The Race for Iran

(President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates walk from the Oval Office to the Old Family Dining Room for a working lunch with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, May 18, 2009. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said this morning that “the only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track but it will require all of the international community to work together.”

However, it is quite clear that key members of the international community – specifically China and Russia – are not prepared to impose the kind of “crippling sanctions” Secretary of State Clinton has called for.

Given the reality of great power discord on this issue – and Gates’ own admission that a unified international position is required for sanctions to have a chance to work – it seems clear that the sanctions path will be self-defeating.

– Ben Katcher

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has been enthusiastically spinning its progress in winning Russian support for prospective new sanctions on Iran.  We have cautioned that, while Russia may, in the end, support a new UNSC sanctions resolution, it will not support broad based sanctions against major sectors of Iran’s economy or measures that would get in the way of Russian economic and security interests.  At the annual meeting of the Munich Security Conference last week, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov—a close ally of Vladimir Putin—clearly confirmed this view.  Specifically, Ivanov said,

“If in the future, hypothetically, if new sanctions are imposed, we are sure that sanctions should be limited to nonproliferation only and not be expanded to cultural, humanitarian, economic parts of Iranian activity.”

It is hard to avoid concluding that the Obama Administration is deliberately overstating its alleged “progress” in persuading Moscow to support tougher sanctions against Iran.

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

The new secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev, said at a news conference in Beijing earlier this week that the conflict in Afghanistan and expanding the SCO’s members to include Iran and Pakistan were the top issues on the SCO’s agenda in 2010.  Certainly, these issues are likely to dominate preparation for the SCO’s annual summit, which will take place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan sometime this coming summer. 

The SCO was founded in 2001 by six original members:  Russia and China along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.  Formally, the SCO was created to institutionalize the founding members’ ongoing cooperation on border security, counterterrorism, and fighting extremist and separatist activism, as well as for economic cooperation.  More broadly, the SCO has established itself as an increasingly important factor in Central Asian affairs, Sino-Russian relations, and the formation of an international “coalition”—loosely organized around Beijing and Moscow—opposed to what its members see as excessive U.S. unilateralism. 

In 2004, Mongolia became the first state to receive observer status in the SCO; in 2005, Iran, India, and Pakistan were also granted observer status in the SCO.  If one includes the populations and territorial extent of the four observer states along with those of the six core members, the SCO has become the world’s largest regional security organization, in terms of the number of people and the amount of territory it covers.  Among other things, the inclusion of Iran, India, and Pakistan as observers significantly expands the SCO’s already considerable latent potential to exert influence over the development and marketing of Central Asia’s oil and gas resources.          

Over the past three years, Russia has pushed for Iran to be accorded full membership in the SCO.  China has quietly resisted this push.  In public, Chinese officials say only that the issue needs to be studied, as a formal mechanism through which the SCO can bring in new members does not currently exist.  In private, Chinese officials say that including Iran would change the character and function of the SCO in important ways.  In particular, Iranian membership would make it harder for Beijing to insist, as it regularly does, that the SCO is not an alliance directed against any specific country—e.g., the United States. 

It is not clear that Beijing is ready to endorse full membership for Iran in the SCO.  But, as Andrei Ibanov, a Russian analyst, wrote this week in China’s Global Times, Beijing’s heightened strategic standing “allows it a more direct role in advancing its national interests faster than ever”.  And, as we have pointed out repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere, since 2007, China has become more assertive in advancing its perceived interests vis-à-vis Iran, even as U.S. pressure on Beijing to take a tougher line against Tehran intensifies.  We certainly expect that trend to continue. 

In this context, Ibanov argues that

“China’s best move, particularly as the leader of the SCO, would be to encourage and facilitate the acceptance of Iran’s membership into the pact quickly before a new round of sanctions are imposed.  Doing so would not only add strength to China’s ability to access Iran’s energy sources, it would also very seriously dampen any unilateral moves, whether sanctions or missiles aimed at Iran and its nuclear facilities.” 

Two years ago, a general in the People’s Liberation Army intelligence branch told us in Beijing that China would agree to full Iranian membership in the SCO “only if the United States forced its hand”.  Given the Obama Administration’s gratuitous antagonism of China, over Iran and other issues, it will be interesting to see whether Beijing is more open to the prospect of full SCO membership for the Islamic Republic. 

On the Obama Administration’s approach to China, we were surprised to find ourselves in rather strong agreement with a recent Op Ed on this subject in The Wall Street Journal by George Gilder, an intellectual darling of conservative and neoconservative Republicans for many years.  We disagree with Gilder on many subjects, particularly with regard to the Middle East.  But his Op Ed, entitled “Why Antagonize China?”, contains passages of real insight:      

It started last June in Beijing when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner lectured Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa, who recoiled like a man cornered by a crank at a cocktail party.  Mr. Geithner was haranguing the Chinese on…the need for a Chinese dollar devaluation, on which one can scarcely imagine that he can persuade Chinese holders of a trillion dollars of reserves.  This week in a meeting with Senate Democrats, President Obama continued to fret about the dollar being too strong against the yuan at a time when most of the world’s investors fear that the Chinese will act on his words and crash the dollar… 

Yes, the Chinese are needlessly aggressive in missile deployments against Taiwan, but there is absolutely no prospect of a successful U.S. defense of that country.  Sending them $6 billion of new weapons is a needless provocation against China that does nothing valuable for the defense of the U.S. or Taiwan…

[But] a foreign policy of serious people at a time of crisis will recognize that the current Chinese regime is the best we can expect from that country.  The Chinese revitalization of Asian capitalism remains the most important positive event in the world in the last 30 years.  Not only did it release a billion people from penury and oppression but it transformed China from a communist enemy of the U.S. into a now indispensable capitalist partner.  It is ironic that liberals who once welcomed appeasement of the monstrous regime of Mao Zedong now become openly bellicose at various murky incidents of Internet hacking…

The U.S. is as dependent on China for its economic and military health and economic growth as China is dependent on the U.S. for its key markets, reserve finance, and global capitalist trading regime.

It is self-destructive folly to sacrifice this core synergy at the heart of global capitalism in order to gain concessions on global warming, dollar weakening, or Internet politics. 

How many enemies do we need? 

How many indeed.  This blog is, in many respects, dedicated to the proposition that the United States does not need the Islamic Republic as an enemy.  It is a disturbing sign of how far off the track the Obama Administration’s foreign policy has gone that both the Leveretts and George Gilder feel compelled to point out just how dangerous it could be for the United States to turn China into an enemy.     

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

This is a video of Panel 1, which featured WorldPublicOpinion.org Director Steven Kull and Washington Post Director of Polling Jon Cohen.

This is a video of Panel 2, which featured New America Foundation/Iran Initiative and Race for Iran Publisher Flynt Leverett, and authors Hooman Majd and Barbara Slavin.

The New America Foundation/Iran Initiative is hosting an event today to discuss what the Iranian public really thinks on key issues and the implications for US foreign policy.

Since the Iranian elections last June, there has been no shortage of commentary surrounding Iranian public opinion, but comparatively little evidence-based analysis.

WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO) will present the findings of an in-depth analysis of twelve well-documented polls from three different sources addressing the central questions of whether the Iranian people perceive their government as illegitimate, how they voted in the June 12th election, and how the opposition views the US and Iran’s nuclear program.

This event will STREAM LIVE today from 12:15pm – 2:15pm simultaneously here at The Race for Iran and over at The Washington Note.

The full agenda is below.

Panel #1: Analysis of the Polling Data

Steven Kull
Director
WorldPublicOpinion.org

Jon Cohen
Director of Polling
Washington Post

Panel #2: Implications for U.S. Policy

Flynt Leverett
Director, Iran Initiative, New America Foundation
Publisher, The Race For Iran

Hooman Majd
Author, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

Barbara Slavin
Author, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation

moderator
Steve Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program
New America Foundation
Publisher, The Washington Note

– Ben Katcher

(US President Barack Obama chairing a historic session of the United Nations Security Council on 24 September 2009)

This is a guest note by Steve Clemons, director of the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program. This post originally appeared on The Washington Note, of which Steve is the publisher.

There is a giddiness that has taken hold in some foreign policy circles in Washington that the Obama administration is showing more courage all of a sudden and is finally breaking away from its courtship of China and is flirting with unilateral paths to ratcheting up pressure on Iran.

This new trend is evident in pushing forward a large arms sale package to Taiwan, in a planned Obama meeting the Dalai Lama, and in Hillary Clinton publicly chastising China’s minimalist participation in global efforts to redirect Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

The US Congress has also quickly pushed an Iran Sanctions bill that after passing both the Senate and the House of Representatives now goes to reconciliation — but this bill is outpacing important and fragile coalition building efforts on Iran strategy involving the Europeans, Russians, Japanese, and yes — even China.

There are some who worry that America’s eagerness to throttle Iran without respecting and working through the resolutions machinery of United Nations will undermine the ability of other key powers — particularly Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Japan — to maintain public support for America’s position. Some in Europe are worried that American unilateralist tendencies are perking up again.

The larger trends in both China policy and on Iran are worrisome. In the China case, America — all of a sudden — seems to be tethering itself to policies designed to frustrate China’s own political and policy goals, inevitably raising the price of China’s cooperation with the United States on other vital fronts and undermining the chances of the US achieving some of its most important global objectives.

Dealing with China can be frustrating — particularly as China continues what is mostly a mercantilist path to its own development — with little appreciation for how its economic course is undermining global economic stability.

But a presidential meeting with the Dalai Lama, who I agree is a symbol of peace and tolerance around the world, should not be confused with real power nor be seen as an event that helps the US achieve its higher ordered goals.

Power is earned by the achievement of goals and objectives that the US sets out for itself. Most of these goals — whether in changing the vector of Middle East instability, establishing a new global arms control and WMD nonproliferation regime, or achieving binding protocols on climate change remediation — will require support from other key global stakeholders. That means China. That means Russia. And that means ongoing maintenance of vital European relationships.

The US-China relationship has veered from being overly acquiescent to Chinese priorities and sensibilities to now what looks like American spitefulness towards China — with no sense of underlying strategy of what America’s core national security and economic objectives are and how these converge or diverge from Chinese interests.

In the economic sphere, America and China need to engage in a serious work out effort that simultaneously decreases the most dysfunctional parts of massive economic imbalances but that also helps to restore American growth, innovation, and consumption. But that takes balance, trust building and strategy.

That’s not the course the US is now on in the antics we are seeing all of a sudden from the Obama team.

The Obama national security group is no doubt frustrated with China’s foot-dragging on a number of key issues, particularly Iran and climate change, and to some degree is threatening Chinese leaders with the prospects of instability in its relations with the US.

But the problem with that strategy is that America’s planned health care overhaul, America’s homeland investment and revitalization efforts, and America’s multiple wars are financed today by China. China’s economy is rapidly growing — and China is ascending in terms of global power.

The US needs to get back to thinking through key interests and needs to find ways other than public humiliation and international embarrassment to manage a complex relationship with a rapidly more powerful China.

Without multilateral efforts that include China, the US may get giddy and intoxicated by the self-righteous fumes of asserting its positions on climate, or Iran, or terrorism — but ultimately, the US will achieve nothing.

– Steve Clemons

(Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note and directs the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and Great Powers Initiative. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons)

Ömer Taşpınar, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and one of Washington’s leading experts on Turkey, is concerned that the United States’ increasingly hostile policies toward Iran do not bode well for Turkish-American relations.

