The Race for Iran

There has been much talk in recent weeks about the possibility of another war between Israel and Hizballah and/or HAMAS (the Middle East’s two most prominent resistance movements, both supported by Iran) in coming months.  Perhaps most notably, President Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, told a Washington think tank audience last month that

“when regimes are feeling pressure, as Iran is internally and will externally in the near future, it often lashes out through surrogates, including, in Iran’s case, Hizballah in Lebanon and HAMAS in Gaza.  As pressure on the regime in Tehran builds over its nuclear program, there is a heightened risk of further attacks against Israel”. 

Just today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Damascus for discussions with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  It is widely anticipated that, while he is in Damascus, Ahmadinejad will meet with both Hizballah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and the head of HAMAS’s Political Bureau, Khalid Mishal.      

But, contra General Jones, after spending much of last week in Lebanon and Syria, we are struck by how disinclined both Hizballah and HAMAS are to provoke another round of military conflict with Israel.  The day before we arrived in Beirut last week, Nasrallah gave a speech on the second anniversary of Imad Mughniyah’s assassination that also commemorated Hizballah fighters who fell in the fight against Israeli occupation (including one of Nasrallah’s own sons).  In the course of the speech, Nasrallah addressed Israel directly, declaring that

“if you destroy buildings in Dahiyeh [a large Shi’a neighborhood south of Beirut], we will demolish buildings in Tel Aviv…If you strike martyr Rafiq Hariri’s international airport in Beirut, we will strike your Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.  If you hit our ports, we will hit your ports.  If you attack our refineries or factories, we will bomb your refineries and factories”. 

Western media reports characterized Nasrallah’s speech as “throwing down the gauntlet” to Israel, while pro-Saudi commentators in the regional media denounced Nasrallah’s speech—and Ahmadinejad’s endorsement of it—as inviting war.  Writing in Al Hayat and Al Arabiyya, one of these commentators argued that  

“previous experience has shown that Iran’s talk of war has been serious when the matter concerns the regime’s interests.  The summer 2006 Lebanon war erupted after economic sanctions were imposed on Tehran, and there is nothing preventing such a scenario from being repeated, a scenario which produced a ‘victory’ Iran and its allies still boast of”.      

But this reading of Nasrallah’s speech is diametrically opposed to the prevailing local interpretation of the Hizballah leader’s rhetoric.  In his address, Nasrallah stressed that, while Hizballah would respond to any Israeli aggression, it does not seek war.  Nasrallah noted that “since July 2006, nothing has happened on the South Lebanon front”.  A prominent Hizballah parliamentarian described Nasrallah’s speech as “historic and crucial”, underscoring that, while Hizballah was not fearful of another war, it was not seeking one.  Another Lebanese politician with close ties to Nasrallah told us that, the day after the speech, people throughout south Lebanon “breathed a sigh of relief” because, in their perception, the Hizballah leader’s speech had substantially reduced the risk of conflict with Israel over the next several months. 

The message that local resistance forces are not out to provoke another round of confrontation with Israel also came through clearly during a meeting with Khalid Mishal in Damascus.  Mishal was very explicit in stating that, while HAMAS is prepared to deal with another Israeli military incursion into Gaza, it “does not want another war”—among other reasons, to spare Palestinians in Gaza the suffering that would come with another conflict, especially so soon after the 2008-09 Gaza war.  Mishal said he had given instructions to HAMAS in Gaza not to fire rockets or do anything else that would give Israel a pretext for military action. 

It was notable that, in our meeting with him, Mishal did not say a word about the murder of a prominent HAMAS figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai last month.  In the immediate aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, HAMAS publicly pressed Emirati authorities to launch a homicide investigation.  That investigation has yielded substantial evidence that Mabhouh was assassinated by Israel’s Mossad, creating tensions between Israel and several European countries—including the United Kingdom— as well as Australia over the Mossad’s apparent use of forged passports for their agents.  In times past, the assassination of a prominent HAMAS figure would have been taken as a casus belli prompting retaliatory action.  One can easily speculate that Mabhouh’s assassination resonates deeply with Mishal, who himself survived an assassination attempt by the Mossad in 1997 in Jordan—an episode that boosted his standing within HAMAS as “the martyr who did not die”.  But, today, Mishal and his colleagues seem intent on using Mabhouh’s assassination to focus international attention on Israel’s provocative stance, while holding off pressures from within HAMAS to retaliate.     

In this context, steps by various regional players that Israel and its friends in Washington are seeking to portray as provocative—Nasrallah’s speech, a recent statement by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallim that Israeli military action against Syria “would move to [Israeli] cities”, Ahmadinejad’s visit to Damascus—are better understood as efforts by regional resistance forces to bolster their own deterrent posture by reminding Israel of the potential consequences of another large-scale attack on Lebanon and/or Gaza.  (In this regard, Mishal suggested to us that one consequence of the Goldstone Report about violations of international humanitarian law during the 2008-09 Gaza war might be that Israel is now more likely to attack Lebanon than Gaza—where Israeli military action would probably generate higher numbers of civilian casualties.)  In his speech last week, Nasrallah noted with apparent satisfaction that,

“when Israel threatened Syria with war, the foreign minister, who is the top diplomat, responded.  This was intentional and not just a coincidence.  I am sure that Israel and Arab regimes were stunned when they heard the Syrian response because it was clear and transparent.  Two hours after the response, everyone in Israel was denying threatening Syria.  This is an example.  You remember [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak speaking about a swift and decisive victory…But what we are hearing today is that any Israeli war should have “modest objectives”.   

If Hizballah and HAMAS are not seeking an armed confrontation with Israel in coming months, does Israel want another war in Lebanon and/or Gaza?  Certainly, the Israeli posture toward both Lebanon and Gaza has grown increasingly provocative.  Violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli military aircraft are not new, but have increased dramatically in recent weeks.  For the past several weeks, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been warning of escalating Israeli threats against Lebanon.  On a state visit to Italy earlier this week, Hariri said explicitly that Israel is seeking war with “Lebanon, Syria, and Iran”.  Likewise, earlier this month, Syrian President Assad said that Israel is “pushing the region toward war”.  Israel also appears to be stepping up the pace of its military incursions in Gaza and engaging in more skirmishes with HAMAS fighters there.  Mabhouh’s assassination in Dubai indicates that Israel has not abandoned its policy of targeted killings, and is now prepared to violate longstanding agreements with European countries not to forge these countries’ passports in order to facilitate Mossad operations. 

Why is Israel doing these things?  Three possible explanations suggest themselves. 

First, it is possible—though, in our view, not likely—that Israel is deliberately laying the predicate for major military action against Hizballah and/or HAMAS later this year.  Israeli intelligence estimates that Hizballah has more than replenished its military stockpiles since the 2006 war, and has acquired longer-range and more capable rockets that significantly increase the damage it could do to Israel in a conflict.  In the wake of last year’s elections in Lebanon, Hizballah showed that it remains indispensable to the country’s political stability, and Hariri’s government has formally endorsed Hizballah’s weapons as an integral part of Lebanon’s national security posture.  Israel also believes that HAMAS is rebuilding its military capabilities in Gaza.  Politically, Egyptian efforts to force HAMAS to accept a blatantly pro-Fatah “unity” agreement have blown up, damaging the credibility and standing of both Egypt and Fatah in the eyes of many Arab observers.  Under these circumstances, it is not wholly implausible that the Israeli security establishment (the IDF, the intelligence services, and the Foreign Ministry) and the Netanyahu Government calculate that Israel needs to strike before the region’s two most prominent resistance groups—as well as their chief regional backers, Syria and Iran—grow even stronger.        

