We hear a lot about how the Europeans have made "offers" to Iran as an incentive for Iran to drop its enrichment program. The EU-3 offers are "refreshed" from time to time but the actual contents of the offers are never made public, and I think the reason is pretty obvious: because the European "incentives" suck. They continue to demand as a pre-condition that Iran give up a perfectly legal and sovereign right to uranium enrichment, and actually offer nothing remotely as valuable in return, and instead only continue to threaten Iran with military attack.
Anyway, for more details of the EU offer to Iran, I suggest reading BASIC's analysis of the EU offer of 2005, which was characterized as "an empty box with a lot of pretty wrapping".
We can get a pretty good idea of the European offer to Iran simply by looking at the offer they made to Iran in 2005, which demanded that Iran abandon enrichment (and thus blatantly violating the terms of the Paris Agreement, pursuant to which the Europeans had promised that they would demand such a thing.)
In effect, the European offer to Iran consists of things that the EU is either already legally required to do, things which the EU cannot deliver upon, things that are not binding on the EU, or things which would only benefit the EU itself and not Iran.
For example, the European States are already legally required to share civilian nuclear technology under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty itself, which requires sharing civilian nuclear technology "to the fullest extent possible" and "without discrimination". Offers to provide such technology to Iran are therefore meaningless and simply commit the EU to what they're already required to do.
Similarly, both the US and the EU are already obligated under the UN Charter not to militararily attack Iran or engage in "regime change". Europe cannot give Iran security "guarantees" anyway since it cannot bind the US - and Tehran would be silly to believe in any such "guarantee".
Assisting Iran joining the WTO? It is not up to the EU to decide who does or doesn't join the WTO, and any such promise of "assistance" is non-binding anyway.
Provide Iran with the opportunity to purchase nuclear fuel? Wow, how generous of the EU to make Iran forever reliant on external energy sources, by demanding that Iran give up a right to use its own natural resources and its own technology to generate energy to operate its own economy.
Excellent article, Cyrus. As correctly stated, the only sin of the Iranians is mastering their inalienable right to enrichment technology. Barring Iran would guarantee monopoly of the field by Anglo Americans and Russians. In other words, a nation of second-class slaves! Hell with that. Iran is doing the absolute right thing. Standing firm and resolute. The West would one day realize that they have to acknowledge Iranians as a new member of their exclusive club. The day is not so distant.
Posted by: mb | June 12, 2008 at 09:59 PM