• Representatives of the Arab League announced in Washington their support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which would be based on 1967 borders but include a “comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land.”
• This is a small but significant refinement of the Arab Peace Initiative (API), shifting the position from an inflexible demand on Israel to return to 1967 lines, to an endorsement of the principle of negotiated land swaps.
• The development is a success for John Kerry in binding regional Arab support into his intensive efforts to the get the peace process moving.
• The initial response from Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is tasked with leading negotiations with the Palestinians, was to welcome the news as positive.
• However, it will not in itself break the deadlock, which will require closing gaps between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

What has been announced by the Arab League in Washington?

Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani, following a meeting between Arab League representatives and US Secretary of State John Kerry, announced that: “The Arab League delegation affirmed that agreement should be based on the two-state solution on the basis of the 4th of June 1967 line, with the [possibility] of comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land.”

Al-Thani also made clear that the delegation, “endorses President Mahmoud Abbas’ effort for the peace,” as well as giving “support for efforts for the economic help and aid,” apparently in reference to Kerry’s recently announced plans for economic development in the West Bank.

Other representatives at the meeting included Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir.

What is the significance in terms of the Arab Peace Initiative?

This is a small but significant refinement of the original text of the Arab Peace Initiative, and partially addresses one of several Israeli concerns with the document. The API was launched as a Saudi initiative in 2002. The Arab League issued a statement in which its 22 members offered to normalise relations with Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal to pre-June 1967 borders, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a “just solution” to the Palestinian refugee problem.

For Israel, the demand for a return to pre-June 1967 lines was unacceptable. Israel seeks to negotiate a new border that will incorporate the major settlement blocks into Israel, and has in the past offered an exchange of territory to compensate the Palestinians. The Palestinians have accepted land swaps in principle, and this announcement now brings the wider Arab League into line with this position. However, the scale of land swap that Israeli negotiators envisaged during the Annapolis talks in 2008 was around 6-7%, whereas the Palestinians proposed a 1.9% swap.

Nonetheless, this softens the tone of the Arab League position. Whereas the original API looked to Israel like a ‘take it or leave it’ deal, this statement appears to position the Arab League more firmly in support of a bilateral agreement to be negotiated by Abbas.

Other elements of the Arab Peace Initiate text remain problematic. Israel’s future as a Jewish state depends on the Palestinian refugee problem being solved in a new Palestinian state, not in Israel. The API remains vague on this point, as it is on the question of Jerusalem.

Will this get the peace process moving?

This development is a concrete initial success for John Kerry in binding regional Arab support into his peace-making efforts. However, it will not break the deadlock in itself, which will require closing gaps between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The initial response from Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is tasked with leading negotiations with the Palestinians, was positive, saying, “It’s true that there is still a long way to go, and we can’t accept all the clauses as holy writ, but sometimes you need to look up over the difficulties and just say good news is welcome.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed his desire to enter negotiations with the Palestinians without preconditions, and is likely to reiterate that point in response to this development. He has said in the past that the API is a positive development compared to the blanket Arab rejection of Israel that went before, but like other Israeli leaders has made clear that peace must be negotiated. Though he has resisted in public any reference to 1967 lines as terms of reference for a negotiated border, he told the UN in 2011 that he was willing to move forward on President Obama’s proposals, which included reference to 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps. However, Netanyahu is likely to remain firm in his position that Israel’s security requirements, and its future status as a Jewish state be addressed in any future agreement.

The immediate barrier in returning to negotiations remains the preconditions of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which Netanyahu has been unwilling to meet. Abbas has raised various demands, including a complete settlement freeze, Israeli acceptance of 1967 lines as the basis for future borders, and the release of prisoners. The Arab League representatives made no mention of these preconditions in their Washington statement, and it is unclear whether Abbas will use this development as cover to re-enter negotiations, or will continue to stick to his preconditions.

What is the significance in terms of regional politics?

It is remarkable to see the Qataris fronting this development, which is another expression of their highly unusual and highly active regional foreign policy. In the 1990s the Qataris were one of the warmest Arab countries towards Israel, allowing an Israeli trade office to open in Doha following the Oslo accords. In recent years the Qataris have had close relations with Hamas, providing economic and political support. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has a home in Doha, and the Qatari Prime Minister accompanied the Emir of Qatar as the first Arab leaders to visit the Hamas run Gaza Strip last year.

The statement in Washington put Qatari support behind Abbas in negotiating with Israel. But whilst there was no mention of Hamas, the Gaza Strip, or the on-off Palestinian reconciliation talks, Qatar remains committed to Palestinian reconciliation and bringing Hamas into the process. Without Hamas acceptance of the Quartet conditions however, any Palestinian reconciliation deal is unlikely to be acceptable to Israel and the US.

