The Race for Iran

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the strange case of Shahram Amiri is the behavior and public statements of U.S. officials since Amiri returned to Iran.  These officials are talking to the media about Amiri in a way that makes one think they are out to goad the Iranian government into prosecuting Amiri for espionage.  Why would they do that?  Are they simply immature and unprofessional? Or, could it be that Amiri told them something they did not want to hear? 

We wrote last week, see here, that

“along with trying to figure out details of Amiri’s trajectory over the last year, journalists ought to be focusing on what the [CIA’s] willingness to pay $5 million to a hyped-up source signals about the U.S. Intelligence Community’s desperation to make a prosecutor’s case against the Islamic Republic.  Indeed, the CIA and the rest of the Intelligence Community seem sufficiently desperate to make their case that they will pay taxpayer dollars to gotten-up defectors who might be prepared to say—for the right price—what Washington elites want to hear…

Some have speculated that Amiri may have helped the United States learn more about Iran’s second enrichment site near Qom—a site which, in any event, Tehran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency last September, well before the introduction of any nuclear material.  But it would seem that the U.S. Intelligence Community, even in the wake of Shahram Amiri’s return to Tehran, continues to have no evidence validating claims that there is a secret, parallel, military nuclear program in Iran, aimed ultimately at the fabrication of nuclear weapons.”

Now Gareth Porter has published an interesting piece, see here, reporting that

“contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri has provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian nuclear weapons programme…revelations about Amiri’s reporting debunks a media narrative in which Amiri provided some of the key evidence for a reversal by the intelligence community of its 2007 conclusion that Iran had not resumed work on nuclear weapons…In creating that false narrative, journalists have evidently been guided by personal convictions on the issue that are aligned with certain U.S., European and Israeli officials who have been pressuring the Barack Obama administration to reject the 2007 estimate.  For the Israelis and for some U.S. officials, reversing the conclusion that Iran is not actively pursuing weaponisation is considered a precondition for manoeuvring U.S. policy into a military confrontation with Iran.” 

We, of course, do not know what Amiri said or did not say to the U.S. Government or anyone else during his time in America.  We have always been skeptical about claims that Amiri was a major intelligence breakthrough.  As we wrote, in April, see here,

“[H]ow could it be that Amiri, who would have been 31 years old at the time of his defection, would have had meaningful access to anything sensitive about Iran’s nuclear program—much less to have had such access “for at least a decade”?  Unless Amiri completed his doctorate as a teenager and was given a senior position in Iran’s nuclear program with high level access at the age of 20 or 21, this claim literally does not add up.” 

As we have noted previously, see here, we believe, like Porter, that some want ultimately to maneuver the United States into a military confrontation with Iran.  Certainly, Israel and other parties have been working since the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program was released to see that the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) toughened up its bottom-line judgments about the Iranian nuclear “threat”.  Undoubtedly, this pressure has helped to fuel what we described as the IC’s “desperation” to make a prosecutor’s case against the Islamic Republic over the nuclear issue. 

But even “desperate” intelligence collection efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies may not be paying off.  As we wrote last week,     

“Whatever information the CIA obtained from Amiri is supposedly being incorporated into a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program–an estimate that was supposed to be released earlier this year but which, according to Newsweek, will probably be delayed for several more months.  The delay strongly suggests that the Intelligence Community cannot reach a consensus on whether and how to revise the previous NIE on Iranian nuclear matters, released in December 2007–which famously concluded that Iran had stopped working on purely weapons-related aspects of its nuclear program in 2003.”  

If Gareth Porter’s report is accurate, Amiri did not simply fail to produce a “smoking gun”—he created a real roadblock for those who are determined to redirect the IC’s judgments about the Iranian nuclear program.  As Porter writes,

[I]nformation from Amiri’s debriefings was only a minor contribution to the intelligence community’s reaffirmation in the latest assessment of Iran’s nuclear programme of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) finding that work on a nuclear weapons has not been resumed after being halted in 2003.  Amiri’s confirmation is cited in one or more footnotes to the new intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear programme, called a “Memorandum to Holders”…but is now being reviewed, in light of Amiri’s “re-defection” to Iran. 

