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Sunday
Feature
Understanding
the Washington-Tehran Deals
By
Tom O’Donnell
These on-again, off-again talks involve partial deals about
the mutual pacification of Iraq, not a “Grand Bargain” that
would finally end the very damaging U.S. sanctions on Iran’s
oil sector. Without such an agreement, the danger of a military
conflict remains very real
Only a
few months ago the Bush Administration was reportedly planning
to bomb thousands of sites in Iran. Then, in December,
Washington began granting Iran a number of concessions – though
both the U.S. and Iran have chosen not to represent these as
such. Consider:
•
In early December 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE) declared that Iran has not pursued nuclear-weapon development
since 2003. The next day, Bush, Merkle, Putin 1,
and Sarkozy each asserted that Iran still must now halt any
enrichment
of uranium.
•
On about December 16, Russia sent Iran a first ever shipment
of nuclear fuel rods for the Bushir power plant under the auspices
of the IAEA. Unlike every other time over many years that Russia
had threatened to do this, this time there was no hue and cry
or dire warnings from Washington. Instead, the U.S. simply
stated that this Russian fuel shipment has now removed any
excuse for Iran to continue to enrich its own uranium – rather
like the assertions made after the NIE was released.
• Early in December, China signed a new multi-billion dollar
oil contract with Iran. Even though U.S. and U.N. oil sanctions
against dealing with Iran remain in force, the U.S. hardly
blinked an eye over this - again, quite unlike after an earlier
Iran-China deal in 2004.
•
At the end of the month U.S. military leaders and ambassador
to Iraq Crocker allowed that somewhere, “high” in
the Iranian leadership, there had obviously been a decision
to reign in attacks by Shiite militia in Iran, and that this
was responsible for much of the substantial decrease in violence
there.
In
turn, on January 2, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
said, “Not having relations with America is one of
our main policies but we have never said this relationship
should
be cut forever," "Certainly, the day when having
relations with America is useful for the nation I will
be the first one to approve this relationship."2
What has happened to cause this sudden turn in the U.S.
position toward Iran, and of Iran towards the U.S. – if, in fact,
that is what this is? Back in 2003, Iran had offered a “grand
bargain” to the U.S. that would have addressed virtually
any question over which the U.S. had ever clashed with Iran;
but the U.S. rejected it out of hand, willing to accept nothing
short of a “regime change” for the Iranian leadership.
Has the Administration now quietly agreed to some sort of new
grand bargain with Iran? There is no evidence that recent events
are anything like a grand bargain; but there is clearly a partial
deal evolving between Iran and the U.S. The big questions are:
What does it mean for Iraq? And, what are the roadblocks to
any “Grand Bargain” that really ends the U.S.-Iran
confrontation? As long as any Grand Bargain remains elusive,
the possibility, sooner or later, of a U.S. attack on Iran,
and a wider Middle East war, remains a very real possibility.
The general outline of the answer to each of these questions
has already become clear. But, before we delve into that
story, the first thing one must be clear about is that
this confrontation
was never “really” about nuclear weapons – it’s
been about Iran’s oil. To be precise, it has been about
how the U.S. does not trust the Iranian clerical government
to develop and manage Iran’s vast oil and natural gas
resources. For example, it does not trust what the present
Iranian leadership might do, down the road, if sanctions on
foreign investments in oil were lifted and it became flush
with oil profits, able to build up a modern military force
in the Persian Gulf (nuclear or otherwise) where 60% of the
world’s oil reserves are found. This is one place the
U.S. insists on hegemony, it has absolutely no intention of
anyone but itself projecting power there. This is the crux
of the matter: one U.S. administration after another, not just
the present one with its neo-cons, have not believed that the
Iranian clerical leadership would function as “reasonable” and “business-like” players
(from the U.S. perspective) in oil markets, or vis-à-vis
America’s OPEC allies in the Gulf: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and the UAE.
The U.S. has maintained sanctions on Iran’s oil sector
for almost thirteen years precisely to keep it from becoming
the major oil power it would naturally become otherwise.
The result is that Iran’s oil and natural gas sector
never recovered fully from either the revolution of 1979 or
the Iran-Iraq
War of 1980-88. Blocked since 1995 from the large amounts
of foreign investment and oil technology it first tried to
acquire
in that year (even though that first big deal would have
been with a U.S. oil company), and faced with growing population
consuming more oil at home, Iran now exports less than
half
as much oil as it did in the1970’s under the shah.