Also remarkable was the presence in the background of the Egyptian foreign minister. This is a positive indication of a pragmatic tendency in foreign affairs of the Cairo government, which is under US pressure to maintain its treaty with Israel and get behind the peace process.

It remains to be seen whether the Arab states behind this move will back their words with actions. Arab states have been much criticised recently for failing to deliver on financial pledges to support the Palestinian Authority. Arab states also disappointed the US in 2009 by rejecting requests to offer concrete steps towards normalisation of relations with Israel in return for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians in the peace process.

Analysis by Toby Greene

As the Obama administration renews its bid to revive the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations through the deployment of Secretary of State John Kerry to the region, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas finds himself caught between two opposing forces. On the one hand he faces international pressure to renew talks, which have been suspended since September 2010, and on the other, domestic suspicion towards the prospect of resuming negotiations with Israel. A recent poll conducted in the Palestinian territories showed a sharp decline in support for negotiations with Israel in the West Bank: from 59% in May 2011 to just 43% in late 2012.

The Palestinians have stated that in order for negotiations to restart, Israel must freeze building in the settlements, accept that a final deal will be based on the 1967 lines, and release Palestinian prisoners detained before the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. At the same time, Palestinian negotiators have insisted that these demands are not preconditions but merely the implementation of previously signed agreements and essential displays of good faith on the part of Israel.

Renewed negotiations with Israel in the absence of a clear conceptual framework, and even a timetable, are increasingly regarded by the Palestinian public as a waste of time. A short video produced in March by the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department ends with that sense of impatience, calling previous negotiation rounds “camouflage for colonisation and segregation.”

While much attention has been given to the Israeli side in analysing the stagnation in peace talks, the Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas faces formidable resistance in public opinion, from within his own Fatah party and from the ranks of the Hamas opposition in Gaza. Deep seated Palestinian suspicion towards the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, coupled with high sensitivity to domestic opposition, has forced Abbas to repeatedly escalate demands before embarking on a new round of talks, for which he has shown little interest, and whose failure could be detrimental to his precarious leadership.

Opposition to negotiations within Fatah

On April 15, Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader and the only prospective heir to Mahmoud Abbas from within his party, spoke to Sky News Arabia from the Israeli prison where he is serving five life sentences for involvement in terrorist activities during the Second Intifada in 2001-2002.

Barghouti advised the Palestinian leadership not to resume talks with Israel and instead seek full state membership in the UN and pursue Israel legally in international fora. “I would advise the Palestinian leadership not to repeat this experience, because the results will be no different,” Barghouti said. “The Israeli government is opposed to peace and is a government of occupation, settlement and extremism.”

Negotiations could not resume, Barghouti added, before Israel explicitly committed to withdrawing to the 1967 lines, allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes within Israel, and releasing “all prisoners and detainees.” Meanwhile, the Palestinians must boycott Israel “politically, economically and security-wise.”

Viewing international sanctions towards Israel as an essential precursor to peace negotiations was shared by Fatah official Tayyeb Abdul Rahim, secretary general of the Palestinian presidency. Speaking to families of Palestinian prisoners on March 16, Abdul Rahim said that negotiations could not resume before “the prisoners are released; especially pre-Oslo prisoners, the sick, children and women.”

This sentiment is widely felt in editorials and in popular demonstration across the West Bank. While US President Barack Obama was speaking to his Palestinian counterpart in Ramallah, protesters outside – by no means Hamas affiliates – were chanting: “No way to peaceful [resistance], only bullets and missiles.”

The resignation this month of politically independent and pro-Western Prime Minster Salam Fayyad threatens a further blow to the path of progress through bilateral cooperation and dialogue with Israel, having strengthened Fatah officials who view the peace negotiations with deep suspicion.

Opposition to negotiations from Hamas

Hamas, which has been engaged in on-off reconciliation talks with Abbas since the Islamic movement’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, adamantly opposes negotiations between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel. A renewed round of negotiations with Israel will likely terminate reconciliation efforts, which last year produced an agreement in principle for a Palestinian unity government led by Abbas, tasked with preparing for presidential and parliamentary elections. While Abbas’ policy making is not directly influenced by Hamas reasoning, the Islamic movement does control over one third of the Palestinian body politic and expresses the sentiment of Palestinian conservatives across the political spectrum.

