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| My Orchids. Paphiopedilum Ayatollah. Photo ET |
The Iran Nuke Talks:
Redline, Deadline, Schmedline
In a surreal exercise,
the world learns from the Twitter accounts of the dapper negotiators inside the
Hotel Beau Rivage in Lausanne, that the “cornerstones” for an agreement have
been accepted. People, we have a deal! Or rather a skeleton, and now we need to
put muscle on it. That will take months, during which the cornerstones will be
questioned again.
Where is this thing
going? Basically, these are asymmetric negotiations. It is as if Miss World,
standing in for “World Peace”, were negotiating with Joseph Stalin. Stalin will
gladly accept his own version of World Peace.
On one hand, the US has
given up its role as the world’s policeman. The President got elected to
precisely do that: disengage, stop wars, close Gitmo, and reduce defense
spending. That is what exactly is going on the US side.
The policeman leaving to
go home does not get unnoticed by those who run the stop signs, or snatch the
old lady’s purse. When one moves out, someone else moves in. It is China for
sure, Russia the "me-too", and obviously regionally it is Iran. As US
disengagement goes on, Iran’s expansion in the Middle East to fill the void is
going on too, mostly through proxies and sponsored terrorist groups. As a
corollary of those ambitions comes Iran’s nuclear aspiration, and the
development of course of complete weapons systems, including ICBMs. If Iran
were Miss Universe, those would be unnecessary frivolities.
Bottomline: Asymmetric negotiations
favor Realpolitik: assessing the counterpart’s possibilities, not its intentions.
Those who ignore this rule, have to rely on the goodwill and on trust in the
other side’s perceived or declared intentions. Generally this posture loses the negotiations.
The Redline, Deadline,
Schmedline posture obviously suits Miss Universe. No qualms when you violate a
Schmedline. It was only a suggestion. If in addition you said that military force
is not an option, there is no compelling reason not to run the stop sign. If later you advise, and a surrogate is coming back later arguing that all options are again
on the table, it earns that Defense Secretary a lot of funny comments. It came even
to the point, when the usually not so aggressive Europeans gave a show of
exasperation upon the violation of yet another Deadline, that they left town.
Officially without bad feelings.
All the while when on the
other side, the mighty Ayatollah yells “Death to America” into the crowd. And a
top general of this militaristic theocracy definitely announces that the
planned destruction of Israel is non-negotiable.
Welcome to the new world
order: we’ll have chaos for a while until we have figured out who fills the
voids. Arab States understood that they better take things into their own hands,
intervening in Yemen. I’m sure a couple are already cooking Uranium themselves.
Israel knows, that it has been dropped. Its new unlikely allies sharing common
concerns are its Arab neighbors, that are not yet under Iranian control.
And Luxembourg? If you
are small, look for allies other than your allies plagued by weakness. Who will
it be then? Russia, because of the oligarchs’ money? We tried Qatar. Will it be
China? We have the relevant Chinese banks in Luxembourg, we do Cargolux-China,
and we’ll participate in the China sponsored Asian Development Bank. I’m
learning Mandarin already, which could be another indication. Or will it be
Iran? Our Secretary of State visited even the shrine to Ayatollah Chomeini. However
he was snubbing the Israelis at the UN, when we helped create the present World
Chaos as a member of the Security Council.
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