The result is that, even though Iran has the world’s
third largest reserves of liquid oil, it now has no effective
oil
weapon. 3
U.S. sanctions have nullified it. Sanctions have also put
Iran’s refineries in such a state of disrepair
that the country actually imports over 40% of its gasoline,
and
its national oil company is in such miserable shape it
can extract only two-third’s as much oil from a given
well as the world average.4 Not to put too fine a point
on this;
but, the reality of U.S. and, now U.N., sanctions is that
Iran today only takes in roughly the same amount of money
per capita
on its oil exports as does Iraq – a country whose
oil sector is hardly in tip-top shape! This state of affairs
is
undoubtedly assisted by clerical corruption and mismanagement
of the economy, but sanctions on foreign investment in
oil have become a grave problem for the Iranian economy
and the
future of the ruling circles.
Faced with a U.S. regime-change policy, yet denied an oil
weapon, and with an economy increasingly being squeezed
by the effects
of sanctions, Iran cultivated two levers over the past
four years to counter U.S. pressure: whatever nuclear threat
it
could muster, and, later, whatever influence it possesses
inside Iraq to frustrate U.S. interests there. Although,
fundamentally,
the U.S.-Iran confrontation has been about whether post-Revolutionary
Iran will ever be permitted to develop its oil sector and
be the player it should be in world oil markets, this confrontation
increasingly came to be fought out over nuclear issues,
and in the past year or two over Iraq as well. On the nuclear
front,
Iran’s very public efforts to produce enriched uranium
and to develop missiles capable of delivering a nuclear
warhead are two of the three elements needed for the ultimate
development
of a nuclear weapon capability. Although the third aspect,
an Iranian effort to master the formation of weapons-grade
uranium onto a nuclear device, has now been declared non-existent
by the NIE, the other two aspects, and especially enrichment
technology, remain anathema to the U.S., E.U. and other
big powers.5
According to the view I am giving here, both the nuclear
issue and to a great extent the Iraq issue, have been nurtured
by
Iran as gambits to be exchanged for lifting of U.S. oil
sanctions and giving security guarantees against any further
attempts
at regime change. In this context, a security guarantee
against regime change means against Washington working
to put a pro-U.S.
government in place as a pre-requisite to lifting sanctions
and Iran taking its natural place in the world of oil.
These are the underlying facts of the matter as Iran and
the U.S. now move towards negotiations and to making deals;
or,
rather, this is a general theoretical framework with which
to make sense of the continuing U.S.-Iran confrontation.
One has to be clear on this matter of material interests
- i.e.,
about the political economy of Iranian oil, and the role
of Persian Gulf oil in U.S. grand strategy - before one
can properly
understand the significance and limits to the partial deals
that the U.S. and Iran are now mutually maneuvering into.
A Deal on Iraq
The present change in U.S. hostility to Iran, as reflected
in the NIE, in the delivery of Russian nuclear fuel rods,
and in the new Chinese-Iranian oil deal (and we shall soon
see on what else), have to do with Iranian cooperation with
the U.S. in the pacification of Iraq. It is clear from press
reports that the Iranian leadership has decided to follow
through on a deal struck with the U.S. during the their first
publicly announced face-to-face negotiations that were held
in Baghdad’s Green Zone on May 28, 2007 with the Iraqi
foreign minister. The Iranians later suspended these talks,
apparently in August, shortly before General Petraeus make
his report to Congress on September 10 and 11, 2007. It appeared
to Iran - and to much of the world - that the U.S. was now
in such trouble in Iraq that it indeed might be forced to
withdraw. Not only Democratic senators, but now several Republican
senators, were threatening to vote for withdrawal. But, by
early December, the U.S. Administration had begun to bring
the Iranians “back to the table” (i.e., figuratively,
if not actually). How did this happen? It was affected by
preparations for massive attacks on Iran and ruthless brinkmanship
on the part of the U.S., and with the active assistance of
both the E.U. and Russian leaderships. Any interest in withdrawal
has now virtually disappeared from both sides of the aisle
in the Senate. Let us first outline the two main areas of
agreement reached in May 2007, in the first publicly announced
face-to-face U.S.-Iran talks.