Taspinar dismisses the notion that Turkey is interested in joining with the Arab states to “contain” Iran and prevent a so-called “Shiite Crescent” from emerging across Iran and Iraq.

While Turkey does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, it is much more concerned about possible U.S. intervention in the region, the economic economic consequences of further sanctions and the escalation of diplomatic tensions, all of which Turkey views as destabilizing.

The economic factor should not be overlooked. According to Taspinar

Iran is already an irritant and potential source of crisis in Turkish-American relations. Ankara has significant economic ties and energy contracts with Tehran. The total trade volume between the two countries is $10 billion and expected to double in the next three years — given Turkey’s growing need for natural gas and willingness to lessen its dependence on Russia. As a result, Turkey will resist Western efforts to tighten economic sanctions against Tehran.

– Ben Katcher

Tony Karon, writing in The National, makes a compelling case for why the United States should attempt to strike a deal with the Islamic Republic, rather than wait indefinitely for regime change.

Karon recognizes that support for Iran’s opposition is due to the fact that almost no one believes sanctions will work. Sanctions won’t work, we can’t invade (see: Iraq), a deal with a ‘rogue” regime like Iran is impossible, therefore we must hope and pray that the regime falls and the new Iranian leadership – whomever they are – will want to give away their nuclear program, which just happens to be among their strongest bargaining chips. So the thinking appears to go.

On sanctions, Karon writes that

The striking thing about those sanctions is how little confidence anybody has that they will change Iran’s behaviour. Not surprising, then, that “regime change” is seeing a revival – not via a US invasion, but through the “green” opposition movement that has kept the regime off balance since the June election.

Karon also makes a strong argument for why a new Iranian revolution is unlikely.

The lifeline for those in Washington struggling to close down Iran’s nuclear programme, however, is decidedly “green”. The effectiveness of sanctions and ultimatum-diplomacy won’t matter much if the regime is brought down, goes the argument. So, why bet on doing deals with a regime that’s on the ropes?

Well, for one thing, it’s wishful thinking to imagine that Iran’s regime is about to be swept aside by the masses taking to the streets. A regime collapses only when it has become so isolated that its soldiers and police find themselves deployed against their next-door neighbours. In Iran, the regime and its security forces can still count on support from millions of people. Betting on a successful insurrection in Iran right now is just plain daft. And the leadership of the opposition movement appears to have other ideas.

The question for U.S. policymakers and analysts should not be whether “regime change” is desirable, but whether it is a likely outcome given the relevant facts and historical evidence.

Folks like Robert Kagan and Richard Haass who claim that Iran is on the precipice of revolution – if only the United States would lend a hand – have a responsibility to provide evidence to support their claims.

– Ben Katcher

Politico’s Laura Rozen reports that Japan is trying to work out a uranium enrichment agreement that is amenable to both the United States and Iran. Japan is a logical choice to help broker a deal because it enjoys friendly relations with both sides.

According to Rozen

Under the alleged compromise fuel swap deal that Japanese diplomats quietly briefed U.S. officials on earlier this month, some 70% of Iran’s low enriched uranium stockpile would be moved to Japan, according to what one Washington source, speaking anonymously, was told by the Japanese. Japan would then take responsibility for the stockpile, and ensure the delivery to Iran of fuel rods for nuclear medical use.

Japanese diplomats were said to consult several U.S. officials of the possible plan in Washington around January 15th, including a deputy to undersecretary of state Bill Burns, who was headed to New York for a January 16th meeting of the P5+1 group on Iran. The deal was described as having met a key western demand that Iran was previously said to reject: that 70% of Iran’s LEU stockpile would be moved out of the country in one batch. U.S. officials did not provide comment for the article.

It is good to hear that the Obama administration has not completely given up on diplomacy, but then we learn that a U.S. goal is to get Japan to support additional sanctions, which appear to be becoming inevitable. According to Rozen

Getting at least one of the leading Asian powers, China or Japan, on board the international sanctions push was described as a key goal of the Obama administration to help legitimate any further economic sanctions and to make them more effective, a Washington Asia expert said. But Japan’s support for such measures is not yet a sure thing, and the Obama administration would see failure to get both China and Japan on board any further Iran sanctions push as a disaster, the Japan expert said.

Sanctions are unlikely to work with or without Japanese support, but a constructive Japanese role in the uranium enrichment negotiations could help alleviate some of the recent pressure on the U.S.-Japan alliance.

– Ben Katcher

Iran and Brazil are discussing a joint project to develop ethanol in Iran, according to the Fars News Agency.

The announcement is the latest sign of growing ties between Brazil and the Islamic Republic. As Nader Mousavizadeh noted in Newsweek, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stood beside President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a recent state visit and declared bluntly: “We don’t have the right to think other people should think like us.”

– Ben Katcher

Back in May 2009—before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election—we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed”. In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have undermined the promise of his encouraging rhetoric about Iran” and was already “backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic, Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran”.  We also identified the policies that would soon displace Obama’s rhetorical expressions of interest in “engaging” Iran—including a quixotic effort to rope other major international and regional powers into intensifying economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic and a delusional push to unite Israel and moderate Arab states in a U.S.-led coalition to contain a rising Iranian “threat”. 

Notwithstanding the denials of “friends” of the Obama Administration at the time, we are now seeing public confirmation that U.S. policy is now going exactly in the direction we said it would.  On the sanctions front, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in a speech at the École Militaire in Paris late last week that China faces “diplomatic isolation” if it does not support the Obama Administration’s proposals for tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.  We have argued for a long time that the Obama Administration’s approach to dealing with China regarding Iran is incoherent, divorced from Beijing’s interests, and grounded in an assessment of the balance of power between China and the United States that no longer reflects reality.  But Secretary Clinton’s speech put these deficiencies in the Administration’s approach in graphic relief, for all the world to see. 

Secretary Clinton’s statement about China facing “diplomatic isolation” if it did not tow the American line on sanctions came during the same week that China’s Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, He Yafei, called in the U.S. Ambassador in Beijing, John Huntsman, to note that the Obama Administration’s decision to move forward with major new arms sales to Taiwan “constitutes a gross intervention into China’s internal affairs, seriously endangers China’s national security and harms China’s peaceful reunification efforts”.  Huntsman was told that the United States would be responsible for “serious repercussions” if it did not reverse the decision .  Additionally, China cancelled a number of planned military-to-military exchanges with the United States.  And, just in case the Obama Administration failed to pick up on those signals of Chinese unhappiness, Beijing also announced that it was considering imposing sanctions on the Chinese operations of American companies involved in supplying products for the arms sales to Taiwan. 

The folly of Secretary Clinton’s proposition that China will face “diplomatic isolation” if it does not fall in line with American proposals for new sanctions against Iran—which include bans on new energy investments in and gasoline exports to the Islamic Republic—was demonstrated in her own comments following her speech in Paris.  Addressing the Chinese in absentia, she said

We understand that right now, that is something that seems counterproductive to you, sanction a country from which you get so much of the natural resources your growing economy needs…But think about the longer-term implications. 

In fact, the Chinese seem to take the longer-term implications of their decisions about relations with the United States and with the Islamic Republic very seriously, as we have explored in great depth both on this blog and in a longer monograph published by the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced Interational Studies in September 2009.  Moreover, from a longer-term perspective, China’s economic and financial leverage over the United States is rapidly increasing.  Under these circumstances, why should Beijing feel compelled to support the imposition of sanctions on Iran—sanctions that would hurt Chinese interests—simply to isolate a country that Washington, some of its European allies, and Israel have, for their own reasons, declared to be an outlaw state? 

This point was made extremely well in a blog post this weekend by Daniel Larison (who was himself commenting on an opinion piece in Newsweek by Nader Mousavizadeh ).  Larison rightly expresses his dismay with what now “passes for a statement of administration policy towards Iran:  making empty threats against a major power on which we have become financially and economically dependent”.  But he puts the problem in an even bigger and more strategic context: 

Obama has followed his predecessors in continuing U.S. foreign policy much as it has been carried out since the end of the Cold War, but he is faced with a world that neither wants nor has to put up with it as often as it once did.  The best approach for a real, sustained engagement policy begins with recognition of the way the world is now.  There are multiple centers of power, their interests will sometimes diverge from ours, and the issues that we have declared to be global issues in which all states have common interests often do not matter to other major powers or these conflict with their interests in a significant way.  In the future, other powers will become even more capable of advancing their interests and ignoring our demands. This means that Washington has to begin reassessing which interests are genuinely vital to U.S. security and prosperity, and which are extraneous or left over from the Cold War and the last twenty years of activist policy…

Too many Americans in and outside the political class remain wedded to a model of global order in which Washington proposes and the rest of the world is supposed to fall in line.  Anything other than this is viewed as capitulation, weakness or appeasement.  Eventually, Washington will be unable to ignore that the world does not work this way, but that may not be before our government plunges into yet another disastrous conflict or embarks on dead-end policies that will continue to strengthen all the “rogue states” it is trying to punish.

This is an important insight, with profound implications for understanding the “race for Iran”.  Clearly, other power centers are competing for influence and to establish economically and strategically beneficial relationships with the Islamic Republic.  But the United States, in effect, continues to believe it can, in effect, refuse to take part in the race for Iran, because it does not view the Islamic Republic as an “acceptable” focus of geopolitical attention.  From the American perspective, Iran must be diplomatically isolated and pressured economically, until it is somehow transformed into a state that Washington might deem “worthy” of strategic engagement.  This is, truly, a perspective which could only be indulged by political elites in a declining “imperial” power, who resist seeing their country’s strategic situation as it really is. 

Another increasingly important aspect of the Obama Administration’s evolving approach to Iran—a drive to forge an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition to “contain” the Islamic Republic—has also been on prominent display recently.  The Washington Post reported over the weekend that “the Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales” that it had inherited from the George W. Bush Administration “and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran”.  These initiatives are described as “part of a broader push that includes unprecedented coordination of air defenses and expanded joint exercises between U.S. and Arab militaries”.  The Post story notes that “Gulf states fear retaliatory strikes by Iran or allied groups such as Hezbollah in the event of a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States or Israel”.

A similar story in The New York Times reported on the Obama Administration’s motives for these moves:  “’Our first goal is to deter the Iranians’, said one senior administration official.  ’A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves.  But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well’.” 

Those officials in the Obama Administration who have struck us as being more forward leaning than most of their colleagues in their understanding of the importance of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement for the American position in the Middle East have privately suggested that, if engagement “failed” and the policy debate came down to a choice between military action against Iranian nuclear targets and containment, they would push hard for the latter as a way of avoiding the former.  That seems to be precisely what is happening now.  But this approach ignores both the risks associated with a further military buildup in the Gulf and with the “opportunity costs” this imposes on American foreign policy in the region.  As we wrote last May,

The notion of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition united to contain Iran is not only delusional, it would leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free fall.  These tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.                  

And that is precisely what is happening—prospects for a resolution of the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict are now, indeed, in free fall.  As a result, the Obama Administration appears to have given up on Arab-Israeli peacemaking, just as they have preemptively surrendered on serious, strategically-grounded engagement with the Islamic Republic, because these challenges are now seen as “too hard.”   That is not how to serve American interests.   

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

The New York Times‘ Editorial Board fell into lock-step with the Obama administration yesterday, calling for the United States to impose additional sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I have so many disagreements with this article that it is difficult to know where to start, but here are three objections to their analysis.

