Soft power and a nuclear Iran

When Joseph Nye, a former US official, coined the phrase 'soft power', detractors - chief among them US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - bristled.

"I don't know what it means," Rumsfeld remarked dismissively. For Rumsfeld and others who became known as neo-cons, military might was a necessary and sufficient tool to achieve foreign policy, soft power came a distant second.

After the latest Iraq war, which began three years ago, hard power no longer seems such a desirable or efficient option.

So when weapons inspectors reported in June 2003 that Iran had not fully disclosed elements of its nuclear programme, arm wrestling was not really an option.

Since the US could not engage in talks with Iran, the European Union was given its chance to tackle a major international security crisis.

In October 2003 the EU took its first major step in resolving a security problem outside Europe, with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK travelling to Tehran.

It was a promising start. Iran agreed to halt its production of enriched uranium - material which is needed to create a nuclear weapon - and to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty additional protocol which allows for more intrusive inspections.

Soft power - the ability to persuade without cohesion - appeared to be working.

Building on that, the Paris agreement of November 2004 ensured Iran would "extend its suspension to include all enrichment related and reprocessing activities".

For the EU the Paris agreement was a step back from the logic of escalation inherent in the UN system and laid the foundations for a comprehensive deal which would hold for at least a decade.

In August 2005 this agreement was eventually presented to the Iranian authorities, offering a way of rapidly improving trade and political relations with the West in return for Iran giving up its uranium enrichment activities indefinitely.

It was summarily rejected by Tehran. "They did not even read it," one EU diplomat remarked at the time. Uranium enrichment activities resumed.

Since then, despite more EU-Iran negotiations and a Russian offer to enrich uranium and then transport it to Iran, the issue has steadily moved to the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency and on to the Security Council, where Iran now faces the threat of sanctions.

The limits of the EU's ability to entice and of its soft power appear to have been shown.

Today the neo-con voices, so prevalent before the Iraq war, have come to the surface once again.

John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, recently said: "The Iran regime must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences."

The lessons of Iraq for the Security Council are unmistakable, he warned: "Failure to act in a timely manner and with a seriousness of purpose will do lasting damage to the credibility of the Council."

The Washington Post reports that a US campaign is under way to forment regime change in Iran.

But according to Walter Posch, a research fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies, the EU should not view its efforts as a failure.

"The EU kept weapons inspectors in the country," said Posch, "and [it] got Iran to voluntarily suspend its enrichment activities, which was extremely useful."

According to Posch that voluntary suspension was successful in dictating the logic of the process and its influence continues even as Iran faces the UN Security Council: "The longer Iran voluntarily forgave the right to enrichment the more it became a fait accompli."

After early wobbles from French President Jacques Chirac, the EU can also take heart from its ability to stick to its policy despite Iran's best efforts and sometimes conflicting commercial interests.

But does this show the limits of what the EU can do even with a common policy?

Posch's own assessment is that Iran should be seen as a case apart and that soft power still has a future: "This has a lot to do with Iran's political factionalism, it stops Iran from becoming extreme, but it also causes stalemate."

But for one European diplomat, the EU's soft-power approach will only be taken seriously by Washington when the military option is out of the question because the US is over-stretched or because military action would be too difficult. "It will not be with pleasure but rather by necessity that the US will support a soft power strategy. Iran has not changed that," the diplomat added.

Major analysis feature looking at the EU's approach to dealing with Iran's uranium enrichment activities using soft power - the ability to persuade without coercion.