The Race for Iran

Today—the third Monday in January—is Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday in the United States, created to honor the Christian clergyman who played a uniquely decisive role in the long struggle to win legal and political equality for Americans of African descent.  King’s work to overcome racial division in the United States made him a genuine American hero, on par with the founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln; it also won him international renown—he was, among other things, the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.  But in the last years of his life, King’s concerns expanded beyond civil rights to encompass issues of economic justice; he also became increasingly (and critically) engaged in debates about America’s role in the world—debates that centered, to a large extent, around the war in Vietnam.

On April 4, 1967, King delivered an address, entitled “Beyond Vietnam:  A Time To Break Silence”, at Riverside Church in New York City.  More than 40 years later, it remains one of the most searing analyses we have ever encountered of the temptation to hegemony which, time and again over the last 60 years, has lured the United States into ill-conceived, highly destructive, and ultimately counterproductive foreign policies. 

King died more than a decade before the Iranian revolution.  Obviously, there is no direct evidence of what he would have thought about his country’s policies toward the Islamic Republic or the course of America’s engagement in the Middle East over the past 30 years.  But we believe that his “Beyond Vietnam” address speaks powerfully to the concerns of those who think the United States has gone badly off track in its approach to the Islamic Republic and the Middle East more generally.  The address is too long to post, in its entirety; for those who want to read the whole text (something we highly recommend), click here and here (for video excerpts and commentary).  But we have excerpted below a number of passages that, we believe, cut to the heart of the (largely self-generated) challenges that the United States faces in the Middle East today.  

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated one year to the day after he delivered this address.  He was 39 years old when he died.

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett 

Beyond Vietnam:  A Time to Break Silence

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.  I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together:  Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam.  The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines:  “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one.  Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war.  Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.  Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.  We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak…Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path.  At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud:  Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King?  Why are you joining the voices of dissent?  Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say.  Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask?  And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.  Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate—leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.  This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front.  It is not addressed to China or to Russia.  Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam.  Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem.  While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents…

[I]t should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.  If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.  It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.  So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission—a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.”  This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ.  To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war…as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God.  Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.  We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula.  I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now.  I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators.  The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China.  They were led by Ho Chi Minh.  Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them.  Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.  With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists.  For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence.  For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not.  We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will.  Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements.  But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators—our chosen man, Premier Diem.  The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north.  The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused.  When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change—especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support.  All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy—and land reform.  Now they languish under our bombs and consider us—not their fellow Vietnamese—the real enemy.  They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met.  They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go—primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops.  They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.  They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury.  So far we may have killed a million of them—mostly children.  They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals.  They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food.  They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform?  What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?  Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?  Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village.  We have destroyed their land and their crops.  We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force—the unified Buddhist church.  We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon.  We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on—save bitterness.  Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets.  The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these?  Could we blame them for such thoughts?  We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise.  These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.  What of the National Liberation Front—that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists?  What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south?  What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms?  How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the north” as if there were nothing more essential to the war?  How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land?  Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions.  Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence.  Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name?  What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part?  They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta.  And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them—the only party in real touch with the peasants.  They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded.  Their questions are frighteningly relevant.  Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.  For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi.  In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust.  To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now.  In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies.  It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva.  After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.  Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made.  Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north.  He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy.  Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else.  For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy.  We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.  Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease.  We must stop now.  I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.  I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.  I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam.  I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.  I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.  The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam.  Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct.  The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.  It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat.  The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam…The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve.  It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people.  The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
5. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment…There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam.  I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.  The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation.  They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru.  They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia.  They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa.  We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.  Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution…I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies…The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.  A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.”  This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.  A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death…

These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days…A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.  Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men.  This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept—so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force—has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.  When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response.  I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.  Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.  This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

“Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.  If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.  We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation.  The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate.  History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate…We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world—a world that borders on our doors.  If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.  This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response.  Shall we say the odds are too great?  Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?  Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets?  Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost?  The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

We are very pleased to present the following article, “The Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States, and the Balance of Power in the Middle East”, by our friend and colleague, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Director of Tehran University’s Institute for North American Studies.  The article is full of insights into Iranian thinking about some of the most important issues on Middle Eastern and international agendas—insights that warrant the widest possible circulation in the United States and other Western countries.  The article is originally being published by our colleagues at the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, and we are grateful to them for letting us also publish it on www.RaceForIran.com.  The original can be accessed on their site, www.conflictsforum.org, which is well-worth visiting for this article and the range of other important materials there.      