First: The U.S. and Iran agreed to work together to pacify
Iraq. In particular, a subcommittee consisting of both U.S.
and Iranian second-tier diplomats, described as serious and
non-political (i.e., technical), was formed to coordinate U.S.
and Iranian efforts to stabilize Iraq. Reportedly the U.S.
was to focus on working with its new Sunni tribal allies whose
forces they had been arming and training, while the Iranians
would work similarly with their Shia allies in the South of
Iraq. In each case, the aim was to suppress and eliminate forces
hostile to the central Iraqi government. A STRATFOR security
analysis put it plainly enough: “Translation: The two
countries will create a purge committee; the United States
will kill any Iraqi Sunnis who do not cooperate, while the
Iranians do the same to rebellious Iraqi Shia.“
Second: Iraq’s army would not be allowed to develop a
capacity to project force outside the borders of Iraq; it would
forever be restricted to being solely for the internal control
of the country. To guarantee Iraq’s sovereignty, the
U.S. would permanently station forces in Iraq. An attack on
Iraq would be an attack on a U.S. protectorate, akin to Saddam’s
attack on Kuwait in 1991, and would bring similar reaction.
In short, Iraq is to join the ranks of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and the UAE as a U.S. oil-state protectorate. This is, of course,
precisely what the U.S. and Britain wanted all along from the
invasion of 2003.
In retrospect, at least, it should now be clear that the extremely
intense back-and-forth dance of accusations and threats between
Iran and the U.S. in the months before the May meeting – the
fiercely heightened brinksmanship that went back at least to
October 2006, including the U.S. surge beginning in February
2007 – were maneuvers that, on the one hand, were intended
by the U.S. to bring Iran to the table on its terms, and, on
the other hand, were intended by Iran to get specific concessions
from the U.S. before it would agree to help it in Iraq.
On May 31, following these agreements reached about Iraq, President
Bush publicly marked the U.S. commitment to this deal with
Iran by saying to the press that he foresees the future role
of the U.S. in Iraq to be like that of the U.S. in South Korea
over the last 50 years.7 The
significance of this seeming non sequitur makes sense only
when one realizes that the U.S. has
special military treaties with not only Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
the U.A.E., and Egypt, but also with South Korea that make
these states U.S. military protectorates. Bush preferred not
to bring up any examples from the Middle East and instead chose
to use the example of South Korea, where, in any case, U.S.
forces have been stationed since the end of the Korean War,
to guarantee its sovereignty against any attack by North Korea
or any other state – so, the essential point about Iraq’s
future was made clearly enough. By November, the Iraqi government
had formally requested such a treaty with the U.S. 8
However, soon after a second and a third meeting in Iraq in
July 2007, things began to unravel between the U.S. and Iran.
The time came for General Petraeus to deliver his report to
Congress. Two security assessments released just beforehand
by U.S. intelligence services (not by Petraeus) were extremely
pessimistic about any purported progress made by the U.S. surge
in pacifying Iraq. This led to the strongest call ever by Democratic
senators, joined now by a significant number of Republican
senators, for a U.S. “withdrawal” from Iraq. I
put “withdrawal” in quotation marks because the
Senate mandate under consideration at that time was, as it
has always been, not a mandate for a real withdrawal from Iraq
and environs, but, rather, for a withdrawal to its borders,
to a posture intended to isolate the country from the intervention
of any of its neighbors while allowing the seemingly un-controllable
Iraqi sectarian warfare to exhaust itself without incurring
any further “loss of U.S. lives or treasure.” The
logic of this sort of “withdrawal” was that, once
the sectarian civil war was completed, and all sides exhausted,
after how-ever-many months or years this might take, the U.S.
forces would then return from their “withdrawal to the
borders” of Iraq and finally establish a U.S.-allied
government in Baghdad. Representative Murtha, for example,
had often described his earlier plan as such a “withdrawal
to the borders” of Iran, to isolate it while the civil
war raged.
Then and only then, when the U.S. returned, would
huge foreign investments in Iraqi oil begin, that is, under
a trusted regime which would accept its fate as a U.S. protectorate
like other oil-producing states around the Gulf. This has been
the fundamental strategic aim of the U.S. vis-à-vis
Iraq since after the First Gulf War and especially since the
2003 invasion - it is also the preferred U.S. strategic vision
for Iran itself.
