The Race for Iran

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.

Read the full post »

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.)

Read the full post »

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’.”

Read the full post »

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.

Read the full post »

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.

Read the full post »

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.

Read the full post »

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

New America Foundation/Iran Initiative Director and Race for Iran Publisher Flynt Leverett appeared on World Focus last night to discuss the assassination of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, an Iranian nuclear physics professor.

Leverett began by saying that it is highly unlikely that the United States was directly involved in the assassination.

He noted, however, that the United States has conducted a series of covert activities as part of a $400 million program that began during the George W. Bush administration – and that it is possible that an individual or group that has received U.S. funding as part of this program could be responsible for the assassination.

Leverett also discussed several U.S. policies aimed at slowing Iran’s nuclear program, including international export controls and the Proliferation Security Initiative – a program to interdict shipments of various materials to Iran. He also noted evidence that the United States has sought to have faulty nuclear equipment sent to Iran.

Leverett emphasized that these efforts are unlikely to fundamentally disturb a dedicated nuclear program and will not generate strategic leverage in negotiations with the Islamic Republic.

You can watch the four minute interview with Daljit Dhaliwal above and here.

Jeffrey Goldberg has written yet another post about me, “Bad News for Hillary Leverett”, on his blog at the Atlantic. The piece opens with a link to a recent piece by Jay Solomon in The Wall Street Journal, reporting that the Obama Administration is increasingly questioning the long-term stability of the Islamic Republic and is exploring ways to use new sanctions against Iran to support its opposition. My husband and I have already blogged about that article, the post can be found here. Mr. Goldberg also provides an extended quote from a piece in The New Republic by Abbas Milani, which describes an Op Ed that my husband and I published in The New York Times on January 6 as the “most infuriating” Op Ed of the New Year. We will be responding to Prof. Milani’s article at another time, I would simply note here that, if one looks at the substance of the various gestures toward “engagement” with Tehran made by the Obama Administration, none of them constitutes a serious, strategically-grounded initiative. But, again, that is an argument for another day.

Read the full post »

Chas Freeman has a piece on “The China Factor on Iran’s Nuclear Strategy” as part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Critical Questions series.

Freeman argues that China’s reluctance to impose further sanctions on Iran is a result both of its growing economic relationship with the Islamic Republic as well as its reluctance to interfere in the sovereign decisions of other states.

Furthermore, China does not perceive Iran’s nuclear program as a direct threat to its security and does not feel the same obligation to maintain global stability that the United States does.

For more on this topic, I highly recommend reading Moving (Slightly) Closer to Iran: China’s Shifting Calculus for Managing Its Persian Gulf Dilemma, a monograph co-authored by John Garver, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett published this past Fall.

The authors argue in part that China is slowly moving toward Iran as it balances its interest in friendly relations with the United States with its interest in securing a steady flow of Iran’s energy resources.

– Ben Katcher

Politico’s Laura Rozen, citing a senior non-proliferation expert from within the Obama administration, reports that Iran has made a formal counter-offer to the P5+1 fuel swap deal.

Here are the key graphs:

A U.S. nonproliferation hand confirmed Sunday that Iran had offered a formal response in late December or early January. While the Iranian fuel-swap response was said to have been conveyed by the highest levels of the Iranian government, U.S. officials contacted Sunday gave no public indication that they have any interest in the counter-offer.

The Tehran Research Reactor proposal, or TRR, calls on Iran to immediately send 1,200 kg of its LEU to Russia, and France would in return supply Iran with nuclear fuel cells for medical use. The plan would have left Iran without enough fissile material to enrich for use in a nuclear weapon, putting time back on the clock for international negotiations on the nation’s nuclear program.

Iran’s counter-offer also proposes sending the 1,200 kg abroad – probably to Turkey – but in batches, starting with a first shipment of 400 kg. The offer seems to establish Iran’s willingness to export the LEU out of the country, which would satisfy a key Western condition.

If true, this is a welcome development – and one that the Obama administration should pursue and use to avoid imposing sanctions.

Rozen’s report can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

Amidst the endless stream of commentary regarding Iran’s nuclear program, it is important not to forget Iran’s importance in the great game for global energy.

M K Bhadrakumar, writing in the Asia Times, explains the inadequacy of the United States’ (and Europe’s) energy policy in the Caspian Basin and particularly with regard to Turkemnistan’s natural gas supplies. (The fourth largest supplies in the world.)

Last week’s inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to northern Iran is just the latest manifestation of the West’s strategic naivete when it comes to energy policy in Eurasia.

While the West’s struggle to secure energy supplies is a mutli-faceted problem, 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.