But all-out war in the Levant during the next several months is a high-risk and potentially high-cost option for Israel.  Consequently, Israel may have adopted a more aggressive posture toward Lebanon and Gaza with the aim of bolstering what Israeli military commanders like to describe as their country’s deterrent edge.  Current and former senior Israeli military officers tell us that, in the view of the Israeli security establishment, Israel’s military initiatives in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09—along with its 2007 air attack on an alleged nuclear facility in Syria—actually “worked”.  As Nasrallah himself acknowledges, the Israeli-Lebanese border has been quiet since 2006.  Furthermore, since the 2008-09 Gaza war, HAMAS has been substantially observing a ceasefire with Israel.  Against this backdrop, the Israeli security establishment—now with the backing of the decidedly right-leaning Netanyahu government—may well calculate that a more aggressive day-to-day posture toward Hizballah, HAMAS, and Syria could extend the deterrent benefits of the Israeli military’s most recent engagements. 

Finally, Israel’s more aggressive posture toward Lebanon and Gaza may be part of a broader strategy for dealing with the Obama Administration regarding Iran.  This strategy grows out of two assessments that seem to be becoming consensus positions among political and policymaking elites in Israel. 

–First, conversations with a range of Israeli interlocutors indicate that there is profound skepticism within the Israeli establishment that President Obama will deal effectively with Iran.  Israeli elites do not expect that there will be successful diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program; likewise, they do not expect international sanctions to effect significant change in Iran’s nuclear activities. 

–Second, at the same time, Israeli politicians and national security experts judge that it is increasingly likely Obama will be a one-term President. 

Given these assessments, Israeli political and policymaking elites anticipate that the next two years in U.S.-Israeli relations will be—as an Israeli colloquialism puts it—“garbage time”, particularly with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue.  For the Israeli security establishment and the Netanyahu Government, the strategic priority for the “garbage time” will be to prepare the ground so that the United States will be more favorably disposed to the imperative of eventual military action to contain the Iranian nuclear threat.  (This could mean preparing the ground so that President Obama’s successor will be inclined to support military action against Iran.  It could also mean preparing the ground so that, if Israel decides it must strike before President Obama’s term is over, public opinion and the political establishment in the United States are so strongly supportive of military action against the Islamic Republic that Obama cannot effectively oppose an Israeli unilateral initiative.) 

The Israeli agenda to prepare the ground so that the United States will be more favorably disposed to the imperative of military action has several interlocking elements. 

–The Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States will continue pressing for a “maximalist” U.S. agenda in whatever nuclear talks with Iran that might take place—including a complete suspension of Iran’s fuel cycle activities.  This position clearly reflects the strategic preferences of the Israeli government; if pursued by the United States, it also would undercut any prospects for a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.  

–The Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States will continue to push for tougher sanctions against Iran.  While Israeli political and policymaking elites are deeply skeptical that sanctions could actually leverage Iranian decision-making about the nuclear issue, they nonetheless believe that it is necessary to go through the process of debating and imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic in order to focus U.S. and Western opinion on the futility of sanctions and the imperative for military action against Iranian nuclear threats.     

–Alongside these steps, the Israeli security establishment and the Netanyahu government will work through multiple channels to condition American policymakers and public opinion to be more receptive to the possibility of military action against the Islamic Republic. 

–And, of course, the Netanyahu Government will continue to be unforthcoming on the Palestinian issue.  The position clearly reflects the government’s strategic and political preferences; it also is calculated to compound Obama’s image in the United States as a foreign policy “failure” in addition to his domestic policy break downs.   

–In this context, keeping tensions relatively high between Israel, on one side, and Hizballah, HAMAS, Syria, and Iran could also fit into the Netanyahu Government’s emerging “garbage time” strategy. 

We are inclined to believe that Israel’s current actions reflect both the IDF’s interest in boosting Israeli deterrence and the Netanyahu Government’s interest in pursuing its “garbage time” strategy.  But, even if the Netanyahu Government is not deliberately seeking to spark a military confrontation in the next few months, Israel’s more aggressive posture increases the risk of such a confrontation.  This is a situation that cries out for “adult supervision” of Arab-Israeli security affairs.  Is the Obama Administration up to the task?       

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

We just returned from a trip to the Middle East, which included stops in Lebanon, Syria, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  We will be writing about our meetings, discussions, and observations on this trip in future posts.  First, though, we want to express our gratitude to the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran for inviting us to come and meet with their students and faculty. 

We particularly want to say how impressed we were with the graduate students in American studies with whom we had the opportunity to spend some time.  University admissions in Iran are done on the basis of competitive national examinations.  Those Iranian students who end up at the University of Tehran are among the brightest young people in the country.  But, beyond their obvious intelligence and talent, the graduate students in American studies impressed us with their seriousness and determination to explore their subject as deeply as possible. 

One of our favorite moments came when two female graduate students (most of the graduate students we met are women) asked us for advice.  The two were preparing for an exercise in one of their classes, in which students would—in English—hold a mock U.S. congressional debate about health care reform legislation.  These two students were tasked to represent the Republican side of the debate.  They had already done extensive research; they were, for example, aware of editorial differences among CNN, MSNBC, and Fox in these networks’ coverage of the health care debate in the United States.  But, while these two students had the opportunity to talk with a couple of American political analysts, they wanted to deepen their understanding of the nuances of conservative argument about health care reform in the United States.  So, we did our best to channel our inner David Frum and tell them what we could about conservative perspectives on health care issues.  We hope those students got something useful out of the conversation.  (They were nice enough to say that they did.)  We also wish that more Americans could encounter young Iranians like those we met. 

Shortly before we arrived in Tehran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Islamic Republic is turning into a “military dictatorship”.  As we drove around Tehran, we looked hard to see a soldier anywhere on the street but did not see a single one—except for a couple at the entrance to the Behest-e Zahra cemetery just south of Tehran, where many of the Iranian soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq War are buried.  Over the years, we have spent a lot of time in a lot of Middle Eastern capitals.  We have never been in one—including in Egypt and Israel—that has fewer guys in uniform on the streets than in Tehran right now.   

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Lee Smith has published another personal attack on us in The Tablet.  To rebut, point by point, Mr. Smith’s allegations by innuendo would not be appropriate here, and would distract us from addressing the many important Iran-related issues currently on the public agenda.  However, because Jeffrey Goldberg has again used the platform that the prestigious The Atlantic has given him to give wider circulation to Mr. Smith’s attacks against us, we feel compelled to respond to the title of the post in which Mr. Goldberg links to Mr. Smith’s piece.  That title is, “Are the Leveretts trying to do business with Iran?”  It is categorically untrue that we are “trying to do business with Iran”.  For us, as Americans, to “do business with Iran” would be a violation of U.S. law.  We have not broken the law, and we will not do so.  For Mr. Goldberg to insinuate that we might be breaking the law, simply because he disagrees with our analysis, is untrue, vicious, and the essence of McCarthyism.   