An intelligence source who has read the “Memorandum to Holders” in draft form confirmed…that it presents no clear-cut departure from the 2007 NIE on the question of weaponisation.  The developments in the Iranian nuclear programme since the 2007 judgment are portrayed as “subtle and complex”, said the source.”  

It will be fascinating to see just where the much anticipated and already overdue National Intelligence Estimate comes out—and whether the U.S. government, even in its internal deliberations, has a real case that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Flynt spoke to Antiwar Radio last week about the disturbing prospect that the United States could go to war with Iran over uranium enrichment and related issues.  The audio and full transcript can be accessed here.  Below are excerpts:  

On the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran:

“My own view is that the Israelis are in all probability not gearing up to strike Iran in the near term, not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, and in fact the Israelis are constrained to some degree because their own unilateral options for attacking targets in Iran from a military standpoint are relatively limited.  The amount of damage that they could do in Iran is just pretty circumscribed.  And I tend to think that the Israelis are playing a much longer game here…

[W]e now have these new sanctions in place that we’re going to need to go through—six months, twelve months or so living with these sanctions until everyone is willing to acknowledge that they’re not having the desired effect.  And I think the Israelis are playing a game, looking at a year down the road, 18 months, maybe two years down the road, when after more and more people come on board and say sanctions aren’t working, the Iranians are continuing to develop their fuel cycle capabilities, etc.—at that point, probably around the time that President Obama is gearing up for his own reelection campaign in a serious way, the Israelis can come back and say, “Okay, now we need to do something more coercive around the Iranian problem.”

On the United States striking Iran:

…[P]art of the long game that Netanyahu and the Israelis are playing [is that] [t]hey’re saying, in essence, “Yeah, we’ll let you [the U.S.] see what these sanctions do.  You can have time to see how these sanctions play out.”  But Netanyahu has also put down markers in public that he doesn’t think the sanctions are going to work, and he’s also put down markers that, as the way he put it, “The only thing that has ever caused the Iranians to stop their nuclear program has been the perceived threat of U.S. military action,” not Israeli military action, but U.S. military action.  And he’s shifting the onus…if and when sanctions fail, and he thinks they probably will fail, the only thing that can really stop the Iranians is the threat of U.S. military action.  And I think he’s putting all these pieces in place.

On the American pro-Israel Community’s Iran agenda:

[The pro-Israel community] were very, very focused on getting the sanctions in place and AIPAC’s stated position has been, “We’re focused on getting new sanctions. We’re not urging military action for now.”  And they’ve always put in that language, “for now.”  But I think the next step is going to be to start hyping the threat, supposedly, that Iran poses to Israel, to start using every channel available and create new channels to drum that message home to the American public that, “Iran is bad, Iran is dangerous, Iran needs to be stopped, and in the end it’s really only the United States that can stop it.”  I think you’re going to see an escalation in the delivery of that message through multiple channels from the pro-Israel community here in the United States over the next one to two years.

On the lack of evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program:

[T]o the best of my knowledge…[there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.]…I haven’t been working in a classified environment for a number of years now and I certainly wouldn’t claim to know everything that the U.S. intelligence community might have, [but]…my very strong impression is that we know that the Iranians have been working on…a dedicated fuel cycle program focused on uranium enrichment for a long time.  Could they have at some point…looked into other kinds of technical or engineering problems that you would need to solve if you were actually at some point going to build a nuclear weapon?  Yeah, that’s possible, but I’ve never seen what I would consider clear and convincing evidence of it.

