THE SPINE MAY 18, 2010
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You may remember that during the president’s first trip abroad he spent two days in Turkey. A little much, I thought. After all, a presidential visit is something of a gift to the host country’s government. And why did Ankara deserve such a gift? Well, it didn’t.
First of all, in 2003, it had barred American troop movement through Iraq from the north. I don’t know exactly how many U.S. deaths accrued because of this ban. But sober estimates tell us that as many as 500 soldiers may have been killed because of the restriction. Since then, the Erdogan regime has been pushing an Islamist agenda at home and an Islamist agenda in foreign policy.
In any case, it was during Obama’s April 2009 visit that he launched his flamboyant (but doomed) seduction of the Muslim orbit, putting an end to his desperate distancing from anything having to do with Arabs or Islam. He has not been rewarded for any of his initiatives—some corny, some embarrassing, some deeply false—by any of the Qur’anic states.
It was clear that Turkey would be one of the several obstacles in the Security Council to sanctions against Iran’s nuclear adventures. Along with Russia, China, and Brazil, all of which the president has also wooed with extravagant but futile gestures. Alas.
Today’s news of the deal consummated among Turkey, Brazil, and Iran is a diplomatic pretext designed to undercut the sanctions regime which was itself being systematically enfeebled so as to get Moscow and Beijing to go along. Poor Mrs. Clinton has been danced out on occasion to assure us that the envisioned restrictions will be tight. At least as of a few hours ago, she has neither been asked nor commanded (nor, for that matter, volunteered herself) to testify to the basic lie once more.
Instead, Robert Gibbs issued a White House statement, the substance and style of which were both mystifying and deceiving.
Isn’t it time we begin a move to expel Turkey from NATO? If Turkey is an ally of civilized Europe, I am a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority.
MEMRI has just released a very smart analysis of the tripartite diplomatic alliance against America. Iran is its locus. But it is not just Iran that will benefit.
Before reading, please take a look at the photograph of the diplomatic goons enjoying their victory over the United States.
The Iran-Turkey-Brazil Nuclear Agreement: In the Iranian Perception, a New World Order Led By Iran
By: A. Savyon
Introduction
As the Obama administration strives for achievements at the NPT review conference currently taking place in New York, Tehran launched a countermove in the nuclear issue vis-à-vis the U.S. and the West.
Tehran, which at the time of this writing is hosting the G-15 conference of developing countries, presented today, May 17, an agreement together with Turkey and Brazil on a uranium exchange deal – after rejecting an identical agreement proposed by the West in late 2009 in the Vienna outline.
According to Tehran, it appears that under this agreement Iran is willing to transfer 1,200 kg of 3.5%-enriched uranium that it has in its possession (out of the stock of 1,600 kg that the West knows about) to Turkey for safekeeping, in order to receive in return 120 kg of 20%-enriched uranium that it needs for the Tehran research reactor. Iran expects the International Atomic Energy Agency, as the body in charge of implementing the NPT, to ensure that Russia enriches the uranium to 20%, and that France turns it into nuclear fuel that will be transferred to Iran, as proposed previously by the Vienna Group (the 5+1). Section 7 of the new agreement ensures Iran's right to back out of the agreement and not to be bound by it if the Vienna Group does not accept it.
Immediately with the signing of the agreement, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the 5+1 to return to the negotiating table.Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast announced that this agreement did not prevent ongoing nuclear enrichment to 20% in Iran, and that this activity would continue as usual.
It was also reported that the details of the agreement would be provided to the IAEA within a week, and that Tehran, together with the agreement's two co-sponsors, Turkey and Brazil, were expecting it to be implemented within a month. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that if Ankara saw that Tehran was not receiving the 20%-enriched uranium, it would return to Iran its entire stock of 1,200 kg of uranium.
The Agreement in the Iranian Perspective
This agreement, which is in effect an Iranian ultimatum to the West and to the IAEA, constitutes a significant Iranian achievement, on two levels:
1. Instituting a new world order, led by Iran. The move and the agreement are the practical implementationof statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the establishment of a new world order, and regarding the need for Tehran to participate in running the world, and even to present a political, cultural, and moral alternative to what it calls the failure of the forces of the old order – the U.S. and the West.
This move attests that Iran has managed to cast out the West, and particularly the U.S., in its drawing up of an agreement on a political and global issue relying onrising forces in the developing world – Brazil, whose nuclear plan has military potential, and Turkey, a regional Islamic force – while the agreement presented in Tehran is the same outline as that proposed to it by the West in Vienna.
The recruitment of Brazil, a major emerging world power and a U.N. Security Council member, has moved the Iranian initiative beyond the Middle East and beyond the Iranian nuclear sphere, making it the first step in the building of a political transregional global front that Iran presents as an alternative to the West's hegemony.
2. The agreement will undermine U.S. and Western efforts for sanctions on Iran: Now that Iran has expressed a practical willingness to compromise on the nuclear issue in the spirit of the West's Vienna outline, Iran considers that the justification for sanctions will completely disappear, and the West itself will now appear rejectionist, and unwilling to share nuclear technology with the third world.
12 comments
"Isn’t it time we begin a move to expel Turkey from NATO?" Yeah, that's a really wonderful idea.
