WRMEA, March/April 2014, Pages 28-29
U.N.
and Arab League envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi (l) and U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Jan. 22 press conference closing
the Geneva II peace talks on Syria. (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)
United Nations Report
Despite Outcome, Ban Was Right to Invite Iran to Syria Talks
By Ian Williams
U.N.
and Arab League envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi (l) and U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Jan. 22 press conference closing
the Geneva II peace talks on Syria. (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)
George Orwell invented “non-persons” in his novel 1984—people
so politically incorrect they were treated as if they did not exist. He
also invented the “Two Minutes Hate,” in which crowds were worked into
paroxysms of rage at the mention of Big Brother’s political opponent.
Today it is not Big Brother but the Dog’s Tail which
decides which is a non-country or a non-person, and identifies which
countries are so unfit that they can only be ritually vilified. In
Washington, the powers that be seem to blithely forget the years in
which the old China lobby persuaded them to ignore Beijing, and the sore
loser faction bade them to boycott Hanoi—or how, until recently, no one
could talk to the Palestinians. Even now, we can only talk to some
Palestinians.
In a recent example of this selective and consciously
directed amnesia, Norway’s permanent representative to the U.N. told the
Security Council that his country was “deeply concerned about the
deteriorating economic and humanitarian situation in Gaza. We call for
the lifting of the restrictions in compliance with Security Council
Resolution 1860 in all its elements, including the need for security for
all the civilian populations.”
Compared with what comes out of mealy-mouthed
Washington, this sounds like a strong statement. But readers accustomed
to the sound of silence will note the absence of names in this otherwise
resounding declaration by Norway in the first Security Council meeting
of 2014 on the Middle East situation. In what perilously approached
Orwell’s Doublethink, Norway could not bring itself to name Israel as
the country maintaining the restrictions its diplomat was deploring in
defiance of previous resolutions.
In contrast, Iran did not disguise its favorite target
the way it used to, since the former “Zionist Entity” has now graduated
to become “The Israeli Regime”—which, the Iranian envoy pointed out, “is
the only one in the region that possesses all types of Weapons of Mass
Destruction but is not a party to any of the treaties banning them.”
He added that it “should also be compelled to join such
treaties, in particular to accede to the NPT, without any further delay
and precondition, and place all its nuclear activities under the IAEA
comprehensive safeguards, in order to remove the only obstacle for the
establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East proposed
by Iran in 1974.”
One might not totally appreciate the messenger, but the message is spot on!
Despite, or perhaps even because of, such eminently good
common sense, Washington banned Tehran from the peace talks in Geneva,
to which U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon very sensibly had invited
it.
As Ban recognized, you do not make peace by refusing to
talk to opponents, and vetoing Iran’s involvement makes it more
difficult to achieve peace. The whole debacle suggests that the Obama
administration is acting from the Clinton-era script when its dealings
with the U.N. are concerned. It is not surprising that Secretary-
General Ban has quipped that SG stood for “Scape Goat,” but this
debacle, unfairly, had him dubbed as Washington’s poodle—for taking a
step with the full knowledge of the State Department and U.S.
administration, but which the U.S. then expediently repudiated.
Despite being the victim of poison gas attacks itself,
it is true that Iran has not exactly covered itself with ethical or
humanitarian glory during the Syrian tragedy. But then, neither has
Russia, which has supplied the bulk of the weaponry for the regime. And
yet no one has suggested banning Moscow from the talks, or even the
Assad regime itself. Additionally, after that regime, among the major
obstacles to a rational and democratic solution are the fundamentalist
fighters bankrolled by major Arab oil states—with whom the U.S.
maintains the closest and most amicable relations.
The problem is that in some quarters—including these
armers and bankers of war criminals—Iran is a non-country, which leads
to palpably nonsensical acrobatics by Washington and others. The U.S.
can have bases in countries bankrolling “terrorist” groups, but because
those profoundly undemocratic regimes do not like Iran, the U.S. must be
careful about talking to Tehran.
So Israel could sell the ayatollahs weapons in the
course of Iran-Contra, during which the U.S. itself was using Tehran to
arm right-wing terrorists in Nicaragua. The U.S. and Iran can both
support the Iraqi government in defeating Sunni insurgents and
terrorists in Iraq, and indeed colluded to combat the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
But because President Barack Obama and Secretary of
State John Kerry were, quite correctly, talking to Iran on the nuclear
issue, they were on a short leash from AIPAC on Iranian entanglements.
This time the dog had more than one tail: There was external pressure
from Arabs and Israel, and of course the internal pressure from Congress
being whipped up by AIPAC.
Clearly in the real world, it is to everyone’s advantage
to have at the table a major player in the conflict—if you want it to
end. But diplomacy is often best orchestrated to the sound of silence.
Not mentioning issues is often crucial to getting parties to agree to
talks, and so Iran’s invitation to the peace talks involved eliding the
issue of whether Iran explicitly accepted the Geneva Communiqué on which
the talks were based. It had not, but showed signs that it could be
nudged that way.
So Ban, with the full knowledge of the U.S., invited
Iran to the talks, despite the fudge on whether or not Tehran had signed
off on the communiqué. He was taking a bold risk. He rightly believed
that Iran should be there, but the talks were the property of the
participants, each of which had an implicit veto.
It was a delicate operation, depending on complicity and
discretion from all parties. Someone somewhere blew enough to bring the
house of cards down. The U.S. side seems to have demanded explicit
guarantees of Iranian acceptance of the communiqué, which precipitated
an explicit repudiation of them by Tehran. That led to Washington
demanding that Ban withdraw the invitation to Iran. American briefers
immediately began to castigate Ban’s incompetence, even though it was
U.S. diplomatic ineptitude that seems to have precipitated the collapse.
Was it the usual Iran haters who blew the structure
down, or did someone in the administration do it so that they could
appease AIPAC for defeating it on the sanctions issue? There were so
many places such a complex operation could be toppled, it would be
difficult to tell. It could be that one part of the administration knew
what was happening, and another didn’t.
Clearly, Ban also, justifiably, feels let down by the
Iranians for rising to the American bait so quickly. They should have
just shut up and turned up.
But the name-calling cannot disguise the inalienable
truth that if the talks are to be successful then Iran should be
involved in them, that Ban was right to invite them and the U.S. foolish
to disinvite them.
As a corollary, if the U.S. had a coherent foreign
policy it would build on its common ground with Iran—in Iraq, in
Afghanistan and, increasingly, on the nuclear issue, to persuade Tehran
that there were advantages in working with Washington to force Assad to
the negotiating table. Indeed, the U.S., as its own hydrocarbons bubble
up out of the ground, could persuade the Arab Iran-haters to cease their
pernicious activities in backing terrorist bands that tend to make
Assad look good, even as they open a fifth column in the opposition’s
ranks.
Washington could have expressed its regrets at the
Iranian invitation, and let it stand. It is not in the longterm
interests of the U.S., or any other responsive great power, to diminish
the appearance of independence by the United Nations. In the end, the
Geneva Talks epitomize the U.N.’s dilemma. The organization is needed to
provide a neutral space, an arena for the negotiations. But it also
needs the active collaboration of its most powerful and involved members
to produce results.
A secretary-general can only play the hand he is dealt, and in this
case Ban’s two aces turned to jokers. He should not let it dissuade him
from trying to do the right thing in the future.