On repeating the Iraq mistake all over again:

[W]e have been through this once before, with regard to Iraq, where we relied on foreign intelligence services, where we didn’t have access to the primary sources, we relied on…defector information.  I have a sneaking suspicion that this new NIE, when it comes out, may make use of a lot of information from both defectors and from foreign intelligence services, and I think there is a real risk that we may be going down the same road that we went down with regard to intelligence, anyway, before the war in Iraq.

And from a political standpoint, if we do go to war with Iran, we are basically going to be going to war with them because they’re enriching uranium.  Not because they have, as…you posited earlier, withdrawn from the NPT and are building nuclear weapons.  Not because they attacked someone. We’re going to go to war with them, if that’s the way things go, because they’re enriching uranium, and Israel is uncomfortable with that.  And I think that’s a really disturbing scenario.  I think it’s going to be quite bad for U.S. interests in the region if it plays out.

And while there were some critics who tried to argue that we basically went to war in Iraq for the benefit of Israel, as someone who was in government in the run-up to the war with Iraq, I have to say that was not my perception, that was not my experience.  But if we go to war with Iran because Iran is enriching uranium, we will basically be doing that because of Israeli discomfort over it and because the pro-Israel community here has really pushed hard to get us to take a confrontational stance toward Iran because it’s enriching uranium.  And I think that’s going to be quite bad for U.S. interests if things play out that way.

On a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate:

I think Western intelligence services have been searching for years for that parallel program and there are many people who are convinced that it must exist, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has actually come up with hard evidence of a parallel program.

…it is striking that the appearance of this NIE is quite overdue at this point.  It’s well past its due date, and that would seem to confirm to me the idea that there may be some disagreement.

—Hillary Mann Leverett

Photo from AFP

Coverage of Shahram Amiri’s departure from the United States and his return to Iran has focused, rather superficially, on the question of whether he was kidnapped or defected and then changed his mind.  Frankly, we are more interested in what reports that the CIA tried to pay Amiri $5 million say about the current political and policy environment in Washington with regard to Iran-related issues. 

We warned, in April, see here, that Amiri could not possibly be the highly valuable intelligence source that some Western officials and the National Council for Resistance in Iran (an affiliate of the MEK, which the U.S. government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization) claimed him to be—a source who “had worked on sensitive nuclear programs for at least a decade” and was now revealing the inside story on Iran’s alleged clandestine nuclear weapons program.  We were appalled that the Washington Post was reporting these claims without the most minimal, common-sense follow-up questioning.  As we wrote in April,

“[H]ow could it be that Amiri, who would have been 31 years old at the time of his defection, would have had meaningful access to anything sensitive about Iran’s nuclear program—much less to have had such access “for at least a decade”?  Unless Amiri completed his doctorate as a teenager and was given a senior position in Iran’s nuclear program with high level access at the age of 20 or 21, this claim literally does not add up.”    

Now we learn, see here, that the CIA apparently tried to pay Amiri $5 million.  Along with trying to figure out the details of Amiri’s trajectory over the last year, journalists ought to be focusing on what the Agency’s willingness to pay $5 million to a hyped-up source signals about the U.S. Intelligence Community’s desperation to make a prosecutor’s case against the Islamic Republic.  Indeed, the CIA and the rest of the Intelligence Community seem sufficiently desperate to make their case that they will pay taxpayer dollars to gotten-up defectors who might be prepared to say—for the right price—what Washington elites want to hear.  As we noted in our April piece, if the CIA and its partners in the Intelligence Community are unable to make a case against Iran, “how could Washington argue for intensified sanctions against the Islamic Republic—much less keep the military option ‘on the table’.” 

Sadly, there is nothing new or unprecedented about this.  The Iraq war was sold to the American people and to U.S. allies on the basis of manufactured intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  And much of that manufactured intelligence was based on stories from “defectors”—including the notorious “Curveball”—who were paid significant sums of U.S. government money to help the George W. Bush Administration manufacture a case for invading Iraq.  The U.S. Intelligence Community largely failed to act as a critical filter against bogus intelligence, and major media outlets, including The New York Times as well as the Washington Post, passed on the Bush Administration’s manufactured case for war without, in most instances, exercising appropriate scrutiny on officials’ claims, see here.

