium-enrichment and plutonium- production programs. The former is centered on a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, which is currently producing “low-enriched” uranium suitable only for nuclear power plant fuel. Iran now has a stockpile of some 1000 kilograms of such material. However, the Natanz facility, the capacity of which continues to grow, could be reconfigured to upgrade these stocks to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU), suitable for nuclear weapons. By some estimates, Iran now has enough low-enriched material to produce one bomb’s worth of HEU. Iran’s plutonium program, based on a reactor now under construction at Arak, is another US concern, but poses less imminent danger.

One prong of the Obama administration’s efforts to constrain these activities is to intensify pressure on Tehran to halt them. Iran is currently subject to four UN Security Council resolutions demanding that it cease both programs and imposing a range of sanctions until it does so.

Opposition from Russia and China, two permanent members of the Security Council, has, however, prevented the council from agreeing to more powerful measures, such as a global embargo on purchases of Iranian oil or a ban on sales to Tehran of gasoline or other refined petroleum products.

To win Russian support on Iran and improve relations more generally, Obama has sought to ease Russian concerns provoked by Bush administration policies, from the planned deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe to repeated calls for the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. The president’s private correspondence with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his public statements indicate that the US is ready to slow implementation of Bush policies and seek compromises that will revitalize US-Russian ties.

If Russia can be persuaded to take a stronger stance at the Security Council, most observers expect China to follow rather than be isolated. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s efforts to avoid confrontation during her late February visit to Beijing also contribute to an environment for bilateral collaboration that could help intensify pressures on Iran.

If sanctions can be stepped up, the most powerful incentive for persuading Iran to slow its nuclear trajectory – the second prong of the Obama strategy – would be the promise to stop pain by suspending these measures. On the more positive side, the Obama administration is more credible than its predecessor in offering to expand diplomatic ties with Tehran, in return for a change in Iranian behavior. Secretary Clinton’s recent invitation to Iran to participate in a major conference on the future of Afghanistan – where Washington and Tehran share a common interest in stabilizing that country – appears to be a first probe of whether direct negotiations mark a path worth pursuing. Press reports that Obama is considering sending a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei discussing nuclear matters and other issues may be a second trial balloon.

The Obama team also has a greater opportunity to change the focus of any future nuclear negotiations than Bush administration diplomats. Rightly fearing that any continuation of the Iranian enrichment program would help Iran master this complex technology, George Bush had demanded a complete halt to Iranian enrichment activities and gained the support of the Security Council for this tough stance, as well as that of the “EU-3” – the UK, France and Germany – which have pursued multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations with Iran. But Iran has defied the demands for an enrichment suspension and built thousands of new enrichment centrifuges at Natanz since the demands were first made, while adding to its stocks of low-enriched uranium.

Obama, on the other hand, can pursue new avenues that, without abandoning Bush’s underlying goals, attempt to achieve them by other means. One suggestion being discussed in Washington policy circles would permit Iran to continue producing low-enriched uranium, at least during negotiations, provided that it shipped its existing stockpile to Russia for fabrication into fuel rods for use in Iran’s Russian-supplied Bushehr nuclear power reactor. The result would allow Iran to continue utilizing its enrichment technology, which it claims as its right, but would reduce the underlying proliferation risk by preventing the stockpile from being turned into HEU.

The package, though less airtight than the one Bush sought, could nonetheless contain Iran’s nuclear weapon potential for the time being, especially if strengthened by persuading Iran to accept intensified International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the kind it allowed from 2003 to 2005, before Iran’s current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office.

Despite Iran’s advances, Obama could have some time left to implement his carrot-and-stick strategy – time which may also bring to power more moderate Iranian political leaders after the country’s June 2009 election. A US National Intelligence Estimate classified summary released in late 2007 declared that in 2003 Iran halted secret work it had been pursuing on the design and manufacture of a nuclear warhead, and US intelligence officials surmise that this halt still holds.

Moreover, in testimony on March 10, 2009, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair declared Tehran has not made the decision to produce HEU or to “press forward…to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile.” Blair estimated that “the minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly enriched uranium for a single weapon is 2010 to 2015,” depending on how intensively it pursued this effort. IAEA inspectors at Natanz would provide early warning of any attempt by Iran to use that facility to upgrade uranium to weapons-grade.

In effect, while Iran may currently possess enough low-enriched uranium that could be upgraded to make a single weapon core, the Obama administration is not embracing Israel’s more fearful view that Iran has crossed a crucial threshold that could pose an imminent threat, potentially necessitating a military response.

Obama has not explicitly ruled out the possibility of such a response, however, and his deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan and authorization of continued unmanned aircraft strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan, demonstrate his readiness to use force, when necessary, to support vital US national security interests. One component the president might add to his strategy vis-à-vis Tehran is to quietly communicate that if it crosses certain redlines – such as production of bomb-grade uranium or the expulsion of IAEA inspectors – the United States would consider the action a grave threat to its national security interests and respond in accordance with the gravity of the situation.

The veiled threat could reinforce the caution Tehran appears to show for now and improve the environment for it to accept a negotiated compromise.