The Race for Iran

The National Interest Senior Editor Nikolas Gvosdev explains why India is reluctant to join the United States’ push for further sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

As Gvosdev makes clear, India simply has too many areas in which it needs Iranian cooperation – including preparing for an American exit from Afghanistan – to support the United States’ provocative posture toward the Islamic Republic.

From Gvosdev’s piece:

India’s foreign-policy establishment has a different set of calculations when considering Iran. Washington still sees Tehran largely through the lens of its activities westward from the Persian Gulf: a threat to Gulf security, a supporter of anti-American movements in Iraq and Lebanon, a spoiler in the Arab-Israeli peace process. New Delhi views Iran as a critical regional partner, and with growing concerns about the future of Afghanistan, an essential component to preserve India’s influence in Central Asia. Former–Foreign Secretary Lilit Mansingh was quite blunt in his appraisal last week: “Unless India prepares for the time when the Americans pull out [of Afghanistan], we will not be in a position to face the political crisis that it will trigger.” His solution: revive the India-Russia-Iran “axis” which supported the Northern Alliance during the 1990s, to ensure against the revival of the Taliban. If that is the case, then India is not likely to be putting coercive pressure on Tehran anytime soon.

You can read the full article here.

– Ben Katcher

While many of those now advocating containment as the optimal U.S. strategy toward the Islamic Republic see this as the moderate (and superior) alternative to preventive war and/or coercive regime change, such an approach would be inherently unstable.  In all likelihood, the pursuit of a containment strategy by the United States vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic would ultimately lead to a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation. 

The Iran policy debate in the United States is certainly turning in an increasingly hawkish direction.  Recently, though, the debate took an even more curious turn, when James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh argued in a recent Foreign Affairs article and Washington Post Op Ed (aptly titled: “The Force Needed to Contain Iran”) against what they see as a “false distinction between containment” and preventive war in America’s long-term strategy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.  They assert that, as Iran’s nuclearization proceeds, Tehran “can be contained only if Washington is prepared to use force against an emboldened adversary armed with the ultimate weapon”.  They argue that, for containment of a nuclear-armed or even nuclear-capable Iran to work, the United States will need to draw and enforce clear “red lines”: 

“No initiation of conventional warfare against other countries; no use or transfer of nuclear weapons, material, or technologies; no stepped-up support for terrorist or subversive activities.  Washington would need to be just as explicit about the consequences of crossing those lines:  potential U.S. military retaliation by any and all means necessary.  Tehran would probably test U.S. resolve early on, believing that regional dynamics had shifted sharply in its favor.  In that case, the United States would face a momentous credibility crisis because it had failed to stop Iran from going nuclear after persistently declaring that such an outcome was unacceptable.  Even close U.S. allies would doubt Washington’s security guarantees.  An emboldened Iran would test Washington in several ways…Such dangerous and destabilizing actions cannot be addressed by tough diplomatic talk or yet more U.N. Security Council resolutions.  It can be addressed only by a willingness to respond with force.  And in the curious logic that governs deterrence, a Tehran that believes Washington will retaliate will be less likely to act aggressively in the first place.”              

In other words, to contain and deter a nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable Iran, the United States will almost certainly need to demonstrate its willingness to use force against the Islamic Republic over lower-level, non-nuclear provocations.  Earlier this month, Steve Walt wrote a post on his blog that takes a critical look at Lindsay and Takeyh’s arguments.  In particular, Steve usefully dissects Lindsay and Takeyh’s incorporation in their analysis of “a series of worst-case assumptions” and “familiar alarmist rhetoric that has been a staple of hawkish commentary for decades”.  Steve reminds us that, “in the run-up to the war in Iraq, a critical moment came when moderates and liberals joined forces with the neoconservatives who had been pushing for war since the late 1990s.  The poster child for this process was Kenneth Pollack, whose pro-war book The Threatening Storm (written under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations) gave reluctant hawks a respectable fig-leaf for backing the invasion.”  Steve then notes that “alert readers with good memories will notice that [Lindsay and Takeyh’s arguments] are the same arguments that pro-war hawks made about Iraq.”     

Steve also points out that,

“like most Americans writing about Iran these days, Lindsay and Takeyh never consider the one approach that might actually have some small chance of heading off an Iranian bomb.  That approach would be to take the threat of regime change and preventive war off the table and accept Iran’s enrichment program—on the strict condition that it ratifies and implements all elements of the NPT Additional Protocol.  At the same time, the United States would engage in serious and sincere discussions about a range of regional security matters, including a public U.S. guarantee to forego regime change.”  (And, he is kind enough to link to one of our articles as a paradigmatic example of the “grand bargain” argument.) 

