Iran may have hoped that China would step into the nuclear dispute on its side, perhaps by agreeing to serve as middleman for the fuel exchange. It looks like they'll be disappointed.
But today Beijing also sent the message that U.S.-Chinese relations would suffer another blow from an aggressive Western push on Iran coupled with a demand that China knuckle under and support sanctions.
The lead editorial in Global Times--the international affairs organ of People’s Daily and therefore an indication of the attitude of the Chinese leadership-- made the point that China resents being “taken hostage” by either side in the Iran crisis.
It sends some heat Iran’s way (though it will be clear from the remarks of China’s ex-ambassador to Iran quoted below, China believes that Iran is open to concessions), but the main object of criticism is the United States.
It is clear that China has decided to take the whole American “you gotta sanction Iran” approach as another episode (following the disastrous falling-out at Copenhagen) in which the United States is happy to employ wedge issues against China, not only to advance its immediate goals, but to isolate China and reduce its standing as a global power.
If the United States continues to take a hard line on China joining Iran sanctions, instead of backing off and continuing negotiations, China will take it as a conscious, hostile act against China.
The editorial’s first point is a reiteration of China’s position that the situation should be resolved through negotiations.
Then, the op-ed criticized the intractability of both parties, with considerable criticism for Iran, apparently in an effort to be even-handed:
When the survival of a nation’s political authority hangs in the balance, any government would possibly decide to stick out its chest and confront the danger. Only with patience, patience, and more patience can both sides obtain the necessary trust. It isn’t through firing off ballistic missiles, raising the level of uranium enrichment, or using the threat of strong sanctions, all at the slightest provocation, and causing the level of anger and suspicion to escalate.
Now, China complains about being caught in the middle (use of the loaded term “lowering its head” i.e. submitting, raising images of the humiliating "kow-tow", instead of the more neutral “support their side” is an indication that China wants the issue to be that China itself isn’t being properly respected):
Neverhtless, both the West and Iran are unheeding at this time. They both believe that only if they are unyielding, then the other side will back off at the end. This unenlightened attitude even extends to their attitude toward China. Both sides believe, all that’s needed is to put pressure on China, then China will, without considering its own interests…lower its head to them…This thinking is unrealistic.
Concerning China’s interests, it states that it has a right to protect its economic interests with Iran. On the U.S. side of the scale, the editorial makes the interesting statement that:
“China has always consistently supported the idea of the balance of interest of the great powers in regional issues.”
I’m not sure what this means. But it probably refers to China’s acknowledgment that the West, like China, has a right to meddle in the oil-rich Middle East, as long as one side doesn’t try to exclude or ignore the other. In other words, the West has a right to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue as long as they don't form a bloc excluding China.
In any case, here’s the warning:
Both sides should be clear: the party that tries to press China the hardest is the party most likely to be met with China’s refusal.
The coda:
Both Iran and the West should make concessions. The final punctuation point in the Iran issue is absolutely not which way China votes at the UN… Both sides should be clear that the dilemma for China is how to bring the two parties together.
Recently in Western public opinion, there has been a call to use the Iran issue to isolate China. This is extremely superficial…China is a big country and its interests must be respected. China’s dilemma must be sympathized with. China’s proposal opposing sanctions must be understood. The big powers must cooperate and negotiate on the Iran issue. The American negotiator, Barshevsky, once said: To achieve an agreement, all parties have to benefit. Otherwise, in agreement can’t be achieved through intimidation; and if somehow an agreement comes about, it can’t be implemented. The great power discussions on Iran should take her words into account.
The final shot across the bow:
China is a great country. If anyone seeks to compel her, to injure her, they will certainly pay the price.
Message to the Obama administration: don't try to force China to kow-tow on sanctions. Instead, continue with negotiations.
As to China’s take on Iran’s position (and culpability for the stand-off), People’s Daily visited China’s ex-ambassador to Iran, Hua Liming.
Here’s what the article said:
Ambassador Hua told the paper that the main purpose of Iran’s declaration of its intention to purify its uranium to near 20% was to put pressure on the West and particularly the United States.
Only a week before, Achminejad had…stated that Iran was prepared to accept the UN nuclear fuel exchange agreement…indicating that Iran still hoped to reach an agreement with the IAEA, but that the exchange terms had to be beneficial to Iran.
Previously, the IAEA proposal called for Iran to ship its fuel to Russia, where it would be refined to 20%. Afterwards, the fuel would be shipped to France and fabricated into fuel rods. This span of time would be 12 months. Iran clearly was worried about the 12-month limit and had expressed a hope that the time be reduced to four to five months. However, the Western countries refused. Under these circumstances, Iran adopted a relatively unyielding attitude in order to put pressure on the West, hoping to preserve Iran’s nuclear development plan and avoid Western sanctions.
