Click:comfortable and

Iran: the diplomatic dividend

The European Union deserves a great deal of credit for securing a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme

The international agreement struck this weekend to constrain Iran’s nuclear programme may only be preliminary, but it is a huge success. In practical terms, for the first time since 2004, Iran has committed itself to suspending the programme and is rolling back some critical elements.

In diplomatic terms, the deal is a triumph. The United States and Iran are talking publicly again, after three decades. The five permanent members of the United Nations’ Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom – have maintained a united front since international talks began in March 2012. And the European Union – led by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief – has led those talks and maintained that unity.

The international dividends could be substantial, as the leaders of the EU – Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission – were quick to point out. It was, they said, a “major breakthrough for global security and stability” and could “reduce political tensions, contribute to build trust and support the promotion of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”.

They are right. There are risks, of course: how, for example, might sceptics and opponents – Israel, the American right, and Saudi Arabia – respond to a permanent deal? But the Middle East, in particular, and central Asia (Afghanistan above all) could benefit from a less confrontational relationship between Iran and the rest of the world. More generally, and more certainly, it is better to have Iran inside the international system, subject to constraints, rather than as a state behaving as a rogue and often treated as a pariah.

There could also be a dividend for the EU’s role in diplomacy. Barroso and Van Rompuy limited their reflections on the EU’s involvement to praising Ashton for her role as principal negotiator of the deal. But the sense of satisfaction went further than that. EU negotiators received a standing ovation when they arrived to debrief the political and security council on Monday (25 November), and were hailed for what was described as a huge success for EU diplomacy.

Just how much the breakthrough was attributable to EU diplomacy and Ashton will become clearer when more is known about the behind-the-scenes diplomacy between the US and Iran. Hours after the deal, it emerged that the two had been holding secret talks since March, a process that continued during the formal talks in Geneva, with go-betweens scurrying around the city incognito.

But such secret diplomacy also needed public diplomacy – and for that the EU and Ashton were essential. The US and Iranian foreign ministers were able to meet face-to-face only in the presence of Ashton. “She is no more than a liaison, and at that she is very effective,” is how an Iranian official described Ashton’s role to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. But even if that characterisation is right, it is clear that liaison was vital – indeed, a senior Western official insider says that it was at Iran’s insistence that many of its meetings in Geneva included just Ashton and that Ashton had to be at almost all the other meetings.

That type of specific demand by Iran illustrates how diplomacy inevitably develops characteristics specific to each situation. Deriving general points from the talks with Iran about the EU’s role in international diplomacy is tricky and risky.

The deal did, however, highlight the EU’s potential as a deal-broker in set-piece negotiations. As a bloc of 28 countries, the EU cannot be as swift or as flexible as the US – or any individual member state of the EU – when diplomacy becomes more strategic and geopolitical. However, the EU can be an honest broker in multilateral negotiations in a way that many individual countries cannot.

Click Here: Cheap Chiefs Rugby Jersey 2019

Consider the cast of countries in Geneva: it contained countries that Iran has good historical reason to distrust – the US, France and the UK – and countries that the West has reason to mistrust, Russia and China. By contrast, the EU is a small-moving bloc of countries whose members embrace widely varying views and whose bilateral relations with non-European states typically range from non-existent to problematic (for the former colonial powers France and the UK in particular). The EU is a bloc that still primarily co-ordinates national policies, so it has some of the advantages of a traditional power – weight and influence – with fewer of the disadvantages, such as a difficult history.

In due course, the EU may develop foreign policies so broadly accepted by its member states that it can move swiftly. In the meantime, the deal with Iran shows that, even in the infancy of its foreign policy, the EU can play an important role in very complex diplomacy.