But that, unfortunately, instead, containment is fast becoming the “moderate” alternative policy option for those who don’t like military options against Iranian nuclear targets or explicit support for regime change in Tehran.  Many advocates of containment argue that the United States has decades of Cold War experience with containing a nuclear-armed hostile power and deterring that power’s use of its (very large) nuclear weapons arsenal.  So, why not take that experience and apply it to the task of containing the Islamic Republic? 

During the Cold War, containment—eventually supplemented with détente as a political framework for managing Soviet-American tensions—made sense as an “interim” American strategy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, at a time when fundamental East-West conflicts were not likely to be resolved pending substantial political change in the Soviet bloc and both sides had an existential interest in avoiding direct military confrontation.  But this is not likely to work between the United States and Iran, for at least two reasons.     

First, while the United States and the Soviet Union were roughly at parity in their military capabilities, the United States is and will remain vastly superior to Iran in every category of military power, conventional or otherwise.  As we have explained the significance of this point,

“Almost 30 years after the Iranian revolution, the Islamic Republic is incapable of projecting significant conventional military forces beyond its borders, and would be severely challenged to mount a conventional defense against U.S. invasion.  Thus, absent a broader strategic understanding with Washington, Tehran would continue to assume and act as if the ultimate objective of U.S. policy toward Iran were the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.”         

This leads inexorably to our second point—in an atmosphere of ongoing uncertainty about America’s ultimate intentions toward the Islamic Republic, Iranian leaders will continue working to defend their core security interests in ways that are guaranteed to be maximally provocative to the United States.  Lacking conventional military capabilities, Iran pursues what Iranian officials have described to us as an “asymmetric” national security strategy. 

• As we have discussed at greater length in other settings, this strategy includes the use of proxy actors—political, paramilitary, and terrorist—in neighboring states and elsewhere, to ensure that those states will not be used as anti-Iranian platforms.  Iran’s ties to Hizballah and HAMAS clearly fall under this chapter of the Islamic Republic’s national security strategy.  According to Iranian national security officials, the cultivation of these proxy actors provides the Islamic Republic with an effective measure of strategic depth it otherwise lacks. 

• Iran’s asymmetric strategy also includes developing unconventional military capabilities—missiles, chemical weapons, and at least a nuclear weapons “option”. 

No U.S. administration, of either party, would be able to maintain domestic support for a containment strategy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic as it pursues such policies. 

And, so, we come back to our main argument, as we stated at the outset—a U.S. strategy of containing Iran is likely to lead to a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation.  This, ironically, is something that Lindsay and Takeyh acknowledge with their argument that the United States may well have to use force against Iran relatively early after the formal declaration of a containment posture, in order for America’s commitment to that posture to be seen as credible. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Sometimes headlines really do convey powerful messages.  That was certainly the case with an AFP story, which appeared late last week under the headline, “Saudis deny discussing pressure on China over Iran with US”.  The story was prompted by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ visits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last week.  During a stop in Abu Dhabi the day after he had held meetings with Saudi King Abdullah bin ‘Abd al-Aziz and Defense Minister and Crown Prince Sultan bin ‘Abd al-Aziz in Riyadh, Gates offered some public observations about the Obama Administration’s efforts to persuade both Saudi Arabia and the UAE to use their economic leverage with China to persuade Beijing to be more supportive of imposing additional international sanctions against Iran.  Specifically, Gates said, with references to the Saudis and Emiratis, “I have the sense that there’s a willingness to do that”.  The next day, Saudi authorities dispatched an “official source” to the Saudi Press Agency to state that “this issue is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of the Secretary of Defense who was in the kingdom recently”. 

So, America’s most important Gulf Arab ally does not even want to acknowledge that it might have discussed what remains of the Obama Administration’s imploding strategy to persuade China to support tougher sanctions against Iran.  This is a profoundly negative comment on the Administration’s diplomatic strategy and performance. 

We have written frequently and extensively, both on www.TheRaceForIran.com and elsewhere, on why China will not support the imposition of sanctions against the Iran that would harm what Beijing sees as fundamental economic, energy, and strategic interests.  We have also written about why, from a Chinese point of view, getting the Saudis and the Emiratis to commit to pumping sufficient additional oil to cover what Iran currently exports to China will not persuade Beijing to drop its energy ties to the Islamic Republic.   We do not want to belabor here the Obama Administration’s apparent lack of appreciation for the realities of China’s strategic calculations regarding Iran, energy security, and foreign policy.  

But the Saudi reaction to Gates’ remarks in Abu Dhabi reveals how badly out of touch the Obama Administration is with Saudi strategic calculations about Iran, China, and the United States.  Last week, we published an outstanding guest post by Jean-Francois Seznec that laid out why the Saudis do not support a military strike against Iran. 