Some have speculated that Amiri may have helped the United States learn more about Iran’s second enrichment site near Qom—a site which, in any event, Tehran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency last September, well before the introduction of any nuclear material.  But it would seem that the U.S. Intelligence Community, even in the wake of Shahram Amiri’s return to Tehran, continues to have no evidence validating claims that there is a secret, parallel, military nuclear program in Iran, aimed ultimately at the fabrication of nuclear weapons.  If the United States ends up attacking Iranian nuclear targets, it will do so because the Islamic Republic is enriching uranium—something Iran is permitted to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  

Whatever information the CIA obtained from Amiri is supposedly being incorporated into a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program–an estimate that was supposed to be released earlier this year but which, according to Newsweek, will probably be delayed for several more months.  The delay strongly suggests that the Intelligence Community cannot reach a consensus on whether and how to revise the previous NIE on Iranian nuclear matters, released in December 2007–which famously concluded that Iran had stopped working on purely weapons-related aspects of its nuclear program in 2003.  

Why is no journalist from a major media outlet in the United States asking why the Obama Administration drove the P-5+1 to push a new sanctions resolution against Iran, when there is such clear disarray, disagreement, and desperation in the U.S. Intelligence Community regarding Iran’s nuclear program?         

This time around, before the United States initiates a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic, we need to ask the hard questions that were not asked before the invasion of Iraq.        

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Hillary Mann Leverett was a featured panel speaker at a Capitol Hill conference today, organized by the Middle East Policy Council, on “U.S. Policy Towards Israel and Iran: What are the Linkages?”  Other panelists included Martin Indyk, Paul Pillar, and Ian Lustick.  Apart from the presentations, there were some good exchanges during the question-and-answer session that followed, particularly between Hillary and Martin Indyk.  The Middle East Policy Council will not have a video of the event ready for a few days.  In the meantime, we append below the text of Hillary’s remarks.    

From Hillary Mann Leverett: 

The “conventional wisdom” in Washington has long held that Iran, its Syrian ally, and their so-called proxies, HAMAS and Hezbollah, are the ultimate “spoilers” for Middle East peacemaking efforts.  According to the conventional wisdom, Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric and terrorist attacks by HAMAS and Hizballah have regularly scuttled what would otherwise surely have been successful diplomatic initiatives.  Given this conventional wisdom, two opposing strategies of “linkage” are typically put forward.  Both start from the same premise, that Iran and its so-called proxies can and must be marginalized—they really only differ in how to achieve that goal.

The first strategy, favored by the Obama Administration, see here, and articulated recently by National Security Adviser James Jones, see here, holds that trying to achieve Arab-Israeli peace is the key to Iran and its proxies’ regional marginalization. 

–From this perspective, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement—or, more accurately, an Israeli-Fatah peace agreement—and the creation of a more prosperous Fatah enclave in the West Bank would undermine popular support for HAMAS, even in Gaza, marginalize HAMAS as an actor in Palestinian politics, and effectively terminate Iranian influence in Palestinian affairs, with significant negative consequences for Iran’s regional standing. 

–Likewise, the prospect of an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement could be used to wean Syria away from its alliance with Iran, thereby circumscribing Hizballah’s role in Lebanese politics and further reducing Tehran’s regional standing and influence.   

–And, of course, progress in the peace process will supposedly make it easier to form that mythical, and I stress mythical, diplomatic constellation, to which several U.S. administrations have aspired—a coalition between Israel and “moderate” Arab states, for the purpose of “containing” Iran. 

The second linkage strategy, favored by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, posits that weakening Iran’s strategic position and stripping it of its nuclear capabilities—if necessary, by force—is needed before there can be real progress on Arab-Israeli peace. 

