The Race for Iran

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