Ambassador Hua stated, “Unyielding” only is one side of the coin…the other side, “Concessions”, still exists. Iran has already indicated its attitude that it will accept the IAEA plan. In general, Iran still hopes for nuclear negotiations and would not lightly close the door to negotiations.
The article concludes with the observation that the Western countries are awaiting the outcome of the February 11 demonstrations to determine how weakened the government will be.
Showing posts with label uranium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uranium. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Iran Turns to China in Nuclear Standoff
Update: According to Haaretz:
Ahmadinejad said on TuesdayIran Tehran
Original post:
During a February 9, 2009 press briefing, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs praised China’s ever more important role on the world stage.
He also stated, according to Phoenix TV’s correspondent on the scene:
If China was willing, Iran could consider conducting the nuclear fuel exchange through China.
The nuclear fuel exchange refers to a proposed confidence-building deal between Iran and the West that has basically turned into a confidence-demolition deal.
The IAEA proposed that Iran ship most of its declared low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for enrichment to 20%; then the Russians would ship the fuel to France for fabrication into rods and return the rods to Iran so it could make medical isotopes in its Tehran Research Reactor.
Theory was that Iran would get out of the uranium enrichment business and the world could find something else to worry about.
However, U.S. engagement with Iran, like so many other nice things the Obama administration had planned, went off the tracks, thanks in part to the large anti-government demonstrations following last year’s dubious presidential election in Iran.
Understandably, the Iranians worried that, if they sent their uranium overseas to Russia (which has started to side with the U.S. on Iran issues) and France, they might never get it back, and they reportedly proposed some deal that would involve incremental exchanges of enriched material for their LEU.
The result was a lot of huffing and puffing from the West about Iranian bad faith and a concerted drive for new Iran sanctions.
China is the only member of the P5 (Security Council + Germany) clearly resistant to new sanctions.
The Iran offer can be seen as 1) an effort to get China involved on its side 2) a recognition that China is the one party that would reliably return their uranium.
The offer didn’t come up in China’s MOFA Feb. 9 presser. On the Iran issue, the Chinese spokesperson stated:
We hope and support that the concerned parties can achieve a unanimity of views on the IAEA’s draft agreement for supply of fuel to the Teheran Research Reactor. This would contribute to the favorable resolution of the Iran nuclear question.
The Chinese, like the rest of the world, are probably waiting to see if the Iranian government can keep the lid on the demonstrations everybody’s hyping for February 11.
If the Iranian government works its authoritarian magic on the demonstrators, I believe China will maintain its current position of negotiations and no sanctions. If the wheels come off and Iran heads for a period of serious political instability, China will simply keep its head down until the clear winner emerges.
China Matters tries to resist the urge to engage in fine de siecle woolgathering, but to me the Iran kafuffle represents the further poodleizing of France and Germany. Ever since the Suez crisis in 1956 the UK has recognized that its only hope of punching above its weight in world affairs was to cleave to the United States more closely and sincerely than any other power.
Now Germany and France see lining up with the US on Iran as a way to assert their claim to an outsized share of world political and moral leadership.
Problem for Merkel and Sarkozy is, it was one thing to line up with the US, the world’s dominant military and economic power at the height of the Cold War. It’s a different thing to for fading Western powers to try to ignore the shift of economic and military gravity away from the North Atlantic with an anti-Iran rave-up.
It seems to me that the lesson that China and India will draw from the Iranian uranium farce is that the world’s business is not being run properly by a politically stymied superpower abetted by second-rate Europowers struggling for relevance.
Coincidentally, the Guardian weighed in on Europe’s bleak prospects on February 8:
Since EU leaders last met in Brussels before Christmas, the mood has soured. For the Europeans who claimed for two years to be leading the world on climate change, the global warming summit in Copenhagen was the gamechanger, a moment when the global balance of power tilted and relegated the EU to the second division.
"What we saw in Copenhagen is that Europe does not count," Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, told a conference of Brussels thinktanks.
"For good or for ill," a senior European official told the Guardian, "the message that Copenhagen sent is that Europe is not at the table. The fact of the matter is that Europe's leaders were taking a coffee and [Barack] Obama visited them at the coffee break. But he negotiated with others."
The Europeans are struggling to recover from that blow.
For the past 18 months, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, has been warning that Europe faces being sidelined in a "G2" world run by the US and China unless the EU steps up.