Frankly, both sets of linkages are wrong.  Let’s start with why the first set of linkages—that is, trying to achieve Arab-Israeli peace as a way of marginalizing Iran and its so-called proxies—is wrong.   

The key point is this:  It is simply not possible today—if it ever were possible at some point in the past—to achieve Israeli-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli peace in a manner that excludes and marginalizes Iran and its regional allies. 

–Usama Hamdan, the chief of international relations for HAMAS has said that Israel and the United States have a “Cinderella shoe” approach to Middle Eastern elections—that is, unless the winner fits a certain set of specific parameters, he will not be accepted as a legitimate interlocutor. 

–I agree, but I would add that Israel and the United States also have a “Cinderella shoe” approach to the Middle East peace process—only parties that can frontload their concessions need apply.         

This is a profoundly dysfunctional approach to diplomacy.  That is something Israel’s late Prime Minister Rabin came to understand when he explained why Israel needed to negotiate with the PLO—because you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.  Policies that deny this reality are bound to and have failed—both in terms of Arab-Israeli peacemaking and in terms of dealing effectively with Iran.  I will elaborate this argument with three specific points: 

First, though they are non-state actors, HAMAS and Hizballah have become indispensable political players in their respective national and regional contexts.  Simply put, these groups win elections—and they win them for the best possible reasons: because they represent unavoidable constituencies with legitimate grievances.  Under these circumstances, I challenge anyone to describe, in a plausible way, how Israel and the United States can reach sustained peace agreements on either the Palestinian or the Syrian and Lebanese tracks of the peace process without these groups’ buy in.

These groups should have a place in the peace process—because otherwise the process has no meaning, except perhaps as a crass “motion without movement” exercise.  Those who continue to depict these groups as nihilistic enterprises with no real political agenda are either not paying attention or are deliberately distorting reality for their own political purposes. 

Second, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to want better relations with the United States and a peace settlement with Israel that meets well-established Syrian “red lines” (for example, full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights).  But, as President Assad has made clear to my husband, Flynt Leverett, and me in our meetings with him, see here, and has said publicly, see here—Syria’s relations with Iran, Hizballah, and HAMAS are, at this point, “not on the table”. 

Syria’s relationships with these actors have moved from perhaps being, in the past, primarily “tactical” levers for the Syrian leadership to being increasingly strategic assets.  As my husband described in his 2005 book, Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial By Fire, following the end of the Cold War, Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option was a peace settlement with Israel that, under appropriate circumstances and with firm parameters for an acceptable deal, could be negotiated bilaterally with U.S. mediation.  To that end, the elder Assad seemed prepared to modify significant aspects of Syria’s relationships with Iran, Hizballah, and Palestinian militant groups, as part of the “price” for an acceptable peace deal with Israel and strategic rapprochement with the United States.  (Of course, this proposition was never put to the test, as the Syria track effectively collapsed under the Clinton Administration’s mismanagement just two months before Hafiz al-Assad’s death in 2000.) 

But Bashar al-Assad’s accession to the Syrian presidency in 2000 took place at the beginning of what has proven to be a period of dramatic shifts in the Middle East’s strategic environment.  As we have described on our blog, www.TheRaceForIran.com and elsewhere, see here, these shifts include the effective collapse of the traditional Arab-Israeli peace process, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, inconclusive U.S. military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of Hizballah and HAMAS as important political actors (as I just discussed), the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri in Lebanon, and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as well as subsequent Israeli military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza.  It is in this context that Syria’s ties to Hizballah, HAMAS, and Iran have taken on an increasingly strategic character during Bashar al-Assad’s presidential tenure. 

–With the removal of Syrian military forces from Lebanon following the Hariri assassination in 2005, Hizballah has become an even more valuable asset for Syria, see here.  Hizballah is, among other things, a key ally for Damascus in protecting Syrian interests in Lebanon; it also provides an important—and, at this point, strategic—deterrent against Israel.     

