Ambassador Azmat Hassan

Azmat Hassan is a career diplomat and former ambassador of Pakistan, where his postings have included Ambassador of Pakistan to Malaysia, Syria and Morocco, and Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations in New York. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University.

The outcome of the recent Geneva talks between the P5+1 and Iran is good news. The international community is rightly concerned at the ambiguity surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s agreement to turn over the enriched uranium fuel from its reactors to Russia represents a significant concession. But more significantly, it is a victory for diplomacy. It staves off, at least temporarily, the hawkish option of preemptive attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities by either Israel or the United States.

The latter course would be disastrous as it almost certainly would unleash more bloodshed and uncertainty in the Middle East — and probably tilt Iran toward joining the nuclear club. Iran feels hemmed in by the only nuclear power in the Middle East, Israel; by the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; and by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. The Geneva talks open up the possibility of diplomatic engagement between the U.S. and Iran.

The U.S. and Iran have not spoken to each other for 30 years. They have to reengage to serve their mutual interests. Normalization would enable American diplomats on the ground in Tehran to better gauge the dynamics of Iranian politics. Ditto for Iranian diplomats in Washington. If matters proceed well, it might enable Obama to have a direct channel to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pakistan helped the U.S. and China to reconcile forty years ago, and it would be a possible mediator between Washington and Tehran.

I vividly remember accompanying President Leghari of Pakistan in a meeting with Khamenei, when the former was on a state visit to Tehran in 1994. Khamenei sat on the floor, and so did the Pakistani delegation, on exquisite Persian carpets interspersed with cushions. Far from the West’s caricature of Iranian clergy as a bunch of scowling mullahs in black robes, Khamenei appeared both genial and worldly.

I did not detect any fire and brimstone in his remarks. Engagement almost always softens the rough edges of animosity and misperception among adversaries. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of the U.K. said that a real hero is one who turns an enemy into a friend.

Diplomatic engagement between the U.S and Iran is imperative if we desire a more peaceful Middle East. This will be good for all actors. Iran is just too important and powerful to be intimidated or isolated. Nixon’s opening to China showed the enormous benefits of bringing China into the world’s mainstream. The same can happen with Iran. Diplomacy means putting oneself in the shoes of one’s antagonist. It means viewing intractable issues from a different prism. Ultimately, it means searching for accommodation. If the U.S. were to open up and normalize with Iran, it could open the way for a broad-based rapprochement between Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab countries and Iran. It could unlock the gridlock in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could thus be win-win all around — instead of the zero-sum game that the hawks want us to play.

- Azmat Hassan

For another perspective on the responsibilities of the P5+1, read contributor Dwight Bashir’s thoughts: Amid Iran nuclear talks, don’t forget human rights.

President Barack Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Photo: White House

Popular democracy and a will for peace weigh heavily in the relations between the leaders of Israel and the United States. As it happens, Barack Obama, the new U.S. president, is a very popular leader whose appeal extends beyond U.S. borders — even to Israel. And the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is the head of a fragile coalition where he must pay lip service to the cause of promoting a secure and just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has opposed a two-state solution in the Middle East and when he took office this spring said a Palestinian solution was secondary to his focus on Iran. “The biggest danger to humanity, and to our state Israel, stems from the possibility that a radical regime will get nuclear weapons, or a nuclear weapon will be armed by a radical regime.” 

Yesterday, President Obama set the order of business squarely with a resumption of Palestinian talks. The goal, Obama said, is a separate Palestinian state.

Netanyahu may not like it, but he may not have a choice. Obama has chosen the path of diplomacy, reaching out to Iran, and waiting for the result of elections in that country next month before taking his additional steps toward dialogue.

Since Netanyahu took power in March, speculation has centered on whether and when he might set a deadline and use Israeli air strikes in an attempt to cripple Iran’s nuclear capacity. There are precedents — Israel bombed Syrian nuclear facilities in 2007 and Iraq’s Osiris nuclear facility in 1981.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that top U.S. officials warned Netanyahu before his visit to Washington “that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran.”

It’s not difficult to imagine what would be happening now if a Republican president were in the White House and if Netanyahu had a stronger hold on Israel’s Knesset. The policy is clearly spelled out in a guest opinion column in the Washington Post.

John P. Hannah, who was former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, clearly sides with Netanyahu. “Successful denuclearization of hostile states is most likely to occur as a result of regime change, coercive diplomacy or military action, not U.S. pledges of mutual respect.”

Regime change was the order of the day for Hannah in the run up to the Iraq War. He and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were key in gathering the thin and fake information on Iraq’s non-existent nuclear program prior to the war.

Cheney and Hannah argue that the United States and the world were safer under the neoconservative policy that held sway during the Bush administration — strongly aligned with Netanyahu and his allies in Israel. At the same time, he implies that U.S. policy in the Middle East under Bush was successful.

He writes: “…given the history of tyrannical Middle Eastern regimes seeking nuclear arms, we must also acknowledge that the Obama strategy reflects the triumph of hope over experience.”

- Peter Eisner

The United States has reached out to Iran in an effort to persuade it to stop its nuclear program.

Daniel Levy, a senior fellow and co-director of the Middle East Task Force of the New America Foundation, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the Iran question, the possibility of resuming negotiations with the Palestinians and the U.S. role going forward.

North Korea had agreed to halt its nuclear program in return for aid from the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Russia and China, but it restarted its main nuclear facility last week.

Richard Wood, President of the Japan Society, speaks with Martin Savidge about the tense history of Japan-North Korea relations and Japan’s fear of a nuclear North Korea. North Korea has fired test missiles over Japan in the past.

Donald Kirk of The Christian Science Monitor discusses the forthcoming talks between South Korea and North Korea and South Koreans’ optimism surrounding U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill’s arrival in North Korea.

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