Following John Kerry’s visit to Israel on April 12, Hamas deputy political chief Moussa Abu-Marzouq wrote on his Facebook page that “despite the optimism expressed by [Kerry], his visit was not a success.” At a rally for Palestinian prisoners at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University on April 16, Abu-Marzouq explained that Kerry’s mission “has failed before it even began.” He told the crowd that all that Kerry wants is to sell Palestinians more “illusions” about tackling core issues that were not resolved in nearly two decades of negotiations.

Hamas has also framed Palestinian negotiations with Israel and Palestinian reconciliation efforts as mutually exclusive. On April 18, a Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu-Zuhri, accused the United States of forcing Fatah to freeze reconciliation talks with Hamas for three months. An agreement to that effect, Abu-Zuhri charged, was recently signed in Paris between Kerry and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Abu-Zuhri’s allegations were adamantly denied by Erekat.

Abbas’ alternatives

In the absence of negotiations, Mahmoud Abbas has maintained two alternative modes of operation.

He has repeatedly denounced the Palestinian use of terrorism against Israelis in the Second Intifada (2000-2003) as both ineffective and immoral, but continues to advocate “popular resistance” (Muqawama Shaabiyah), more similar to the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993). This mode of “resistance” includes mass demonstrations; marches toward Israeli road blocks in the West Bank; the erection of Palestinian outposts to mirror Israeli settlements; boycotting Israeli products; and even stone throwing and limited clashes with the IDF.

The second track pursued by the PA is diplomatic and legal. It began with the failed bid for statehood at the UN Security Council in September 2011 and continued with the achievement of “non-member observer state” status at the UN General Assembly in November 2012. This new international standing allows ‘Palestine’ to seek membership of international organisations, invite the International Criminal Court to extend jurisdiction over it, and to positions itself in international forums as “a state under occupation“.

Although an official law suit has not yet been filed by the PA against Israel – with the Palestinians apparently suspending such measures temporarily at the request of John Kerry – more limited measures have already been taken. On April 10, PLO official Hanan Ashrawi appealed in a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to “hold Israel to account and penalise it” for the recent deaths of two Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, which Ashrawi claimed were a result of “intentional neglect”. In a similar vein, Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe announced that the PA was preparing to sue Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the death of prisoner Arafat Jaradat in February.

Encouraged by the overwhelming international support for Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly, the PA leadership continues to prefer the threat of international legal action as a means of pressuring Israel, rather than a return to negotiations.

Conclusion

Considering the significant domestic pressure on Abbas to forgo a new round of negotiations with Israel – both from within the Fatah party and from the Hamas opposition in Gaza – the Palestinian President currently appears unwilling to stake his limited public clout on talks, the outcome of which he cannot predict. While Abbas will certainly need assurances from Israel and the US to re-enter talks, he must also face a united international community that both stresses the necessity of re-engaging in bilateral talks with Israel and firmly discourages unilateral and punitive alternatives on the part of the PA.

Elhanan Miller is the Arab Affairs correspondent for the Times of Israel.

Fathom issue 3 will be available from early May.

You can read Fathom – for a deeper understanding of Israel and the region, online at www.fathomjournal.org or download the app for your iPhone or iPad here. Fathom is also on Twitter: @fathomjournal

Fathom issue 3 will be available from early May.

You can read Fathom – for a deeper understanding of Israel and the region, online at www.fathomjournal.org or download the app for your iPhone or iPad here. Fathom is also on Twitter: @fathomjournal

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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is not known for his sense of irony, but he might reflect on the curiosity that, just as his country’s diplomatic ascent seemed to have stalled, he has secured two of the greatest political prizes within weeks of one another.

The first was a ceasefire agreement with the Kurdish insurgents of the PKK, on terms that were drastically slanted in Ankara’s favour. That deal could underpin a grand bargain, as part of which Erdoğan hopes to amend the Turkish constitution and run for a newly empowered presidency next year.

The second victory was to extract from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – ‘a man who does not spend his days looking for people to apologize to,’ as Jeffrey Goldberg memorably put it – an apology, for Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara in 2010, breaking a three-year impasse over the issue.

The rapprochement, though it may be too soon to call it that, was enabled by three things: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s departure from the cabinet, the presence of President Barack Obama (who placed the call to Erdoğan from the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport), and, above all, the escalating tumult in Syria.

Turkey is hungry for intelligence on Syria – on its Kurds, its chemical weapons, and its jihadists. Israel is eager for allies, at a time when bullets are flying across the Golan and Hezbollah has its eye on Assad’s high-end Russian hardware.

Israel was especially concerned that any major NATO operation in Syria – securing chemical weapon stockpiles, for instance – might be jeopardised or hindered if Turkey were to object to Israeli involvement. For the past three years Ankara has thrown a fit anytime the Alliance tried to include Israel in exercises or even seminars.