–HAMAS’s control of Gaza and credibility among Palestinians more broadly, see here, makes it hard to imagine that Assad would agree to expel Khalid Mishal from Syria as part of a purely bilateral settlement with Israel. 

–Iran has also proven its strategic value to Syria in recent years.  Iran’s religious legitimization of the Assads’ Alawi sect is important as Syria’s secular regime navigates its way through a religiously charged regional environment.  Iranian support was also critical for Syria in fending off heavy pressure from the United States, most of Europe, and moderate Arab states in the wake of the Hariri assassination.  In an uncertain strategic environment, Assad will continue to value the “hedge” provided by its close relationship with Iran.  Assad is not about to be “weaned” away from Syria’s alliance with Iran.  

Third, all that I have discussed under my first two points means that, at this juncture, Iran is bound to be at least an indirect party to any serious Middle East peace process.  This is not an obstacle to peace; it is a requirement for progress toward peace.  In fact, HAMAS leaders and President Assad told us, and have said publicly, that Iran has backed their efforts to reach a settlement.  

–Iran publicly endorsed Syrian participation in talks with Israel that were mediated by Turkey in 2008, see here.     

–And, Iran does not try to block HAMAS’s publicly stated openness to a popularly legitimated two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, see here. 

Now let’s turn to the more hawkish version of linkage favored by Netanyahu—namely, that “rolling” back Iran is a prerequisite for Middle East peace, see here.  This vision is at least as delusional as the suggestion by many neoconservatives in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq that the “road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad”.  It is delusional to think that, if the Islamic Republic of Iran disappeared or were effectively “contained”, there would be no more problems with the Middle East peace process and HAMAS, Hizballah, and Syria would “fall into line” with Israeli and American preferences for organizing the regional order. 

–These actors have their own agendas and preferences for regional diplomacy, which they will not give up simply because Israeli or U.S. military aircraft strike nuclear targets inside Iran.

–Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the increase in Iran’s regional standing and influence in recent years is not a function of its military capabilities. 

–To this day, the Islamic Republic of Iran has no meaningful capacity to project conventional military power beyond its borders.  To the extent that Iran’s regional standing and influence has increased in recent years, it has been because Tehran has picked “winners” for its allies in key regional arenas like Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine.  U.S. and Israeli pressure on the Islamic Republic is not going to undercut its regional influence; in fact, confrontation with Israel and/or the United States might well enhance Iran’s regional standing.         

It is also delusional to think that concern about a rising Iranian threat could unite Israel and moderate Arab states in a grand alliance under Washington’s leadership.  In reality, the prospect of strategic cooperation with Israel is profoundly unpopular with Arab publics.  Even moderate Arab regimes cannot sustain such cooperation.  Pursuit of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition united to contain Iran is not only delusional, it also will continue to leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free fall—as these tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, HAMAS and Hizballah.

Additionally, Iran is not going to take Israeli and U.S. political or even military pressure without “pushing back”.  And at least some of the ways in which Tehran will seek to “push back” are likely to make it even harder than it is now (that is to say, virtually impossible) to move forward with serious Arab-Israeli peacemaking.  

Finally, Netanyahu’s declaration this weekend that only the threat of U.S. military action can have a positive impact on Iran’s nuclear decision-making comments during his visit here last week should be taken very seriously, especially among those of us in the American Jewish community, because he is on an extremely dangerous course.  Netanyahu’s push for eventual U.S. military action against Iran could do real damage to Israel and the American Jewish community. 

A U.S. attack on Iran would almost certainly result in a much broader confrontation between the United States and Iran—a confrontation that will threaten U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the strategic outcomes of our military adventures in both of those countries, spike the price of oil and hurt an already shaky global economy, and shatter international perceptions that reckless and dangerous U.S. behavior in the strategically vital Middle East was peculiar to George W. Bush’s presidency, see here.  These eminently foreseeable consequences would have a devastating impact on America’s standing in one of the world’s most important regions.  Israel and the pro-Likud community, if not the broader Jewish community, in the United States may well be blamed when the resulting U.S.-Iranian confrontation does severe damage to American interests, because they have led the charge to war, see here. 