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss takes down Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz’ op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which the two writers argue that the United States should lead an international campaign to impose gasoline sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Duss’ post can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

(Armymil’s photostream)

In a previous post on this blog, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett described what they identify as the increasingly polarized strategic environment in the Middle East. They explained that

On one side of this divide are those states willing to work in various forms of strategic partnership with the United States, with an implied acceptance of American hegemony over the region. This camp includes Israel, those Arab states that have made peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan), and other so-called moderate Arab states (e.g., Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council).

On the other side of this divide are those Middle Eastern states and non-state actors that are unwilling to legitimize American (and, some in this camp would say, Israeli) hegemony over the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran has emerged in recent years as the de facto leader of this camp, which also includes Syria and prominent non-state actors such as HAMAS and Hizballah. Notwithstanding its close security ties to the United States, Qatar has also aligned itself with the “resistance” camp on some issues in recent years. And, notwithstanding Turkey’s longstanding membership in NATO and ongoing European “vocation”, the rise of the Justice Development Party and declining military involvement in Turkish politics have prompted an intensification of Ankara’s diplomatic engagement in the Middle East, in ways that give additional strategic options to various actors in the “resistance” camp.

While the “pro-American” camp retains considerable resources and influence, the “resistance” camp has made impressive strategic gains since the turn of the millennium—in no small part, because of the George W. Bush Administration’s strategically counterproductive approach to the region. Against this backdrop, the “pro-American” camp clearly hoped that President Obama would re-legitimate America’s leadership role in the Middle East and deal effectively with the region’s most pressing strategic challenges—with the Palestinian issue and Iran at the top of that list. But, as we have met with senior diplomats and officials from the “pro-American” camp in recent weeks, we have been struck by the accelerating pace at which our interlocutors’ concern about the direction of the Obama Administration’s Middle East policies is mounting. They are becoming increasingly dubious that President Obama will “deliver” in the Middle East—on Palestine, on Iran, in Afghanistan, and on other important regional issues.

The importance of this analysis has been laid bare by Secretary Clinton’s recent trip to the Middle East and the United States’ growing arms sales to its allies in the region.

In this context, I thought I’d share this “Strategic Comment” published by The Institute for International and Strategic Studies back in November.

The report documents the large arms purchases by the Gulf countries and notes that in 2008, UAE and Saudi Arabia spent more than any other developing countries on arms-transfer agreements, committing $9.7 billion and $8.7bn respectively. The report goes on to explain key trends in Middle Eastern arms purchases including the deployment of missile defense systems.

Here is what the report concludes:

The bases and weapons purchases illustrate the dichotomy of Gulf thinking regarding Iran. Some Gulf states fear that Iran, with its size and wealth, aspires to the status of regional superpower. Were Iran to have nuclear weapons – or a ‘break-out’ capacity that could quickly furnish it with weapons – rulers fear Tehran could dictate to them in military and economic matters. They do not want a nuclear Iran. At the same time, however, they are concerned about the possible consequences of a hard Western line against Iran, and especially of military action aimed at disabling its nuclear programme. They fear that Tehran’s response would be to lash out not at the West, but at the West’s friends in its neighbourhood. Hence their increased expenditure on defence, missile shields and foreign bases.

Confronting this dilemma by tightening their embrace of the West – and doing so openly – represents a gamble for the Gulf’s rulers: it is an implicit acknowledgment that however much they may spend on weapons, their security, ultimately, lies with outside powers. With the closure of American facilities in Saudi Arabia and, eventually, Iraq, and an accompanying scaling-down of operations in Kuwait, the trend is obviously towards a smaller overall US footprint in the region. This, however, must be balanced against the new wave of weapons sales, the French base in Abu Dhabi and the significant expansion of American naval facilities in Bahrain. When the dust settles there may well be fewer foreign troops in the Gulf than there were a decade ago, but with Iraq no longer a strategic threat to its neighbours this was to be expected. The remaining forces are very openly focused on Iran. It is too soon to say whether Iran, looking from across the water, sees a threat or a deterrent.

You can read the full “strategic comment” here.

– Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: Defense Department Photostream)

CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus stated on Meet the Press yesterday that the United States is now pursuing the “pressure track” as a means to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

It appears that the administration is banking on one of two things happening. Either increased sanctions will make life so difficult for the Islamic Republic that it will capitulate and somehow give up or alter its nuclear program in a way that is beneficial to Western interests, or the Islamic Republic will collapse and a new government will emerge that is more eager to deal with the United States.

Last Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor General Jim Jones made comments directly linking sanctions to regime change in Tehran – suggesting that they think the second scenario above is a likely outcome. But what if the regime, which has persisted for 30 years despite immense international pressure and war, survives?

Even if more sanctions compelled Iran agreed to concessions on the nuclear issue, the United States has other very important interests with regard to Iran. The only way to prevent Iran from continuing to play “spoiler” in other areas such as peace with Israel and stabilizing Iraq is to fundamentally reorient and improve U.S.-Iranian relations.

The question we should be asking is, “What if the Islamic Republic manages to survive and does not agree to major concessions with regard to its nuclear program?” Then “the pressure track” will have only served to exacerbate the mutual hostility between Washington and Tehran and we will be even further from the kind of strategic opening that is so important for American interests.

– Ben Katcher

I have pasted a copy of yesterday’s IAEA Board of Governors Report on Iran below.

IAEA Report Iran 18Feb2010

– Ben Katcher

The International Crisis Group published an “Update Briefing” yesterday on “The Iran Nuclear Issue: The View From Beijing.”

The report is an excellent summary of the strategic, political, and economic sources of China’s policy toward the Iranian nuclear issue.

Its conclusions are largely consistent with, “Moving (Slightly) Closer to Iran
China’s Shifting Calculus for Managing Its “Persian Gulf Dilemma,” a mongoraph written by Race for Iran Publishers Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, along with Georgia Tech University Professor of International Relations John Garver.

It should also be noted that the report sources substantially both from the monograph and from this blog.

Some notable highlights from the report:

General Zhang Zhaozhong of China’s National Defense University told the ICG that “the enrichment technology of Iran is very primitive…Iran does not have very large quantities of uranium ore… And it’s a very long process from processing nuclear materials to actually developing nuclear weapons. Iran does not have the required facilities, equipments, or technology.”

The ICG reports that “[Chinese] analysts also had no qualms suggesting that China does not mind the [Iranian nuclear] issue tying up U.S. resources and attention.” This calls to mind The Washington Note Publisher Steve Clemons’ conversation with the Deputy Director of the Policy Planning staff of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who told Clemons that “We are trying to figure out how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.”

The report refers to Iran’s “binding” strategy, by which Iran is attempting to “bind” China to its economy and hydrocarbon resources by inducing Chinese investment. The latest evidence of this is Sinopec’s deal with NIOC to provide $6.5 billion for the joint development of two refineries.

The ICG concludes that while economic factors are key to China’s relations with Iran and opposition to sanctions, containing U.S. influence in the Middle East and maintaining a balance of power in the region are also central goals of Chinese strategy.

The full report is absolutely worth a read and can be found here.