Miliband's worst fears materialised when Obama held his press conference at the end of Copenhagen and deleted Europe from the script.
"If the G2 world was approaching, suddenly there it was," said the diplomat. "A seminal and symbolic moment."
Perhaps pledging to be the US’s BFF on Iran is not going to extract Europe from its geopolitical cul de sac.
Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday
That would defeat the draft plan's purpose of reducing
Original post:
During a February 9, 2009 press briefing, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs praised China’s ever more important role on the world stage.
He also stated, according to Phoenix TV’s correspondent on the scene:
If China was willing, Iran could consider conducting the nuclear fuel exchange through China.
The nuclear fuel exchange refers to a proposed confidence-building deal between Iran and the West that has basically turned into a confidence-demolition deal.
The IAEA proposed that Iran ship most of its declared low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia for enrichment to 20%; then the Russians would ship the fuel to France for fabrication into rods and return the rods to Iran so it could make medical isotopes in its Tehran Research Reactor.
Theory was that Iran would get out of the uranium enrichment business and the world could find something else to worry about.
However, U.S. engagement with Iran, like so many other nice things the Obama administration had planned, went off the tracks, thanks in part to the large anti-government demonstrations following last year’s dubious presidential election in Iran.
Understandably, the Iranians worried that, if they sent their uranium overseas to Russia (which has started to side with the U.S. on Iran issues) and France, they might never get it back, and they reportedly proposed some deal that would involve incremental exchanges of enriched material for their LEU.
The result was a lot of huffing and puffing from the West about Iranian bad faith and a concerted drive for new Iran sanctions.
China is the only member of the P5 (Security Council + Germany) clearly resistant to new sanctions.
The Iran offer can be seen as 1) an effort to get China involved on its side 2) a recognition that China is the one party that would reliably return their uranium.
The offer didn’t come up in China’s MOFA Feb. 9 presser. On the Iran issue, the Chinese spokesperson stated:
We hope and support that the concerned parties can achieve a unanimity of views on the IAEA’s draft agreement for supply of fuel to the Teheran Research Reactor. This would contribute to the favorable resolution of the Iran nuclear question.
The Chinese, like the rest of the world, are probably waiting to see if the Iranian government can keep the lid on the demonstrations everybody’s hyping for February 11.
If the Iranian government works its authoritarian magic on the demonstrators, I believe China will maintain its current position of negotiations and no sanctions. If the wheels come off and Iran heads for a period of serious political instability, China will simply keep its head down until the clear winner emerges.
China Matters tries to resist the urge to engage in fine de siecle woolgathering, but to me the Iran kafuffle represents the further poodleizing of France and Germany. Ever since the Suez crisis in 1956 the UK has recognized that its only hope of punching above its weight in world affairs was to cleave to the United States more closely and sincerely than any other power.
Now Germany and France see lining up with the US on Iran as a way to assert their claim to an outsized share of world political and moral leadership.
Problem for Merkel and Sarkozy is, it was one thing to line up with the US, the world’s dominant military and economic power at the height of the Cold War. It’s a different thing to for fading Western powers to try to ignore the shift of economic and military gravity away from the North Atlantic with an anti-Iran rave-up.
It seems to me that the lesson that China and India will draw from the Iranian uranium farce is that the world’s business is not being run properly by a politically stymied superpower abetted by second-rate Europowers struggling for relevance.
Coincidentally, the Guardian weighed in on Europe’s bleak prospects on February 8:
Since EU leaders last met in Brussels before Christmas, the mood has soured. For the Europeans who claimed for two years to be leading the world on climate change, the global warming summit in Copenhagen was the gamechanger, a moment when the global balance of power tilted and relegated the EU to the second division.
"What we saw in Copenhagen is that Europe does not count," Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, told a conference of Brussels thinktanks.
"For good or for ill," a senior European official told the Guardian, "the message that Copenhagen sent is that Europe is not at the table. The fact of the matter is that Europe's leaders were taking a coffee and [Barack] Obama visited them at the coffee break. But he negotiated with others."
The Europeans are struggling to recover from that blow.
For the past 18 months, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, has been warning that Europe faces being sidelined in a "G2" world run by the US and China unless the EU steps up.
Miliband's worst fears materialised when Obama held his press conference at the end of Copenhagen and deleted Europe from the script.
"If the G2 world was approaching, suddenly there it was," said the diplomat. "A seminal and symbolic moment."
Perhaps pledging to be the US’s BFF on Iran is not going to extract Europe from its geopolitical cul de sac.
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