1. The Board says, “We were glad to see Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly warn China, which seems especially intractable, that it faces diplomatic isolation if it fails to back new sanctions.”

Does anyone seriously think that China is concerned about being “diplomatically isolated” if it refuses to go along with sanctions? It is hard to imagine what “diplomatic isolation” even means in a world in which China owns nearly one trillion dollars worth of U.S. treasuries.

Besides, Clinton is making a curious argument. She is, in effect, saying that China’s energy security requires that it join the United States in imposing additional sanctions. Not surprisingly, China seems to have concluded that, in fact, its interests are better served by preserving cooperative relations and increasing its energy agreements with the Islamic Republic, a country with enormous oil and natural gas reserves.

See this post by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett for more on China’s interests in Iran and its management of its “Persian Gulf dilemma.”

The Board also says that while additional sanctions must be pursued, “the door must remain open to negotiations.” But going down the sanctions path and engaging in good-faith diplomacy are mutually exclusive. It is wrongheaded to think that the Islamic Republic will negotiate with a country that is actively seeking to choke its economy. The idea that Iran might respond to sanctions by begging the United States to negotiate on the nuclear issue is pure fantasy.

Finally, the Times says near the end of its piece that “President Obama needs to speak out more strongly on behalf of Iranians who are peacefully seeking change. But the United States and its partners also must be very conscious of the fierce pride and independence of the Iranian people. Squaring that circle will be extremely hard, but it must be done.”

The problem with this statement is that negotiations cannot succeed if the Islamic Republic perceives that the United States is actively supporting its domestic opposition. It is wishful thinking to think that we can have it both ways.

– Ben Katcher

Secretary of State Clinton, speaking in Paris, warned China today that it risks diplomatic isolation and disruption to its energy supplies unless it helps keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Clinton’s remarks are part of a broader pattern according to which she and other American officials respond to China’s refusal to agree to further sanctions by lecturing China about what its interests are.

Given the relative successes of the two countries’ recent foreign policies in the Middle East, it is no wonder that China does not appear to be listening.

China understands very well its interest in facilitating positive relations with Iran and the risks that supporting a U.S. policy of confrontation may pose.

For a comprehensive study of China’s relations with Iran, consult Moving (Slightly) Closer to Iran: China’s Shifting Strategic Calculus for Managing Its Persian Gulf Dilemma, a monograph co-authored by John Garver, Flynt Leverett, and Hillary Mann Leverett this past Fall.

– Ben Katcher

Daniel Larison over at the American Conservative asks why Richard Haass thinks that repeating the mistakes of the past is a great idea.

Larison is referring to Haass’ article in Newsweek that calls for the Obama administration to adopt a policy of supporting regime change in Iran.

According to Larison

What Haass’ article reminds us is that predictions of major political upheaval in Iran are becoming very much like the consistently wrong string of warnings that Iran is just a few years away from a nuclear weapon. An Iranian bomb is always just over the horizon, and it has been just over the horizon for almost twenty years. It seems that the next Iranian revolution is also always just around the corner, and this always seems to be an excuse for delaying diplomatic engagement that ought to have started years ago. Obviously, opponents of meaningful engagement exploit prospects for internal political change Iran to kill off a policy option they reject anyway. That’s to be expected. What doesn’t make sense is why so many supporters of engagement have begun abandoning a policy that was scarcely tried and has been given no time to work.

Haass represents something no less frustrating than the hawks who exploit internal dissension to push hard-line policies. Haass is one of many advocates of engagement who have lost all confidence in a policy option that they endorsed when Iran was a brutal, authoritarian state with a thin veneer of quasi-democratic practices. Its internal repression and violence did not deter them then, because they concluded that there was little that could be done about this and it was not directly relevant to the most contentious security issues. Since the crackdown after June 12, Iran continues to be a brutal, authoritarian state, but now it no longer wears that thin veneer, and all of a sudden some supporters of engagement cannot call for regime change quickly enough.

Fundamental Iranian state interests have not changed in the last seven months, nor has the compelling logic of engagement with Tehran become any less so. In 2008, the bankruptcy of demonizing and isolating Iran was obvious, and it was associated with a deeply unpopular administration, and so for a time it became unfashionable. For all of six months, engagement was trendy when Obama was widely liked and the policy involved sending Nowruz messages and doing nothing meaningful. It has taken much less time for pro-Green advocacy to displace engagement as the preferred fashion. Incredibly, the impulse to isolate Iran has regained much of its former strength despite its record of abject failure. Politically, pro-Green sympathizers are making it much easier for hawks to advance measures designed to isolate and punish Iran, because they are resisting the one alternative course of action that will avoid the imposition of more sanctions or military action. Sanctions will, of course, mainly harm the Green movement and do nothing to change regime behavior, and scrapping engagement will ensure that Washington continues to have zero influence over what Tehran does inside or outside of the country.

Larison’s entire post can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

The United States Senate passed legislation yesterday that would let President Obama impose sanctions on Iran’s gasoline suppliers and other sectors of its economy.

The notion appears to be that these new sanctions might compel the Islamic Republic to capitulate and give up its nuclear program.

Readers of this blog know that I believe the historical evidence suggests this is a fanciful notion.

More soon.

– Ben Katcher

In a State of the Union address that devoted less time or attention to foreign policy than any recent counterpart, President Obama provided disturbing evidence as to the ongoing strategic regression of his administration’s Iran policy. 

Obama has moved, during just one year in office, from relatively forward-leaning expressions of interest in engaging Iran on the basis of “mutual interests” and in an atmosphere of “mutual respect” to rhetoric reminiscent of President George W. Bush’s description of an “axis of evil” (North Korea, Saddam Husayn’s Iraq, and the Islamic Republic of Iran) in his 2002 State of the Union address.  Last night, Obama equated Iran’s nuclear activities with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program—even though there is no doubt that North Korea has built nuclear weapons and no evidence that the Islamic Republic has done so or even tried to do so.  (For good measure, the President effectively put the status of Iranian women in the same category as that of their Afghan sisters.  While one can take issue with restrictions still in place on Iranian women, the educational, professional, and social standing of women in the Islamic Republic is among the highest in the greater Middle East and clearly superior to the status of women in Afghanistan.) 

There was no mention of engaging Tehran in last night’s speech.  Instead, the emphasis—as during George W. Bush’s administration—was on isolating and punishing Iran.  With regard to the nuclear issue, in particular, Obama said that “as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt:  They, too, will face growing consequences.”  (Departing from his prepared text at this point in the speech, the President added starkly: “That is a promise.”) 

To the extent that there is room left in Obama’s Iran policy for diplomacy, it is diplomacy of the sort pursued by the George W. Bush administration during its second term in office—engagement with America’s regional and international allies, to marshal support for intensified multilateral pressure on Iran, not engagement with the Islamic Republic with the aim of resolving differences and realigning U.S.-Iranian relations.  One could accurately characterize this as diplomacy about Iran, rather than diplomacy with Iran.  It certainly does not amount to “change we can believe in”. 

Obama’s retreat from any serious effort to develop a genuine strategy for engaging Tehran is matched by the absence of a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the array of challenges confronting the United States in the broader Middle East.  The President said, literally, nothing—not a word—about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Arab-Israeli peacemaking.  His remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan focused on how U.S. military involvement in these conflicts is coming to an end.  It would seem that, under President Obama, America’s “grand strategy” for the Middle East has been reduced to killing as many jihadist terrorists as possible.      

The lack of a comprehensive strategy for the broader Middle East has important implications for the Obama administration’s approach to Iran.  In his speech last night, President Obama evinced no recognition that a more constructive relationship with Tehran is essential for the United States to achieve its high-priority policy objectives in the region.  There was certainly no sign of interest in engaging the Islamic Republic regarding post-conflict stabilization in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Iranian officials and analysts in Tehran have already begun to suggest that, if the United States moves ahead with additional sanctions or other coercive measures, Tehran might feel compelled to reduce its cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Indeed, Iran declined to attend an international conference on Afghanistan in London this week.  According to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Iran opted not to take part because

the approach of the conference is in line with increasing military action, following double standards on [fighting] terrorism, overlooking the roots or problems and not using regional potentialities in solving the problems in Afghanistan (emphasis added). 

The Obama Administration’s approach could well end up increasing the risks of proxy conflicts between the United States and the Islamic Republic in both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Besides President Obama’s rhetoric, we observed what we thought was another important indicator of the strategic drift—and, consequently, the poor prospects of success—in the Obama Administrtion’s foreign policy.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not attend last night’s State of the Union address.  To be fair, she is in London attending the aforementioned conference on Afghanistan and a similar meeting on Yemen, so she had an acceptable excuse.  But, on the same day that President Obama would deliver his State of the Union speech, Secretary Clinton gave an interview to PBS in which she indicated that she did not anticipate staying on as America’s chief diplomat in an Obama second term.  The Secretary professed to be worn out by the rigorous demands of her job.  We do not doubt that Secretary Clinton is working hard.  But we took her statements as a tacit vote of no confidence in the direction of American foreign policy under President Obama.  A year in, there have been no foreign policy successes of note.  The prospects for major achievements over the next 2-3 years are not good.  Most likely, what Secretary Clinton can look forward to during the balance of her tenure is a hard and unrewarding slog.  From that vantage, a return to private life might not look so bad.  

Other harbingers about the direction of America’s Iran policy are not good.  The Israel Project—which describes itself as an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom, and peace…to help protect Israel, reduce anti-Semitism and increase pride in Israel”—announced earlier this week that it had purchased air time on CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for an extensive ad campaign, starting on the day of President Obama’s State of the Union address and continuing for three days thereafter.  This campaign is intended to highlight the Iranian “threat” to Israel—and, by extension, to the United States.  (To see the signature ad in the campaign, click here .)  The text of the ad script reads, in part

Imagine Washington, DC under missile attack from nearby Baltimore.  Since 2005, Israel has been targeted by 8,000 rocket and missile attacks from HAMAS and Hezbollah.  Iran has helped fund, train, and arm these terrorist groups.  A nuclear Iran is a threat to peace, emboldens extremists…and could give nuclear materials to terrorists with the ability to strike—anywhere.       

This, of course, harkens back to the same kinds of advertising and public “educaction” that helped to pave the way for the American invasion of Iraq.  And, in a manner reminiscent of the run-up to congressional action on the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia is now scheduled to hold a hearing next week on what the United States can do to assist the opposition in Iran. 

We always knew that President Obama would have to be prepared to fight in order to take America’s Iran policy in a new direction that truly served American interests and promoted regional stability.  We were never sure he was really up to this fight.  But, it is truly disappointing to see how rapidly he is pre-emptively surrendering to the other side.     

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

It didn’t take long for the neoconservatives to take advantage of Richard Haass’ call for a U.S. effort to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Robert Kagan, writing in today’s Washington Post, cites Haass’ piece while arguing that the Islamic Republic is on the verge of crumbling – if only the Obama administration would support the protesters.

Two things stand out about Kagan’s analysis.

First is that he correctly points out that the P5+1 uranium enrichment swap would constitute only a small step toward improving relations between Washington and Tehran. But rather than proposing a more ambitious proposal, Kagan seems to assume that one is impossible.

Second, it seems as if every political analyst in Washington has become an expert on Iran’s notoriously opaque internal political dynamics. What evidence is Kagan basing his conclusion that “this is a tear down this wall moment?”

