The six world powers negotiating with Iran should consider “pivoting” to a new,
tougher strategy following the apparent failure of this week’s talks in Moscow,
Dennis Ross told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.
Ross, who was involved in
determining US policy on Iran under US President Barack Obama, among his many
Middle East roles in the State Department and White House over the years, said
that even before the inconclusive Moscow meetings he had felt it was time “for a
pivot in the negotiations away from the step-by-step approach, and more to an
endgame on the nuclear issue approach.”
The step-by-step approach that
has governed the negotiations with Iran up until now would have each side giving
something up to the other as part of confidence- building measures. The problem
with that approach, Ross indicated, was that it was taking too much time without
results, while Iran continued to move its program forward.
Now, Ross
said, the time has come to clarify, “is there a deal here or not?” The “core
issue,” he said, is whether Iran is “prepared to accept an outcome where it has
a civil nuclear power capability, but the limitations imposed on them preclude
that from being converted into a nuclear weapons capability.”
In other
words, Iran can have civil nuclear power, but not breakout capability. “But if they are not going to accept that, then we know diplomacy is not going
to work. I think maybe the best way to enhance the prospect of diplomacy working
is for the Iranians to understand that in the end, while we want it to succeed,
we don’t fear its failure – they should fear its failure.”
Ross, who is
in the country participating in President Shimon Peres’s “Facing Tomorrow”
conference, dismissed the notion that Obama’s rhetoric on the unacceptability of
a nuclear Iran was not strong enough.
“I don’t think rhetoric alone is
what is going to do it,” he said. “I think the Iranians are reading the six [the
US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany], and not just the president, as
wanting diplomacy to succeed, and therefore interpreting that as a reluctance to
let it fail.”
But if the world powers now clearly set down an endgame,
Ross argued, “then I think that will put them on the spot. Until they are put on
the spot, they think they have time.”
Ross said that if the Iranians
rejected a clear endgame proposal put on the table, “they would be exposed to
the world and demonstrate clearly that they had an opportunity for civil nuclear
power, which is what they say they want, but that is not good enough for them
because what they really want is nuclear weapons capability. If they know they
are going to be exposed like that, then it becomes much clearer that there will
be a consequence for saying ‘no’ under those circumstances.”
He added,
however, that at the end of the day there was no military solution to the
problem.
“The military can set the program back, but it can’t destroy
it,” he said. “The Iranians have the know-how and the engineering capability so
that whatever you destroy can be rebuilt.”
As such, according to Ross, a
context needed to be created whereby the international community believed that
military action as a last resort was justified, so that the day after a military
action, the international isolation and sanctions against Iran would remain in
place to keep them from rebuilding their nuclear program.
Regarding
Israel’s sour relations with Turkey, Ross said it was in Jerusalem’s long-term
strategic interest to try to patch up the relationship, even at the cost of
issuing an apology over the Mavi Marmara incident, as Ankara demanded. He said
this need not be a blanket apology, but something along the lines of apologizing
for operational mistakes spelled out in Israel’s own Turkel commission, which
investigated the incident.
“You have to weigh your strategic interests,”
he said.
“Turkey and Israel have an enormous common stake in Syria. Is it
difficult to make an apology? Yes, I don’t dismiss that. But how does that weigh
against wider strategic interests you have in Syria and a region undergoing
tremendous upheaval?” Ross said that a restoration of the relationship would
have an impact on the whole region, and suggested imagining what a sobering
impact this type of rapprochement would have on ascendant players like the
Muslim Brotherhood.
“You are trying to impact the regional landscape
practically and psychologically,” he said. “That is why I say it is worth
thinking about.”
Asked why Israel should apologize to the Turks for the
Mavi Marmara when the US refused to apologize to Pakistan for accidentally
killing 24 of its troops last year, as Islamabad is demanding, Ross said, “This
is not about scoring points, but rather about what are your own strategic
interests. Given everything going on in the region, is this an important
strategic benefit for Israel?”