What Ukraine means for Iran

Recent events in Ukraine – both the movement that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and the ensuing crisis in Crimea – weigh upon the triangular relationship between the United States, Russia and Iran. They also carry consequences for Syria and Afghanistan. Topics of debate familiar to Iran watchers, such as the limits of American power and the practicalities of economic sanctions, have dominated recent press coverage. Ukraine’s history is laden with episodes that should resonate with Iranians, from its abandonment of its nuclear weapons in 1994, to its 2005 “color” revolution in response to electoral fraud, to Yanukovych’s Shah-like flight from the country on February 22^nd.

“Iran's government has closely monitored developments in Ukraine and appears to be paranoid about the power wielded by the pro-EU protesters,” wrote Vasuvedan Sridharan in The International Business Times last month. Iranian MP Alireza Salimi, Sridharan noted, told the majles that Ukrainian developments should “instil vigilance in those naive enough” to believe 2009 Green Movement protests were “only an incident”. Sridharan also quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marzieh Afkham, who offered a general objection to “foreign interference” in Ukraine, and justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who objected to the enthusiastic way that some of Iran’s media were covering events. “Our country and our system are not analogous with these countries”, he said.

On Sunday, Andrew K Davenport posited in Forbes that Iran might be “the next Ukraine”, and that Hassan Rouhani and Ali Khamenei would do well to note parallels. Davenport likens the “raised hopes” of Ukrainians in relation to the proposed EU trade deal that Yanukovych abandoned in favor of closer ties with Moscow to the expectations that last November’s interim nuclear deal has raised in Iran. The “cavalcade” of foreign firms showing interest in Iranian markets, he suggests, represent “a tantalizing prospect for the long-suffering Iranian people”. Should Iran fail to finalize a deal with the West, effects on Iran’s domestic political situation “could be profound”.

Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy warned in The New Republic that the crisis in Ukraine could shape the future of the Middle East, and urged that the United States and Europe should ensure that Russia faces “a political and economic price” for its actions, such as (should it remain in Crimea) removal from the G8, trade boycotts or targeted sanctions. He acknowledges fears about Russia’s continued cooperation with the P5+1 group, but asks rhetorically, “Does Putin really want Iran to become a nuclear weapons state?” He argues that Middle Eastern leaders are “acute observers of the balance of power” and that many of them “now believe that the Russians (and the Iranians) act while we only warn”.

On Monday, The Economist Intelligence Unit (IEU) argued that Russia’s moves in Crimea might undermine nuclear talks by upsetting cooperation between P5+1 members. Russia, which has supported UN Security Council resolutions against Iran, and has delayed delivery to Iran of its S300 missile defense system, is now at greater odds with the West. The IEU noted the diversity of Iranian press coverage of Ukraine, with the hardline paper Kayhan writing that Russia is “paying” for its support of Bashar al-Assad, and reformist papers defending Ukrainian sovereignty. Iranian leaders, it writes, “need to keep the Ukraine crisis isolated from Iran's nuclear talks with the P5+1”.

Terry Atlas reported in Bloomberg Politics that the crisis could put several US interests at risk, including the pursuit of Russian cooperation with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, negotiations to end Syria’s civil war, and plans for US withdrawal from Afghanistan (since “the U.S. depends on Russia for part of its Northern Distribution Network” of supply routes). Atlas quoted Republican senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, warning of Saudi perceptions of American weakness.

Author David Reiff argued in The New Republic that, from an American perspective, “the storm over Ukraine is actually mostly a displacement of the Iran debate” because “those who believe that Iran will never relinquish its nuclear weapons program and that, sooner or later, the U.S. must grasp the nettle and launch military strikes, look at American impotence in Ukraine and worry it’s a harbinger of the future.”

On Tuesday, Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sketched for Foreign Policy the outlines of a new cold war emerging from what now looks like “the inter-Cold War period”. As “relations between Russia and NATO will assume a more familiar, adversarial nature,” he projects, “there would be no need...to talk about Iran [as the perceived threat] when upgrading NATO's missile defenses from bases in Romania and Poland or those at sea.” In this potential future, “elements of U.S.-Russia cooperation might survive where the two countries' interests clearly meet, but doing anything together in Syria or Iran would become much more difficult.”

On Wednesday, George Freidman, founder and chairman of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, wrote of the United States’ “intricately linked” efforts to prepare sanctions against Russia as it loosens them against Iran. “The United States,” he writes, “is trying to free itself of an increasingly outdated geopolitical threat in the Islamic world to better deal with a re-emerging risk to the balance of power in Eurasia.” He argues that the U.S. “hopes to go beyond a nuclear agreement and develop a stable enough working relationship with Tehran to allow [it] to re-engage other parts of the world vying for its attention.” He suggests that the U.S. and Iran have “designed” negations to reduce Russian involvement, but adds that Iran is likely to see its leverage in talks benefit from US-Russia confrontation.

Fox News contributor Paul Alster pointed out the peculiar history of Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, and suggest that “the Russian incursion into Crimea...might never have happened” had Ukraine not given up its weapons under the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, by which Britain, the US, and Russia agreed upon guarantees for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “Twenty years later,” Alster writes, “the same three parties are attempting to persuade a wary Iranian regime it should give up on its nuclear ambitions, but the lesson [Iran draws from] Ukraine could be that letting your guard down in exchange for economic aid is dangerous”. Iran, he suggests, could cite the fate of Ukraine, along with that of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya, as a reason not to engage with the P5+1 group.

Colum Lynch wrote in Foreign Policy of China’s annoyance with Russia’s move in Crimea, and quoted a counsellor at China’s UN mission saying,"We respect the choice made by the Ukrainian people on the basis of national conditions". Elizabeth Economy, a China specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Lynch, "Russia's actions clearly run up against China's central foreign policy tenet of non-interference in others' internal affairs. It is a policy that has guided Chinese policy in North Korea, Sudan, Iran and Syria.”

The past two weeks have seen not just a marginal upheaval in the post-Soviet sphere, but a gentle twist of the global kaleidoscope.