– Ben Katcher

Normally I can’t tell the difference between Newsweek and Time. Their websites even have similar color schemes.

But while Newsweek recently ran a piece by Richard Haass advocating for regime change in Iran, Time published a much more insightful article by Massimo Calabresi.

Calbresi explains that the Obama administration’s core strategy – to offer “engagement” as a way to generate international support for more sanctions on the Islamic Republic – has failed.

From the piece:

The idea behind Obama’s engagement effort, though, was that if Iran kept stalling, countries previously opposed to sanctions, such as Russia, China and Germany, could be persuaded to support new punitive measures aimed at forcing Iran to cooperate. “We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in last April.

So, how’s that working? Not very well, by all indications.

True, with Iran stalling, the Germans seem to be playing along, although earlier in the year they said they’d only support sanctions if approved by the U.N. And while senior American officials and European diplomats say Russia has come around to supporting sanctions, nothing that has happened publicly has confirmed that claim — and the signals from Moscow remain mixed.

But where Russia had previously taken the lead in blocking sanctions efforts, that role has now fallen to China, which has a rapidly growing stake in Iran’s energy sector. Beijing believes that while Iran must be brought into compliance with the international nonproliferation regime, its nuclear program does not represent an imminent danger of producing nuclear weapons and diplomacy should therefore be given a lot more time.

Beijing has bluntly opposed any effort to introduce new punitive measures against Iran, and last weekend China’s Deputy Foreign Minister snubbed his counterparts from the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and Germany and sent only a low-level official to a meeting called to discuss new efforts to pressure Tehran. “The meeting we had last weekend was not great,” says a European diplomat. “The Chinese sent someone along who said, ‘I can’t make any decisions.’ ” Worse, the Chinese have become allergic to the very mention of sanctions. After last weekend’s meeting, a senior European diplomat speaking on background with reporters declined even to utter the word sanctions for fear of upsetting Beijing.

Without China, which holds a Security Council veto, there is no prospect of meaningful sanctions at the U.N. That in turn means difficulty getting tough sanctions from all the European countries, some of whom can’t act without U.N. approval.

As Calabresi indicates, the Obama administration has perhaps inadvertently set itself on a strategically counter-productive path of sanctions, threats, and indefinite conflict with the Islamic Republic – while China, Russia and others continue to “race for Iran.”

– Ben Katcher

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass recently published an article in Newsweek advocating that the United States adopt a policy of regime change in Tehran. The article has received quite a bit of attention including two posts on this blog; one by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett and another by Henry Prect.

Foreign Policy Blogger, Harvard University Professor and realist extraordinaire Stephen Walt has also weighed in against Haass’ position. Walt appears to have the same awful déjà vu feeling that the Leveretts expressed in their piece, as he compares Haass’ position to Kenneth Pollack’s intellectual justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In his post, titled “Nothing More Dangerous Than A Recovering ‘Realist’?,” Walt lays out three reasons why Haass’ position is misguided.

First, after acknowledging that “ousting regimes and replacing them with something better is easier said than done,” he assumes that anything would be preferable to what we have now. Maybe so, but our track record in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central America, and elsewhere suggests that U.S. meddling often makes things worse. Like the liberal interventionists he has sometimes sparred with in the past, Haass simply cannot imagine leaving well enough alone, and letting Iran’s own people determine their own political future. A hands-off approach is not an endorsement of the clerics or the brutal behavior of the Revolutionary Guards; it is merely recognition that further meddling on our part might be counterproductive.

Second, as Richard Silverstein points out on his blog, Haass’ approach lacks patience. Repairing the troubled U.S.-Iran relationship cannot be accomplished in a month or even a year, and the kind of posturing and pressure that Haass is calling for is more likely to retard progress than advance it. Ordinary Iranians are already convinced that the United States has long interfered in their affairs for various nefarious purposes — and with some reason — and putting on the full-court press isn’t going to reduce those concerns. Indeed, it will surely exacerbate them.

Third, a policy of “regime change-lite” puts us one step closer to actual war. Haass is saying in effect that Iran’s government has no legitimacy or standing and that we ought to help bring it down. Attacking Iran is not a practical goal right now, but getting rid of the regime ought to be. So what happens when sanctions and speeches and ostracism don’t work, and Iran continues to develop its enrichment program? Wait another year or two, and Haass will find himself sounding even more like Kenneth Pollack, telling us that he has ever so reluctantly concluded that we have no choice but to bomb.

The entire post can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

As we noted yesterday, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass has attracted considerable attention with an opinion piece in Newsweek entitled, “Enough is Enough: Why We Can No Longer Remain on the Sidelines in the Struggle for Regime Change in Iran”.  As we reflected on Richard’s arguments, we recalled another high profile piece of policy advocacy, in which Richard was centrally involved, that also employed the repeated “usage” of the word “enough” to underscore America’s determination to remove a Middle Eastern leadership deemed too problematic to tolerate any further:  “How much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq’s noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: ‘Enough. Enough’.”  

That quote is from Secretary of State Colin Powell’s now infamous February 5, 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council, making the case for coercive regime change in Iraq.  Richard, who was then serving as Powell’s Director of Policy Planning, had an important role in helping his boss prepare for the presentation.  Powell’s speech to the Security Council did much to facilitate the herd-like rush to support the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq—one of the biggest debacles in post-World War II American foreign policy.  Of course, the presentation turned out to have been based on faulty, incorrect, and, in some cases, downright fraudulent intelligence as well as wholly unrealistic assumptions guiding the analysis of that intelligence.  Now, the man who was Powell’s principal policy advisor during the preparation of that speech tells us, regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran, that, once again, “Enough is Enough.”—the United States and its international partners should adopt regime change as the explicit objective of their Iran policy. 

In his book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars, Richard described his position on the 2003 invasion of Iraq as being only “60/40 against going to war”—even though, before President George W. Bush took office, Richard had been one of the few prominent Republican foreign policy experts arguing against adopting regime change as the objective American policy towards Iraq.  Looking back on his service in the George W. Bush administration, Richard writes, “Had I known then what I know now, that Iraq no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction, then it would have become a 90/10 decision against the war, and in that circumstance I would have left had the president gone ahead all the same.”

Against that backdrop, what would Richard say about adopting regime change as the goal of American policy toward Iran if he knew that the outcome of the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election was not stolen?  The basis for Richard’s claim that the election had to have been stolen is eerily similar to the arguments in 2002-03 to justify claims that Saddam had to have WMD:  “There’s no other explanation for why the [Iranian government] would have reacted in such a heavy handed manner. If they had the ballots on their side, they could have wrapped themselves in the cloak of democracy…Why would the regime act with the haste and secrecy and heavy handedness if they didn’t have to?”  (All of us should recall that, in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, advocates of coercive regime change frequently argued that, if Saddam did not have WMD, he would surely come clean and cooperated with international inspectors to resolve the issue.)   

What would Richard say about pursuing regime change in Iran if he knew that the Green Movement did not represent a majority of Iranian society?  Richard seems very certain in his judgments about contemporary Iranian politics—a subject about which Henry Precht wisely counseled caution in yesterday’s post —but presents far less evidence in support of those judgments than Secretary Powell presented to the Security Council in support of his (utterly erroneous) judgments about Saddam Hussein’s WMD capabilities.

In keeping with his realist credentials, Richard acknowledges in his current Newsweek piece that “the United States must…work with undemocratic China to rein in North Korea and with autocratic Russia to reduce each side’s nuclear arsenal.”  Why does the United States not also need to work with the Islamic Republic to put the strategically vital Middle East on a more stable trajectory?  Richard asserts that nuclear diplomacy with Iran is “going nowhere”.  But that is not a reason for pursuing regime change—rather, that is a reason for the Obama Administration to make a serious offer, which it has yet to do. 

Beyond the nuclear issue, the Obama Administration has declined to address Tehran’s repeated expressions of interest in a “comprehensive framework” for U.S.-Iranian negotiations.  How does Richard think that the United States will be able to achieve any of its high priority objectives in the Middle East—Arab-Israeli peace, post-conflict stabilization in Iraq and Afghanistan, curbing WMD proliferation, assuring adequate supplies of oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf to international energy markets, etc.—without a more positive and productive relationship with the Islamic Republic?

Richard’s Newsweek article is likely to do real damage to American interests in Iran and the Middle East more broadly.  It is altogether too easy to imagine him being asked to testify to Congress on behalf of a new “Iran Liberation Act.”  This is especially ironic because, in 1998, Richard had the insight and political courage to oppose passage of the Iraq Liberation Act.  But the measures that he now recommends vis-à-vis Iran are strikingly reminiscent of key elements of the Iraq Liberation Act.   That law’s stated purpose was “to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq.”  It roundly criticized Iraq for having ignored UN Security Council resolutions.  More specifically, the Iraq Liberation Act authorized the president to support Iraqi opposition groups with broadcasting and humanitarian assistance.  (It also authorized the president to provide military training and equipment to Iraqi oppositionists, although Richard does not advocate a similar initiative for Iranian oppositionists in his Newsweek piece.)  While the law explicitly did not grant the president authority to use military force to achieve regime change in Iraq, two months after the Iraq Liberation Act was passed, then President Clinton launched Operation Dessert Fox, a four-day bombing campaign against Iraqi targets.  Four years later, President George W. Bush used the Iraq Liberation Act as part of his campaign to lay the groundwork for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. 

Following Richard Haass’s advice today will put the United States on a path toward a similarly misguided and counterproductive policy course.

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett 

Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has attracted considerable notice with an opinion piece out now in Newsweek arguing that “the United States, European governments, and others should shift their Iran policy toward increasing the prospects for political change” in the Islamic Republic–in sum, that the United States and its international partners should adopt regime change in Tehran as the explicit goal of their Iran policy.  For someone who has for a long time been identified as a prominent advocate of foreign policy realism, this is a remarkable statement to say the least.

In the interest of full disclosure, we should state up front that both of us have known Richard Haass for many years.  Both of us worked for him during his tenure as the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning.  Moreover, Richard was Flynt’s best man at our wedding seven years ago.  However, it should come as no surprise to our readers when we say that we disagree profoundly with Richard’s Newsweek piece–both in its assessment of Iranian domestic politics and its prescription for America’s Iran policy. 

Rather than offer our own detailed rejoinder, we are pleased to present the following post by Henry Precht, published here with his permission.  Henry occupies a unique position in the circle of those concerned about the historical evolution and current trajectory of U.S. policy toward Iran and the Middle East more generally.  Henry was involved with the Middle East for most of his diplomatic career, serving in Tehran (1972-1976) and having charge of the State Department’s Iran desk during the revolution and hostage crisis.  Blamed for the “loss” of Iran, he was blocked from an ambassadorial appointment by the late Senator Jesse Helms.  He is the author of A Diplomat’s Progress:  Ten Tales of Diplomatic Adventure in the Middle East. 

We are grateful to Henry for letting us publish his analysis of Richard Haass’s Newsweek article.  We will offer our own post shortly looking strategically at what we see as the folly of adopting regime change as the explicit goal of America’s Iran policy.