It was at this point, it seems sometime in August, that the
Iranian leadership, and most commentators, made a serious misjudgment
of the situation facing the U.S. in Iraq and in the U.S. Congress.
It appeared to the Iranian leadership as though the Bush administration
might actually be forced by Congress to withdraw (albeit in
the aforementioned manner). Indeed, if that were to be the
case, they reasoned, what was the need to continue to negotiate
with the U.S. and make concessions over the future of Iraq?
The Iranians quickly (one might say precipitously) cutoff negotiations
with the U.S. about Iraq. What is more, President Ahmadinejad
made a speech in which he made a very public overture to Iraq’s
Arab neighbors that they, together with Tehran, should step
into the power vacuum that the soon-expected U.S. withdrawal
would create in Baghdad. On August 28, President Ahmadinejad
in a live speech on Iranian television, called for a new Iranian-led
order in the Persian Gulf region in the wake of an American
withdrawal, saying:
" The
political power of the occupiers (of Iraq) is being destroyed
rapidly and very soon we will be witnessing
a great power vacuum
in the region. We, with the help of regional
friends and the Iraqi nation, are ready to fill this void."
" They are trapped in the swamp of their own crimes
and have no choice but to accept the failure
and accept the independence
and rights of the Iraqi nation."
" If you stay in Iraq for another 50 years nothing will improve,
it will just worsen."
" I want to officially announce to you that from our viewpoint
the issue of Iran's nuclear case has been closed.
Today Iran is a nuclear Iran, meaning that it has the complete cycle for
fuel production. 9
Tehran simultaneously made overtures to Saudi Arabia, to reassure
it that, were Iran to become the dominant force in the Region
after a U.S. withdrawal, the new order in Iraq need not be
seen as a danger for it and its Sunni allies. But two things
occurred that pulled the rug out from under this bold change
of course by the Iranian leadership. One was that it was based
on faulty assessment of what Congress would do, which, in turn,
is about not making a sober analysis of what U.S. forces had
recently accomplished inside Iraq. The other was that the Iranian
leadership misjudged the possibility that Washington would
retaliate by demonstrating a brutal willingness to make a massive
and disproportionate military assault on Iran.
On the first matter, General Petraeus’ report to Congress
argued forcefully that the situation in Iraq was still retrievable
from the brink of disaster. Most significantly, his report
was sufficiently convincing to the majority of both Republican
and Democratic senators to halt any serious mandated-withdrawal
legislation in its tracks. A sober analysis would seem to be
that the U.S. success in rallying Sunni tribal forces, backed
up by the show of U.S. commitment as embodied by the surge,
and combined with the change in tactics enforced by Petraeus
where the U.S. had moved from force protection to Iraqi-population
protection, had, all in all, begun to turn the tide for the
U.S. In addition, it was very likely the case that Iran’s
efforts to reign in attacks by Shia militia beginning
in May 2007 (even though these efforts might have now
been suspended
or significantly lessened) had also greatly facilitated
this turn in Iraq. As regards the reduction in Shia militia
attacks
on both Sunni and government forces as well as on one
another, one must not underestimate how the new coming
together of Sunni
tribal forces together with U.S. occupation forces presented
an extremely sobering reminder to Shiite leaders - both
those inside Iraq and those inside Iran - of how the
British had,
some 90 years prior, put the Sunni in charge in Baghdad
when it had become impossible to rule Iraq through a
Shia regime
in Baghdad. In any case, it appears that the Iranian
leadership had, since at least October 2007, seriously
overestimated the
prospects for an immanent, congressionally mandated U.S.
withdrawal.
Secondly, President Bush, speaking to the U.S. Veterans Association
on August 28, the very same day President Ahmadinejad had publicly
called for a new Iranian-centered order in Iraq and the Region
in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal, asserted:
“
The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied
munitions have increased in the last few months -- despite
pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in
Iraq [an obvious reference to the May agreement – T.O’D.].
“ Some say Iran's leaders are not aware
of what members of their own regime are doing. Others say Iran's leaders
are actively seeking to provoke the West. Either way, they cannot
escape responsibility ... The Iranian regime must halt these actions.
