Renewed U.S.-Iran Talks May Hinge on 'Mutual Respect'

FARIDEH FARHI: Well, as Cliff suggested, the most important issue in relationship between Iran and United States is the nuclear issue. And the United States has taken the zero-option position, you know, suspension for no play.

And the reality is that that approach to Iran has not worked. Whether or not the United States engages in conversation with Iran, but enters the conversation saying exactly the same thing that the George Bush administration has said, the result will be the same.

MARGARET WARNER: So what should be the approach?

FARIDEH FARHI: Well, there are other alternatives that have been discussed: the possibility of limited enrichment, the possibility of the multinational facilities. There are other options that have been discussed as well as the very - the Iranian acceptance of very intrusive inspections.

The question is whether or not these other options will be part of the discussion or the United States will go, along with the Europeans, will go into the discussion essentially saying that Iran has to stop; if not, the sanctions will continue.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's - may I interrupt you? Let's step back for a minute and take a look at the nature of the threat because we had this question from a number of viewers.

I'll just read one from Joseph from North Carolina and someone named Angoni from Montreal, which is: Would Iran be a threat to the United States and the world if it gains a nuclear weapon? Why would it be any more dangerous than North Korea or, for that matter, Pakistan? George Perkovich?

GEORGE PERKOVICH: Well, it might not be much more dangerous than North Korea and Pakistan, but I just spent the weekend with Japanese officials who find North Korea extremely dangerous and makes Japan, for example, you know, want the U.S. to kind of beef up its nuclear weapon presence in the region.

So, in other words, the Japanese find the North Korean situation extremely dangerous and I think many people say the Pakistani situation with its nuclear weapons has been extremely threatening to the world, including the proliferation of nuclear weapons capability from Pakistan to Libya to Syria to Iran and so forth.

So, now, Iran with nuclear weapons is alarming to many people because they feel that with nuclear weapons, Iran would provide more sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic jihad and be more likely to encourage kind of more robust violence by those groups against Israel and others, confident that with Iran with nuclear weapons, it would be able to deter Israel or anybody else from attacking Iran and punishing it for strengthening kind of the violence capability of Hezbollah and others. And that's the main worry about Iran with nuclear weapons.

MARGARET WARNER: Cliff Kupchan, why don't you jump in here? How do you see that threat?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: First of all, from discussions with senior Iranian leadership and Ahmadinejad partisans and from discussions with the Khatami people, I don't think Iran has plans to weaponize nuclear technology.

I think what they want is strategic ambiguity and, by that, I mean a position where the world knows they could develop a weapon in short order if they so wanted.

Now, that, unfortunately, does lead us to the same position, pretty much, where George left off, which is, Iran wants a nuclear shadow for its proxies. It wants to increase regional influence and it wants to be able to completely deter Israel from taking action against it. So that a nuclear-capable, I would say, Iran, does pose threats, in my view, to U.S. interests in the region.

MARGARET WARNER: And so, if you go back to some of the options that Farideh Farhi was outlining in terms of perhaps having some sort of multilateral facility there, multinational, or limited enrichment.

Would that, in your view, constitute a nuclear-capable Iran? In other words, where is the red line here over which if Iran goes, you feel they've become nuclear-capable?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: Well, that is the central question, Margaret. And, in my view, the challenge facing the policy community over the next year or two is to thicken the line between a civilian nuclear capability and a military nuclear capability. Right now, if you've got one, you've pretty much got the other. And it's a very tall order to thicken that line.

But whether it's through inspections, through insisting that Iran export all of its low-enriched uranium after it makes it, we've got to find a way where Iran saves face, has an enrichment capability, but yet does not pose - at least for the foreseeable future - a threat of developing a nuclear weapon. That's the task we face.

GEORGE PERKOVICH: Well, actually, I agree with Cliff and would pick up, for example, on one of the examples that he made about, you know, would Iran ship the low-enriched uranium it produces outside of the country?

Now, they could do this for a variety of reasons, but one of them is, they don't have a facility to make fuel out of that low-enriched uranium so there's a functional argument; they could ship it out. If they were willing to do that, that would allay a lot of concern.

The bigger question on any of these is that Iran really hasn't been negotiating for the last four years. If you talk to any of the Europeans who've been in the room with Iranian officials, there are not negotiations. There has been no indication at any official level really that Iran wants to even explore, well, what if we did it this way or what if we did it that way in a serious way. Things have been floated by unofficial academics like myself, but nothing official.