–Flynt and Hillary Leverett     

From Henry Prect:  Realism about American policy towards Iran ought to start with some awareness of the historical context.  Two facts are paramount: First, the Iranian Revolution was, in good part, about gaining independence from foreign powers (i.e., the US and Britain).  When Khamenei & Co. blame outsiders for the recent troubles they are undoubtedly speaking from a sincere (if mistaken) perspective and appealing to a fundamental tenet held by most Iranians (if not by those in exile).  Second, American efforts over the years to influence Iran’s politics have almost always ended unhappily, reinforcing the fear and hatred of the “foreign hand.”  Yes, there have been exceptions:  the schools set up by missionaries (which didn’t have a primary political purpose) and the aid programs of the 1950s and 1960s (which did have liberalization in mind).  But the negative moments have been more salient — Mossadeq and subsequent efforts to strengthen the Shah, Nixon/Kissinger excluding the Iranian people from their calculations, the assistance to Iraq during the 8-year war.  Those are the episodes that define America’s role for many Iranians.

Arch realist Richard Haass is convinced the June election was fraudulent, that Iran is determined to build a nuclear weapon and that the regime’s opposition is close to making a second revolution.  More modest realists might ask to see the evidence.  They might inquire about the views of those folks who haven’t marched or gone on strike.  They might speculate whether the Iranian regime is capable of reaching a compromise with its opponents, whether some give and take on both sides will not be necessary if Iran is to enjoy domestic peace.  A modest and historically informed realist might think that one of the factors holding back a significant move towards compromise by the regime could be the feared perception that they were doing the bidding of foreigners or acting under their pressure. 

Khamenei’s tentative gestures towards Moussavi should be given a chance to develop a bit, free of outside “help.”  What Iran and the US need, I suggest, is a period of quiet, an absence of threats and artfully designed (and foolish) sanctions.  Let Iran get on with resolving its tough political dilemma alone and uninterrupted.  If Mr. Haass needs an outlet for his new and creative realism, he might look elsewhere in the region for countries which have nukes, oppress people or reject their right to elections, break international law and disregard the views of Washington.  Complex and creative sanctions would not be necessary; imagination could be limited to limiting aid.

–Henry Precht, Bethesda, Maryland

In the aftermath of the latest diplomatic row between Turkey and Israel, Ankara’s Deputy Chairman of External Affairs Suat Kiniklioglu penned an op-ed in Friday’s New York Times that asks for the United States, Europe, and Israel to acknowledge Turkey’s role as an ascending regional power and begin to treat it as such.

He says

I remember vividly the days when the United States criticized Turkey for engaging with Syria at a time when Washington and the Europeans were trying to isolate Syria. Today we see a full reversal of U.S. and European policies. Both now recognize that engaging with Syria is the right course of action.

Then, Turkey’s views on the Middle East were shunned and disregarded. The Americans began to revise their position in 2007 and recognized that Turkey is a regional power and no longer the satellite state of the Cold War years. They understood that Turkey needed to be treated accordingly. It took a bit of time and effort to facilitate that mental shift, but President Barack Obama’s early visit to Turkey was a confirmation of that perception.

The Europeans still have a hard time making the mental shift concerning Turkey, which is why our relations remain fragile. Israel appears to be in the same position. It also does not seem to have fully accepted that Turkey has changed and that Turkey’s reentry into the Middle East is permanent.

And here is the snippet most relevant to the “Race for Iran”:

Our regional policy seeks to reintegrate Turkey into its immediate neighborhood, including the Middle East. Turkey is a member of the G-20, a current member of the U.N. Security Council, negotiating with the European Union and increasingly influential in various regions.

Turkey will continue to advocate a new inclusive order in the region and will seek diplomatic means to further this agenda.

Thought Kiniklioglu doesn’t articulate it directly in this piece, part of Turkey’s regional strategy is to develop cooperative diplomatic and economic relations with Iran as a way to promote regional prosperity and stability. For Turkey, the strategic logic of cooperating with its energy-rich neighbor is indisputable and lays bare the futility of trying to “isolate” Iran.

As Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett explained on this blog last week, the trend lines in the energy sector indicate that Iran’s neighbors will be compelled to further integrate Iran into the regional energy equation.

– Ben Katcher

The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States came this week.  The sharpest criticism of Obama’s first-year record on domestic and economic affairs came from the Nobel prize-winning economist, New York Times columnist, and Princeton professor Paul Krugman.  This line from Krugman encapsulates the concern many of us have:

I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt that I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.   

Unfortunately, this assessment applies just as well to Obama’s approach to foreign policy.  For us, Obama was an attractive candidate, first of all, because of his campaign commitment to end not just the war in Iraq but also “to end the mindset” that led the United States into that war.  We and others hoped that Obama’s courageous pledge to make “engagement” a pillar of his foreign policy, especially with countries like Iran, would be seriously pursued.  In his inaugural address, his first television interview with Al-Arabiyya, and his Nowruz message to “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Obama’s early references to engaging Iran on the basis of “mutual interests” and in an atmosphere of “mutual respect” seemed promising to many.    

But Obama’s decision to appoint prominent supporters of the Iraq war to key positions in his administration—Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton, Middle East super-adviser Dennis Ross—was an early and disturbing sign that the new President might not be serious about his pledge to “change the mindset” that guides much of America’s Middle East policy and pursue purposive, strategically-grounded diplomacy with Iran.  Obama’s team has done little or nothing to help him develop a genuine strategy for realigning U.S.-Iranian relations, in the way that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger had a serious strategy to guide their “engagement” with China. 

In the end, Obama and his advisers have spent their entire first year—and much of their political capital—trying to game the Iranian system (by ignoring President Ahmadinejad’s letter to Obama and instead trying to go over Ahmadinejad’s head by communicating directly with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and issue ultimatums (e.g., ship most of your current stockpile of low-enriched uranium out of Iran before the end of 2009 or face “crippling” sanctions) that they now pass off as attempts to “engage” the Islamic Republic.  And if those attempts did not succeed, that is attributed to internal Iranian “paralysis”, not to any substantive deficiencies in U.S. policy.    

But, even as his initial rhetorical pretensions about “engaging” Iran are deflated, the President and his team want to claim that their “engagement” policy has been successful after all.  As we predicted in a New York Times Op Ed in May—before Iran’s June 12 presidential election and subsequent controversy surrounding its outcome provided an “excuse” to back away from serious diplomacy with Tehran—Obama’s professed interest in “engagement” is being used to build support for more coercive measures against Iran, not to recast fundamentally the U.S.-Iranian relationship.  To demonstrate this, one has to look no further than what Obama himself told Time’s Joe Klein this week: 

On Iran, one of our trickiest foreign policy challenges.  We have held the international community together.  Both in our engagement strategy, but also now as we move into the other track of a dual-track approach.  Which is if they don’t accept the open hand, we’ve got to make sure they understand there are consequences for breaking international rules.  It’s going to be tough, but I think the relationship we’ve developed with Russia will be very helpful.  The outreach we’ve done to our traditional NATO allies will be very helpful.  The work that we’ve done with China—including the work we’ve done with China to enforce sanctions against North Korea—will help us in dealing more effectively with Iran.

This proposition—that, because of Obama’s half hearted efforts at “engagement”, the United States is now in a stronger position to persuade Russia and China of the case for sanctions—is now being echoed by many of the same foreign policy elites and institutions in Washington that helped cheerlead the Bush Administration as it launched the Iraq war . 

Against this, our fundamental criticism of Obama’s Iran policy is not that engagement has failed but that it has yet to be tried in any serious, strategically-grounded fashion.  Yes, Obama offered some nice words and wrote a couple of letters to the Supreme Leader (while, as noted, declining to respond to a letter sent to him by Ahmadinejad).  But he has shown no strategic understanding of the imperative of managing Iran’s rise and accommodating it in a new regional order in the Middle East—certainly, Obama has displayed nothing comparable to Nixon’s keen awareness of the importance of a diplomatic opening with China in the early 1970s. 

Lacking such insight, Obama has never seen fit to address the Iranians’ longstanding interest in defining a “comprehensive framework” for U.S.-Iranian negotiations, aimed at a fundamental change in the character of U.S.-Iranian relations.  Tehran has come to view the definition of such a framework as essential for serious U.S.-Iranian engagement, given that repeated efforts over 20 years to cooperate with the United States on particular issues (Lebanese hostages, arming Bosnian Muslims, Afghanistan after 9/11) have produced no significant strategic benefits for the Islamic Republic.  Obama also declined to take concrete steps to show Tehran that he was serious about forging a different sort of U.S.-Iranian relationship.  In particular, he refused to stop overt and covert initiatives to destabilize the Islamic Republic that he had inherited from his predecessor. 

Under those circumstances, there was little chance that Obama’s half hearted—or, half baked—efforts at “engagement” would be seen in Tehran as serious and credible.  In a year, Obama has succeeded only at giving engagement a bad name. 

Obama’s failure to pursue engagement with Tehran in a substantive and strategically serious way has not been limited to the nuclear issue.  The Obama Administration has not even tried to look like it is seeking to engage Iran on the range of daunting regional challenges facing the United States.  During his first year in office, for example, President Obama has rolled out two high-profile policy announcements regarding Afghanistan.  Neither offered any substance (and the second offered hardly any mention at all) regarding a regional strategy for engaging Afghanistan’s neighbors—including, perhaps most importantly, the Islamic Republic of Iran—in collective efforts to stabilize the security environment there and promote a political settlement. 

This is strategically short sighted, in the extreme.  In anticipation of the “Friends of Afghanistan” conference to be held in London at the end of this month, Karl Inderfurth and Chinmaya Gharekan have published an Op Ed, “Afghanistan Needs a Surge of Diplomacy”, in The New York Times in which they quote a statement issued recently by 20 former foreign ministers—“there needs to be a regional solution to Afghanistan’s problems”.  Amplifying on this point, the Op Ed argues specifically that, “to reach the goal of a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, the country must have better relations with its powerful neighbors, including Pakistan, Iran, China, India, and Russia”.        

More specifically, engaging Iran and other neighbors of Afghanistan is critical to any serious effort to broker a political settlement to what remains an ongoing civil war there.  As Hillary Mann Leverett has attested from her own experience as a U.S. official negotiating with senior Iranian diplomats regarding Afghanistan for almost two years during 2001-2003, Tehran’s cooperation with Washington was critical to the initial success of international efforts to stand up a post-Taliban political order in Kabul.  Iran has longstanding and influential ties with a wide range of powerful regional warlords.  In many cases, Tehran was able to deliver its allies to the bargaining table to support the new Karzai government.  In other cases, the Iranians kept some of their more recalcitrant Afghan partners on the sidelines, to prevent them from playing a “spoiler” role.  The Iranians have important contributions to make in putting Afghanistan on a more stable trajectory.  But this reality seems to be almost completely excluded from the Obama Administration’s calculations about Afghanistan.    

The Obama Administration has been just as negligent in its failure to engage Iran regarding post-conflict stabilization in Iraq.  Recent discussion on Iraqi politics has focused on the disqualification of 500 or so potential candidates in Iraq’s upcoming parliamentary elections.  Some commentators have suggested, without any particular evidence, that the disqualification reflects Iranian interference in Iraqi politics.  For a more granular analysis of the disqualification, see the following pieces by Reidar Visser; click here and here.    