One is left with the conclusion that supporting “crippling sanctions” does not fit into China’s management of its “Persian Gulf Dilemma.”

– Ben Katcher

Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times reporter and author of an endearing book about Turkey called Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds, is spot on in his analysis of the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran.

In laying out the American approach to Iran, Clinton showed how little US foreign policy has changed since the last years of the Bush administration. President Bush famously explained that he would not negotiate with unfriendly regimes because he didn’t want to “reward bad behaviour”. He wanted states like Iran to change of their own accord, not as a result of negotiation but as a pre-condition for being allowed to negotiate….

A more promising approach would be to tell Iran what President Nixon told China 35 years ago: if you agree to consider all of our complaints, we will consider all of yours. Clinton has made clear that the US will make no such offer. Instead it clings to the decades-old American policy toward Iran: make demands of the regime, threaten it, pressure it, sanction it, seek to isolate it, and hope for some vaguely defined positive result.

Some of America’s most seasoned diplomats are eager for the chance to see what kind of a “grand bargain” they could strike with Iran. An ideal one would curb the nuclear programme, guarantee some measure of protection for brave Iranians who are being brutalised for defending democratic ideals, and give Iran security guarantees that might lure it out of its isolation and lay the groundwork for a new security architecture in the Middle East. Instead the US has fallen back on sabre-rattling. This pleases Israel, war hawks in Washington, so-called American allies like Saudi Arabia – and most of all, President Ahmadinejad and his reactionary comrades in Tehran. They thrive on confrontation, and are doing all they can to bait the US into attacking their country. It is a strategy as effective as it is dangerous.

Kinzer’s short article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

We have pasted below the text of an analysis of Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to the Middle East by Rami Khouri for Beirut’s The Daily Star.

The link to Khouri’s column is here.

Why Chuckles Greet the Hillary Show
by Rami G. Khouri

BEIRUT — American secretaries of state have been coming to the Middle East to create all sorts of complex alliances against Iran for most of my happy adult life, and every time this show passes through our region I learn again the meaning of the phrase “lack of credibility.” Hillary Clinton is the latest to undertake this mission, and like her predecessors her comments often are difficult to take seriously.

We are told that her trip to the region has two main aims: strengthen Arab resolve to join the United States and others in imposing harsh new sanctions to stop Iran’s nuclear development program, and harness Arab support for resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. These important issues also represent two critical diplomatic arenas where the United States has both taken the lead and also achieved zero results. Either the actors involved — Arabs, Israelis, Iranians — are all chronically or even chromosomally dysfunctional (for which there is some evidence) or the United States is a particularly inept party to assume leadership in these endeavors.

The weakness in both cases, I suspect, has to do with the United States trying to define diplomatic outcomes that suit its own strategic objectives and political biases (especially pro-Israeli domestic sentiments in the US). So Washington pushes, pulls, cajoles and threatens all the players with various diplomatic instruments, except the one that will work most efficiently in both the Iranian and Arab-Israeli cases: serious negotiations with the principal parties, based on applying the letter of the law, and responding equally to the bottom-line rights, concerns and demands of all sides.

Two Clinton statements during her Gulf trip this week are particularly revealing of why the United States continues to fail in its missions in our region. The first was her expression of concern that Iran is turning into a military dictatorship: “We see that the Government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship.”

Half a century of American foreign policy flatly contradicts this sentiment (which is why Mrs. Clinton heard soft chuckles and a few muffled guffaws as she spoke). The United States has adored military dictatorships in the Arab world, especially states dominated by the shadowy world of intelligence services. This has become even more obvious since Sept. 11, 2001, when the US has intensified cooperation with intelligence services in the fight against Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East are military and police states where men with guns rule, and citizens are confined to shopping, buying cell phones, and watching soap operas on satellite television.

Countries like Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, the entire Gulf region, and others are devoted first and foremost to maintaining domestic order and regime incumbency through efficient multiple security agencies, for which they earn the friendship and cooperation of the United States. When citizens in these and other countries agitate for more democratic and human rights, the US is peculiarly inactive and quiet.

If Iran is indeed becoming a military dictatorship, this probably qualifies it for American hugs and aid, rather than sanctions and threats.

Mrs. Clinton badly needs some more credible talking points than opposing military dictatorships. (Extra credit question for hard-core foreign policy analysts: Why is it that when Turkey slipped out of military rule into civilian democratic governance it became more critical of the United States and Israel?)

The second intriguing statement during her Gulf visit was about Iran’s neighbors having three options for dealing with the “threat” from Iran:
“They can just give in to the threat; or they can seek their own capabilities, including nuclear; or they ally themselves with a country like the United States that is willing to help defend them…I think the third is by far the preferable option.”

This sounds reasonable, but it is not an accurate description of the actual options the Arab Gulf states have. It is mostly a description of how American and Israeli strategic concerns and slightly hysterical biases are projected onto the Arab Gulf states’ worldviews. These Arab states in fact have a fourth option, which is to negotiate seriously a modus vivendi with Iran that removes the “threat” from their perceptions of Iran by affirming the core rights and strategic needs of both sides, thus removing mutual threat perceptions.

This is exactly the same option the United States used when it negotiated détente and the Helsinki accords with the Soviet Union for decades (and whose results ultimately caused the collapse of Communism). Why the United States does not use the same sensible approach to the perceived threat from Iran is hard to explain, other perhaps than two reasons: The United States would have to deal with Iran (and other defiant Middle Easterners) through negotiations rather than haughty neo-colonialism, and, Israel would have to submit to nuclear inspections and stop its aggressive behavior.

– Ben Katcher

The New York Times’ White House correspondent Helene Cooper appears to confirm Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s suspicion that the Obama administration is using “engagement” with Iran as a way to garner international support for tougher sanctions, rather than as a means to open negotiations on a comprehensive set of issues between the two countries.

Here is what Cooper says in her New York Times piece:

But Iran is where the administration is pinning most of its hopes about the perception of American engagement. At a news briefing on Thursday, the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, presented this latest metamorphosis of the administration’s thinking: that engagement is not necessarily about the two adversaries, but rather, about the worldview on America. The White House, he said, is trying to get Russia and China to join the United States, Britain, France and Germany — a group referred to in diplomatic circles as the P5+1, for the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany — in imposing harsher sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of a nuclear program. While it remains unclear whether the effort will succeed, Mr. Gibbs said Mr. Obama’s outreach to Iran had paved the way for a united Security Council resolution.

“We would not be here unified in the P5+1 were it not for engagement,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Because we engaged, it demonstrated to the world that the choices that Iran made were choices that it alone had to vouch for.”

That is a far cry from the argument Mr. Obama has made in the past about why American and Iranian leaders needed to talk. In his speech to the Muslim world from Cairo last June, Mr. Obama spoke of the need for both nations to overcome decades of mistrust.

“There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect,” he said. Mr. Obama even acknowledged that the role the United States played in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 was a source of some of the tension, then added that “rather than remain trapped in the past, I’ve made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward.”

You can read Cooper’s full news analysis piece here.

– Ben Katcher

The National Journal Online is hosting a forum for national security analysts that asks “What Should Obama Do Next on Iran?”

The forum includes responses from Michael Brenner, Paul Pillar, Steven Metz, James Jay Carafano, Robert Baer, and Daniel Byman.

