policy brief
CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN REFORM
The EU and Iran: how to make conditional engagement work By Steven Everts ★ The IAEA’s decision to censure Iran for its nuclear activities but also to give Tehran time to co-operate with inspectors creates a breathing space. The EU should use it to put forward a broader set of policies, fleshing out the political and economic incentives it is offering Tehran, while making clear that if Iran fails to satisfy the IAEA, trade and other sanctions will follow. ★ ‘Regime change’ will not end Iran’s nuclear ambitions. If Western countries do not address underlying Iranian security concerns, any Iranian government will continue to want nuclear weapons. Therefore, the EU should try to persuade the US to offer Iran diplomatic relations and a security guarantee in exchange for denuclearisation. ★ While avoiding America’s taunting rhetoric of regime change, the EU should position itself more clearly on the pro-democracy side. This means giving political support to those inside Iran promoting deep reform, and especially reaching out to young Iranians.
Under heavy international pressure, Iran agreed in mid-December 2003 to accept highly intrusive inspections of all its nuclear installations. This decision came after the board of the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, had agreed at the end of November to a resolution that strongly criticised Iran for its clandestine nuclear activities. That resolution had held back from sending the issue to the UN Security Council. It gave Iran one more chance to prove its innocence and co-operate fully with the IAEA. The US had wanted the IAEA to conclude that Iran was in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a first step towards UN-mandated sanctions. But the Europeans argued that such a move would have robbed them of all leverage, precisely at a time when Iran was showing signs of a genuine desire to end its international isolation. The EU and the US compromised by agreeing to a ‘trigger clause’, stipulating that should new
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evidence of further “serious breaches” come to light, the IAEA board will convene immediately to consider “all options”. In layman’s terms the resolution said: let bygones be bygones, but if we catch you again, sanctions will follow. Politically, Iran’s decision to sign the NPT’s ‘additional protocol’, paving the way for tough ‘anytime, anywhere’ inspections, is both significant and welcome. IAEA inspectors will now step up their monitoring. International attention will focus again on Iran in March 2004, when the IAEA board will reconvene. Therefore, the Vienna compromise creates a breathing space in which Iran must prove the sincerity of its commitments and in which the EU must demonstrate that ‘conditional engagement’ with Tehran can deliver real results. Europeans can take some satisfaction at how they have, thus far, handled Iran. But European
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