The latest negotiations about Iran's nuclear programme will go the same way as the others, writes Graham Usher in New York On 6 December Iran met in Geneva with the European Union and six world powers (the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) for talks about its nuclear programme. These were the first negotiations in 14 months; the first since fresh sanctions were imposed on Tehran by the United Nations, US and EU; and the first since a WikiLeak release of US diplomatic cables revealed not only Israel but Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi all urged Washington to take out Iran's nuclear programme pre-emptively. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believed this mix of sanctions and regional hostility has instilled in the Iranian regime "a much more sober assessment of what isolation means". "We know [the sanctions] are having an effect inside Iran," she said on 2 December. "We hope that will cause [the Iranian government] to have the kind of serious negotiation we're seeking". US officials say the sanctions' purpose is to slow the Iranian nuclear programme and compel the regime to accept UN-defined limits on it. The Obama administration is convinced Tehran is using the programme to build a bomb. Iran insists the goal is peaceful nuclear energy, as is its right as a signatory to the Non- Proliferation Treaty. The new sanctions are hurting though, as in pre-invaded Iraq, the pain is felt more by ordinary Iranians than the government. But there is no sign that either punishment or isolation has budged Tehran from the "right" to enrich uranium, whether for peaceful or military ends. On the contrary, the head of Iran's nuclear programme, Ali Akbar Salehi, upstaged the negotiations on 5 December by announcing that Tehran had successfully mined uranium ore domestically: if true, this would mean Iran could circumvent UN sanctions banning the import of raw uranium. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran's right to enrich uranium is "non-negotiable", despite four sets of UN Security Council resolutions demanding suspension. The result of the negotiations is therefore likely to be impasse, with one analyst saying an agreement to hold more talks would be deemed "progress". In the absence of other progress "the six" will revert to the strategy that has tried and failed to make Iran change its ways for the last 31 years: pressure. It's the policy of the Obama administration, despite his promise of a "new era of engagement" with Iran. Even as Obama was proclaiming "outreach" to Tehran he was assembling a policy of military containment among America's Arab Gulf allies, with $60 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia and as much again to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait. And as the WikiLeaks cables show, Washington bought support for a new round of UN sanctions by abandoning a new NATO missile system in Europe to woo Russia. And it pledged Saudi oil to China should Iranian energy exports be hurt by sanctions or worse. Moscow and Beijing needed bribing: neither sees Iran's nuclear programme as a strategic threat. The US has sold containment as the alternative to war, since, as another WikiLeak cable revealed, an Israeli or American strike "would only delay Iranian [nuclear] plans by one to three years, while unifying the Iranians to be forever embittered against the attacker," ceded US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to a French minister this year. But containment has also been a cover for war. Unrevealed by WikiLeaks has been an accelerating covert programme against Iran's nuclear facilities, say US media sources. Last month Ahmadinejad admitted that Iran's nuclear programme had been victim of a cyber attack, damaging centrifuges to slow the production of enriched uranium. And on 29 November an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed and another wounded in bombings in Tehran. The Iranian president blamed the US, UK and Israel for the attacks. All three denied the charge, though not vigorously in the case of Israel. Containment and covert action are supposed to induce political change in Iran. The danger is they may bring about the outcome they are intended to avoid: open war. This at least is the view of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, two former US diplomats known for their proximity to the Iranian regime. They say containment will lead to a "US-initiated military confrontation with Iran" for two reasons. First, given the enormous military imbalance between the US and its Arab allies in the Gulf and Iran (Iran's military budget is less than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's and less than two per cent of the US), Tehran will view any increased military encirclement by its Arab neighbours as a prelude to regime change. Second, Tehran will respond "asymmetrically", say the Leveretts, activating allies or "proxies" in the region and/or accelerating the process by which it can rapidly assemble the bomb. Such a move could trigger an Israeli or US military strike or both. Is there an alternative to diplomacy as war by other means? One -- advocated by countries like Turkey and Brazil -- is diplomacy as the alternative to war. But this would require a negotiating process that included not only a "Western agenda" focussing on Iran's nuclear programme; but also an "Iranian agenda" that addressed America's military presence in the region, Israel's nuclear arsenal and US covert action. Negotiations like these would alarm certain Arab rulers, since they would be an implicit acknowledgement of Iran's heft in the region. But they would be welcomed by their peoples. Last August the Brookings Institute conducted a survey of public opinion in seven Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE. One question was to ask respondents to name the "two biggest threats" to the region: 10 per cent said Iran, 77 per cent said the US and 88 per cent said Israel.