The apology was bad news for Assad, bad news for Iran, and probably bad news for Hamas, which has been drawing increasingly closer to Erdoğan’s party.

But we should remember that the downturn in Turkey-Israel ties preceded the Mavi Marmara raid. Turkey’s reaction to Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9, and Erdoğan’s famous public clash with Shimon Peres on a panel at Davos shortly after the conflict, were symptoms of a deeper condition, interwoven with a broader pivot by Erdoğan away from Europe and towards the Middle East.

The breakdown in relations between Turkey and Israel flew in the face of decades of collaboration rooted in overlapping strategic interests. It was David Ben-Gurion’s ‘periphery doctrine’ that saw Israel establish close ties with the Middle East’s non-Arab rimland – countries like Ethiopia, Iran, and Turkey – as a counterweight to Soviet-backed pan-Arabism. In 1958, Iran, Turkey, and Israel even formed an intelligence-sharing group, the ‘Trident’, that was unprecedented between such disparate countries.

These ties survived Turkey’s transition from secular-nationalist Kemalism, to compulsive Praetorianism – an addiction to coups – from the 1960s to the 1980s, and finally to Islamism in its fits and starts from the 1990s onwards.

In fact, cooperation deepened under Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan who, in 1996, signed a landmark military cooperation agreement with Israel, one that went as far as to allow either country to deploy its forces on the other’s territory. (Erbakan has been less than friendly to Israel since: in 2010, he railed at the ruling AKP and its co-option by an ‘international Jewish conspiracy’.)

In the 1990s, particularly after the peace process got back on track in Madrid in 1991, the relationship was driven by Turkish hunger for Israeli military technology, Ankara’s growing angst about NATO’s reliability in the post-Soviet world, and Israeli assistance to Turkey in countering Greek, Armenian and Kurdish lobbying in Washington.

But the Turkish state itself has changed fundamentally. The biggest constitutional shift over the past decade has been the way in which Erdoğan has brought the military to its knees. Over half of Turkey’s admirals and many of its generals are in jail. Erdoğan himself has admitted that, ‘at this rate, we will have no officers left to appoint to command positions.’

A quarter-century ago, the Turkish armed forces vetoed their president’s desire for direct Turkish participation in the First Gulf War. It is impossible to imagine such a dynamic today. If Erdoğan ordered his (pruned) army into northern Syria, it would go. And that political latitude has changed, though not yet destroyed, the terms of Turkey’s relationship with Israel.

Their ties will be repaired, but can they be restored? This seems unlikely. It is now a cliché to observe that Turkey’s famous foreign policy doctrine of ‘zero problems’ has, in fact, given way to problems in nearly every diplomatic arena: with Iran, Gaza, Syria, and Iraq.

Yet Erdoğan remains, thanks in no small part to his confrontational attitude towards Israel, in many ways amongst the most popular regional leaders since Egypt’s Colonel Nasser, and he is untethering himself from domestic ballast with every passing year. Twenty years ago, insecurity pushed Turkey closer to Israel. The challenge for Israel today, gripped by its own growing sense of vulnerability, is to limit Turkey’s drift away. Netanyahu has taken the first, crucial steps in that direction.

Shashank Joshi is a Research Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, where he specialises in the Middle East and South Asia.

Professor Alan Johnson, BICOM Senior Research Fellow and Editor of Fathom, is interviewed on ABC TV (Australia) about President Obama’s visit to the Middle East.

Professor Alan Johnson, BICOM Senior Research Fellow and Editor of Fathom, gives a lecture at the Australian Institute of International Affairs on re-starting the Middle East Peace Process.

But rather than simply ratcheting up pressure on Israel, Obama’s visit has been presented as a love in with the Israeli government.

This reflects lessons from Obama’s first term, when clashing publicly with Netanyahu did not produce the results he wanted. In assessing the reasoning for Obama’s new approach, there may be some lessons for British policy makers also.

Many of us who want to see a two-state solution will have, at one time or other, entertained some version of a fantasy, in which the President swoops in on Air Force One, bashes everyone over the head with his Nobel Peace Prize and orders the secret service to block the exits to Jerusalem until he gets an agreement. But such hopes are misplaced, and Obama and his administration know it.

Read this article in full at Left Foot Forward.

• To read a transcript of the opening remarks click here.
• To hear audio of the event click here.
• To see video highlights click here.

Michael Herzog is Senior Visiting Fellow at BICOM as well as being an international fellow of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is a former head of the strategic planning division in the IDF, a former chief of staff to four former ministers of defence, and in 2009-10 served as special envoy on the peace process.

