Tony Blair’s speech at the Guildhall adroitly placed him ahead of the news. By reiterating his support for dialogue with Iran and Syria on the same day that George W. Bush met James Baker’s Iraq Study Group, he has guaranteed himself some of the plaudits if and when Washington finally — and formally — talks to Tehran.
It is credit that Washington is happy for Blair to take. His appearance, largely for appearance’s sake, before the Study Group on Tuesday shows just how much more sensitive the Americans have become to Blair’s domestic plight. Long gone are the days when Dick Cheney, with a breathtaking ignorance of the realities of British politics, muttered that the administration shouldn’t fret too much about Blair being forced from office as Iain Duncan Smith would make a more congenial ally. One effect of Blair’s falling popularity, reinforced by the failed September putsch against him, has been to awaken the American foreign policy establishment to how close the United States was to losing Britain. All the blows that Blair has taken for his devotion to the special relationship will make things easier for his successor.
What won’t is Iraq. There is a sense of optimism on both sides of the Atlantic that the Study Group will chart a way out of the morass. Sadly, this optimism is misplaced. As one adviser to the group told me, ‘it ought to be fairly self evident’ that it won’t come up with a silver bullet. He points out that the middle ground on Iraq — which this American bipartisan commission is primed to find — ‘is an illusion’. Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair, seemed to confirm this analysis at the weekend, saying that the panel might not be able to reach agreement. What is certain is that the elections have made the quaintly named Study Group more important than before, as evidenced by the White’s House’s volte-face about sitting down with them.
The $64,000 question is whether the Bush administration plans to welcome the report, pick out some ideas it likes, and then carry on. If it does anything more, some dramatic changes will be on the cards because the experts staffing the group read like a who’s who of groups that were shut out of the policy-making process in the run-up to the war. The composition of the support staff is causing considerable fear among those who have been traditionally close to the Bush administration that their beliefs could be sold down the Tigris. Already one prominent adviser, Michael Rubin, who has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, has resigned citing bias.
For Blair, the problem is that if the Bush administration ignores much of the report, it will provide the Tories with the opening on Iraq which their vote for military action has denied them to date. But on the other hand, if radical change takes place, Blair will be left scrambling to catch up with the new US position.
Talking to Iran and Syria is a change that Blair would welcome and could take some of the credit for. The nomination of Robert Gates, an advocate of direct negotiations with Tehran, to succeed Donald Rumsfeld suggests that the Bush administration is finally prepared to sit down with the Iranians. Their acceptance of the need for talks is long overdue and will be welcomed in Whitehall. A bilateral dialogue with Iran could have accomplished a great deal — as Blair argued — straight after 9/11, after the fall of the Taleban, after the toppling of Saddam and after Bush’s re-election. But now, five years on, the decision is clearly a product of weakness, if not desperation, and the benefits are far from clear. Also, while the formality of these talks may be new, the substance will not be because discreet contacts have been under way for some time.
Any successful negotiation requires both sides to need something. It is clear what the Coalition needs from the Iranians — an end to their interference in Iraq. The only thing of commensurate scale that Tehran wants from the Coalition is something that Washington will never give: an acceptance of Iran’s right to become, at least, a nuclear-ready state and the de facto regional hegemon.
Having just returned from four years in Washington, I have noticed that there is no subject on which the British and American strategic conversation differs more than Iran. The prevailing British view is that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are something to be bartered with, and many believe that a nuclear Iran is inevitable and something we’ll have to learn to live with. Jack Straw’s constant, and gratuitous, emphasis on how inconceivable attacking Iran was represented the view of the British foreign policy establishment. By contrast, for the political class in Washington, a nuclear Iran is a red line that must not be crossed. This view extends far beyond the perennial neoconservative bogey-men. Both Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh — two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination in 2008 — have sought to out-hawk the Bush administration on the issue.
The potential consequences of Iran becoming nuclear explain the American position. A nuclear Iran would know that it could act with total impunity — it would meddle in Iraq at will, offer whatever support and weaponry it felt like to Hezbollah and Hamas, and be free to collude in things like the toppling of the Lebanese government. In short, Iran would behave in exactly the ways Blair says it must not. Then there’s the fact that if Iran goes nuclear, every other Middle Eastern regime with regional aspirations would feel obliged to follow suit. Europe should be more concerned than it is about the prospect of fractious nuclear powers in its backyard.
The neoconservatives are right when they argue that if Iran is allowed to go nuclear, it would cancel out whatever progress is made in Iraq. But the majority in this country who argue, with Blair, that a solution to the Israel–Palestine dispute is a prerequisite to success in the war on terror should be equally concerned at the prospect of an Iranian bomb. For an Iran safe from retaliation and flush with oil money will undercut Palestinian moderates at every point and provoke the Israelis whenever peace appears in sight.
The dilemma for the Bush administration — and in turn, No. 10 — is that the Americans might soon be forced to choose between trying to achieve stability in Iraq and stopping Iran going nuclear. Action against Iran when there are 150,000 Coalition troops sitting next door is almost impossible. The Iranians would allow their proxies off the leash completely in those circumstances — with appalling consequences for the British forces in the Iranian-infiltrated south. Even sanctions would lead to an increase in violence. Iran knows all too well what powerful leverage the Iraq situation provides it with.
Ultimately, the Bush administration might decide that Iraq cannot be salvaged and is not worth letting Iran go nuclear for. The troops would be drawn down, restoring America’s strategic flexibility. The challenge for Blair and Brown in this scenario will be to look like more than mere bystanders. To avoid this fate, they will have to change the strategic conversation in London. A good place to start would be to point out who is arming the militias that are killing British troops in Basra.
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