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Accept Iran's Regional Role, Says French

Envoy
Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (IPS) - In a sharp departure from U.S. policy, a leading

French diplomat has called on the international coalition sponsoring U.N.
sanctions against Iran to support a larger Iranian role in the Middle East.
Ambassador to the United States Pierre Vimont told a conference on Iran at the Middle
East Institute in Washington Friday that one reason Iran has refused to give up its
nuclear programme is its perception of potential threats in the Middle East.
"Sometimes they can feel there are threats," Vimont said, "and thus a need for bold
initiatives. This is why you have a very strong will to increase their influence in the
area."
Vimont then called for a shift in the Western diplomatic posture. "If we all agree that
what Iran is looking for is to play a larger role in the region," he said, "we have to make
it clearer that we are willing to support that."
Vimont did not indicate how such support might be integrated into the international
coalition position on Iran.
Under French President Nicolas Sarkozy, French policy toward Iran has been marked by
support for further economic sanctions against Iran through the U.N. Security Council
and tough rhetoric about Iran by President Sarkozy. On Sunday, Iran's Foreign Ministry
accused France of open hostility toward Iran.
But the tone of Vimont's speech was notable for the absence of any accusation about
Iran as a threat to peace. The ambassador's call for support for Iran's regional role,
which was not reported in media coverage of the speech, suggests that France is now
seeking a significant adjustment in the negotiating position of the coalition of states
which have backed sanctions against Iran in the U.N. Security Council.
The proposal to support a more prominent Iranian regional role appears to revive an
issue that sharply divided France and other members of the "P5 + 1" (permanent
Security Council members United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus
Germany) from the George W. Bush administration during negotiations on a diplomatic
proposal to Iran in spring 2006.
In those negotiations, the French, British and Germans had wanted a formula that
would give Iran a new formal status in regional security arrangements, as well as a
security guarantee to Iran. But the Bush administration had refused to accept either
concession as part of the package.
France is not the only European ally of the United States to believe that the P5 + 1
should adopt a more flexible diplomatic stance toward Iran in seeking an agreement on
the nuclear issue. Last year, the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel told
the Bush administration privately that the United States must give up the precondition
of immediate suspension of uranium enrichment for the beginning of negotiations and
offer to talk about the full of range issues dividing the two countries, according to a
source close to the German foreign ministry.
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That German position was not made public, according to the source, because German
officials wish to maintain a private channel of communications with Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who they believe has been listening to them.
Vimont's views on Iran policy can be taken as an authoritative reflection of the French
government's foreign policy. He served as chief of staff to the foreign minister from
2002 to 2007.
His speech shed new light on the French view of the prospects of success in using
sanctions to pressure Iran to drop its nuclear programme. Vimont said that the
sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme -- particularly "informal" sanctions --
are "starting to have an effect on the ground". But the French envoy warned that the
sanctions would "not have a quick effect" on Iranian policy.
Vimont then cited the cases of sanctions against Rhodesia and South Africa in the
1970s and 1980s -- two cases that illustrate how long it could take for international
sanctions to have the desired effect on the target state. It was five years from the time
multilateral sanctions were applied against the white regime in Rhodesia in 1974 to the
1979 agreement with Britain which began the political process that ended the white
regime there, and nearly a decade from the imposition of multilateral sanctions on
South Africa in the mid-1980s to the end of the apartheid regime.
Waiting that long for sanctions to change Iranian policy would ensure that Iran would
have mastered the fuel cycle sufficiently to have a nuclear weapons option, whether or
not Tehran chose to exercise it.
Vimont devoted much of his speech to an explanation of why it is "so difficult to get a
result with the process we have set up". In doing so, he made a number of points that
the Bush administration presumably would not have wanted to hear from a close ally.
One of the difficulties cited by Vimont is the fact that the Iranian regime has exhibited
"lots of political stability", despite political contradictions within the country, especially
when compared with its neighbours Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
The French envoy also cited the fact that the Iranian regime's assertion that it has a
right to uranium enrichment has broad popular domestic support. "The nuclear
programme has become a national cause in Iran," he said.
Political support for the Iranian position on the right to a complete fuel cycle "in the
Arab and Islamic world", Vimont suggested, is another factor strengthening Iranian
determination to maintain the enrichment programme.
The strategy of the international coalition has depended heavily on the assumption
that "moderates" in the Iranian political elite, such as former President Hashemi
Rafsanjani, will prevail in their political conflict with radicals, led by President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, and will agree to the demand for a suspension of enrichment.
Vimont did not argue, however, that the moderates could be counted on to make that
concession if they were to gain power in the coming years. He suggested instead that
the moderates "may have some doubts" about such a course.
Some analysts of Iranian national security policy believe that Iran's enrichment
programme is aimed in part at accumulating bargaining chips to be used to achieve
formal recognition as a regional power.
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book,
"Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was
published in June 2005.