David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at The Washington Institute. He is a widely published journalist and writer and is coauthor, with Dennis Ross, of the 2009 Washington Post bestseller Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East (Viking/Penguin).

Michael Herzog, BICOM’s Senior Visiting Fellow, is a retired Brigadier General of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a fellow of The Washington Institute. He has held several senior positions including serving as chief of staff to Israel’s Minister of Defense and special emissary for Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defence in the efforts to relaunch the peace process (2009-10).

I believe that the issue we are about to discuss – the Iranian nuclear programme – is one of the most complicated facing Jerusalem, Washington and the major European capitals. It is extremely complicated because of the nature of the weaponry at stake, the regime type – an Islamist regime with strong anti-Israel and anti-Western sentiments – and because we’ve been trying to resolve this for two decades now, and we’ve been unsuccessful.

It’s also complicated because of the cultural gaps, the gaps between the actors and ultimately because there are no easy options.

Are the Iranians really after nuclear weapons? My answer is yes; and most Israelis would agree. I could give a long lecture about this, but for now, let me just say that Iranians have been concealing and cheating for two decades. That speaks for itself.

Some of what they are doing can only be explained as being for military purposes. An enrichment site, hidden 90 metres under a rock, that only hosts 3,000 centrifuges, does not make sense as a site merely for energy purposes. And their heavy water facility can only be for military purposes.

If you read the IAEA reports about what the Iranians are doing, there is a long list of things that cannot be explained other than for nuclear weaponry purposes, such as nuclear triggers, warheads with nuclear capabilities, and so on.

Even if the uranium they have been enriching to 20 per cent is ostensibly for medical research, they still have sufficient isotopes for years to come to conclude that Iran is after nuclear weapons. The Iranians are developing all the elements needed for what we call ‘breakout capacity’ – that is the ability to create a weapon. There is an ongoing weaponisation effort which has been reported by the IAEA. They already have a delivery system with a range that they can hit Israel, so now they need to develop nuclear warheads for them. We don’t focus on it, because we’re all focused on their uranium enrichment programme, but if you read the IAEA reports, they may even be able to develop initial plutonium capabilities in 2014, and this is even more dangerous than uranium enrichment.

It is estimated by both Israel and Western intelligence communities that if the Iranians make a decision today to make a nuclear weapon, it will take up to six months to enrich a sufficient amount of uranium and around a year to operationalise it. I believe the Iranians have made a strategic decision that this is what they want, but not the operational decision to make a weapon.

Let me very briefly go over the strategic options of how to respond to their nuclear programme. We’re talking about four major options.

The first is, through a variety of forms of pressure, to get the Iranians to change their policy and stop their nuclear programme, or at least limit it to a peaceful programme. I am talking mainly about political pressure and economic pressure, i.e. sanctions. The problem with this policy, which is currently being pursued by the international community, is that, in the meantime, the Iranians are continuing to develop their programme. The international community has been talking to them for years. Is there a timeframe for diplomacy or is it an open-ended process?

The big risk with this option is that Iran can withstand this pressure for years. In the meantime, they can develop their capabilities, immunise themselves from strikes by both Israel and America and ultimately shorten considerably the breakout time to making a bomb. Ultimately they can make a decision when and how to breakout at a time of their choosing and it will be impossible to stop them. This is a problem that Israel has identified. The American red lines put forward to the Iranians say ‘we will stop you only when you make a decision to make a bomb and move in that direction.’

Another option is regime change. I don’t believe this is an option you can rely on. Governments have tried regime change; the US certainly has, and the Israeli government tried it in Lebanon. We have never really succeeded and it is risky. It may take years if you rely on domestic processes in Iran for this to happen and, in the meantime, the regime may reach nuclear capabilities.

So if these two options don’t work, we’re left with the other two strategic options, which are the containment of a nuclear Iran on one hand, and military prevention on the other. None of us want to be in a situation where we have to choose between these two options. It is a very bad choice.

Let me just frame the debate in Israel regarding these two options, as it is very different from the debate in Europe or the US. You don’t have two major schools of thought, one advocating containment and the other advocating prevention. I would say that most Israelis don’t believe that containment can work with the Iranians.

Naturally Israelis feel directly threatened by the Iranian nuclear programme. They believe that even if you can deter Iran from actually employing nuclear weapons, you cannot contain it from dangerously shifting the strategic balance in the Middle East. We are going to face a nuclear arms race, and instability under the umbrella of nuclear deterrence. I don’t want to think of a situation where the nuclear arms race is between Shi’ite and Sunni Islamist regimes. This would be very dangerous.

