After months of negotiations, China has agreed to, er, negotiate.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced on Wednesday that China would join the United States, Britain, Russia, France, and Germany for talks on a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Iran.

“China will participate in a meeting tomorrow (Thursday) in New York,” said Kouchner, “Whether they will talk about the text, whether it’s just to respect formalities, I don’t know.”

The U.S. and others are hoping to speed up an agreement by sending P5+1 ambassadors directly to the United Nations. In the past, political directors from the six countries have agreed on an outline before negotiations moved to the U.N. to hammer out the final text.

But the buck doesn’t stop there.

Once the six countries agree on a text, it must then be presented to the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council for further negotiations. Several, including Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon, have already indicated their opposition to sanctions.

Further, both China and Russia have been historically difficult when negotiating Iran sanctions. Just yesterday, President Medvedev reportedly told President Obama in Prague that there remain limits to his country’s support:

“Let me put it straightforward,” Medvedev said, “I have outlined our limits for such sanctions, our understanding of these sanctions.”

China’s opposition has been loud and ongoing, but appears to be waning in recent weeks, and while China does ultimately hold veto power on the Security Council, many analysts agree that its opposition will result in a watered down resolution, rather than none at all.

Travis fired up an op-ed in today’s Washington Times responding to some of the hysterical whining on the right that the NPR and the Prague Treaty will compromise the U.S. nuclear deterrent.  Note to Travis: Mad props on convincing the Times to let…

One year ago in Prague, President Obama pledged that the Nuclear Posture Review “will put an end to Cold War thinking” and “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

The Review, which was released today after nearly a year of analysis, outlines many important and valuable steps that the U.S. will take toward that end.  “While the Review could have been bolder in some areas, according to Deputy Director of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Kingston Reif, “it constructively reorients U.S. nuclear policy to reflect the fact that changing technologic, strategic, and geopolitical circumstances have made it possible and essential for the U.S. to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons.”

Overall, the Nuclear Posture Review is a significant improvement over the two previous Nuclear Posture Reviews conducted since the end of the Cold War.  “The encouraging steps outlined in the report should not be viewed as the end of the journey toward reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, but they point us in the right direction,” said Executive Director John Isaacs.

On the positive side, the Nuclear Posture Review places preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism atop the U.S. nuclear agenda.  It also significantly reduces the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security by stating that the “fundamental” role of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the U.S. and its allies and limiting the circumstances under which the U.S. would contemplate using nuclear weapons.  Both of these measures will be helpful in strengthening the U.S. hand at the upcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May.  Furthermore, the Review reaffirms that the U.S. will not conduct nuclear explosive tests and rejects the development of new nuclear weapons.  The Review also supports further discussions with Moscow on even deeper bilateral reductions in U.S. and Russian arsenals – including non-deployed and non-strategic (i.e. tactical nuclear weapons) – beyond those called for in the New START agreement.

Though the positives significantly outweigh the negatives, the report stops short of saying that the “sole” purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the U.S. and its allies nor does it call for the U.S. to adopt a “no first use” policy.  The U.S. does not need nuclear weapons for any other purpose but deterrence.  A “sole purpose” and “no first use” declaration would have further strengthened the credibility of the U.S. conventional deterrent and reduced the incentives that other states might have to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves from a U.S. first strike.

The Review also does not recommend that the U.S. abandon its current launch on warning or launch under attack posture.  Maintaining such a posture increases the chances of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch.

Press Contact: Mary Slosson, Herbert Scoville Peace Fellow, mslosson@armscontrolcenter.org 202-543-4100, ext. 2114

In recent weeks calls to further sanction Iran for its nuclear program have been on the rise in a number of high profile op-eds, in blogs, and in rhetoric from the White House.  

For example, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) recently stated that it is now time for ‘moving beyond engagement’.  Berman is a key author and supporter of unilateral U.S. sanctions legislation that has passed both the House and the Senate and could be sent to President Obama’s desk for approval soon.  Berman writes that the legislation will ‘impose severe penalties on companies that sell refined petroleum products to Iran or support the development of Iran’s domestic refining capacity.’

David Milliband, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, said that ‘proportionate and reversible’ multilateral sanctions ‘are needed urgently’ to affect a change in Iran’s behavior.  In the blogosphere, the Heritage Foundation is calling for ‘extremely strong international sanctions that would impose excruciating economic pain and threaten the regime’s continued hold on power.’  In a (sadly) similar vein, Hillary Clinton called for ‘sanctions that will bite’.  Although varying in the level and form of sanctions called for, both sides of the political spectrum appear to be coalescing around the view that tougher measures are required because engagement has failed.  

Yet dialogue should have always been framed as a long-term pursuit, not something that was ever going to solve problems in any immediate time-frame…

In February 2009, Norma Percy, one of the producers of the BBC’s fantastic ‘Iran and The West’ series, reminded us that engagement with Iran would not be an easy task, pointing out that ‘all previous attempts at talks between Iran and the West have ended as the dialogue of the deaf.’  After three decades of mistrust and animosity, the notion that a young and charismatic U.S president could quickly change the status quo – no matter how committed he may be to changing the American relationship with Iran – was not a realistic one.

U.S. policy, at least from the perspective of Iran, appears to suffer from a case of multiple personality disorder.  On the one hand, the Obama administration has made a sincere effort to both directly and indirectly (see here, here and here, for example) reach out to and engage in dialogue with the Iranian regime.

Yet these overtures also come against the backdrop of Congressional efforts to impose harsh new sanctions, public White House proclamations that keep all military options on the table, and the U.S dismissing Ahmadinijad’s own ‘offers’ of engagement (here,here and here).  These factors  gives the upper hand to the hardliners in Iran who argue that Obama’s offers of engagement are a ‘ploy’.

Meanwhile, the Iranian leaderships’ brutal crackdown of last summer’s demonstrations against alleged electoral fraud, the revelation of Iran’s secret uranium enrichment facility near Qom, and Tehran’s rejection of an offer from the United States and its allies to ship its stock of low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment and refinement, have done little to dispel concerns in the U.S. that Iran is bent on developing nuclear weapons.

Given these developments, it is easy to see why sanctions appear to be an attractive option for U.S. policy makers at the moment.  It enables them to appear proactive in responding to the current situation.  However, neither unilateral or multilateral sanctions have historically achieved much success in changing Iran’s thinking, thus its hard to see what gains will result from more being imposed.

If Obama signs off on unilateral U.S. gasoline sanctions or if he is able to convince the Chinese to support a UN administered multilateral sanctions package, they will merely make future calls for negotiations seem more incredulous than ever to the Iranian leadership.  In addition, there are compelling arguments which suggest that further sanctions will strengthen the regime at the expense of the Iranian people.  

As Roger Cohen pointed out in the New York Times last year, ‘France and Germany fought three wars in 70 years before the bright idea dawned of enfolding their problem into something larger: the European Union. The United States and Iran have not gone to war but have a relationship of psychotic mistrust. The answer can only be the same: Broaden the context.’  

This lesson of history suggests that it is essential that the U.S peg its approach to engagement to a medium and long-term strategy in the region that also covers other issues of mutual interest.  Such an approach is fundamental if there is to be any hope of introducing transparency and building confidence in Washington and Tehran’s relationship.