Looking beyond the immediate issue of the disqualification, the bigger picture is this:  Iran is and will be a hugely influential player in post-Saddam Iraq.  Tehran believes that there are vital Iranian interests at stake there, and will pursue policies intended to protect those interests.  Iran has cultivated deep ties to an extensive range of important political actors in Iraq.  The Islamic Republic supported virtually all of the major Iraqi Shi’a parties and their associated militias in exile, while Saddam Husayn was in power.  Iran also has longstanding ties to the major Iraqi Kurdish parties and political figures, going back to the time when these Kurdish groups were the backbone of opposition to Saddam’s regime.  Since Saddam’s overthrow, Tehran has worked assiduously to bolster its ties to Iraq’s new political elite and to reinforce its influence through burgeoning economic links.  This strategy has given the Islamic Republic many cards to play to protect its interests in Iraq.  As The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss pointed out this week , the trend in the relative balance of influence is clear:  “the US has less and less leverage in Baghdad these days—and Iran has more and more”.      

Given this reality, Iraq’s future should be one of several important regional issues included on a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian strategic dialogue.  At a minimum, the United States should not let Iraq become an arena for proxy conflict with Iran—as Lebanon became in the 1980s.  More positively, the United States should be working to persuade Iran to use its considerable influence in Iraq in ways that support American goals in the region.  The Obama Administration’s failure to do this, as it seeks to position the United States to withdraw military forces from Iraq, is a profound dereliction.         

President Obama’s failure to engage Iran also has deeply negative consequences in the Arab-Israeli arena.  The United States is not going to be able to pry Syria away from its alliance with the Islamic Republic simply by brokering an Israeli-Syrian peace that returns the Golan Heights to Syrian control (and this administration is not about to put serious pressure on the Netanyahu government over the Syria track anyway).  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been quite clear on this point with his increasingly regular calls for a “comprehensive” peace settlement in the region.  Moreover, by refusing to engage with other Iranian allies—in particular, HAMAS—the Obama Administration condemns its diplomatic efforts on the Palestinian track to failure.  To think that, somehow, the United States can “corner” Iran by mediating Arab-Israeli peace is severely misguided.  At this point, it is necessary to acknowledge that the United States will not be able to broker negotiated settlements on the unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict without a more productive relationship with Iran.         

A year after President Obama’s inauguration, America’s Iran policy—and, therefore, the Obama Administration’s “strategy” (to the extent there is one) for the Middle East as a whole—remains fundamentally incoherent. 

 –Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett 

President Barack Obama meets in the Situation Room of the White House on Oct. 5, 2009, with Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, third from left, and other advisors who had returned from talks with Iran officials in Geneva.

The AFP is quoting a “high-ranking European official” as saying that he or she expects China to drop its opposition to new sanctions for fear of isolation. Only time will tell whether that is the case.

But even if the P5+1 does arrive at an agreement on sanctions, the question becomes, “then what?” It is not clear what the United States and its P5+1 partners anticipate will happen as a result of sanctions. Revolution? Capitulation on the nuclear issue? Both seem unlikely and unsound bases for policy making.

As The Washington Note’s Steve Clemons has argued

The sanctions path on trying to influence Iran’s behavior has more to do with providing a focus for American frustration and emotion than achieving a successful course correction with Iran. Neither the bill that House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman has been pushing in Congress nor a more watered down sanctions effort from the United Nations Security Council will influence Iran’s calculations at this point.

– Ben Katcher

Not surprisingly, Saturday’s meeting of representatives from the P-5+1 countries reached no agreement about further sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities; as we pointed out in a post on January 14, China’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, He Yafei, who has been representing his country in the P-5+1 political directors’ meetings, declined to attend the January 14 session in New York.  (This was the second month in a row that Beijing declined to send a senior Chinese official to attend a P-5+1 meeting to discuss new sanctions against Iran.)  Instead, China’s Mission to the United Nations sent a lower-level official in his stead—and this official made clear that Beijing continues to oppose further sanctions. 

The failure of the P-5+1 to agree on new sanctions against the Islamic Republic prompted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to say, during a press conference in Tehran on Monday, that “we now observe narrow stripes of rationality” in the Western approach to the nuclear issue.  While we hope that Foreign Minister Mottaki’s detection of “narrow stripes of rationality” in the Western approach to the nuclear issue is correct, we see no concrete signs that the Obama Administration is prepared to take a more realistic approach to nuclear diplomacy with Iran. 

Flynt Leverett appeared yesterday on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story for a segment on the Iranian nuclear issue; to view the segment, which also features Tehran University’s Seyed Mohammad Marandi and Ken Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, click here.  Among other things, the Inside Story segment underscores that, notwithstanding media shorthand that Tehran has “rejected” a U.S.-backed offer to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), the Islamic Republic is still interested in a deal to refuel the TRR, and has proposed modifications to the U.S.-backed plan tabled in October—specifically, that Iran would agree to “swap” the larger part of its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for finished fuel upfront (rather than giving up its LEU in exchange for promises of future deliveries of finished fuel), and would send its LEU out of the country in installments, rather than a single batch.  (We, as well as our colleague Ben Katcher, have discussed Iran’s approach to a prospective deal to refuel the TRR in many previous posts; see “Iran Agrees In Principle to Uranium Swap in Turkey”, “Give the Uranium Swap a Chance”, “When Will the Obama Administration Try Actually Engaging Iran?”, “Gareth Porter Explains Iran’s Negotiating Stance”, “Understanding Iranian Perspectives on the TFF Proposal”, “Has Iran Rejected the TRR Proposal? Not According to Its Foreign Minister”, “Interpreting Iran’s Response”, “Flynt Leverett Counsels Patience”, “Baradei’s Proposal and Iranian Calculations”, and “Flynt Discusses the P-5+1-Iran Negotiations on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story”).  At his press conference on Monday, Mottaki reaffirmed Tehran’s continuing interest in a TRR deal .            

However, as Flynt points out in the Inside Story segment, there is no concrete indication—as opposed to some hopeful speculation by people outside government—that the Obama Administration is backing away from its insistence that Iran send its LEU abroad in a single batch, and without waiting for the delivery of finished fuel for the TRR.  This is hardly likely to be a workable basis for diplomatic progress on the issue. 

More broadly, a critical mass of elite opinion in Iran remains interested in negotiating arrangements under which the Islamic Republic would continue to enrich uranium on Iranian territory and the international community could have confidence that the proliferation risks associated with uranium enrichment were being controlled.  On this point, we want to draw our readers’ attention to a new article, “Iran’s Nuclear File: Recommendations for the Future”, by Abbas Maleki, a former Deputy Foreign Minister who is one of Iran’s most interesting public intellectuals on foreign policy and international energy issues .  Maleki’s article offers, inter alia, some of the more thoughtful arguments we have seen as to why pursuing a deterrent capability based on the fabrication of nuclear weapons would not contribute to Iran’s security.  More significantly, Maleki positively evaluates various schemes under which enrichment facilities in Iran could be operated under multinational auspices, thereby ameliorating proliferation concerns.        

Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that the Obama Administration is prepared to incorporate these kinds of proposals into its nuclear diplomacy with Iran in concrete ways.  Indeed, the trends in the debate over America’s Iran policy seem to us to be going in a negative direction, in at least two respects.  First, as Ken Katzman points out in the Inside Story segment, U.S. policy is starting to “shift from a focus on getting a deal to a focus on, perhaps, dealing with some sort of a ‘post-Islamic’ Republic…there is a growing belief inside the U.S. government that the regime is in very, very serious trouble and it is now possible to envision a ‘post-Islamic Republic’ government”.  As we have argued elsewhere, it would be a major mistake for the Obama Administration to base its Iran policy on the expectation of the Islamic Republic’s collapse.    

Second, there are mounting leaks to the media, from inside the Obama Administration and the U.S. Intelligence Community, feeding a story that the Intelligence Community is revising its famous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program.  This story, as initially reported by Newsweek , suggests, in particular, that U.S. intelligence believes Iran has resumed “research” on nuclear weapons—that is, “theoretical work on how to design and construct a bomb”.  However, it seems that U.S. intelligence is not prepared to claim that Iran is engaged in nuclear weapons “development”—that is, actually trying to build a nuclear weapon. 

As Newsweek notes, “this distinction between research and development is unlikely to satisfy hardline critics”.  But the distinction is important in the context of nonproliferation policy.  Even if Iranian scientists and engineers have engaged in “theoretical work on how to design and construct a bomb”, it is not at all clear that such work, in itself, violates the obligations of non-nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. 

One of the NPT regime’s dirty little secrets is that a number of Western countries, which signed the treaty as non-weapons states, have conducted research programs on aspects of nuclear weapons design and fabrication that are almost certainly more advanced than anything Iran might have undertaken to date.  There has never been any serious suggestion that these programs constitute a breach of the NPT.  But the charge that Tehran is actively working to build nuclear weapons will help push the American policy discussion toward more coercive options—a trend that, if left unchecked, leads ultimately to a U.S. or Israeli (with U.S. backing) military confrontation with Iran. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett  

Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition Over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21^st Century”, we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS.  Ed generously notes his agreement with “most of what you said and with much from those you quoted”, and, in particular, with our argument that “U.S. policy should not seek to isolate Iran in its own region, particularly on oil and gas”.  However, he cautions against exaggerating the impact of the recent inauguration of a new gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Iran, noting the problematic past performance of both Ashgabat and Tehran in the previous dealings with one another over natural gas.  Likewise, Ed cautions against exaggerating “the ability of TPAO—Turkey’s national oil company—to develop big gas fields in Iran”.  In particular, he dismisses the notion of Iranian gas going into Nabucco as “mainly a useful ploy”.  (Ed is one of the sharpest analysts we know of the serious commercial challenges that would need to be overcome for Nabucco to become anything more than a “pipe dream”.  We have learned much from him on this subject, and largely agree with his analysis of Nabucco’s commercial viability.) 

More broadly, Ed notes that   

Iran has no surplus gas to export at present, given its internal needs for power generation and reinjection to sustain oil production.  The big gas reserves to be developed in Iran are mainly offshore.  If they are developed—and here Iran’s commercial obstinacy is more the obstacle than international sanctions—why wouldn’t Iran build liquefaction facilities to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to world markets rather than ship gas via a long-haul pipeline through half a dozen undependable transit countries to an inland European market?  Nabucco does not make any economic sense with or without Iranian gas.  If Iran is to export large volumes of pipeline gas, I find the Pakistan-India pipeline much more compelling. 

Ed is a real expert—that is, someone with two decades of high-level industry experience—in the commercial aspects of the international oil and gas business.  Certainly, his argument that LNG is commercially and strategically (in the business school sense of the term) preferable to Nabucco as an export outlet for Iranian gas makes sense.  So does his argument that, among Iran’s options for exporting gas via pipelines, the proposed Pakistan-India pipeline is more compelling than Nabucco.  And he is not the first person from the industry to cite Iran’s “commercial obstinacy”.  However, with regard to LNG, we believe that international and domestic political factors have come together in recent years to reduce Tehran’s interest in pursuing LNG export projects—which makes pipelines the most likely channel through which the Islamic Republic might emerge as a gas exporter in coming years. 