Many people ask if Israel has a military option. The answer is yes. It is not as robust as the US option, but it would certainly hold the programme back for several years. The problem with the military option is not the operational aspect; it is the ‘day after’. The first issue will be the retaliation that follows. We can expect what I call a third Lebanon war ‘plus plus’. The Iranians will fire missiles at Israel. They will activate Hezbollah and some other Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza who will fire on Israel and so on.  It is not a doomsday scenario, certainly not as Syria is preoccupied with its own civil war. But it will be a challenge. The biggest dilemma for Israeli decision-makers in the aftermath will be how do to prevent Iran from reconstructing its nuclear programme. For that, all types of pressure on Iran currently applied by the international community will be required.

The question put forward to us was: should all options be kept on the table? My answer is clearly, yes. I believe that the Iranians froze their programme in 2003 because they were afraid that Americans would strike against them after Iraq. The fact that they have not yet broken out is because they’re afraid of the military option. They don’t cross Israel’s explicit red line of 20 per cent enrichment of the materials sufficient for one bomb because of this threat. So yes, all options should be kept on the table in order to deter Iran and to provide backbone for sanctions and diplomacy.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers is Research Director/Director UK Defence Policy at RUSI, and Special Adviser to the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.

Although I was asked to talk about the UK policy, I’m not representative of the UK government in this discussion.

Having followed this debate for quite some time now, both inside the UK government and then outside, there is a danger of crying wolf on this issue and claiming that we’re about to come to a tipping point where decisions of a very dramatic nature have to be taken.

That argument has been around for some time and we need to be careful about any such claim. I would say the most probable scenario over the next year will be a continuation of the status quo: no peace, no negotiated settlement, but no war either. The reason for that is I think getting a negotiated settlement between the E3+3 and Iran is going to be very hard. But I think the main parties involved want to avoid war. Therefore, ‘no peace, no war’ is probably where we are going to be at for some time to come.

Getting a negotiated settlement is going to be very hard because neither the American nor the Iranian governments feel that they have enough room for movement for the ‘grand bargain’ that would solve this issue. I suspect the Iranian leadership simply doesn’t believe that there is anything that they could do, short of ending any sponsorship of their regional allies in Lebanon and Iraq and Palestine, holding free and fair elections, and allowing a US-sponsored candidate to take power, that would lead to an end to the sanctions, which after all have been in place since not long after the Iranian Revolution. Even if President Obama was prepared to go some significant way to lifting sanctions, if the only thing that Iran did was listen to the concerns on the nuclear agenda, would the international community then be prepared to lift all or most of the sanctions?

There is a credible case to be made that the economic sanctions are having a really big impact on the Iranian economy. It is probably having quite an impact on Iranian political leaders too, making them think about how they could reverse those sanctions. But I am sceptical about whether I can see a bargain that would allow those sanctions to be substantially lifted now that they are in place. Unless the Iranians believe there is something they could do that would allow the reversal of sanctions, they will not be able to sell to their country the prospect of some sort of bargain.

I think that the US, and its allies, would find it very difficult to sign up to an agreement that would involve very substantial softening of sanctions, if they felt that there was not a deal on the nuclear side that was sufficiently deep and intrusive as to prevent any future breakout. There are plenty of proposals out there for confidence building measures, such as stopping production of Fordow, while continuing with production of low-enriched uranium. The problem is that they are often one-sided against Iran.

So I think ‘no peace no war’ is probably a safe prediction. Of course, you never know what might happen, especially after the Iranian presidential elections. The Supreme Leader is clearly under a lot of pressure due to the sanctions, and it’s possible you could have a development similar to the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran took a bitter pill in order to lift the greater threat to their country. But I don’t think it’s very likely.

So much of the nuclear deterrent theory is based on countries giving the impression that they are prepared to be irrational in some circumstances. Very radical and apparently irrational declaratory policy by President Ahmadinejad can be rational in terms of the anti-nuclear terms. My judgement would be that both sides want to avoid military action. I think that is certainly true of President Obama. In his State of the Union speech he says, “We’re going to end the war in Afghanistan.” What he means is “we’re going to end American involvement in Afghanistan.” Whether there continues to be a war after 2014 is not America’s business.

That’s not the sort of president who is going to take preventative action against Iran simply because their stockpile of 20% uranium is sufficient to build two bombs rather than one. My impression from people in the UK security community would say that Israel’s positioning for military action in the near-term is significant but certainly not overwhelming. If military action was to be taken by Israel – in particular without the operational breakout, without the expulsion of inspectors or a deliberate and very visible attempt to actually construct a weapon as distinct from constructing the capability in material terms to have the weapon – then it would be even more isolated in the international community than it is now.