National Journal suggested that each contributor choose one of the four options below:

1. Continued gradual pressure from the U.N. Security Council, combined with other U.S.-led, non-U.N.-approved sanctions targeted narrowly at the Revolutionary Guards and hardliners associated with Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
2. “Crippling” sanctions, to include a ban or even embargo on refined petroleum imports to Iran, as urged by the U.S. House and Senate and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
3. Full open and clandestine support for the opposition “green movement.”
4. Military strikes against Iran’s nuclear complex.

Sadly, engaging in comprehensive negotiations with the Islamic Republic is not even on the menu of options to be considered.

Only University of Pittsburgh Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner endorsed a ‘grand bargain’ approach. He said

The only avenue that holds out any hope of reaching a modus vivendi with the current regime (and perhaps a successor – if there is one) is a comprehensive approach. That is to say, for the West to put on the table the elements of a grand bargain that may entail: lifting the economic and diplomatic embargo; and fashioning a place for Iran in a Gulf security arrangement. The Iranians, in turn, would have to put in play everything that concerns us. Anything short of that is shadow play, and a waste of energy.

The full forum can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

The Race for Iran Publisher Flynt Leverett and Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation Author Barbara Slavin debated the state of the opposition movement in Iran, the latest on the Iranian nuclear issue, and Obama’s Iran policy.

Leverett criticized the Obama administration for failing to offer a comprehensive agenda that could provide a strategic opening to the Islamic Republic and for continuing Bush-era overt and covert efforts to destabilize the Islamic Republic – noting that President Nixon ordered the CIA to stand down covert operations in Tibet prior to his historic trip to China.

Slavin claimed that the two letters President Obama sent to the Supreme Leader constitute a serious offer of engagement, and questioned the comparison to Nixon’s opening to China. According to Slavin, China was prepared for an opening, while the Islamic Republic today is not.

The full video can be watched above or at this link.

– Ben Katcher

We want to highlight a three-part exchange about our post, “Misreading Iranian Politics in Washington,” that took place recently on two other blogs.  First, Andrew Sullivan, a frequent critic of our work, wrote in The Daily Dish on February 13 that we were gloating about the Green Movement’s rather weak display on February 11, the anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding, which most commentators and analysts thought would be the occasion for a major popular challenge to Iran’s political order.  Sullivan elaborated,

“Obviously the argument that the Tehran junta is not going away is a legitimate area of debate.  But there is a glee with which the Leveretts write about this that I find somewhat callous given the suffering and deaths and torture of so many young lovers of freedom in that imprisoned country.” 

Second, Daniel Larison wrote on February 14 in Eunomia that Sullivan was being “extremely unfair”:

“The Leveretts are not expressing “glee” or anything like it when they say that the regime is not going anywhere. They are acknowledging a reality that far too many Westerners have had enormous difficulty acknowledging.

“Iraq war opponents were not gleeful when the political chaos and sectarian violence some of them predicted broke out. We were not pleased when the disaster we opposed unfolded. They were going to draw attention to the mistaken judgments of the people who up until the previous hour had denounced them as so many water-carriers for despotism and agents of foreign governments. The Leveretts are doing no more than re-stating their original arguments and pointing out that all those legions of pundits and bloggers who mocked them were rather impressively wrong on the main questions of the strength and potential of the Green movement and of the endurance of the current regime. Of course, the Leveretts know just as well as everyone else that there is no real accountability in foreign policy commentary. Their basically correct analysis will not make people more interested in their arguments, and the basically flawed analysis of dozens of others will not prejudice the reading public against their arguments in the future.”

Third, today Andrew Sullivan linked to and quoted extensively from Larison’s February 14 post. Sullivan presented Larison’s arguments straightforwardly for his readers’ consideration. 

We would like to make three points about this exchange. 

First, we want to thank Daniel Larison for his many expressions of support for our analysis of Iranian issues and our arguments about an optimal Iran policy for the United States.  His response to Sullivan was on the mark in terms of its understanding of what we tried to do in the “Misreading Iranian Politics in Washington” post. 

Secondly, we want to thank Andrew Sullivan for presenting Larison’s criticisms of Sullivan’s February 13 post—and presenting those criticisms in a manner indicating that Sullivan thought they warranted a fair hearing, at least.  This indicated an openness to genuine discussion that we respect and hope we can reciprocate.

Third, we would like to address the issue that Sullivan raised regarding our being “somewhat callous” in the way we write about Iranian politics.  We do not intend to come across as callous in our work.  We certainly do not take glee in anyone’s death, injury, or incarceration.  Every death is a tragedy, especially when the life lost is a young one.  But, in our view, our first responsibility as analysts is to be right.  We would ask people to judge our work by its clarity, rigor, and whether the bottom-line judgments and supporting analyses stand the test of time.

Two of the Obama Administration’s most senior figures on national security and foreign policy issues recently have voiced support for “regime change” in Iran as a near-term outcome.  To be sure, the Administration continues to stop short of full-throated embrace of regime change as the formal goal of America’s Iran policy, as Richard Haass and a host of neoconservatives have urged.  Nevertheless, shifting rhetorical trends from the Administration indicate that various aspects of U.S. policy toward Iran—in particular, the push for additional sanctions against the Islamic Republic—are now being shaped with the goal of encouraging regime change in mind. 

On February 2, when asked by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell whether the Obama Administration wanted to see regime change in Iran, Vice President Joseph Biden said that “the people of Iran are thinking about, the very people marching, they’re thinking about regime change”. Biden went on to charge that Iran’s leaders had “lost their moral credibility in their own country and around the region and I think they’re sowing the seeds for their own destruction…in terms of being able to hold onto power”. Then, most strikingly, Biden linked the Administration’s ongoing push for additional multilateral sanctions against Iran to the encouragement of regime change there:

“We are moving with the world including Russia and others to put sanctions on them. I think that we’ve moved in the right direction in a measured way…We’re going to end up much better off than we would have had we tried to go in there and physically tried to change the regime.”

Of course, many Washington hands would hold that Biden has an extensive record of undisciplined public remarks.  Given that record, perhaps there was not too much significance in his statement linking sanctions and the encouragement of regime change in Iran.  But, today, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, President Obama’s national security adviser, retired Marine Corps General James Jones, made the link between new sanctions and the encouragement of regime change explicit. Specifically, Jones said that

“we know that internally there is a very serious problem [in Iran]…we’re about to add to that regime’s difficulties by engineering, participating in very tough sanctions, which we support. Not mild sanctions. These are very tough sanctions. A combination of [internal and external problems] could well trigger a regime change.”

Jones’ remarks are troubling on two levels.  First, there is the sheer detachment from reality that is reflected in them.  As we have written frequently on www.TheRaceForIran.com and elsewhere, there is no way that the United Nations Security Council will approve anything approaching “very tough” or “crippling” sanctions on Iran.  In the interview, Jones acknowledged that “we need to work on China a little bit more.”  He went on to declare, though, that “China wants to be seen as a responsible global influence, and on this issue they cannot be non-supportive.” 

