Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilizations and the Nuclear “Disappearance Act”

Abstract

President Khatami was elected on the platform of Islamic Reformation, a movement that promised to liberalize the harsh Islamist politics. Khatami’s “Dialogue of Civilizations” provided a matching vision of a new beginning in Iran’s strained relations with the international community. Implied in the new approach was a promise to give up the illicit nuclear project—a notion that Khatami strongly encouraged.

But behind the well-publicized outreach, the regime worked hard on completing the nuclear cycle—an antecedent for producing a bomb. Ironically, it was Khatami’s highly respectable international status, together with the support of the IAEA, which shielded the regime from scrutiny. According to reputable estimates, some 60 % of the work on the enrichment cycle was completed during the Khatami tenure.

Things changed when, in 2002, Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)—allegedly with the help of the Israeli Mossad—revealed illicit enrichment sites. Fearful of a referral to Security Council (SC) the first step toward sanctions, the then chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rouhani devised a new negotiation strategy described as “slow-playing the West.” Accordingly, Iran offered a few temporary concessions to freeze enrichment, only to break them promoting a new series of negotiating. The strategy was highly successful; the EU-3 (Great Britain, France, and Germany) prevented the United States from referring Iran’s dossier to the SC, a policy that created considerable tension among the allies. The Rouhani strategy exposed another weakness of the non-proliferation regime, namely the reluctance of European countries, which had lucrative commercial ties with Iran, to push for sanctions.