- ironyroad
May 18, 2010 at 1:23am
On kicking Turkey out of NATO, considered in the abstract, and considered only on the level of gut reaction, I see the attraction. But our strongest relations with Turkey have always been at the military-to-military level. This is especially true today, and it's in large part why the AKP government is going after military leaders with its Ergenekon perse-/prosecution. Cutting the last good ties we have to anyone in the Turkish regime, at precisely the moment when the Turkish military would regard such a thing as the greatest betrayal as well as an American endorsement of the Ergenekon case, that's beyond foolish.
- rhubarbs
May 18, 2010 at 8:47am
Two questions about Turkey's "zero problems with neighbors" foreign policy, and Brazil's "friends with everyone" foreign policy. 1) Can these policy platforms outlast the personalities of their current leaders, Erdogan and Lula?, and 2) How dependent are such foreign policies on this moment in the economic strength of both countries, which have weathered the financial firestorms much better than the United States and most of Europe? Brazil's election is in October, and it is too soon to tell if Lula's adventures with Iran and Venezuela will become an issue that benefits Jose Serra's challenge to Lula's handpicked successor, Dilma Rouseff. In any event, Iran is certainly NOT the leader in any New World Order. This is more about Turkey and Brazil flexing their muscles on the international stage by poking the U.S. and EU. Perhaps Turkey aspires to making BRIC into BRICT. It is certainly going to be a tense summer.
- K2K
May 18, 2010 at 11:00am
The NATO alliance survived a number of crises including a military coup in Greece and then the removal of that military govt, France withdrawing from the command structure, Britain refusing to join with the U.S. (an aside: did Blair ever think about Harold Wilson?) in the Vietnam adventure, etc. The Soviet threat was paramount. That particular threat has now been gone for 20 years in its original form, and NATO has had problems reconfiguring a mission and an identity. Nevertheless the alliance is not the plaything of individual governments or regimes, and responding to a standoff with one particular government by trying to threaten them with exclusion is not a good idea. Brazil is a separate issue, and here I see the need for a complete rethink of our relations with Latin American countries on the lines of what FDR accomplished around 1938/40 which effectively pushed back at Nazi influence in South America. If Brazil is experimenting with more f-p autonomy, it might be wise not to act all offended as if we were some creepy uncle who wants his niece to sit on his knee like she used to. It might be useful, in fact, to work hard at getting that autonomy to work in productive directions. At the end of the day, the U.S. and Brazil are more important -- or should be -- to each other than Turkey or Iran is to Brazil. And whil I have no problem seeing Achmedinnerjacket as a goon (I guess he might even be proud of it), I'm puzzled as to where any universally goon-ish element is located in the photo. Lula and Erdogan are in any case political leaders, not diplomats.
- ironyroad
May 18, 2010 at 2:08pm
You don't understand, irony; anyone that has any agreement on anything with mad Mahmoud is a goon. Hell, just being in the same picture with him has qualified Erdogan and Lula as "diplomatic goons", regardless of their political positions.
- scrubby
May 19, 2010 at 8:57am
Yeah? Oh well . . . http://www.life.com/image/1424016
- ironyroad
May 19, 2010 at 11:51am
Thanks malahat! You just have to be old enough . . .
- ironyroad
May 19, 2010 at 12:53pm
malahat, after viewing the picture in irony's link above, I suddenly got your point about "holding hands with grinning goons".
- scrubby
May 20, 2010 at 10:30am
Turkey's Zero-Problems Foreign Policy The Turkish government this week brokered an 11th-hour nuclear fuel swap deal with Iran. Turkey's foreign minister explains the principles that made it possible. BY AHMET DAVUTOGLU | MAY 20, 2010 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/20/turkeys_zero_problems_foreign_policy I guess I would be more impressed with the coherence of FM Davutoglu if he had included Kurds as one of Turkey's ethnic minorities, and mentioned Israel as a neighbor, but still good of him to explain Turkey so well at this moment in time
- K2K
May 21, 2010 at 12:18pm
"Yeah? Oh well . . ." You'd think that photo was the most acute warning against holding hands with goons. It shows exactly why realpoliticking and its ignoration of simple moral disgust can be so deadly.
- noga1
May 21, 2010 at 8:01pm
The bumbling of the Obama administration is lack of knowledge of the Middle east core issues. Add to this the state department in love with anything Arabic and you have a disaster in the making. Lebanon has just joined the axis Iran/ Turkey/ Syria. This while the US supplying arms and training to the Lebanese army mostly Shia. Same in the PA. Temporarily lead by un- elected Abbas. The only place where the administration is not calling for elections to promote democracy knowing full well that if elections took place Hamas could win. At best Obama is an amateur. I tend to think that his 20 years cheering his spiritual mentor Wright has more to do with the US pitiful Middle east policies.
- Poupic
November 27, 2010 at 7:24am
The bumbling of the Obama administration is lack of knowledge of the Middle east core issues. Add to this the state department in love with anything Arabic and you have a disaster in the making. Lebanon has just joined the axis Iran/ Turkey/ Syria. This while the US supplying arms and training to the Lebanese army mostly Shia. Same in the PA. Temporarily lead by un- elected Abbas. The only place where the administration is not calling for elections to promote democracy knowing full well that if elections took place Hamas could win. At best Obama is an amateur. I tend to think that his 20 years cheering his spiritual mentor Wright has more to do with the US pitiful Middle east policies.
- Poupic
November 27, 2010 at 7:24am