If Iran actually did indicate at the official level a willingness to start negotiating how would you do this, I think there would be interest, without commitment, but there would be interest from the counterparts saying, okay, well, actually, how do you have it in mind? How would it work? What would it look like? What about shipping the low-enriched uranium out of the country?

But we haven't gotten there and, thus far, the Europeans have kind of been negotiating with themselves and then when others in the U.S. come up with these alternative ideas, we're really negotiating amongst all of the parties except Iran.

CLIFF KUPCHAN: Can I jump in real quick on that? It's Cliff Kupchan.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

CLIFF KUPCHAN: In my mind, though, the U.S. hasn't negotiated either. I mean, the real tragedy here is the Bush administration, in eight years, didn't really try diplomacy.

What we need to do is offer to lift sanctions, offer security guarantees, offer Iran a real role in regional security - the three things they really want - and see how they respond. See what we can get in return. That, to me, is the crux of the matter.

GEORGE PERKOVICH: Yeah, I agree with that.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Farideh Farhi, what is your sense - you read the Iranian press; you talk to people there - of how Iran is looking at all of this? What is their reaction to the election of President Obama? What are they looking for?

FARIDEH FARHI: Well, so far, they have a wait-and-see attitude. They are hopeful that there will be change because Iran was part of the campaign. At the same time, they have made very clear through a variety of spokespeople, you know, whether they are reformists, they are pragmatic conservatives or hardliners, that, essentially, if the conversation takes the form that it did before and the result is going to be the same.

What to me is important in this relationship with Iran is that there has been a shift because of four years of non-negotiations with the Bush administration. There has been a shift in Iran to the right of the political spectrum.

So what you have are people who are saying, pragmatic conservatives, who are saying that we are interested in having a serious, strategic conversation - and those who are taking a rejectionist position. And I think it is between these two positions that the Obama administration has to find a way to insert itself.

CLIFF KUPCHAN: Margaret, this is Cliff Kupchan. Again, from talking to Iranian leaders, I think they really don't know what to make of this guy: I mean, an African-American president, a liberal, a guy who's reached out to them. You know, I think they're thrown a little bit off balance here. And they really are just stepping back and asking the question, is this the same old wine in a new bottle or is this guy really something new?

I think it's encouraging that just this past weekend Ambassador Holbrooke, in effect, reached out to Iran to cooperate on Afghanistan. And I think it's those kinds of offers and mutual probing that the Iranians really have their antenna up and I think Holbrooke's offer is going to be taken quite seriously and noticed very much in Tehran.

MARGARET WARNER: And, in fact, we had a question from a viewer, Dan in Auburn, Washington, asking about that, saying Iran was helpful to the U.S. after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and really provided actionable intelligence on al Qaeda and Taliban that helped the United States defeat them there. What options do you think there are for rebuilding a rebuilding a working relationship with Iran to reduce Taliban and al Qaeda capacities in Afghanistan, certainly, and maybe even Pakistan?

GEORGE PERKOVICH: This is George. My sense is that that's a very - that there's potential for real positive cooperation there, and that was signified or understood by Ambassador Holbrooke. And we may well see that.

The challenge that's going to come to President Obama and to the Iranian leadership is how you relate these different theaters. In other words, we can also cooperate in Iraq, perhaps. And let's say there's cooperation on those two fronts - Afghanistan and Iraq - but on the nuclear issue, there's none.

And you can imagine, from an Iranian point of view, okay, the Iranian leadership could decide, well, let's see if we can cooperate on Afghanistan and Iraq but we hold the line on the nuclear issue - absolutely nothing on the nuclear issue. And on an Iranian point of view, you'd say, well, we've moved on two out of three issues; that's significant progress.

Well, meanwhile, back in Washington, there would be a debate that would be along those lines. Some people would say, look, they're working with us - there's progress on the two issues and so let's not emphasize or push too hard on the nuclear issue. And then other people would say no, but the nuclear issue is absolutely the most important of those and we can't be bought off on that.

So how those priorities and dynamics and tradeoffs get worked out are very difficult between the states, but they're also very difficult among the leadership in each country, and I think that's why this is going to be so challenging.

Iran and the United States cooperated, and the result was Iran's placement in the axis of evil. So in terms of cooperation in these two other arenas, at least Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranians may be quite hesitant to cooperate in those arenas unless they see signs that the kind of pressures that are being imposed on Iran because of the nuclear program are relaxed.

So the previous experience in terms of cooperation is very much in the Iranian mind as they engage with the United States.

