Financial markets may crash, Georgia and Ukraine may be invaded, Britain may leave the EU, the West may be chased out of Kabul, but amid all this turbulence one thing remains constant. Once again the gloomy halls of the UN in Vienna host the world’s top diplomats in instalment 94 of the long-running series Deal or No Deal (with Iran).
The Iran show has been losing its audience recently. But the Americans are back, corralling visibly reluctant Middle Eastern allies back into the studio. Russia and China look smilingly on. Meanwhile, we and the EU don’t seem to mind what the script is as long as we have a leading role.
The only problem is that no-one is quite sure how the series is going to end. And they have all forgotten why they liked the show in the first place.
For younger readers’ benefit, the dim and distant origins of the process go back to the Iraq war, after which France and Germany decided they could persuade Iran to renounce its nuclear ambitions through diplomacy. Britain under Tony Blair joined in, to prove that we were not hopelessly in hock to the US cowboys. Inevitably, the effort failed, and the UN imposed sanctions.
Enter the fresh new President Obama with a new plan in 2009. Unfortunately it was the same as the old plan – to talk Iran into giving up its nuclear programme, this time in return for dropping sanctions, the only thing stopping Iran sowing terror and confusion throughout the Middle East.
The Iranians soon spotted the West wanted a deal more than they did. So in the 2015 agreement, the so-called JCPOA, Iran promised to defer its nuclear programme for a time (assuming you believed them) but accepted no constraints on missiles, arms proliferation, or destabilising our friends in the region. The hope, incredibly, was that one day a newly responsible Iran would drop its nuclear plans and help to manage the Middle East, allowing America to back out.
Needless to say, wise Western foreign ministers and diplomats thought this was a tremendously good deal. It parked a problem, allowing them to get on with what they preferred, which was holding international conferences on climate change. President Trump did not agree. Suspicious of Iranian intentions, he rightly withdrew the US from the deal and once again imposed sanctions. Britain did not. For our decision-makers, Britain was already in the international dog-house over Brexit, and lining up with Trump was just too much.
But Trump lost the 2020 election. And so another cycle begins. The people who brought you the JCPOA are back in Washington. Iran is busily enriching uranium and firing missiles at our friends. And the Europeans just want a deal – and, it seems, Iranian oil back on the market.
In truth this whole process has been based on a fallacy: that Iran could simply be talked out of something it saw as in its national interest. In fact, only sanctions and the threat of force have given Iran pause. Trump’s strike on General Soleimani, following which disaster was predicted, in fact put Iran on the back foot. Under Biden, by contrast, Iran has accelerated enrichment.
We have failed to read the realities of international power – as so often, unfortunately, when Europeans take the lead. We have now seen from Russia where signalling weakness gets us. The same is true of Iran.
David Lean’s great film Bridge on the River Kwai portrays Alec Guinness’s Colonel Nicholson, the British POW who, ordered to build a bridge for the Japanese war effort, becomes determined to finish the job come what may, and ends by trying to stop a commando team destroying it.
The Iran deal has become our Bridge over the River Kwai. We have become obsessed with completing it, but have forgotten why. Let’s blow it up and face down our enemies properly instead.