So, what is a more constructive way forward?  The answer is clear:  Real U.S.-Iranian rapprochement to normalize U.S.-Iranian relations, what my husband and I call the “grand bargain”, along with a serious negotiation for Arab-Israeli peace that includes Hamas and Hezbollah.  The precedent for this is what Nixon and Kissinger did to realign U.S. relations with China and Egypt in the early 1970s—striking grand bargains with what, at the time, were two rising regional powers.  These strategic bargains profoundly changed, for the better, the regional environments in Asia and the Middle East.  In particular, the U.S. rapprochement with Egypt and its corollary, the Camp David Accords, have made another generalized Arab-Israeli war nearly impossible.

Today, from a strategic perspective, bringing Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah into a non-conflictual diplomatic process and, eventually, a political settlement would be at least as consequential.  For those who buy into the demonization of the Islamic Republic and these groups, it would be useful to remember that only in retrospect is the late Anwar Sadat viewed as a “man of peace”—throughout much of the 1970s, he was widely seen as an anti-Israel activist who had launched the 1973 Yom Kippur war, had admired Adolf Hitler, and had collaborated with Nazi Germany against British forces in Egypt during World War II. 

But the critical point is that without U.S.-Iranian rapprochement the United States will not be able to achieve any of its high-priority goals in the Middle East.  This would be bad for America’s Arab allies and Israel, which need credible and effective American leadership in the region to maintain a stable balance of power, address serious threats, and ensure their safety and survival.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States last week was capped off today with the broadcast of a previously-taped interview on Fox New Sunday.  The interview covered a range of important topics, including the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship and prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.  But it is the Prime Minister’s remarks on Iran that deserve special attention—for these remarks suggest that Netanyahu is embarked on an extremely dangerous course.  Netanyahu is pushing the United States to take eventual military action against Iran—a confrontation that would have predictably disastrous consequences for U.S. interests and regional stability, and for which Israel and the pro-Likud community in the United States will be blamed, because they will have led the charge to war.  Such a scenario would be far more damaging to Israel and the American Jewish community than anything Iran might conceivably do.       

Three points regarding Iran from Netanyahu’s interview with Fox News Sunday warrant particular attention. 

–First, Netanyahu said that CIA Director Leon Panetta was “probably right” in his judgment that new United Nations and U.S. unilateral sanctions against will not “stop” Iran’s nuclear program—which Netanyahu characterized as “racing to develop atomic weapons” for the explicit purpose of “Israel’s destruction”.          

–Second, Netanyahu argued that the Islamic Republic’s “irrational regime” cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons capability, because “you can’t rely on the fact that they’ll obey the calculations of cost and benefit that have governed all nuclear powers since the rise of the nuclear age after Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.  Netanyahu disdained the plausibility of “containing” a “nuclear Iran”:  “I think that’s a mistake, and I think that people fall into a misconception”.  Indeed, Netanyahu went on to compare Iran to “other radicals like the Taliban” (sic) who sent terrorists to attack the United States without regard to the consequences and characterized the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as “the ultimate terrorist threat”.      

–Third, while noting that “the Jewish state was set up to defend Jewish lives and we always reserve the right to defend ourselves”, Netanyahu asserted that it was only the threat of U.S. military strikes that might prompt Iranian decision-makers to stop their alleged advance toward building nuclear weapons:  “There has only been one time that Iran actually stopped the program.  That was when it feared U.S. military action”.  (We take this as a reference to the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear program, see here, which famously judged “with high confidence” that “Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” in the fall of 2003, “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work”.)    

Netanyahu’s remarks about Iran are noteworthy, for at least two reasons. 

