Crunch-time on Iran: Five ways out of a nuclear crisis By Mark Leonard ★ Since the summer of 2003, the so-called EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) have been
negotiating with the Iranian government to convince it to voluntarily give up its uranium enrichment activities in exchange for trade and help with its civil nuclear programme.
★ The EU is asking Iran to choose between carrots of trade and technology, and the stick of re f e rral
to the UN Security Council. However, without the full engagement of the United States, the EU will struggle to put together a package that could persuade Iran to abandon its programmes. Although the Bush administration made a modest shift towards engagement in March – with offers of aeroplane parts and support for Iran’s WTO membership – it now needs to offer further security and economic guarantees in order to save the diplomatic process.
★ As negotiations enter a period of uncert a i n t y, this paper sets out five possible scenarios for the
next few months: “muddling through” without a deal while Iran continues its suspension of uranium enrichment but refuses to make it permanent; a deal which opens the way for a “grand bargain” with the West; an escalating spiral of sanctions after Iran re s t a rts its enrichment activities; a “nuclear compromise” where Iran is allowed to pursue a small-scale heavily-monitored uranium enrichment pilots project; and military strikes on Iranian nuclear targets by the US or Israel. The most likely outcome is a combination of several scenarios.
★ Policy-makers should pull out all the stops to prevent Iran from going nuclear, in order to prevent
an arms race in the Middle East and the end of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However, they also need to plan for the failure of diplomacy. Putting together proposals for a tough containment policy based around sanctions, security guarantees to Iran’s neighbours, and a regional security architecture could strengthen Euro p e ’s negotiating hand today.
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OR THE LAST FEW WEEKS IRAN HAS been openly flirting with the idea of developing nuclear weapons. The European Union, under the leadership of Britain, France 1 Steven Everts, ‘Engaging and Germany, has been trying to Iran: A test case for EU stop it.1 The two sides look set foreign policy’, CER, to head for a showdown later March 2004. this year. When the negotiations last went to the brink in May 2005, the so-called EU-3 promised to produce a formula to defuse the stand-off by August. In exchange Tehran agreed to freeze its nuclear programme until the EU revealed its
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package, although it threatened to resume its uranium enrichment (a crucial step for making nuclear weapons) if it did not like the offer. At the time of writing in early August 2005, that deal was coming unstuck: Tehran has announced an “ i rreversible” decision to resume its nuclear activities, and the EU-3 have responded with a threat to refer the Iran question to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The stakes are high: European governments are concerned that Iran’s nuclear programme could set o ff a spiral of proliferation in the Middle East. They fear that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even Egypt might
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