The Race for Iran

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.)

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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’.”

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