Iran’s announcement that it will not respond to the formal negotiating offer from the six powers until late August was both an expression of confidence and a bit of payback for European stalling in responding to Iran in 2005.

By refusing to comply with a June 29 deadline, Tehran was communicating to Washington and the three European states (Britain, France and Germany) that it is not intimidated either by threats of force or plans for economic and diplomatic sanctions. The Iranian time-table appears to be aimed at showing the Europeans and US that Tehran can play the same game of delaying that it believes the Europeans played in their negotiations with Iran a year ago.

In a speech last Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “We will study the offer and give our opinion at the end of Mordad.” That month of the Iranian calendar ends on August 22, indicating that Iran was delaying its response two months beyond the deadline set by the six powers — the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany.

That brought an expression of impatience from the US. President Bush immediately responded, “It shouldn’t take the Iranians that long to analyse what’s a reasonable deal.”

The two-month Iranian delay in making a formal response to the offer from the six powers appears to parallel a similar delay by the European three in regard to Iran’s 2005 negotiating proposal to them under the November 2004 Paris Agreement. Iran had presented the proposal on April 29, 2005. Nearly a month later, on May 25, at an EU3-Iran ministerial meeting in Geneva, Iran asked for a formal response from the EU. But the EU ministers would only agree to present their comprehensive package for the implementation of the Paris Agreement by July end or early August, more than two months later.

It is certainly not a mere coincidence that Ahmadinejad’s August 22 date for responding to the six powers corresponds to the two-month delay announced by the EU3 at that May 2005 meeting. That delay was particularly galling to Iranian leaders, because they were convinced that the Europeans were stalling deliberately to await the outcome of Iran’s presidential poll on June 24.

It was widely known in diplomatic circles that the Europeans and US were hoping that former President Hashemi Rafsanjani would win the election. But after the conservative Ahmadinejad was elected instead, the EU3 gave Iran a proposal in early August that ignored the previous Iranian proposal completely. It demanded a permanent end to all enrichment and offered no real concessions on Iranian security, as had been promised in the Paris Agreement itself.

The two-month Iranian delay suggests a new level of confidence of Iran in its overall position in the confrontation with the Bush administration. Iranian leaders see that the Bush administration has lost domestic political support for its militaristic approach to the Middle East. They also believe the US understands its vulnerability to Iranian retaliation in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East for any US attack.

A central question for Iran in deciding on its substantive response is whether it can count on Russia and China to block US efforts to organise a six-power move for a Security Council resolution paving the way for sanctions against Iran. — IPS