And until it does, I will take actions necessary
to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders
in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities.”10
The
U.S. was not going to accept Iran pulling back from the May
agreement.
In addition, it was not about to allow any thought
of Iran filling the political vacuum in Baghdad if in fact
the U.S. was ever forced to withdraw. This point was very
forcibly made, albeit indirectly through Seymour Hersh. Within
a few
days of Bush’s speech, Hersh wrote in the October 8,
2007 issue of The New Yorker 11 (which was available
some days ahead of the publication date) of the new determination
and
planning by the U.S. administration and the Pentagon to bomb
Iran. How could it be, most observers asked, in a situation
where the U.S. is so overextended in Iraq that the administration
could possibly be considering a major attack on Iran for
regime change there? However, the revealed preparations for
bombing
Iran were not, per se, intended for regime change in Tehran.
No, this time, it was a warning that, if indeed the U.S.
were forced to withdraw from Iraq, if its Iraqi regime-change
adventure
was going to end up as a failure, nonetheless this failure
would not present a strategic opening for Iran. Rather, any
U.S. withdrawal would be what is known in military science
as a “scorched earth” withdrawal.
Bush’s August 28 warning to Iran, and The New Yorker’s
expose-cum-threat should be taken together with another,
distinctly un-diplomatic statement by Bush at his next press
conference
on October 17:
“ ... we got a leader in Iran who has announced
that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that
if you're interested
in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought
to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge
necessary
to make
a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a
nuclear weapon very seriously. And we'll continue to work
with all
nations about the seriousness of this threat.
“ Plus we'll continue working the financial measures that we're
in the process of doing. In other words, I think --
the whole strategy is, is that at some point in time, leaders or responsible
folks inside of Iran may get tired of isolation and
say, this isn't worth it. And to me, it's worth the effort to
keep the
pressure on this government.” 12
Such blunt
talk of war, much less of world war, immediately following
Hersch’s expose, was widely commented on in
the press—precisely as Washington had intended. Bush
and the Pentagon were sending a ruthless warning to Iran that
the U.S. was perfectly willing to engage Iran militarily, risking
a conflict that could easily escalate into attacks from which
it might take a generation for Iran to recover.
Nevertheless, there was a certain nuance in these preparations
for a U.S. military assault on Iran. This newest threat to
bomb Iran (as compared to the previous round exposed by Sy
Hersh), was that this was not intended to be a massive, large-scale
bombing of tens-of-thousands of economic infrastructure and
military sites that would reduce the entire country to a state
of utter economic and military ruin; rather, it was to especially
targeted at the facilities and personnel of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards (IRG), Recently, the IRG’s Quds Corps had repeatedly
accused by Administrations officials as being behind continued
assistance to Shiia groups still fighting against U.S. forces
and its allies in Iraq in violation of the May 2007 deal. Accordingly,
the U.S. had now begun to deemphasize the Iranian nuclear program
as the key target for bombing attacks, and would now instead
focus on the IRG sites in Iran. In this way the armed conflict
would be a continuation of very specific political aims. This
is consistent with our view, laid out above, that the Bush
administration was now focusing tightly on the specific issue
of constraining Iran to cooperate with it in the pacification
of Iraq. For the present, this meant putting regime change
within Iran on the back burner. Hersh wrote:
“ The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened
focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals
and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use
of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted
ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy
the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply
depots, and command and control facilities.
There
was now apparently some analysis in Washington that any Iranian
abandonment of cooperation in pacifying Iraq was
mainly associated with a specific political faction within
Iran. So, to target the country more broadly would be counter-productive,
as it would likely rally the entire leadership and nation against
the U.S. whereas a tightly focused (yet nonetheless devastating
and pre-emptive) attack focused on IRG targets might instead
heighten any internal exasperation in leading circles with
the IRG and associated hard-line rightist groupings for having
mishandled relations with the U.S. – in particular, with
President Ahmadinejad for the abandonment of negotiations on
Iraq, and making precipitous public threats to fill the political
vacuum after an impending U.S. failure there.14 Accordingly,
as Hersh wrote:
“’
Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for
surgical strikes,’” the former senior American
intelligence official told me. ...
“
A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if
the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by
a series of what he called ‘short, sharp incursions’ by
American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training
sites. He said, ‘Cheney is devoted to this, no question.’