It is clearly isolated already because of its policy on settlements and the increasingly distant prospect of a two-state solution, but if Israel launched a unilateral attack in the absence of an evident Iranian breakout, a sort of preventative attack of the same calibre of the recent attack against Syria or back in the 1980s against Osirak in Iraq, then this would add to the perception of Israel as a rogue state, and would harm its relations in the region as well as in the United States and Europe. Israel would much prefer any attack on Iran to be carried out by the United States, as much for political reasons as operational ones.

The one thing that I think could trigger a military attack by the United States would be if Iran were to take that extra step to dash to a bomb. Given how much international attention there is on Iran, it would be an enormous gamble by the regime as it would provide legitimacy to a military attack.

My final point is that I think if war does come, it won’t be like the preventative attacks in Iraq and Syria, and it won’t be like the wars Israel has waged on Lebanon and in Gaza. Whatever the immediate retaliation, we would be in a situation which many of us, perhaps, including my country, would be in a state of war with one of the major powers in the Middle East which, in all likelihood would seek to rebuild their nuclear capability covertly. We would therefore be faced with the prospect of repeated attacks on Iran which would become progressively harder as it got better at defending itself.

A war, whether low or high intensity, which would be very difficult for either side to pull out of is something I am confident that the UK is very strongly committed to avoiding.

Dr. Emily Landau is Senior Research Associate and Director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Project at the Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv.

I was asked to speak on how can nuclear proliferators can be stopped and to suggest policy directions for the international community, the NPT, and the IAEA.

Before I move to that though, I can’t resist making a few comments on what we’ve heard so far. This is basically a non-proliferation issue. Iran made a decision to join the NPT back in the 1970s. It made a commitment not to go for a military nuclear capability and has been violating this for years. This is an international issue not an Israeli one. The actors that have the role and responsibility to deal with this challenge are the permanent members of the Security Council, not Israel. Israel’s predicament is that it is one of the countries that will suffer the most from the adverse consequences of the failure of those that have the responsibility to stop Iran, but who will suffer the least from the consequences of their own failure.

The countries that have the responsibility need to step up to the plate and deal with Iran. If Iran goes nuclear, it has implications not only for the NPT but for any international treaty. What does it mean if a country joins an international treaty, proceeds to violate it, and nothing happens? It should be unacceptable but this is the situation we’re dealing with. Because the NPT doesn’t really have strong teeth for dealing with violators, strong states have stepped up to the plate and taken on the role of negotiating with Iran.

However, it’s very difficult to negotiate with a determined proliferator. This is not be a game of building confidence; make no mistake, it is a game of hardball negotiations. Iran wants a military capability; the international community wants Iran to stop. It’s pretty close to a zero sum situation.

With regard to the military option, I would suggest we do not think about this as war, necessarily. There is a whole array of military options. One should also take into account the difference between threatening military force and actually carrying it out. A credible threat of military force is an essential lever of pressure on Iran to finally get it serious about the negotiations.

I will now speak about the IAEA, the NPT, and the international community.

The most important thing for the IAEA – if we’re thinking about future proliferators down the line – is that it needs to change its organisational culture. The IAEA needs to understand that there are dangerous states out there that don’t have any qualms about cheating on the commitments they have made. So it needs to change the way it thinks about its inspections, and to start thinking more in terms of seeking out violations. From talking to some of the inspectors in the IAEA I think they realise that this is what needs to be done, but it is a big organisation.

For the NPT, the most important thing is to create benchmarks for declaring non-compliance. One of the biggest problems in dealing with Iran is the time that was lost between 2003 and 2008 in endless discussions of whether they were really going for a military option. Everything turns on interpretation of the evidence and political interests come into play. The Russians, even when the IAEA report of November 2011 came out were still saying, ‘Does this really mean that Iran is going for a military capability? Where’s the proof?’ Precious time was wasted because states were still putting a big question mark next to that statement.

Fordow has room for about 3,000 centrifuges. That does not make any sense in the context of a civilian programme. Natanz has room for something like 54,000 centrifuges which is what you need for a civilian programme. 3,000 centrifuges, however, in the context of a clandestine nuclear programme makes a lot of sense. It is just what you need in order to secretly enrich uranium to the higher levels you need for between one and two bombs.

That kind of evidence should be given a lot of sway in determining whether Iran is non-compliant. If there’s no good civilian explanation, and there is a very good military explanation, those are the sorts of things that need to be taken seriously. The same case could be made in regard to Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to 20 per cent in February 2010. Though not clear-cut evidence that Iran is going for a military capability, this kind of evidence should be taken very seriously in the context of the NPT.