–First, there is an inherent contradiction in the official Israeli analysis of Iranian decision-making on nuclear matters.  On one hand, Iran is deemed to be so “irrational” that it cannot be relied on to follow the same sorts of cost-benefit calculations that have presumably guided the decisions of states actually possessing nuclear weapons since the end of World War II.  On the other hand, Iranian decision-makers are judged to be sufficiently “rational”, in the instrumental sense, to make logical risk-benefit calculations about the management of their country’s nuclear program.  (As the 2007 NIE held, “Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.”) 

We continue to hold that there is no evidence Tehran has taken a decision to weaponize its developing nuclear capabilities, and continue to note that the highest levels of political and religious authority in the Islamic Republic seem to have ruled out such a decision—not least on religious grounds.  But the contradiction in Netanyahu’s position affirms our assessment (see, here) that the Iranian nuclear program is hardly an “existential threat” to Israel.  The real problem, from an Israeli perspective, is that a nuclear-capable Iran might, at the margins, begin to impose some limits on Israel’s current freedom to use military force unilaterally, wherever it wants, and for whatever purpose it favors.      

–Second, while preserving the option of Israeli military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets, Netanyahu is shifting the onus for forestalling the further development of Iran’s nuclear capabilities onto the prospect of U.S. military action.  In this context, we note President Obama’s response to a question about the possibility of a unilateral Israeli strike against Iran, in an interview with Israel’s Channel Two television, see here, following his meeting with Netanyahu last week:  “I think the relationship between the US and Israel is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other…We try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern and that approach is one Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to”.  It is unlikely that Obama would have made such a statement unless he believed he had a commitment from Netanyahu not to “surprise” him by taking unilateral military action against Iran.       

Based on our own conversations with well-connected Israelis, we believe that there is an elaborated, long-term logic to Netanyahu’s approach.  In essence, Netanyahu is minimizing the risk of an Israeli attack on Iran in the near term to maximize pressure on the United States to take military action against the Islamic Republic in the medium term—perhaps in the next 12-18 months, after a critical mass of opinion concludes that international and U.S. sanctions are not “working”.  At that point—having already dismissed the plausibility of containment, the Prime Minister has positioned himself to press President Obama not to “waste time” with a futile strategy and move on to serious consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets. 

At least in theory, Obama could say “no” to Netanyahu’s exhortations—but that “no” would become public knowledge within roughly 15 minutes of its ostensibly private delivery.  And, if our assessment of timing is correct, Obama’s “no” would become public knowledge as the President’s re-election bid is gearing up in a serious way.   

If Obama says anything other than “no” to Netanyahu, the United States will be committed to military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.  A U.S. attack on Iran would almost certainly result in a much broader confrontation between the United States and the Islamic Republic—with residual U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq at high risk, the strategic outcomes from our military adventures in both of those countries in even deeper jeopardy, profoundly negative effects on the global economy, and international perceptions that reckless and “rogue” U.S. behavior in the strategically vital Middle East was an idiosyncratic feature of George W. Bush’s presidency forever shattered.  These eminently foreseeable consequences would have a devastating impact on America’s standing in one of the world’s most important regions.       

Some critics of the American invasion of Iraq argue that this decision reflected undue influence by Israel and parts of the pro-Israel community in the United States.  As individuals who served at the White House on the National Security Council staff in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, we saw no evidence that Israeli officials and leaders of the American Jewish community (as opposed to some pro-Israel intellectuals like the Saban Center’s Ken Pollack and neoconservative policymakers in the Bush Administration) goaded the United States into invading Iraq.  However, if Washington initiates war with Iran over the nuclear issue, it will be primarily in response to pressure from Israel and the more Likudnik parts of the pro-Israel community in the United States.  And those actors will bear a significant share of the blame for the consequences of that war.    

So, between now and the next U.S. presidential election in 2012, the most important question about America’s Iran policy is this:  What will President Obama say, when Prime Minister Netanyahu comes calling again? 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett