Rooyesh

Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the worst possible welcome in New York, yet he managed to walk away the winner. He should dedicate his victory to Lee Bollinger,

the President of Columbia University whose infantile introduction of Ahmadinejad provided the Iranian hardliner with an undeserved opportunity to present himself as a defender of academic integrity and freedom of speech.

As Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh commented: “I think it’s generally a good idea when you’re inviting people to your university not to tell them upon arrival that they’re not welcome, because then you look crazier than Ahmadinejad.”

Yet, the main point Ahmadinejad scored was the media’s willingness to let the limelight exaggerate his power and importance. For a few days, the media spoke of Ahmadinejad as if he actually determined Iran’s nuclear policy, as if he was in charge of the Iranian army and as if it was up to him whether Tehran would seek Israel’s destruction or not.

While the former Tehran mayor questioned the veracity of the Holocaust in New York, ordinary Iranians were glued to their TVs to watch a completely different drama – an Iranian series about the Holocaust, the suffering of the Jewish people and the heroic efforts of Iranian diplomats to help French Jews escape the Nazis by providing them with Iranian passports. The contrast with Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric could not have been any clearer. Apparently, the Iranian President even lacks the power to enforce his Holocaust theories on Iran’s state-run TV.

The contradiction between Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust rhetoric and the Iranian TV-drama exemplifies the dangers of the media’s infatuation with the Iranian hardliner – and all hardline statements coming out of Tehran. Not only does the unwarranted media attention make Ahmadinejad appear more powerful than he is, it also takes attention away from another side of Iran; one that doesn’t question the Holocaust, that understands the dangers of playing the anti-Israeli card to score points on the Arab streets and that is far more concerned about making friends with the US than making permanent enemies with the Jewish state.

Iran’s National Security Advisor Ali Larijani has carefully avoided echoing Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki’s has denied that Iran seeks the destruction of Israel. Their posture is far less sensational than Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, yet much more indicative of Iran’s real policy.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Iran’s position on Israel isn’t ideologically driven. Though the ideological component of Iran’s foreign policy is undeniable, it is secondary to Iran’s geostrategic considerations.

Ideology and geopolitics

Throughout the existence of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian theocracy has adopted a harsh, provocative and uncompromising rhetoric on Israel to boost Iran’s credentials as a leader of an imaginary Islamic bloc and use the anti-Israeli card to bridge Iran’s difficulties with the Arab states.

But the rhetoric has only been translated into actual policy when Tehran deemed that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincided. When these two pillars of Iran’s foreign policy have clashed – as they did in the 1980s during the Iraq-Iran war when Tehran quietly sought Israel’s aid and the Jewish state made many efforts to get Iran and the US back on talking terms – Iran’s geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed over its ideological impulses.

Today, Tehran believes that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincide in regards to the Jewish state. On a strategic level, Iran opposes Israel due to a perception that the Jewish state seeks Iran’s prolonged isolation and exclusion from regional affairs. Whether in Washington or in Ashkhabad, Iran perceives Israel to be countering its interest. On an ideological level, the Islamic Republic’s pretense to leadership in the Islamic world compels it to pursue a line that often times make Iran more Palestinian than the Palestinians.

The key to changing Iran’s behavior vis-à-vis the Jewish state lay in the dynamics between ideology and geopolitics. If these two forces of Iranian foreign policy once again can be arranged to counter each other, the force behind Iran’s belligerence against Israel can be put to rest.

This, however, cannot be achieved solely by increasing pressure or by making threats of war. Only through a larger US-Iran accommodation can Iran’s foreign policy impulses shift away from its current stance on Israel.

To explore this strategic opportunity, Israel must first adopt a more sober analysis of Iran; one in which it sees through Iran’s deliberately misleading hyperbole and pays attention not only to the dangerous rhetoric but also to the less sensationalist voices in the Iranian government. Iran’s pragmatists may not be friendly towards the Jewish state, but neither are they apocalyptic. By only focusing on the most extreme and radical notions coming out of Tehran, we let
radicals win. And their victory is a loss for all.

Source: Trita Parsi, YNet News

The heads of state of all five Caspian littoral states — Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan — arrived with pressure mounting to finally solve the problem of whether the biggest inland body of water is a sea or a lake.

That issue is key to clarifying the Caspian’s legal status and establishing how to best exploit — and export — the vast energy reserves that lie under the Caspian seabed.

In their declaration at the end of today’s summit, they simply pledged closer cooperation but left any specifics for future talks. They also pledged to refrain from some unilateral activities “until there is a definition of the new legal status of the Caspian.”

The question of the Caspian’s legal status has aggravated relations among the five states since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — when suddenly five, not two, countries’ shores were washed by its waters. In the absence of any new deal, relations and cooperation is still guided by treaties signed in 1921 and 1940.

Moscow was essentially able to call all the shots in both of those treaties, and there was little attention devoted to any eventual exploitation of fossil fuels like natural gas and oil.

A Sea Or A Lake?

The central question — whether it is a lake or a sea — quashed any real progress at the first Caspian summit more than five years ago.

If it’s classified as a sea, then the bigger a country’s coastal area, the greater the share it can expect to control and develop. Such a deal would greatly favor Kazakhstan — not simply because it has the longest Caspian coastline but also because the rich Kashagan oil field and other potentially lucrative fields would presumably lie within its territorial waters. Kashagan is regarded as the largest oil field to have been discovered in decades.

Iran would be the biggest loser if the Caspian is defined as a sea, because its sector in the southern Caspian would be among the smallest and — according to exploratory work — its most energy-poor.