CLIFF KUPCHAN: And Margaret - it's Cliff here - the Iranians, in my view and what they told me, are quite interested in cooperating on Afghanistan, on Iraq, on counter-narcotics, on Hamas - as George just said, the real problem is, when it comes to the nuclear issue, they just aren't budging. They're really not. It's like two Venn diagrams that don't overlap, when you listen in Washington and when you listen to the Ahmadenijad people, at least, talking about the nuclear program.

So where the rubber hits the road, which is the nuclear program, it's going to be a very, very difficult talk.

MARGARET WARNER: And so if you were advising the Obama administration, how would you advise them?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: I would tell them to start as they're starting; to think about new sanctions - we have to have leverage - but to explore ways to thicken that line between civilian and military applications of nuclear technology and to keep the most open mind moving forward, in a way that I don't think the Bush administration did, about getting rid of this standoff, which benefits neither side.

MARGARET WARNER: George Perkovich?

GEORGE PERKOVICH: Well, no, I agree with what Cliff said there and I guess I would just add, for example, to clarify that the U.S. is open and willing to talk productively and with great respect to the Iranians on any issue, in particular Afghanistan and Iraq, but on any issue.

However, the nuclear issue is one that is under, kind of, the jurisdiction, as it were, of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Security Council and so, you know, until Iran demonstrates that it's going to comply fully with those requirements, we will keep those related sanctions on, but we're happy to talk with them productively on the other issues and not have that preclude progress on other issues.

But the nuclear issue does have to get resolved in order to allow, you know, the lifting of sanctions and the thorough economic cooperation. I also - and this is kind of unheard of in the U.S. - I mean, I also think we ought to emphasize that military force is not a viable option that we're considering. I think that that's important both to signal to Iran, but also to the rest of the world.

MARGARET WARNER: And why?

GEORGE PERKOVICH: Well, because I don't think it is viable in terms of military action against the Iranian nuclear program. The consequences of doing that - how Iran would react, how the rest of the world would react, the uncertainties you still have about what you've accomplished - outweigh the potential benefits.

It's counterproductive, number one. Number two, and because of that, it's not so worthwhile.

The other reason is that you may lose support from the other countries whose cooperation we need - Russia, China, India and so forth - to try to put more pressure on Iran. You lose that support if they think you're going to go to war. And three, I think it actually helps cohere the Iranian population around the government if they're being threatened.

I mean, it's very rare that publics - think about the U.S. and when Osama bin Laden releases a tape and everything. It isn't like people in the U.S. say, oh my god, let's give him what he wants; you basically say go find and kill this guy.

I mean, it makes people madder and so I think if you're threatening another country, it doesn't make them more - you know, their public - more accommodating. It's fine to threaten them if you really could do it in a way that, you know, you're clear you're going to win at the other side. But given the consequences, which the Iranians probably calculate to say, well, it's more or less of a bluff.

MARGARET WARNER: Cliff Kupchan, do you think it looks like a bluff - like an empty threat? Do you think it's something the president should take off the table?

CLIFF KUPCHAN: I think it is something the president should take off the table. I think it's something that, over time, the president will take off the table. Look, it's not the U.S. - not my country - I worry about; it's Israel.

The Israelis view Iran as an existential threat in two sense. First, one bomb could take out half the population around Tel Aviv. Secondly, the Israelis are very concerned about what the demographics of Israel would look like if Iran did develop a nuclear weapon - people would just leave.

So they don't look at it like we do. They think Iran is much further along. They, I fear, are much more disposed to doing the best they can to set Iran back one year, two years, whatever - just roll the dice, because the alternative to them is so unpalatable. If Mr. Netanyahu does become the next prime minister - unknown right now - if he does, I think that's going to become somewhat even more acute.

So I really worry about Israel going for broke even against the Obama administration's objections - not likely, not likely - but I think it's the threat we face, especially this year in 2009.

MARGARET WARNER: Farideh Farhi, do they talk much about that in Iran? How do they see the threat of a strike from Israel?

FARIDEH FARHI: Well, they do take it into account, but the Iranians, essentially, have always argued a military threat against Iran is part and parcel of the psychological warfare - part of an array of instruments the outside world has used to make them stop their nuclear program.

They say they are ready for it and they have said that they consider an Israeli attack against Iran an American attack. Obviously, that means that they would be willing or ready and willing to attack American forces in the area.

But generally speaking, yeah, they have always operated as though the military attack is essentially (inaudible) and that is why the whole dynamic in the area has become increasingly dangerous. Perhaps not taking the possibility of attack very seriously, I think, really enhances the possibility of a confrontation in the future.