As we’ve also argued before, it is possible that, in the end, Moscow and Beijing will acquiesce to a new sanctions resolution—among other reasons, to keep the Iranian nuclear issue in the Security Council, where, as permanent members, they have significant influence.  But, if Russia and China acquiesce, they will only do so after they have ensured that the new sanctions actually authorized by the Council do not impede them in the pursuit of what they see as their most important interests vis-à-vis Iran.  And that precludes anything close to “very tough” sanctions.  Furthermore, we think the notion that non-“very tough sanctions” will combine with “internal problems” to produce regime change in Iran is a misreading of both what sanctions can accomplish and the true state of the Islamic Republic’s internal politics.         

Second, Jones’ remarks are troubling because they strongly suggest that the linkage drawn by Biden between new sanctions and the encouragement of regime change in Iran was not a fluke.  Until recently, the dominant argument in the Obama Administration’s rhetoric about additional sanctions against Iran held that movement on the “pressure track” was needed to get Tehran to be more forthcoming on the “diplomatic track”.  In other words, additional sanctions are a tactical tool to be employed instrumentally to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table in a more “cooperative” posture.  Of course, we think that this argument, too, is nonsense.  In our view, sanctions will do nothing to generate strategic leverage over Iranian decision-making and will further undermine prospects for what the Obama Administration should be doing—pursuing comprehensive, strategically-grounded engagement with the Islamic Republic to achieve a fundamental realignment of U.S.-Iranian relations.  But, at least until recently, the Administration’s rhetoric about sanctions tried to link them to the goal of productive diplomatic engagement. 

Now, the remarks by Biden and Jones indicate that the Obama Administration is looking at sanctions as a tool for encouraging regime change.  As Flynt argued last week on The Newshour, “the Obama Administration goes down a very dangerous path if it lets support for this Green Movement take over its Iran policy…The United States needs to be doing serious strategic business with the Islamic Republic as it is, and not as some might wish it to be. That’s what the Obama Administration needs to be focused on, and not give in to what is, frankly, an illusion that Iranian domestic politics are going to produce some government that we’re going to find much, much easier to deal with”.  

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

In two previous posts on this blog, “Explaining the Concept of ‘Learning Curve’ to Jeffrey Goldberg” and “Explaining the Concept of ‘Facts’ to Jeffrey Goldberg”, Hillary Mann Leverett responded to a pair of truly shoddy pieces of “journalism” written about her by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.  Now we write jointly in response to a third such offfense, “The Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Flynt Leverett Connection”, which Mr. Goldberg posted on his blog yesterday.  Goldberg’s post both links to and quotes from an “article” published by one Lee Smith earlier this week in The Tablet—an online publication which, until this week, we had never heard of.  Mr. Goldberg, it turns out, is a contributing editor to The Tablet (according to the publication’s website). 

In Mr. Goldberg’s previous attempts to write about Hillary (with whom he has, to this day, never spoken or sought to speak), he displayed a fact-free approach to journalism that we found truly unfortunate from someone who works for such a historically august publication as The Atlantic.  In his current effort to portray Flynt (with whom Mr. Goldberg has also never spoken or sought to speak), Mr. Goldberg stoops to a new low in attempted character assassination—a low set by Mr. Smith.  Mr. Smith’s “article” is chock full of unsubstantiated statements and  fabricated allegations.  For the record, we would like to respond to these unsubstantiated statements and fabricated allegations lies here. 

We will start by quoting the paragraphs from Mr. Smith’s article which Mr. Goldberg reprints in his post: 

“The opposition camp has been critical of Leverett for his collaborations with Mohamed Marandi, director of Tehran University’s Institute for North American Studies and the son of Khamenei’s personal physician, who appears to have facilitated Leverett’s upcoming visit. “The University of Tehran is the institution which has applied for our visas,” Leverett explained to me.

Leverett was offended when I asked if the Revolutionary Guard had played a role in his invitation, and yet there’s little doubt that his co-author is personally and professionally close to the regime–and publicly justifies some of its most brutal actions. Since the June elections, Marandi has been the Ahmadinejad government’s key spokesperson in the English-language media, and he recently defended the regime’s sentencing opposition members to death. His true occupation may be even more unsavory. “He passes himself off as an academic, but he’s with the Ministry of Intelligence,” says Ramin Ahmadi, co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentary Center and a professor of medicine at Yale.”

Where to begin?!  By way of background, we should inform our readers that we are planning a trip to the Middle East next week.  Our itinerary includes Beirut and Damascus.  If our application for visas is approved, we might also be going to Tehran.  (As Middle East specialists, we travel to the Middle East multiple times each year.  We have been wanting to visit Iran for some time, and accepted an invitation from the University of Tehran to do so.)  It seems strange to us that people we don’t know have become so interested in our travel plans of late.  Mr. Smith is certainly very focused on the subject.  He bizarrely asserts that “Western scholars and policy wonks alike understand that access to the [Iranian] regime is a form of currency that can make you powerful or rich or both…all see access to the Iranian regime as the biggest prize in the foreign policy game”.   

Considering the amount of grief we have to put up with because we actually want to talk to Iranians, including government officials, both inside Iran and outside the country, we are tempted to conclude that Mr. Smith is describing some parallel universe to the one that we live in.  We don’t know of a single “Western scholar” or “policy wonk” (and we know a lot of people in both categories) who thinks that access to the Iranian regime is going to make them powerful, rich, or both. 

To return to the passages quoted by Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Smith’s claim that Flynt was “offended” when Smith asked if the Revolutionary Guard had played a role in our invitation from the University of Tehran is not accurate.  What Mr. Smith asked Flynt—and we quote from the email in which he asked it—was “to check information I have from two sources that your trip was facilitated via Muhammad Marandi on behalf of the IRGC”.  What offended Flynt was Smith’s claim that he had two sources telling him this nonsense.  There was no way that other human beings to whom Smith would have access could have been telling him this except that they made it up; alternatively, Smith himself made up his two “sources”.  Under either scenario, Smith is peddling lies. 

Regarding our “collaboration” with Mohammad Marandi—a professor of literature who, indeed, directs the University of Tehran’s Institute for North American Studies—we have written one article with him.  We remain quite proud of this article, which we believe should be viewed now and will be viewed in retrospect as one of the seminal pieces of fact-based analysis of Iranian politics in the wake of the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election.  We think that Mohammad’s analyses of Iranian politics and U.S.-Iranian relations are informed, interesting, and important.  We count him among our Iranian friends (we have friends across the political spectrum in Iran.)  It is execrable that Mr. Smith would print an unsubstantiated assertion that Mohammad is working for Iran’s Intelligence Ministry; Mr. Smith clearly did so with the sole aim of demeaning Mohammad.  We certainly have no reason to believe that Mohammad is anything other than what he says he is.  The statement by Dr. Ahmadi—a well-known expatriate advocate of regime change in Iran—that Mohammad is working for the Iranian Intelligence Ministry is completely unsourced.  Unless Dr. Ahmadi has his own employment relationship with Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, he would have no basis for knowing whether Mohammad or anyone else was on the Ministry’s payroll.  We hope that Mr. Smith misquoted Dr. Ahmadi.  But, we are learning that a disappointingly high percentage of those who want to apply the Iraq model of regime change to Iran seem to think that there is nothing wrong with lying in order to discredit their opponents.   