Of course, any such engagement could very easily get catastrophically
out of hand:
“A limited bombing attack of this sort ‘only makes
sense if the intelligence is good,’ the consultant said.
If the targets are not clearly defined, the bombing ‘will
start as limited, but then there will be an ‘escalation
special.’ Planners will say that we have to deal with
Hezbollah here and Syria there. The goal will be to hit the
cue ball one time and have all the balls go in the pocket.
But add-ons are always there in strike planning.’
Apparently,
the campaign of highly credible U.S. threats and preparations
for warring with Iran had its desired effect in
Tehran. Soon, Tehran was giving the IAEA blueprints from
its work on nuclear warheads in years past, and signaling
its willingness
to return to assisting the U.S. in Iraq. New negotiations
are to resume sometime in January 2008. They were delayed
from
mid-December due to “scheduling issues,” although
actual back-and-forth U.S.-Iranian quid-pro-quos continue
to occur, as non-public discussions take place in some form.
And,
the technical subcommittee set up last May on the joint pacification
of Iraq, was set to begin meeting in the third week of December
2007.
(Actually, there is more to the story of what was done to
force Tehran back towards negotiations over Iraq, and it
has to do
with an arch-typically real- politic deal between Washington
and Moscow, in return for which Defense Secretary Gates publicly
allowed that the missile defense systems that the U.S. wants
to set up in the Czech Republic and Poland, and which Russia
strenuously objects to, could “go away” if “the
Iranian threat” went away. Immediately after meeting
with Secretaries Gates and Rice in Moscow, President Putin
personally delivered a message to the Supreme Leader in Tehran
under the cover of public smiles and back-slapping between
himself and Mr. Ahmadinejad on the same day President Bush
made his comment about “World War III.” President
Putin delivered a “special atomic message” in Tehran.
Iran’s then-chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said
that "Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his trip to
Tehran, had a special message for Iranian officials." Asked
if it involved Iran’s nuclear activities, and said: "Yes,
Iran's nuclear issue was also a part of it." Supreme Leader
A. Khamenei reportedly responded to Putin: "We will think
about what you said and your proposal," adding that Iran
was "determined to provide our country's need for nuclear
energy.")
The long and short of the story to this point is this: if
in fact the recent NIE findings that Iran has given up an
explicit
nuclear-weapon program are part of a quid pro quo between
Washington and Tehran, then it is undoubtedly a quid
pro quo for an Iranian
return to cooperation in the pacification of Iraq. In this
view, the NIE release is also a step to prepare the U.S.
and Iranian public for a progression of increasingly public
steps
in cooperation between the two countries in Iraq. However,
as I indicated at the start, neither the pacification of
Iraq or Iran’s nuclear program are the fundamental issue driving
the long-term U.S.-Iran crisis. The larger issue one has to
keep in mind, to make sense of all this, is that the U.S.-Iran
confrontation is most fundamentally about oil – and Iranian
and Persian Gulf oil is in turn very much about U.S. hegemony
in the Gulf and its role as the sole superpower in the world
beyond. There is still no evidence that the U.S. has accepted
the present clerical leadership in Iran as trustworthy to be
in charge of re-invigorated Iranian oil production. Iran’s
exports could increase perhaps by two-to-three times over
five-to-seven years if sanctions were lifted and massive
foreign investment
and technology allowed to flow in. What guarantees and what
limitations on Iranian national sovereignty would the present
Iranian leadership have to make for the U.S. to agree to
lift sanctions?
Now, with a U.S.-Iranian-Iraqi agreement that Iraq will be
a U.S. protectorate, four of the five major oil-producing states
around the Gulf will be U.S. protectorates.
Iran remains the
only one of the five not reduced to this state of affairs.
The Iranian leadership is trading away its ability to disrupt
U.S. efforts to pacify Iraq for improved relations and other
concessions, including the U.S. NIE declaring its nuclear
bomb-making program defunct. But, what does the Iranian leadership
now
have remaining to bargain away to achieve its ultimate strategic
requirement – lifting of U.S. and U.N oil sanctions without
a regime change? One doubts that agreeing to not enrich uranium
would be sufficient to satisfy Washington on this issue. What,
short of conceding to also become a U.S. protectorate of some
sort – a state unable to project power in its region
and dependant on another for its defense – would satisfy
Washington? There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and
the UAE, the major oil-producing U.S. protectorates across
the Gulf have leaderships as highly antagonistic to an Iran,
after its recovery from oil sanctions and flush with cash,
projecting power in the Region. For now, it seems the present
deals being made are only partial deals, deals about Iraq,
and as long as the fundamental deal over Iran’s oil
remains elusive, U.S. forceful regime-change efforts will
remain a
very real threat for the Iranian people and world peace.
