WORLD_ Good news from the UN … until you stop to think about it

Good news from the UN … until you stop to think about it

By Peter Foster - World -  Last updated: September 27th, 2013

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*** Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.


No one likes a party pooper, but the great rejoicing coming out of the United Nations this week following the resolution on Syria's chemical weapons and Iran's new-found desire to cut a deal over its nuclear programme urgently needs tempering with reality.

So before we start popping champagne corks, here's are some reasons to pause for thought:

Be under no illusion, Iran, Russia and Syria are driving the agenda here.

Given their past records, why is it that Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani and Bashar Al-Assad are all signing up to these resolutions and agreements-in-principle, and at a time when the hand of the West has never been weaker?

Is it because they have had some Damascene conversion, or is it because they are getting what they want? The former is deeply unlikely. The latter should be extremely troubling.

So if Putin, Rouhani, and Assad are getting what they want, what is it?

In Putin's case, control of the UN, which was clearly demonstrated by the "toothless" (Foreign Policy) resolution on Syria. There is no meaningful threat of force, Barack Obama saw to that by his terrible miscalculation in going to Congress, forever weakening his hand and quite probably the presidents who will follow him.

In Assad's case, time to regroup and kill lots more people by conventional means, secure in the knowledge that he isn't about to get bombed. He can spin out the chemical weapons issue at his leisure, and he will.

In Rouhani's case, legalised UN-sanctioned access to the nuclear fuel cycle (albeit limited to five per cent enrichment) and the rapid lifting of economic sanctions.

Is that so worrying? In the post-Cold War era, world diplomacy is no longer a zero sum game, right?

If only. Obama and Cameron may have saved face at home, they may have given their public what they want, but opting for a quiet life today does not necessarily lay the foundations for a stable tomorrow.

Putin's hand is now immeasurably strengthened. He gets to prop up his last client in the Middle East, burnish his prestige on the world stage and enforce (as the toothless UN resolution on Syria shows) the Russian/Chinese view that sovereignty is all.

Mr Obama warned in his UN speech that sovereignty "cannot be a shield for tyrants". Well that's what happening, and the Syria "deal", which the US, UK had no choice by to accede to having failed so dreadfully at home, has set a dangerous precedent.

But how can Iran be said to be "driving the agenda"? Aren't they making concessions?

Superficially, but only because Tehran has already won the most crucial argument – that it should have access to the nuclear fuel cycle and be able to enrich its own uranium. That is Iran's big victory here, to set up this negotiation as a binary choice between a "deal" (give us enrichment) and "no deal".

This ignores the "third way", which is to give Iran access to nuclear fuel from third-party countries, something that US and UK diplomats have already privately accepted Iran will not accept.

But if Iran accepts enrichment cap of 5 per cent, and intrusive IAEA inspections, isn't that a win-win?

Sure, until it all goes wrong. If the deal goes through, Tehran has already crossed one vitally important threshold – legal recognition of its right to enrich uranium. Tehran well knows – given what happened in Syria – how difficult it is for the US to intervene these days, even when children are writhing and dying right in front of us. How much harder to convince the public of the need to address something nebulous, far away and deep underground.

So having shown such "good faith" in agreeing to this "deal", it will be virtually impossible to sell the need for intervention to stop a "legal" programme, even if – and no doubt Tehran will find an excuse – there starts to be some slippage on inspections and enrichment.

Iran has already demonstrated its capacity to enrich to 20 per cent, which crosses a key technological threshold, meaning that they can get to 90 per cent (needed for a bomb) pretty quickly if they try.

As in Syria, the West is negotiating from a position of weakness, and Tehran knows it.

But if you take such a cynical/distrustful attitude, how can there ever be a deal?

The Ayatollah's seductive argument, exactly. The fact is, over the last decade Iran has done nothing to deserve trust – as former IAEA inspectors will testify. Sure, sanctions are hurting – hence the current overtures – but that doesn't mean Tehran has suddenly given up on its ambitions to build a bomb.

Rouhani is in the UN promising "transparency" and "assurances" of Iran's promise not to build a bomb, but the facts of that past decade simply don't fit.

Given that past history, there is every reason to be suspicious about why Iran wants legally-sanctioned access to the cycle. If the ambition was to have civilian nuclear power, they could have had it a long time ago, with the Russians or another trusted third party providing the fuel, as already happens at Bushehr.

So, what should we do, nothing?

No, but we need to be clear-eyed about what is going on here. Diplomacy is a game of poker and there are winners and losers. The fact that Western publics are war-weary and want to believe that Russia, Iran and Syria are suddenly seeing the light, unfortunately doesn't make it so.

On the contrary. Iran, Russia and Syria rightly sense weakness and division in the West and they are moving to capitalise on that space, correctly calculating that Western public is happy to buy in to the fiction, and that their leaders will do so for a quiet life. And if that sounds binary/Cold War, then sad-to-relate, that's how the world goes round.

As the saying goes in poker, if you don't know who the mug is round the table, it's very likely that it's you.

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