We have been on record with our assessment that sanctions are a counter-productive policy tool vis-à-vis Iran that will not produce strategically meaningful leverage over Iranian decision-making about the nuclear issue and other matters of concern.  However, on the international front, sanctions—especially unilateral U.S. sanctions—place limits on the Islamic Republic’s possibilities for realizing LNG projects.  At this point, only Western energy companies—U.S. companies and major European players like Royal Dutch Shell and Total—are capable of and have experience doing LNG trains.  Much of the relevant technology remains subject to U.S. export controls.  While some European companies say they are capable of carrying out LNG projects without using U.S.-controlled technology, none of these companies to date has been prepared to do so in Iran—almost certainly for a mix of commercial and political considerations.  Currently, the most important new investments in Iran’s upstream oil and gas sectors as being undertaken by China’s national energy companies (NECs), which are not yet able to develop LNG trains on their own.  As we noted in a monograph on Chinese-Iranian relations that we published with our colleague John Garver in September 2009 ,

[I]t seems highly probable that China will not only continue to import significant amounts of oil from Iran, but that Chinese NECs will become increasingly involved in the Iranian upstream.  On their own, the Yadavaran and Azadegan oil fields have the potential to become major producing assets for Sinopec and CNPC, respectively.  As Chinese NECs become more involved in Iran’s upstream gas sector, some companies—e.g., CNOOC—may continue to hold on to ambitions to become involved downstream in the development of LNG trains.  But it is likely to take many years before a Chinese NEC would be able to realize such ambitions without Western partners.  Thus, it seems more probable that upstream gas projects involving Chinese NECs will ultimately be tied to meeting Iran’s internal demand for gas and/or to pipeline export projects.

On the domestic front, it appears that political opposition to exporting natural gas in the form of LNG has grown significantly in recent years.  If one believes that exporting natural gas amounts to letting foreigners gain control of Iran’s natural resources, it should not matter whether the gas is exported in the form of LNG or through pipelines.  But LNG—which, as noted above, still requires the involvement of Western energy companies—has taken on especially negative connotations in Iranian politics.  Thus, for the foreseeable future, Iranian ambitions to emerge as a gas exporter are more likely to be focused on pipeline projects than LNG.   

Just after we published our “Iran, the Competition Over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21^st Century” post—in which we lamented the relative lack of attention to these issues in the Western media—we came across this UPI piece, “Iran Redraws Energy Map to Defy U.S.”, filed from Tehran on January 14 .  For the most part, the article reinforces arguments we made in our post.  However, the article also notes a potential “fly in the ointment” that could work against Iran’s ambitions to help supply Turkmen—and, perhaps, its own—gas to Europe via Turkey: 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki offered last summer to supply Nabucco with 15 bcm of gas a year from 2015.  If that comes off, the Americans, determined to leave a viable Iraqi state behind them would undoubtedly throw their weight behind such a project, if only to tighten the squeeze on Iran.               

The prospects of Iranian-Iraqi competition to supply hydrocarbons to international markets looms increasingly large on the strategic horizon, both with regard to crude oil and internal dynamics within OPEC and with regard to natural gas markets.  We anticipate taking up this topic on this blog on a regular basis.  For now, we would point out that any Iraqi gas that might go into Nabucco would almost certainly come from the Kurdistan Region.  The commercial viability of natural gas production and export in Iraqi Kurdistan is still to be demonstrated.  Moreover, exporting gas from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey would require a resolution of fundamental differences between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government in Baghdad—differences that have precluded the conclusion of a national oil law in Iraq for five years.  It is not clear to us that those differences are any closer to being resolved than they were a year ago or two years ago.  If the differences between the KRG and Baghdad were resolved, Turkey would surely look seriously at Iraqi gas as an option; in the absence of such a resolution, though, Ankara has for some time shown itself to be reluctant to strike “separate” energy deals—meaning actual contracts, not just preliminary agreements—with the KRG.   

Finally, one reader wrote privately to suggest that we may have overstated our case about Europe’s future need for non-Russian, Eurasian gas, citing the recently released 2009 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook to argue that the world will actually experience a gas “glut” with declining prices in coming years.  In such an environment, the strategic value of Iran’s natural gas reserves would seem to be significantly diminished.  Flynt Leverett was a peer reviewer for the 2009 World Energy Outlook and, while he does not speak for the IEA, we are very familiar with the IEA’s analysis of international gas markets.  The IEA anticipates an oversupply of gas, including LNG, in the near-to-medium term, to be sure (this almost certainly contributes to Iran’s diminished enthusiasm for moving ahead with LNG projects in the near-to-medium term).  But the IEA also sees serious risks of a supply “crunch” in the medium-to-long term.  Furthermore, while the unconventional gas “revolution” will make North America self-sufficient in natural gas, there is not likely to be a comparable unconventional gas “revolution” in Europe.  Moreover, IEA officials say that gas self-sufficiency in North America will reinforce the longstanding regionalization of international gas markets—which means that Iranian and Central Asian gas will still be strategically significant for Europe (and China) in coming years.    

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Tomorrow, January 16, is the 31st anniversary of Shah Reza Pahlavi’s abdication and departure from Iran.   To mark the occasion, we bring to our readers’ attention a compellingly sober Op Ed, “Regime Change in Tehran? Don’t Bet on It”, published in Asia Times on January 14 by the veteran journalist and author Dilip Hiro.  The bottom-line conclusion—that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not imploding—is close to the fundamental take-away from our own Op Ed, “Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely”, published in The New York Times on January 6.  But Dilip Hiro devotes more of his analysis than we did to comparing the dynamics that propelled the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 to current conditions “on the ground” in the Islamic Republic.  In this regard, he pointedly draws the parallels (or lack thereof) between the revolution that overthrow Shah Reza Pahlavi 31 years ago and political events and prospects today.

In February 1979, the autocratic monarchy of the shah collapsed when the country’s economy ground to a halt due to strikes not only by the religiously observant merchants of the bazaar, but also by civil servants, factory employees, and (crucially) leftist oil workers.  At the same time, the foundations of the modern state—the armed forces, special forces, armed police, intelligence agencies, and the state-controlled media—all cracked.

The street demonstrations, launched in October 1977 by Iranian intellectuals and professionals to protest human-rights violations by SAVAK, the shah’s brutal secret police, lacked both focus and an overarching set of coherent demands articulated by a towering personality.  That changed when Khomeini, a virulently anti-shah ayatollah exiled to neighboring Iraq for 14 years, was drawn into the process in January 1978.  From then on, the ranks of the protestors swelled exponentially…

Now, the foremost question for Iran specialists ought to be:  over the past six months have significant numbers of residents from downscale south Tehran, with its six million people, joined the protest?  Going by the images on the Internet and Western TV channels, the answer is “no”.  South Tehranis do not wear fashionable jeans, and any protesting women would appear veiled from head to toe and without noticeable make-up.

It is South Tehran that contains the Grand Bazaar, covering eight kilometers of warren-like alleyways and more than a dozen mosques.  That bazaar is the commercial backbone of the nation, with its intricately woven strands of trade, Islamic culture, and politics.  Its lead is followed by all the other bazaars of Iran.  Because Prophet Mohammad was a merchant, there has been a symbiotic relationship between the commercial class and the mosque from the early days of Islam.  Iran is no exception, and the importance of the bazaar’s influence still cannot be overestimated.  After all, it was barely a century ago that oil was first found in the country, while industrialization gained a foothold only after World War II.  So, have bazaar merchants begun to shut their shops in solidarity with the protestors—as they did during the anti-shah movement?  No again…

The attempts of today’s opposition leaders to emulate Khomeini’s example have not succeeded, chiefly because their camp lacks a religious leader of his stature.  The near-fatal blow that Khomeini struck at the shah’s regime lay in the fatwa (edict) he issued decreeing that firing on unarmed protestors was equivalent to firing at a copy of the holy Koran.  Most of the shah’s soldiers, being Shi’ite and often young conscripts, accepted Khomeini’s interpretation.  Many of them had already lost faith in their commanders after bank employees revealed, in September 1978, that top army officers had been transferring vast sums abroad.  Little wonder that, by the time the shah left Iran in January 1979, the army’s strength had plummeted from 300,000 to just over 100,000, mainly due to desertions.

By contrast, there is little evidence so far that the present regime’s security forces—the heavily indoctrinated Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Basij militia, or the armed police—are vacillating when ordered to break up demonstration with force.  On its part, the regime, aware of the danger of creating martyrs and of the historical precedent, has taken care to make minimal use of live fire in dispersing protesting crowds.  During the 12 months of the revolutionary movement that stretched from 1978 into 1979, the indiscriminate use of live fire by the shah’s regime led to between 10,000—the government figure—and 40,000—the opposition’s statistic—deaths.  In the six months of the street protest this time around, the total, according to the opposition, is 106.

The whole article is worth a read.  And thanks for continuing to read us.

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

In an earlier post on this site, “Isolating Iran From the Energy Equation Is Not Possible”, our colleague Ben Katcher noted the extraordinary significance (largely unnoticed in the Western media amidst all the frenzied speculation that the Islamic Republic is imploding) of the inauguration of a new pipeline during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent trip to Turkmenistan.  This pipeline will bring gas from a large Turkmen field into northern Iran.  Ben rightly noted that, in the West’s quest for energy security,

one of the key obstacles to success is the self-inflicted decision to try to ‘isolate’ Iran in this game—as if that were possible.  Iran not only possesses the second largest natural gas reserves in the world, it is also a key geographical bridge from Turkmenistan to Turkey (and on to Europe).  Isolating Iran is not an option when the strategic logic of cooperation is so compelling for countries like Turkmenistan, Russia, and China. 

We couldn’t agree more with that assessment.  In his post, Ben linked to a very astute piece of analysis on the strategic significance of Turkmen-Iranian gas dealings by former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar .  As Bhadrakumar writes

The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas.  But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran’s Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export.  The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports…

The Turkmen-Iranian pipeline mocks the US’s Iran policy. The US is threatening Iran with new sanctions and claims Tehran is “increasingly isolated”.  But Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s presidential jet winds its way through a Central Asian tour and lands in Ashgabat for a red-carpet welcome by his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, and a new economic axis emerges.  Washington’s coercive diplomacy hasn’t worked.  Turkmenistan, with a gross domestic product of US$18.3 billion, defied the sole superpower (GDP of $14.2 trillion)—and, worse still, made it look routine.

There are subplots, too.  Tehran claims to have a deal with Ankara to transport Turkmen gas to Turkey via the existing 2,577km pipeline connecting Tabriz in northwestern Iran with Ankara.  Indeed, Turkish diplomacy has an independent foreign-policy orientation. Turkey also aspires to be a hub for Europe’s energy supplies.  Europe may be losing the battle for establishing direct access to the Caspian.

This is important stuff, very much at the heart of the “race for Iran”.  Three recent reports from the Jamestown Foundation—one by Vladimir Socor and published on January 7, another by Alman Mir-Ismail and published on January 11, and the third by Sergei Blagov and published on January 13—add more dimensions to the story, which we will try to pull together for our readers.

Socor’s piece, among other things, amplifies on what Bhadrakumar describes as the Turkish “subplot” to Iranian-Turkmen gas dealings: 

With Turkmen gas expected to reach Iran in growing volumes, Turkey is interested in receiving more Turkmen gas via Iran, or Iranian gas freed up by Turkmen deliveries.  [Turkish Energy Minister] Yildiz told Berdimuhamedov and Ahmadinejad during this event, that Turkey can use those added volumes partly for its own consumption and also for the Nabucco pipeline project to Europe.  Yagsygeldi Kakayev, the head of Turkmenistan’s State Agency for Management and Use of Natural Resources, told Yildiz that “Turkmen gas will reach Turkey as alternative routes develop”.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had discussed these issues during his October 2009 visit to Tehran while also reaching out politically to Ahmadinejad.  Agreements of intent signed on that occasion include exploration, production, and transportation of Iranian natural gas, notwithstanding US sanctions in that sector.  Turkey is also interested in receiving future Turkmen gas production volumes via Iran, irrespective of the situation with trans-Caspian transportation and potentially to that project’s detriment.