Note
of the author – The
following graphs illustrate (a) that Iran’s per-capita
oil-export income is now reduced to the low level of Iraq’s;
and (b) that U.S. sanctions have reduced Iran’s oil
output to 2/3 the level it was under the shah.
Notes:
1. Speaking the next day to the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator,
Mr.
Jaiali in Moscow.
2. Reuters, from Iranian state television, 3 January 2008.
3.
Today Iran exports only 2.4 million barrels per day; but
Saudi
Arabia alone can easily turn up its pumps
by 2 million
barrels a day, and U.S. and European strategic petroleum reserves
also rather effortlessly replaced 2 million barrels per day
during the Katrina emergency. In fact, the combined Strategic
Petroleum Reserves (SPR) of the OECD states’ International
Energy Agency (IEA) could maintain this level of pumping for
well over four years if commercial stocks were also called
upon. The psychological shock to oil markets of any Iranian
cutoff of oil would be great, of course cause, at least temporarily,
a price spike; however, there would be no fundamental oil crisis
or shortage. This is why Iran has pointedly always backed away
from any such threat, as it would only play into the hands
of the U.S. to prepare public opinion for exercising military
force against Iran.
4. See especially the Energy Information Agency of the U.S. DOE, Country Analysis
Brief (CAB) on Iran.
5.
This point was underscored by Henry Kissinger, in his commentary
on the NIE. “Misreading the Iran Report: Why Spying
and Policymaking Don't Mix” By Henry A. Kissinger,
Thursday, December 13, 2007; Washington Post, Page A35.
6. For more detail on the political economy of Iranian and Persian-Gulf oil in
U.S.
grand strategy, see articles and talks by the present author at http://TomOD.com.
7. “Bush
Sees South Korea Model for Iraq,” By
Terence Hunt, The Associated
Press, May 30, 2007.
8. “U.S. and Iraq to Negotiate Pact on Long-Term Relations” By THOM
SHANKER and CARA BUCKLEY, New York Times, November 27, 2007. The White House
website also discusses the initial iteration: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-11.html
9. “Iran
says ready to fill vacuum in Iraq left by U.S.,” By
Edmund Blair, Reuters, August 28, 2007. http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL28886783
10. “President
Bush Addresses the 89th Annual National Convention of the
American Legion,” Reno-Sparks Convention
Center, Reno, Nevada, August 28, 2007. White House Office of
the Press Secretary, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070828-2.html
11. “ Shifting Targets: The Administration’s
plan for Iran” by Seymour
M. Hersh, The New Yorker, October 8, 2007.
12. Press Conference by the President, White House, October 17,
2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071017.html
14. (In fact, it seems, such a cleavage might have now opened
up;
there are reports of an electoral front formed between
two former presidents who otherwise would not be expected to
ally: neo-liberal-style reformist and social conservative Rafsanjani,
and the clerical-based liberal reformist Khatami, and including
former nuclear negotiator and national security chief Larijani.
Tom
O’Donnell, Ph.D. in
nuclear nuclear physics, University of Michigan,
his Ph.D.
Dissertation "A Superconducting-Solenoid Isotope
Spectrometer for
Production of Neutron-Rich Nuclei (136Xe + natC,
E/A = 30 MeV/u)" was
awarded the Terwilliger Prize, by the Physics Department
of The University, the "most
prestigeous award given by the Physics Department
to a graduate student." Dr. O’Donnell
is at present a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, at the
Centro de
Estudios del Desarrollo,
at Universidad Central
de Venezuela, Caracas (CENDES-UCV). See O’Donnell
articles and talks on Oil and the Middle East at
http://TomOD.com. Petroleumworld does not necessarily
share these views
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Petroleumworld
02/17/08
Copyright ©2006
Tom
O’Donnell. All Rights Reserved