Not surprisingly, Tehran favors its definition as an inland lake. That would leave all littoral states sharing equally in the riches of the Caspian. As a result, profits from Kazakhstan’s multibillion-dollar Kashagan oil field would be distributed equally among all five countries.

Moscow has traditionally favored labeling the Caspian a sea — not merely because Russia’s sector is the largest after Kazakhstan but also because Russian businesses are active on Kazakhstan’s Caspian shore. But as indications emerged at today’s summit that the sides failed to fully agree on all issues, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Caspian’s “territory should not be covered with state borders, sectors, and exclusive zones. The less area they occupy, and the more the waters and the surface remain for common use by the Caspian states, the better.”

Putin’s comment appear to signal that Moscow would like each country to retain limited territorial waters extending only a few kilometers from the shore, not to a midpoint where it met another country’s territorial waters.

Blocking Off National Interests

Also speaking at today’s summit, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said that his country “has always followed the path of seeking mutually acceptable solutions, based on international law, that promote understanding and take measures to ensure the sovereign rights and lawful interests of the Caspian Sea states.”

Berdymukhammedov became Turkmen president in December 2006. It was joked that his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, changed his view on the Caspian frequently — sea or lake — depending on which other Caspian leader he had met with most recently. One constant in Niyazov’s approach was that no disputed sector should be developed until an agreement was reached about who controlled that sector. This was due to a dispute with Azerbaijan about who owned an oil field that is called by Azerbaijan “Kapaz” and by Turkmenistan “Serdar,” which lies somewhere along the midpoint between the two countries’ coasts.

A further comment by Berdymukhammedov indicated that despite a warming of relations with Azerbaijan since Berdymukhammedov came to power, his country’s policy regarding the disputed Caspian oil field has not changed. “The practice of unilateral actions in the Caspian Sea remains unacceptable for Turkmenistan,” he said, “primarily the conducting of oil operations at sites that are not covered by agreements between the parties.”
Russian President Putin also represented his country’s interests today when he spoke about larger projects that would involve two or more Caspian neighbors. “I believe that projects that could be ecologically harmful to the entire Caspian Sea should not be, and must not be, implemented without mandatory preliminary discussion [by] the Caspian 5 and by adopting consensus decisions in the interest of the common Caspian Sea,” he said.

Putin’s statement appears clearly aimed at talks of trans-Caspian pipelines to carry oil and natural gas from eastern Caspian states Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and further west. Such projects are backed by foreign businesses, not the least of whom are countries from the United States and Western Europe.

Another of Putin’s comments again aimed at outside influence in the Caspian region, where currently Russian military might is undisputed. “It is also important that we talk about the impossibility of providing our own territory for other countries in case of aggression or some other military actions against one of the Caspian Sea states,” he said.

The United States and other countries have been contributing to the fledgling naval forces in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and to a far lesser extent Turkmenistan and the United States just a few years ago identified the Caspian as an area of strategic interest for Washington.

Source: Radio Farda

Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran.

He also said countries bordering the Caspian Sea must jointly back any oil pipeline projects in the region. At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea, Putin said none of the nations’ territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was a clear reference to long-standing rumors that the U.S. was planning to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran. “We are saying that no Caspian nation should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression against any Caspian state,” Putin said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also underlined the need for solidarity. “The Caspian Sea is an inland sea and it only belongs to the Caspian states, therefore only they are entitled to have their ships and military forces here,” he said. A State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said the United States is not planning military action against Iran. “We are pursuing a diplomatic course with respect to Iran that includes with respect to its nuclear program as well as with respect to its support for terrorism and other issues that are out there,” he said. Putin refused to set a date for the start-up of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, to be built by Russia. “I only gave promises to my mom when I was a small boy,” Putin told Iranian reporters, when asked whether he could promise that the plant that Russia is building would be launched before his term ends next May.

At the same time, he said, “We are not going to renounce our obligations.” Putin’s careful stance suggested that Russia is seeking to preserve solid ties with Iran without angering the West. A clear pledge by Putin to quickly finish the plant would embolden Iran and could complicate international talks on the nuclear standoff. Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the sea support them. Putin did not name a specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow’s strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West, bypassing Russia. “Projects that may inflict serious environmental damage to the region cannot be implemented without prior discussion by all five Caspian nations,” he said.

Other nations bordering the Caspian Sea and in attendance at the summit are: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. The legal status of the Caspian — believed to contain the world’s third-largest energy reserves — has been in limbo since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits. Iran, which shared the Caspian’s resources equally with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation’s shoreline, which would give Iran a smaller share. Putin’s visit took place despite warnings of a possible assassination plot and amid hopes that personal diplomacy could help offer a solution to an international standoff on Iran’s nuclear program. Putin has warned the U.S. and other nations against trying to coerce Iran into reining in its nuclear program and insists peaceful dialogue is the only way to deal with Tehran’s defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.

“Threatening someone, in this case the Iranian leadership and Iranian people, will lead nowhere,” Putin said Monday during his trip to Germany. “They are not afraid, believe me.” Iran’s rejection of the council’s demand and its previous clandestine atomic work has fed suspicions in the U.S. and other countries that Tehran is working to enrich uranium to a purity usable in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only wants lesser-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that would generate electricity. Putin’s visit to Tehran is being closely watched for any possible shifts in Russia’s carefully hedged stance in the nuclear standoff. The Russian president underlined his disagreements with Washington last week, saying he saw no “objective data” to prove Western claims that Iran is trying to construct nuclear weapons. Putin emphasized Monday that he would negotiate in Tehran on behalf of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — and Germany, a group that has led efforts to resolve the stalemate with Tehran.

Source: The Associated Press