The Saudis are no less resistant to the idea of expanding sanctions against the Islamic Republic.  Last month, at a joint press conference with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her most recent visit to Riyadh, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal referred skeptically to additional international sanctions against Iran as a “long-term solution”, noting that “we see the issue in the shorter term because we are closer to the threat…We need an immediate resolution rather than a gradual resolution”.  To clarify that the Kingdom was unenthusiastic about both additional sanctions and a military strike against Iran, Saudi authorities had a senior “Saudi foreign policy official” tell the media that “there is no point in our spending all our time on sanctions which will not have an effect in the short term.  We need something more tangible.”  The senior “Saudi foreign policy official” then said that “we don’t want a military strike…a military strike, we still believe, will be very counter-productive.” 

What would the Saudis support?  The senior “Saudi foreign policy official” was commendably clear:  “We need to do something on Israel and the Palestinians…For instance, the US could get Israel to halt settlements” on the occupied West Bank.”  The Saudi official noted that “there is a credibility issue with the US administration on promises it cannot fulfill.”  At his public appearance with Secretary Clinton, Prince Saud was equally forthright in saying that U.S. efforts to rid the Middle East of nuclear weapons needed to apply to Israel as well as other countries in the region—a reiteration of longstanding Saudi advocacy for the creation of a nuclear-weapons free zone in the region, perhaps starting in the Persian Gulf but ultimately extending across the whole region.

But, of course, the Obama Administration has already shown its lack of seriousness on the settlements issue, and could not possibly consider supporting an initiative for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.  And so the United States is left with policy options that have no chance of succeeding in the real world. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Vice President Joseph Biden set out to massage U.S.-Israeli relations this week, but instead ran up against the reality of Israeli politics, manifested in the Netanyahu government’s announcement of the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.  The result, as described by the normally rhetorically sober Financial Times, has been to expose “an emasculated White House” that lacks “Mideast muscle.”  This criticism is completely deserved, because Biden’s debacle in Israel is the fruit of the Obama Administration’s fatally flawed approach to the Middle East. 

The first and most fundamental flaw in that approach is President Obama’s failure to pursue strategic realignment with the Islamic Republic of Iran with the kind of strategic focus and political determination with which President Nixon pursued strategic realignment with the People’s Republic of China in the early 1970s.  By allowing the Iran issue to drift, President Obama has given Prime Minister Netanyahu an ideal excuse for not acceding to effective American mediation on the Palestinian issue.  “How can Washington ask me to take both strategic and domestic political risks on the Palestinian issue,” Netanyahu can ask rhetorically, “when I have to marshal every bit of the Israeli government’s bureaucratic and national security capacity and my own political capital to deal with the Iran issue?”

Furthermore, the Obama Administration’s current default policy for dealing with Iran—namely, to pursue further sanctions and work to forge a regional coalition to “contain” Iran—will do nothing to resolve the Iran problem.  This only reinforces Netanyahu’s excuse for pursuing policies toward the Palestinians that are deeply damaging to whatever prospects might still remain for a two-state solution and, by extension, to America’s strategic position in the region.  As we wrote in a New York Times Op Ed in May 2009 (and were criticized in some quarters for being too critical of the Obama Administration too early in its tenure): 

“President Obama and his team should not be excused for their failure to learn the lessons of recent history in the Middle East—that the prospect of strategic cooperation with Israel is profoundly unpopular with Arab publics and that even moderate Arab regimes cannot sustain such cooperation.  The notion of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition is not only delusional, it would leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free fall.”

And that is exactly where prospects for resolution of the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks are today—in free fall.  As we noted in our May 2009 Op Ed, “These tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, HAMAS and Hezbollah”. 

Beyond the failure to deal in a genuinely strategic way with Iran, the second fundamental flaw in the Obama Administration’s approach to the Middle East is a failure to define any appreciable limits for Israeli actions.  This is particularly devastating on the Palestinian track.  

As we wrote in an article, “A Roadmap to Nowhere: Obama’s Refusal to dub Israeli settlements illegal is undermining any hope of Middle East peace”, that we published on ForeignPolicy.com in July, President Obama missed a critical opportunity in his June 2009 Cairo speech to take U.S. policy on Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory back to what is was under the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, when U.S. policy actually achieved meaningful progress towards a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict—namely, a clear-cut stance the such settlements were illegal, in that the settlement of Israeli civilians in occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. 

