America’s friends must help extricate it from the war, writes Sayyid Badr

The Foreign Minister, Sayyid Badr al Busaidi, in an exclusive article in The Economist, said that it may be difficult for America and Iran to resume bilateral negotiations. Still, the path away from war, hard though it may be for both parties to follow it, may have to lie through precisely this resumption.

Twice in nine months, the United States and Iran have been on the verge of a real deal on the most difficult issue that divides them -  Iran’s nuclear-energy programme and American fears that it could be a weapons programme, Sayyid Badr wrote in The Economist. 

'So it was a shock but not a surprise when on February 28—just a few hours after the latest and most substantive talks—Israel and America again launched an unlawful military strike against the peace that had briefly appeared really possible.'

He added, 'Iran’s retaliation against what it claims are American targets on the territory of its neighbours was an inevitable, if deeply regrettable and completely unacceptable, result. Faced with what both Israel and America described as a war designed to terminate the Islamic Republic, this was probably the only rational option available to the Iranian leadership.'

The effects of this retaliation are felt most acutely on the southern side of the Gulf, where Arab countries that had placed their trust in American security co-operation now experience that co-operation as an acute vulnerability, threatening their present security and future prosperity, the Minister said.

'For Gulf states, an economic model in which global sport, tourism, aviation and technology were to play an important role is now endangered. Plans to become a global hub for data centres may need to be revised. The effects of Iran’s retaliation are already being felt globally, as maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is severely disrupted, driving up energy prices and threatening deep recession. If this had not been anticipated by the architects of this war, that was surely a grave miscalculation,' said Sayyid Badr.

The American administration’s greatest miscalculation, of course, was allowing itself to be drawn into this war in the first place. This is not America’s war, and there is no likely scenario in which both Israel and America will get what they want from it. Hopefully America’s commitment to regime change is just rhetorical, whereas Israel explicitly seeks the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and probably cares little about how the country is governed, or by whom, once this has been achieved, he added.

'With this objective in mind, Israel’s leadership seems to have persuaded America that Iran had been so weakened by sanctions, internal divisions, and the American-Israeli bombings of its nuclear sites last June, that an unconditional surrender would swiftly follow the initial assault and the assassination of the supreme leader. But it should now be clear that for Israel to achieve its stated objective will require a long military campaign to which America would have to commit troops on the ground, opening a new front in the forever wars, which President Donald Trump previously vowed to end. This is not what America’s government wants. Nor do its people, who certainly do not see this as their war.'

Sayyid Badr said, 'The question for friends of America is simple. What can we do to extricate the superpower from this unwanted entanglement? First of all, America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth. That begins with the fact that two parties to this war have nothing to gain from it, and that the national interests of both Iran and America lie in the earliest possible end to hostilities. This is an uncomfortable truth to tell, because it involves indicating the extent to which America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told.'

The leadership of the United States will then need to decide where its national interests really lie and act accordingly. A sober assessment of those interests would indicate that they must include a definitive and decisive end to nuclear-weapons proliferation in the region, secure energy supply chains, and renewed investment opportunities in the context of the region’s growing global economic significance. All of these would be best achieved with Iran at peace with its neighbours. They can perhaps be identified as shared objectives for all the countries of the Gulf. How to get there from today’s catastrophe is the challenge, he said.

'It may be difficult for America to return to the bilateral negotiations from which it was twice diverted by the temptations of war. It will certainly be difficult for the Iranian leadership to return to dialogue with an administration that twice switched abruptly from talks to bombing and assassination. But the path away from war, hard though it may be for both parties to follow it, may have to lie through precisely this resumption.'

The parties need an incentive to summon the necessary courage to engage once again. This could be provided by linking the bilateral negotiations essential to resolving the core American-Iranian issue to a wider regional process, designed to achieve a framework for transparency on nuclear energy—and the energy transition more broadly—in the region. As all the countries of the region look towards their shared post-carbon future, secure innovation and development may depend upon some basic agreement on the role nuclear technologies will play, he wrote.

'Could this offer a prize large enough for all the main players to willingly endure the difficulties of dialogue to win it together? It is certainly something Oman and its Gulf Co-operation Council neighbours can propose. Some initial talks could lead over time to confidence-building measures and a consensus around the role nuclear energy should play in the energy transition. The ultimate destination of such a process is, of course, impossible to determine, especially in the middle of a war. But might it be possible, perhaps in the context of a regional non-aggression treaty, to secure a substantive regional deal on nuclear transparency?