The Race for Iran

(Photo Credit: State Department)

This post also appears at The Washington Note.

Iranian Petroleum Minister Masoud Mirkazemi’s visit to Turkey last week highlighted Turkey’s multifarious equities vis-a-vis Iran.

A new article by Kadir Ustun, “Turkey’s Iran Policy: Between Diplomacy and Sanctions” in the current issue of Insight Turkey offers a Turkish perspective on Ankara’s relations with Tehran in the context of the nuclear issue and relations with the United States.

Several conclusions can be drawn from the piece.

First, while Ustun does not say this explicitly, he indicates that Turkey must keep some distance from the United States in order to maintain its credibility in the Middle East. During the Cold War, many Arab countries viewed Turkey with suspicion due to its close ties with the United States and Turkey has no interest in allowing anti-Americanism to prevent Ankara from exerting regional influence. This sentiment is understandably unpopular in Washington, but it is a fact of life for Turkey.

Second, Turkey sees itself as a natural candidate to mediate regional conflicts. Turkey’s leaders relish this role both because they view the resolution of local conflicts as in Turkey’s national interests and because mediation raises Turkey’s international profile and is popular at home. Effective mediation requires maintaining positive relations with all sides. Therefore, Ustun says that “Turkey saw no choice but to vote ‘no’ to the sanctions [on Iran] in order to protect its reputation as an honest broker.”

It is noteworthy that while Turkey has been (rightly) subjected to vehement criticism in Washington for its over-the-top reaction to the Gaza Flotilla crisis, many of those same people have criticized Ankara for seeking to maintain friendly relations with Tehran. The fact is that Turkey is most valuable as a partner when it enjoys friendly relations with all of the Middle East’s major stakeholders.

With that goal in mind, Ustun’s major theme is that Iran simply believes that diplomacy, rather than sanctions and threats, is the best way for the international community to engage the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is the crux of the problem between Turkey and the United States and will remain so until either the United States engages in more vigorous engagement or Turkey determines that diplomacy has failed and that a more confrontational policy is necessary.

– Ben Katcher

The New America Foundation/Iran Initiative will host Shireen Hunter today at 12:15pm EST. Hunter will discuss her new book, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order.

– Ben Katcher

The New America Foundation/Iran Initiative is hosting an event today featuring Stephen Kinzer, who will speak about his new book, Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.

Race for Iran Publisher Flynt Leverett will moderate the event, which will stream live here from 12:15pm – 1:45pm EST.

– Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook, writing in Foreign Policy, suggests that the Flotilla incident is the latest evidence that dreams of a “model partnership” between the United States and Turkey are mere fantasy. Cook suggests conceiving of Turkey as something closer to a “strategic competitor” with interests that sometimes converge but often diverge from those of Washington, particularly in the Middle East.

Cook says:

The Obama administration has yet to grapple with the ways the structural changes in the international system have affected U.S.-Turkey relations. All the talk about strategic cooperation, model partnership, and strategic importance cannot mask the fundamental shift at hand. The stark reality is that while Turkey and the United States are not enemies in the Middle East, they are fast becoming competitors. Whereas the United States seeks to remain the predominant power in the region and, as such, wants to maintain a political order that makes it easier for Washington to achieve its goals, Turkey clearly sees things differently. The Turks are willing to bend the regional rules of the game to serve Ankara’s own interests. If the resulting policies serve U.S. goals at the same time, good. If not, so be it…

Given the mythology that surrounds the relationship, the divergence between Washington and Ankara has proved difficult to accept. Once policymakers recognize what is really happening, Washington and Ankara can get on with the job of managing the decline in ties with the least possible damage. Obama’s goal should be to develop relations with Turkey along the same lines the United States has with Brazil or Thailand or Malaysia. Those relations are strong in some areas, but fall short of strategic alliances. “Frenemy” might be too harsh a term for such an arrangment, but surely “model partnership” is a vast overstatement. It’s time to recognize reality.

I agree with much of Cook’s analysis. He is certainly correct that Turkey and the United States are on opposing sides in the Israel-Palestine issue. The United States remains steadfastly committed to Israel, while Turkey under Prime Minister Erdogan has clearly distanced itself from the Jewish state and embraced the Palestinian cause. I also can see how disagreements between Washington and Ankara over Syria are likely to widen in the event of another conflict along Israel’s northern border.

On the other hand, there are areas of significant cooperation including, most significantly, in Iraq. Ankara’s influence there is widely considered constructive.

On Iran, yes there are differences between the Turkish and American positions, particularly in light of the recent uranium fuel-swap agreement. But Turkey can be forgiven for seeking to chart its own path given that U.S. policy toward Iran has failed for decades. I think Turkey is sincere that it does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon and time will tell whether there is, in fact, less distance between the Turkish and American positions than may appear at the moment.

Cook’s full article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Photo)

Former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA Graham Fuller has a provocative op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor on the uranium fuel-swap agreement reached among Iran, Brazil, and Turkey in the context of the United States’ posture toward rising powers.

Fuller is critical of the Obama administration’s dismissal of the agreement and suggests that Washington will actually benefit from the emergence of rival power centers with diverse interests and perspectives on global political issues.

From Fuller’s piece:

After the Lula-Erdogan success, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton immediately proclaimed her own success at garnering Russian and Chinese support for enhanced sanctions against Iran – a stunningly insulting response to the remarkable accomplishment of Brazilian and Turkish negotiation. These states are, after all, immensely important to US regional and global interests. To blow them off like that was a major blunder, not just in terms of Iran, but in broader global strategy. The rest of the world has surely taken further negative note that Washington’s game remains depressingly familiar.

But do we really believe Clinton has in fact garnered Russian and Chinese support? Just as Tehran had every incentive to accept a proposal from “equals,” offered with respect instead of bluster and threats, so too Russia and China have every reason to welcome this initiative from Brazil and Turkey. Yes, the terms of the agreement do matter somewhat, but what is far more important for them is the slow but inexorable decay of US ability to deliver international diktats and to have its way. This is what Chinese and Russian foreign-policy strategy is all about. Neither of these countries will, in the end, permit the US hard-line approach to win out over the Brazilian-Turkish one in the Security Council, even if the Brazilian-Turkish deal requires a little tweaking. Russia and China champion the emergence of multiple sources of global power and influence that chip away at dying American unipolar power.

China and Russia, of course, represent the alternative polarity in the emerging struggle to end American hegemony in international affairs. But of greater moment, they now witness the political center in international politics shifting away from Washington as well. These two countries that defied American wishes are not just some Third World rabble-rousers scoring cheap points off the US. They are two major countries that are supposedly close friends of the US This makes the affront even crueler.

You can read the entire article here.

– Ben Katcher