Finally, for the international community, the best way to stop a determined proliferator is to make sure that it does not become an advanced determined proliferator. If Syria’s nuclear facility had not been bombed in 2007, we probably would be dealing with somewhat of a similar situation that we are now dealing with in Iran. The years that have gone by in the Iranian case have only strengthened their hand.

When diplomacy is chosen, understand that this is a game of hardball. It is not about confidence building; it is about stopping a determined proliferator that is violating a clear commitment that it made according to an international treaty to remain non-nuclear.

Gabrielle Rifkind is Director of the Middle East programme at the Oxford Research Group and has facilitated a number of Track II roundtables in the Middle East on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as on the Iranian nuclear issue.

The Oxford Research Group have spent a lot of time sitting with Iranians, who have access to the decision-making process or are part of the actual official negotiations, trying to find out what a deal could look like. There is going to be another round of official talks at the end of the month.

What is really good about this panel is that it sees things through different lenses, and that is a great strength. We start from the position that you actually have to do business with your enemies. They say extremely disturbing things, behave very aggressively, and go as far as to become, or feel like they have become, a real existential threat. We would also say that in order to do business, you have to think as they do. To actually negotiate a deal you also have to address what the security anxieties are of the other side, but most governments don’t actually think like that.

However, when you are dealing with resistance politics and revolutionary groups, trying to impose conditions means you will fail. We say that you have to understand the narrative, the mind-set of the people with whom you are trying to negotiate. On one hand, we have a ‘fanatical rogue Iran’ determined to bring nuclear armageddon, and then from an Iranian perspective, we have a ‘perfidious imperialist West’, determined to hold back the Islamic nation.

The Iranian Revolution was founded on the need for an enemy in order to achieve social cohesion. Their society has been glued together by its opposition to the US and Israel. On top of that we have seen extremely provocative behaviour from Ahmadinejad, with Holocaust denial – stuff that is deeply disturbing. We also have a supreme leader who is reclusive; hermetically sealed off from the West, and surrounded by a small group of advisors.

Most people would say that the sanctions have had an effect, and it could be that this is part of what is bringing Iran to the table. There are those who are now saying that we have to incentivise the country and offer some juicier carrots.

It is not only about hardball, it is also about deals that are actually in their best interests. If you listen to what goes on in the build-up to the negotiations, there is always talk and finger pointing saying the other side has got to show that it is serious. The truth is there is mutual suspicion on both sides; one side doubting the seriousness of the other. That is just what happens in negotiations. If we talked about Palestine and Israel we would hear exactly the same narrative about not believing in the seriousness of the other.

One of the problems with the negotiations is the way they are framed. We have what is called the E3+3, which was originally Britain, France and Germany, and then China, Russia and the US. It is quite hard for these countries to actually agree amongst themselves. Seventy per cent of their time is working out if they could come to a common agreement.

Talk about bilaterals is a good sign, although because of the elections coming up in Iran in June there may not be much movement. The US and Iran sitting down together is something that they have not done for 33 years. Salehi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, made a statement at the Munich Conference saying that they would sit down with the Americans. However, immediately after that, we had the supreme leader saying – but bear in mind that it was on Revolutionary Day – “You Americans want to negotiate pointing a gun at Iran. The Iranian nation will not be intimidated by such actions.” My American colleagues thought this meant that the bilateral talks were off. However, we read it that the supreme leader has a huge distrust and suspicion but there could still be serious negotiations. He has empowered Salehi to begin engagement and we will see what will happen on that track. There has been some positive signalling going on, such as a slowing down of the missile programme, a resumption of converting small amounts of highly-enriched uranium into the active fuel so it can’t be used for bomb-grade uranium.

If a deal was to be done, what could it look like? In the end, how do you incentivise all different parties? Just making demands doesn’t work. Everybody has to see negotiations to be in their interests. One of the things that we recommend strongly is to outline what the endgame is going to look like and how you get there. There is a lot of concern about that because people think you are showing your cards and the Iranians are saying in the end that they want all the sanctions lifted.

There is an area that is very contentious but key for the Iranians. Under the NPT Iran claims the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. They are completely consumed with the idea that they are not going to be pushed around by the West; they’re not going to be told that they are not going to have what they are entitled to or treated the same as other countries.

The kind of deals we want to do with our enemies are not the deals we want to do with our friends, but if you are going to end the conflict, you don’t want to be talking about stopping Iran, you want to be talking about how a reciprocal deal would incentivise all the parties and deal with the security needs of all sides.