We also can’t resist responding to Mr. Smith’s references to Mohammad’s father, because they show so well how utterly disinterested Mr. Smith—and Mr. Goldberg—are in basic, factual truth.  There is a clear implication in Mr. Smith’s “article” that, because Alireza Marandi is Khamenei’s “personal physician”, then his son Mohammad’s integrity must be suspect.  Now, we have never met Dr. Marandi.  However, the claim that he is Khamenei’s “personal physician” seems strange given that Dr. Marandi is known both in Iran and the United States as a highly regarded pediatrician, specializing in neonatology—the care of premature infants and other newborns.  (Surely, Ayatollah Khamenei can find a competent internist somewhere in Iran).  Dr. Marandi—who lived for several years in the United States before returning to Iran after the 1979 revolution—did serve as health minister under then-Prime Minister Mousavi and then-President Rafsanjani.  He is widely known for his careful promotion of birth control in Iran, which has helped to lower the country’s historically very high rate of population growth (during his tenure as health minister, Iran allowed the U.S.-based Population Council to operate there).  Even The New York Times reported on Dr. Marandi’s leadership in this area.  (Did Mr. Smith even bother with a Google search on Dr. Marandi?  Are Messrs. Smith and Goldberg interested in and capable of accessing even the most basic factual data about their subjects?)  Since leaving his post as health minister, Dr. Marandi has also been one of Iran’s leading advocates of breast feeding.  If we actually get to go to Iran, we would look forward to meeting Dr. Marandi, as well as seeing his son again.   

The portions of Mr. Smith’s “article” that are not directly quoted by Mr. Goldberg contain an even higher concentration of lies and basic factual errors.  Frankly, we do not want to take the time to correct every single one of them.  However, we do want to address two that are particularly relevant to discussions of U.S. policy toward Iran.  One of Mr. Smith’s bigger lies is that we fabricated the “legend” that Iran sent in a “grand bargain” offer through Swiss intermediaries and peddled this false story to boost our standing as Iran experts.  This claim is dishonest on at least three levels. 

• First, there is the question of physical reality—there was, indeed, a document from the Iranians that came to the State Department via the Swiss (Switzerland is the “protecting power” for the United States in Tehran, where there is no U.S. diplomatic representation).  That document was reported on by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post in 2007 (link is here).  The link to a pdf of the document that the Post also published along with the story appears not to be easily accessible anymore from the Post’s website.  However, it can be accessed on Steve Clemons blog, The Washington Note, from a post that Steve wrote on the Glenn Kessler story (link here)–go to the part where Steve writes, “Here is a PDF of the actual “Roadmap” faxed by Guldimann”).  The document captured in that PDF is the document we read at the State Department after it had been sent in by the Swiss.  Now, of course, one may argue that the document would not have been a good basis for U.S.-Iranian negotiations (we obviously disagree with those arguments), but the document exists.  That Mr. Smith claims to have found an (anonymous) NSC staffer who was at the White House after we left and who says he never saw this document does not alter the reality of the document’s existence.  (We know for a fact that the document was sent from the State Department to the NSC.  What happened to it after that we cannot address, as we were no longer working at the White House at that time.) 

• Second, Mr. Smith is not telling the truth when he claims that we lied about the document coming from the Iranians, since, in his parallel universe, the document—which, you will remember, never existed in the first place, according to Mr. Smith—was really written by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran at the time.  The Swiss ambassador’s cover letter that came in with the Iranian document—and which you can read yourself as part of the PDF referenced above–about how he received the document from the Iranian side couldn’t be clearer.  Maybe one doesn’t want to believe him, or one thinks he was duped.  But there is no way to say that the document was a substantive (if not a physical) fabrication without having tested the basic proposition that the text was sent to the United States by the Iranians as a basis for negotiations.  And that, in fact, is something the Bush Administration declined to do—as Secretary Powell, Richard Haass, and other senior Bush Administration officials have publicly confirmed. 

• Third, it is not true that, as Mr. Smith alleges, the Iranian document was shot down by our purported “allies”, Secretary Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage, and not by neoconservatves.  Powell’s own Chief of Staff at the time, Larry Wilkerson, told the BBC that Powell and others at the State Department thought “it was a very propitious moment” to respond to the Iranian offer. “But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President’s office, the old mantra of ‘We don’t talk to evil’… reasserted itself.“

Another of Mr. Smith’s canards that is categorically false is that Flynt was fired from the National Security Council because “his desk was notoriously messy” and for other administrative deficiencies.  Three months before Flynt left the NSC, the White House publicly announced that it was promoting him, from acting senior director for Middle East affairs to senior director.  (Shortly before this, Flynt’s home agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, from which he was seconded to the NSC staff, promoted him to the Senior Intelligence Service, the equivalent of promotion to general-grade rank in the uniformed military.)  Flynt’s desk was messy when he was promoted to SIS rank.  His desk was messy when then-national security adviser Condoleeza Rice promoted him to full-fledged senior director status.  Why would she have promoted Flynt after he had been at the NSC for almost a year, only to decide a few weeks later that his desk was unacceptably messy and his work of unacceptably poor quality? 

No one disputes the facts that Flynt was strongly critical of the direction of the Bush Administration’s policies on a number of Middle East issues, and concluded, in the end, that he could not stay on at the NSC to promote these policies.  Mr. Smith may have found a neoconservative alumnus of the Bush NSC or Secretary Rumsfeld’s staff who continues to be in denial about the serious policy debates at the time, and wants to dismiss Flynt’s critique of the Bush Administration’s policies by telling stories about a messy desk.  (The Tablet does not disclose that Mr. Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, where his colleagues include Doug Feith—the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who, in the run up to the Iraq war, peddled false (indeed, fabricated) information about an alleged but nonexistent relationship between Saddam Husayn and Al-Qa’ida—and Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of the “Bomb Iran” movement.)

Mr. Smith’s “article” is nothing but a gossip column meant to undermine a genuine debate in the United States about what is in America’s interests in the Middle East and how best to deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Mr. Smith asserts at the end of his “article” that we have become “instruments through which the [Iranian] regime might influence Washington”.  That statement is categorically untrue and nothing more than a blatant attempt at character assassination.    

This kind of McCarthyite tactic was used by Mr. Goldberg, among others, in the run up to the Iraq war, in a largely successful effort to ensure that there was no serious questioning of the lies about Iraqi WMD and links to Al Qaida that Mr. Goldberg, among others, worked hard to disseminate. We will continue to do our best to ensure that Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Smith, and others like them do not get away with such profound and dangerous dishonesty this time around.       

 –Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Flynt Leverett, appeared on PBS’ NEWSHOUR last night with Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright and University of California Riverside Professor Reza Aslan to discuss events in Iran yesterday – the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic – in the context of U.S. policy.

In the clip above, Leverett argues that the Islamic Republic is more stable than many western commentators have indicated.

He compares events since the June 11 elections to the revolution of 1978-79 that overthrew the Shah, noting that in the twelve months prior to that revolution, Iranian security forces gunned down tens of thousands of protesters. In contrast, slightly more than 100 people have been killed since last year’s June 11 elections.

Leverett’s bottom line is that support for the opposition in Iran should not get in the way of doing “serious strategic business with the Islamic Republic as it is and not as some might wish it to be.”

The 11 minute clip is available here.