As we wrote in an October 2009 Op Ed ,

Turkey may well move ahead and conclude significant upstream and pipeline contracts in Iran despite U.S. opposition. The U.S. position on this issue is detached from economic reality. However much the Obama administration resists admitting it, the Nabucco pipeline will almost certainly not be commercially viable in the long run without Iranian gas volumes. In the end, Turkey’s approach to Iran does more for Western interests than does the U.S. approach. 

Last month, a senior Obama Administration official acknowledged privately that it is increasingly possible over the next year or so that Turkey might sign its own upstream and midstream deals in Iran.  Recent developments strongly suggest that Turkish policy is continuing to move in this direction. 

Mir-Ismail’s piece focuses on the ongoing decline in U.S. relations with Azerbaijan—a country that is critical to plans for supplying gas to proposed pipeline projects (e.g., Nabucco) that would bring non-Russian gas volumes to Europe.  He notes that

a strengthened Azerbaijan, frustrated with the lack of progress on the resolution of the Karabakh conflict and dissatisfied with what is perceived as the short-sighted policies of President Barack Obama in regards to re-opening the Armenian-Turkish border, considers the US less as a strategic partner…the US might soon witness a further decline in its political standing in the region. 

The decline in U.S. relations with Azerbaijan is important in this context because Azeri gas has long been seen as an essential ingredient to make the expansion of non-Russian pipeline infrastructure transporting non-Russian gas volumes to European markets economically viable.  But it is becoming much less likely over time that anticipated volumes of Azeri gas will be available for expanding a “Fourth” or “Southern” Corridor for shipping Eurasian natural gas to Europe.  And that makes Iran an even more indispensable player for long-term energy security, in Europe and globally. 

Blagov’s piece reinforces the foregoing points about shifting calculations in both Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan regarding the marketing of these countries’ future natural gas production.  Specifically, he notes that “Moscow has moved to revive its gas partnership with Turkmenistan and started unprecedented gas imports from Azerbaijan.”  However, Blagov argues that “Russia now faces Iranian competition in its gas dealings with both Caspian nations”.  Iran’s engagement with Turkmenistan may well mean that Gazprom ends up paying more for Turkmen gas than it might have otherwise.  (We suspect, though, that Chinese imports of Turkmen gas probably have a much greater impact on the prices that Gazprom must pay to Ashgabat.)  And, of course, Russia wants to avoid gas-on-gas competition with prospective Iranian gas exports to Europe.  But, in strategic terms, we think that there is actually considerable complementarity between Russian and Iranian objectives in the development of the natural gas trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus.  On this point, Bhadrakumar offers the following observations:

We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil.  Russia traditionally takes the lead.  China and Iran follow the example.  Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world’s largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves.  And China will be consumer par excellence in this century.  The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy…

Russia does not seem perturbed by China tapping into Central Asian energy.  Europe’s need for Russian energy imports has dropped and Central Asian energy-producing countries are tapping China’s market. From the Russian point of view, China’s imports should not deprive it of energy (for its domestic consumption or exports).  Russia has established deep enough presence in the Central Asian and Caspian energy sector to ensure it faces no energy shortage.  What matters most to Russia is that its dominant role as Europe’s No 1 energy provider is not eroded.  So long as the Central Asian countries have no pressing need for new US-backed trans-Caspian pipelines, Russia is satisfied.

Iran, of course, is also happy to see U.S.-backed trans-Caspian pipelines—from which it is deliberately excluded by Washington—fall by the wayside.  (And, if Iran could eventually begin exporting gas to Europe via Turkey, this would represent another victory for Tehran over U.S. efforts to keep the Islamic Republic in a box.)  As Bhadrakumar notes,

The United States’ pipeline diplomacy in the Caspian, which strove to bypass Russia, elbow out China and isolate Iran, has foundered.  Russia is now planning to double its intake of Azerbaijani gas, which further cuts into the Western efforts to engage Baku as a supplier for Nabucco.  In tandem with Russia, Iran is also emerging as a consumer of Azerbaijani gas.  In December, Azerbaijan inked an agreement to deliver gas to Iran through the 1,400km Kazi-Magomed-Astara pipeline.

More broadly, what all this reflects is the strategic impact of the relative decline in U.S. power and influence across the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Central Asia.  This trend is creating new “optionality” for major energy producers in these critical regions—Russia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and, of course, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  It also reinforces Turkey’s identification and consolidation of new foreign policy options beyond its established ties to the United States and Europe. 

In such an environment, what the United States needs to do is to start practicing what used to be described as classical diplomacy, rooted in the notion of the “balance of power”.  (We are grateful to Chas Freeman for sharing this insight with us.)  Certainly, other important players–Russia, Turkey, Iran, etc.,–are doing so.  But the Obama Administration—like the George W. Bush Administration before it—seems stuck in a mindset that sees U.S. foreign policy as, in effect, a tool of imperial administration.  If President Obama persists in this course, U.S. interests on multiple fronts are at risk of serious damage over the course of his presidency. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett  

In yet another demonstration of the (in)effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s quixotic quest to get China on board for what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to call “crippling sanctions”, the Chinese foreign ministry announced that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who has been representing Beijing at meetings of the P5+1 political directors regarding Iran, will not attending the next meeting, which will be held on Saturday in New York.  The Chinese Foreign Minsitry says that the Vice Minister ”will not be able to attend because of scheduling issues.”  This was the same reason provided for his unavailability for last month’s P5+1 political directors meeting. 

The Obama Administration’s continued pursuit of what it must know will be a failed effort to win UN Security Council authorization for effective sanctions against Iran will only provide ammunition for those who want to push the United States into a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.  Having “failed” at (half-hearted) engagement, the Obama Administration’s looming failure on sanctions will leave many foreign policy elites arguing (and much of the American public thinking) that the United States has no option left to stop Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon except military force.  As we have written and said many times before, such an outcome would be tragic for all involved and profoundly counter-productive for American interests.

Adrian Hamilton, writing in The Independent, argues that most recent Western analysis about developments inside Iran are based on what people on the outside want to happen, rather than on an objective analysis of the relevant facts and history.

Here is Hamilton’s conclusion:

The trouble with most comment is that it is suffused by what people on the outside, and the exiles, want to happen rather than what they think will. Opponents of Tehran’s policy on nuclear, Palestine and the region wish for a velvet revolution that would produce a pro-Western government which would reverse all those plans. But even if the reformers eventually prevail, it is still far from certain that they would overthrow the whole theocratic system or act within the tenets of an Islamic revolution which most people still subscribe to. Nor is it sure, however devoutly it may be wished for, that the reformists have the numbers to prevail – although it is my feeling that they will.

The one near-certainty is that, if changes comes, it will be from within the country not without and that when, and if, it comes it cannot be seen to be at the behest of the West and to the detriment of Iran’s independent standing. Our policy should be what it should have been these past 10 years – to forget all the nonsense of sanctions and forcing Tehran to the table, to keep negotiating in good faith and with due understanding of its imperatives, and to support reform by keeping communication open, constantly reiterating our concern and providing a refuge for any who need it.

You can read the entire article here.

– Ben Katcher

Our January 6 Op Ed in The New York Times, “Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely” , has generated a considerable amount of commentary, on this site and others.  We are grateful to all who have responded, written in, extended positive comments, and offered criticism.  We were particularly struck by one piece of commentary, which we are re-publishing here with permission from the author. 

The piece is by Farid Marjai, an Iranian-Canadian who, among other things, has published several pieces in reformist newspapers in Iran over the years.  As his writing about the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election attests , Farid is someone deeply sympathetic to the Green Movement, but who is also concerned about the risk that “émigré circles, neoconservatives, and elements of Iranian opposition linked with the neoconservative cliques” would hijack the movement as a “strategic vehicle for this regime change”.  From this perspective, he offered what we judged were exceptionally thoughtful comments about our Op Ed.  We are pleased to present them to our readers, and grateful to Farid for granting his permission for us to do so.   

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett 

Because the op-ed piece written by the Leveretts in The New York Times departs from the official line in Washington, it has elicited a chorus of response from many different individuals and quarters.  However, often, it is precisely this kind of critical, bold and courageous analysis that unlocks diplomatic deadlocks, and that eventually may lead to political developments. So in that sense, the Leveretts’ overall analysis and critique of policy have quite a bit of significance, and is a welcome departure from the usual.

The central themes of the OpEd piece are somewhat lost on many observers—the two dominant subjects—that the US can consider engaging the Iranian government despite domestic difficulties, and that the Iranian regime is not about to implode.

It seems to me that the assessment and the exact magnitude of the Green anti-government and pro-government street demonstrations (Dec. 27, and Dec. 30 respectively) became the dominant themes of the critics of this OpEd piece.  But those comparisons are not critical to the above mentioned conclusions.  One can only take issue with the Leveretts’ opinion piece if one is against “engagement,” or if one firmly believes that the State in Iran is about to fall; and, lastly, if one hopes (plans) to encourage an affirmative US policy so the crisis is deepened, to eventually help bring about that collapse of the system.  In other words, there are policy preferences (and critics of the OpEd piece) that have “implosion” in mind as a strategic objective and not an eventuality. So, this background may provide a prism and a framework to decode some—only some—of the responses to the Leveretts’ piece.

On the other hand, understandably, a number of Iranian scholars and journalists feel personally very connected to the Green movement.  And to a varying degree each identifies with the more radical or more moderate demands of the Green wave, depending on his/her political orientation.

But, is it fair to expect the Leveretts to act as mere Green activist partisans for our benefit, with no objective policy analysis of their own?

Ironically, some academics criticized the Leveretts for their quantitative/qualitative assessment of the pro-government demonstrations, as if they themselves could provide any verifiable numbers and tangible evidence of their own. These critics consider their own data as “terra firma,” and the Leveretts’ quantitative analysis as arbitrary!

Some in the Green movement may be against “engagement,” (and pursue the overthrow of the State) but many don’t see engagement at the international level and dialogue domestically as hurtful to the overall objectives of the Green movement. There should not be any assumptions about that.

When it comes to “engagement” and those who recommend serious engagement, the neoconservatives have an ax to grind.  Clearly, they have certain agenda and strategic objectives for the region—the example of Condoleezza Rice mentioned in the Leveretts’ response comes to mind with respect to dialogue with President Khatami.  However, neoconservatives cloak their attacks with criticism that the Leveretts don’t care about “Iranian democracy” and that they are apologists, and that they are accommodating!

President Ronald Reagan’s administration was not too long ago.  The neoconservatives in that government were not anti-apartheid activists.  As a matter of fact, they came up with the policy of “Constructive Engagement” with the South African Apartheid regime.  In terms of Latin America (Gene Kirkpatrick, Elliot Abrams, State Dept.) they were supporting military juntas and, consequently, the death squads that were devastating the civil societies of Central America.  Neoconservatives have a selective view of “engagement”, democracy and idealism.

In their op-ed, the Leveretts make the point that there are those who prefer a military strike against Iran. Many observers don’t think this is good for Iran or the Green civil movement.  Those who follow the insider discussions of the Green wave may concur with the Leveretts’ observation that the ones who advocate regime change receive considerably more Western press coverage. As with the Leveretts, many Iranian activists caution us that the events of today are not necessarily analogous to the events of the 1978-79 period (i.e. the leading voice, Ezzat Sahabi cautioned against this “shabih-sazi“).

–Farid Marjai