Bhadrakumar’s article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

In one of our posts surrounding our January 6, 2010 Op Ed in The New York Times we noted that “analytic views of Iranian politics since the June 12 presidential election have important implications for the debate about U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran”.  In particular, buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is imploding has the effect of driving the policy argument toward support for “regime change” in Tehran.  This was confirmed two days ago (on January 9) in a news story, “U.S. Shifts Iran Focus to Support Opposition”, published by Jay Solomon in The Wall Street Journal.

No fewer than six senior Obama Administration officials backgrounded Jay for the story; highlights include       

The Obama administration is increasingly questioning the long-term stability of Tehran’s government and moving to find ways to support Iran’s opposition “Green Movement”, said senior U.S. officials.  The White House is crafting new financial sanctions specifically designed to punish the Iranian entities and individuals most directly involved in the crackdown on Iran’s dissident forces, said the U.S. officials…

In recent weeks, senior Green Movement figures—who have been speaking at major Washington think tanks—have made up a list of [Revolutionary Guard]-related companies they suggest targeting, which has been forward to the Obama administration by third parties…

American diplomats, meanwhile, have begun drawing comparisons in public between Iran’s current political turmoil and the events that led up to the 1979 overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi.  “In my opinion there are many similarities”, the State Department’s chief Iran specialist, John Limbert, told Iran-based listeners this week over U.S. government-run Radio Farda. 

Jay goes on to note that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is exploring whether the United States could strike a deal on the nuclear issue “without crippling prospects for the Green Movement”.  He also quotes a “senior U.S. official” as saying that “the Green Movement has demonstrated more staying power than perhaps some have anticipated.  The regime is internally losing its legitimacy which is of its own doing”.  For what it’s worth, Senator Joseph Lieberman (pictured above with the self-styled leader of a democratic Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, when Lieberman was vigorously supporting regime change in Iraq) said yesterday from Jerusalem that we are seeing “the beginning of the end of the repressive, extremist regime in Tehran” and that Washington should support opposition protesters in Iran.

As a responsible journalist, Jay dutifully notes that the senior officials he interviewed stressed that President Obama “isn’t moving toward seeking a regime change as its policy for Iran”.  But, whether President Obama and his advisers want to call their policy “regime change”, that is precisely the direction in which they are moving.  Their efforts, in this regard, will not only fail to produce regime change in Tehran—they will further undermine the already tattered credibility of American diplomatic representations toward the Islamic Republic.    

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

In his blog today at The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg published a piece, “Hillary Mann Leverett: From Iran Critic to Iran Apologist”, in which he notes discontinuities between some of the pieces that I wrote on Iran in the 1990s, when I was the first Terrorism Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the views on Iran and U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic that I espouse today. He concludes that these discontinuities demonstrate I have “lost [my] bearings”.

It seems inappropriate for Mr. Goldberg—who has never spoken with me—to offer any assessment of my “bearings”. More substantively, though, there is a simpler and more compelling explanation for the evolution of my views about Iran over the course of my professional career: I have learned from experience—including experience actually negotiating with Iranians as a U.S. diplomat.

In the 1990s, when I worked at the Washington Institute—which was created by AIPAC staff as a non-profit, 501(c)(3) “think tank” to influence substantive policy discussions in Washington about the Middle East—I was indeed part of the intellectual apparatus that helped justify the use of unilateral primary and secondary sanctions by the United States Government as a way to pressure Iran and other governments that Washington had designated as state sponsors of terrorism. My work for the Institute clearly reflects that point of view, which had significant influence over the formulation of America’s Iran policy during the 1990s.

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The Financial Times published an analysis piece yesterday that provides a thorough summary of why the United States appears poised to embark on a course of further sanctions against Iran – and why those sanctions are very unlikely to change Iran’s strategic calculations with regard to its nuclear program.

As the article explains, sanctions are likely to fail for two interrelated reasons. China and Russia will be reluctant to agree to sanctions that threaten either Iran’s gasoline imports (which come in part from China) or arms sales (which come almost exclusively from Russia). Furthermore, even if sanctions could be implemented successfully (a highly doubtful proposition), they would be more likely to boost popular support for the regime than to force the Islamic Republic to capitulate to Western demands. International sanctions on Iran have never worked before and there is no reason to think this time will be any different.

As New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Director and The Washington Note Publisher Steve Clemons notes in the article, “The sanctions path has more to do with providing a focus for American frustration and emotion than achieving a successful course of correction by Iran.”

The entire article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

Our Op Ed, “Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely”, in The New York Times on January 6 is eliciting very strong reactions from many quarters. Much of the reaction is critical, which is fine and was very much what we anticipated, given the subject. We thought it might be useful to respond to some of the more widely displayed themes in the critical commentary on our piece.

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