Instead, Obama stuck with the same tired and useless stance that has enabled Israel to expand settlements in occupied Palestinian territories by orders of magnitude over the past quarter century; in Cairo, Obama said only that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements”.  When the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler asked the State Department to clarify whether Obama’s rejection of the “legitimacy” of continued Israei settlements meant that the U.S. government considered settlement activity in itself to be a violation of international law, the State Department repeatedly declined to answer.  As we wrote in “A Roadmap to Nowhere” on ForeignPolicy.com,

“Obama’s rhetoric in Cairo strongly suggests that his Middle East diplomacy will extend America’s decades-long record of ineffectual efforts at Arab-Israeli peacemaking—a record that has its origins in the Reagan administration’s 1981 decision to abandon the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations’ characterization of Israeli settlements in occupied Arab territory as ‘illegal.’  While the European Union and most of the rest of the world have consistently done so, the last four U.S. administrations have not—a position Obama is continuing.  By shrinking from declaring Israeli settlement activity illegal, Obama has guaranteed that, in substance, his Middle East policy cannot depart significantly from that of George W. Bush… 

“Worse, in contrast to other policy mistakes made early in his presidential tenure, Obama will be hard put to reverse the damage done by his lack of clarity and courage on the settlements issue by coming back at a later date and arguing that Israeli settlements in occupied territory are, in fact, illegal…

“Had President Obama explicitly declared Israeli settlements illegal…his call for a halt to settlement activity would not be based on a (disputable) judgment that such activity is ‘unhelpful’ or creates ‘facts on the ground’ that prejudge final negotiating outcomes.  Instead, the U.S. call to end settlement activity would be grounded in a straightforward argument: Because Israeli settlements are illegal, no negotiating process rooted in international law could responsibly tolerate their expansion…

“By explicitly declaring Israeli settlements illegal, Obama could have transcended [the absence of clearly defined final status parameters] in the road map.  If settlements are illegal, then no negotiating process grounded in international law could take any starting point other than the 1967 boundaries for negotiating final borders.  Similarly, if settlements are illegal, then any negotiating process grounded in international law would have to start from the premise that all of Jerusalem cannot remain under exclusive Israeli control…

“In response to pressure from the Netanyahu government, Mitchell is reportedly already considering a ‘new’ definition of ‘natural growth’ in existing settlements—a definition that would allow Israel to complete construction that has already been started.  One can only imagine how many construction permits will be pulled out of drawers in Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank in anticipation of such an arrangement; the practical effect of such ‘limits’ will be as meaningless as the Bush administration’s ‘understandings’ with Sharon and Olmert.”

And that is precisely what is happening today.  In addition to the 1,600 East Jerusalem housing units announced by the Netanyahu government in conjunction with Biden’s visit, Haaretz reports that “some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval”.

But bad strategy on Iran and Arab-Israeli issues, in and of itself, does not account for descriptions of the Obama Administration as “emasculated”.  For that, we must consider the third flaw in President Obama’s approach to the Middle East—his determined position to enable Israel to act without cost or consequence, no matter how damaging its actions might be to regional peace prospects and America’s own strategic interests.  Writing in POLITICO today, Laura Rozen reports that people who heard what Biden said to Israeli officials behind closed doors “were ‘stunned’, the centrist Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported. ‘This is starting to get dangerous for us’, Biden castigated his interlocutors. ‘What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.’” 

One hopes that Biden did indeed use those words.  But what do such behind closed-doors words mean, really, if they are not backed up by a willingness to withhold some part of America’s aid to Israel over behavior that, as Biden reportedly said, puts the lives of American soldiers at risk?  What do those fine words mean if they are not backed up by a willingness to let Israel begin appreciating the consequences of such behavior in the United Nations Security Council?  What do those words mean if President Obama does not inform Prime Minister Netanyahu that he is prepared to use those words himself, addressed to the American public, if Israel does not reverse course on the settlements issue?              

Biden’s visit to Israel has brought into graphic relief the fundamental flaws of the Obama Administration’s approach to the Middle East.  Unless there is a fundamental change in approach, those flaws will prove fatal, and the United States will experience massive strategic failure in this critical region on President Obama’s watch. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

(Photo Credit: Hoder’s Photostream)

Despite China’s continued opposition to sanctions, the UK Ambassador to China reports that he is optimistic China will eventually come around because it fears “diplomatic isolation.”

This argument is problematic because clearly China is not isolated in its opposition to sanctions. In fact, Turkey, Brazil and others agree with China that a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue is preferable to additional sanctions.

In fact, it is the United States, not China, that is increasingly diplomatically isolated in its refusal to engage in the race for Iran’s growing market for consumer goods and immense hydrocarbon resources.

As Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote previously on this blog:

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

British and American officials can repeat “diplomatic isolation” all they want, but is clear that China is not alone in recognizing that Iran is a significant regional player whose interests must be accounted for.

– Ben Katcher