– Ben Katcher

Yesterday was the 31^st anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding—an annual celebration that comes as the culmination of a preceding 10-day commemoration of the “days of dawn” between Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran from exile on February 1, 1979 (the Shah had departed the country on January 16) and the proclamation of the Islamic Republic on February 11. Many Western-based Iran watchers and Western journalists covering Iran anticipated that this would be the occasion for mass protests that would rock the Iranian government to its foundations—marking, as one journalist put it just a few says ago, the “beginning of the end” of the Islamic Republic. The most prominent establishment figures associated with the Green Movement—Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohammad Khatami—all called for their supporters to come out on February 11 to show the strength of their cause.

The anniversary observances have now concluded in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran, and the strength manifested by the Green Movement was hardly noticeable. There is nothing new about this. Ever since the Green Movement emerged in the run up to the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election, Western observers have been describing the rise of a broad-based social movement that would bring about fundamental change—perhaps even “regime change”—in Iran. These observers told us, among other things, that the 3-, 7-, and 40-day mourning observances for those protestors who were killed in clashes with security forces would prompt ever larger protests—as was the pattern during the revolution that ultimately overthrew the Shah. But that has not occurred. The protests on the Shi’a holy day of Ashura (December 27) were much smaller than some previous demonstrations by the Green Movement. Furthermore, no demonstrations of any significance were seen in Iran on the anniversary of the Shah’s departure from Iran on January 16 or for Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s arbaeen (40-day mourning observance) on January 29.

Since the Iranian election, we have never saw evidence that the Green Movement commanded the support of a majority of Iranians. This judgment was in keeping with our assessment that President Ahmadinejad certainly could have commanded the support of the majority of the Iranian electorate in his re-election bid and that no hard and credible evidence of election fraud that would have fundamentally changed the outcome had been presented. But, the rush to judgment by the vast majority of Western observers, that the election result could only have been the product of fraud which “stole” victory from Mousavi, skewed much subsequent analysis of the relative strengths of the government and the Green Movement. This distorted perception afflicted not only neoconservatives and other Green Movement partisans, but also some of our realist friends, like Richard Haass and Steven Walt.

Read the full post »

Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran. Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards . The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, in that it has enabled the United States to consolidate some measure of Western support for additional sanctions against the Islamic Republic. In reality, though, U.S. policy on Iran-related sanctions—unilateral, multilateral, and secondary sanctions directed against third-country entities investing in the Islamic Republic—is stuck in an anachronistic model of the global economic order.

In this anachronistic model, America’s ability not just to keep U.S. companies out of Iran but also to limit the willingness of other Western (primarily European) companies to invest there put real constraints on the Islamic Republic’s capacity to develop its hydrocarbon resources and other important sectors of its economy. Now, of course, non-Western countries from what we used to call the developing world—e.g., China—have emerged as increasingly critical players in the global economy. This is catalyzing a shift in the worldwide distribution of both economic and political power that has serious implications for the American approach to Iran.

Read the full post »

David Kenner over at Foreign Policy has compiled a list of political analysts who are advocating that the United States bomb Iran.

The list includes Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow John Bolton, Commentary Editor at Large Norman Podhoretz, Foreign Policy Institute Fellow Joshua Muravchik, U.S. Air Force Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, and Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot.

It is striking that many of these analysts are the same folks who advocated “regime change” in Iraq. Despite the horrific consequences of America’s ongoing occupation of Iraq, these analysts are now advocating bombing Iran.

Kudos to David Kenner for putting together this important list. His full article is available here.

– Ben Katcher

(President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao reach out to shake hands after a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Nov. 17, 2009. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Amidst the bravado surrounding President Ahmadinejad’s announcement that Iran will start enriching uranium to 20 per cent purity, the Financial Times reported yesterday that China has passed the European Union as Iran’s largest trading partner.

According to the FT, China’s annual trade with Iran is more than $36.5 billion and consists primarily of swapping Chinese consumer goods and machinery for Iranian oil, gas, and petrochemicals. The article also noted that China now relies on Iran for 11 percent of its energy needs.

The finding is indicative of a broader trend: China’s growing willingness to work with the Islamic Republic, despite objections from the United States and Europe.

For a thorough analysis of Beijing’s strategic calculus with regard to balancing relations between Iran and the West, read Moving (Slightly) Closer to Iran: China’s Shifting Calculus For Managing Its Persian Gulf Dilemma, and outsanding monograph by John Garver, Flynt Leverett, and Hillary Mann Leverett.

Given China’s steadfast refusal to support meaningful sanctions on Iran, Washington is left to determine whether it can circumvent Beijing while crafting its Iran policy.

German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Fellow Andrew Small suggests that China’s intransigence on a variety of issues is leading American and European policymakers to reconsider their policies of strategic engagement toward China.

These ideas include

Threats of targeted measures that limit Chinese free-riding, such as stricter sanctions against Chinese companies dealing with Iran. Punishment for currency manipulation, and carbon tariffs.

A move from comprehensive to selective engagement and integration. Parts of the vast architecture of dialogues and summits may be dismantled. Right now, China is the one to cancel and postpone dialogues, and Western powers are the perpetual demanders. This can be stopped. The headlong rush to give a new seat to China at every table in every international process can also be slowed.

A move to a less Sino-centric engagement and integration policy. Rather than making a bilateral beeline for Beijing, more effort could be employed in coordinating China policy with other like-minded countries. The United States has plenty of room to deepen its cooperation with its treaty allies in Europe and Asia has considerable scope. But more diplomatic energy could be focused on other potential members of a progressive coalition — India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa. Expanded economic, technological, security, and trade advantages can be offered to those countries that are willing to act as system-strengtheners rather than spoilers.

More consciously competitive policies could be initiated in areas where disagreements on values are likely to persist, such as aid policy or dealing with rogue states. The West would focus less on reaching agreement with China and more on maneuvering around it.

Some of these ideas are good – particularly the notion of coordinating American and European China policies and engaging a broad range of global stakeholders on issues of strategic import – but a key aspect of coping with China’s rise will be to acknowledge that many policies will be ineffective without Chinese support.

A policy of isolation and coercive sanctions on the Islamic Republic is one of those policies. It is foolish to pretend otherwise.

– Ben Katcher

Until today, the Obama Administration and much of the foreign policy punditocracy in Washington have been overflowing with observations that recent statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki reiterating the Islamic Republic’s interest in a deal to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) were just another example of Iranian efforts to “buy time” and forestall new international sanctions. Today, however, Tehran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—and President Ahmadinejad announced publicly yesterday—that Iran would begin working to enrich its own uranium to the near-20 percent level required to fabricate new fuel for the TRR.

In response to this announcement, the Obama Administration and its European partners have been flailing like the proverbial headless chicken. Even before the Iranian announcement, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking in Turkey last week, said portentously that the Iranians had “done nothing to reassure the international community that they are prepared to comply with the NPT or stop their progress toward a nuclear weapon” (sic). (Following the Iranian announcement, an AP story sought to be even more specific than Secretary Gates on this point, headlining that “Iran moves closer to nuke warhead capacity”.) Speaking today in Paris, Gates further intoned that “the only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track” —a view that was dutifully echoed by French officials.

Read the full post »

(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.

Read the full post »

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