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

The Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States, and the Balance of Power in the Middle East

by Seyed Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s interest in a stable Middle East is arguably greater than that of the United States—after all this is Iran’s neighborhood.  For Iran to grow and prosper, it needs secure borders and stable neighbors. A poor and unstable Afghanistan, for example, inhibits trade and, potentially, increases the flow of refugees and narcotics into the northeastern part of Iran.

Arguably, stability in Iraq may be even more critical to Iran than stability in Afghanistan.  The Iran-Iraq war caused enormous suffering to the people of Iran; Iranians will not forget it in the decades ahead. They will also not forget that their suffering was largely because of American and European support for Saddam Hussain—including Western support for his acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, which he regularly used against Iranian and Iraqi civilians. There was no condemnation from western governments or even the western media for these cruel and barbaric acts. Iranians believe that western leaders are just as guilty for these crimes against humanity as Saddam Hussain himself. It is critical to note that Iran never used or produced chemical weapons either during the war or afterwards, despite the technological capability to do so. This alone, Iranians regularly point out, is evidence that the Islamic Republic of Iran is honest when it states that it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Because of this history, it is understandable that Iranians say they will never again allow Iraq to be used as a platform to attack or destabilize Iran. Iranians will not allow their enemies, adversaries, or antagonists in the future to view Iraq as an asset in any form of conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The United States and Saudi Arabia persist in their attempts to intensify sectarianism and racism between Iran and its neighbors. I was in the Aljazeera studio in Doha when the American ambassador to Qatar used the race card on live television and said that for centuries the Persians have been little but trouble to the rest of the region as well as a constant threat. Nevertheless, a solid majority of Iraqis have strong religious, historical, and cultural ties with Iran. Many Iraqi leaders and intellectuals have lived in Iran for years and are fluent in Persian, and many have married Iranians during the dark years when only the Islamic Republic and Syria backed and recognized the opposition to Saddam Hussain.

In addition, while western-funded and western based Persian TV channels regularly make reprehensible and derogatory statements about Arabs, Iranians inside the Islamic Republic have remained remarkably sympathetic towards Iraqis who suffered under Saddam Hussain and, subsequently, the U.S. occupation of their country. Iranians also remain strongly sympathetic towards the mostly Sunni Palestinian Arabs suffering under the occupation of what Iranians see as the world’s only official apartheid regime.

Iran believes that fundamental change in Iranian-Iraqi relations is more than a future possibility.  It has already been achieved.

This does not mean that Iran wants a weak government in Iraq. In fact, the dramatic increase of trade, tourism, and investment between the two countries since the fall of Saddam Hussein has been a major boost to the Iranian economy.  The Iran/Iraq border, which was, for the most part, a dead-end until the year 2003, is now witnessing long lines of trucks and busses waiting to cross. Officials from both countries are busy building a border infrastructure which will allow this trade and investment to develop further, but they are constantly falling behind the increasing demands of businessmen and pilgrims. Hence, the Islamic Republic of Iran wants a strong and stable Iraq, but an Iraq that is on good terms with Iran and works to further the interests of the region’s population as a whole. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s recent statement that American troops must leave the country by the end of 2011 is a strong sign that this is actually happening.

The same logic applies to Afghanistan. The majority of Afghans share strong religious and cultural links with Iran; most speak the Persian language. Despite what Iranians believe to be the utter failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Iran has invested heavily in the relatively more stable north of the country, building roads and infrastructure. Trade has risen sharply and moderate Sunnis and Shias who were supported by Iran when the United States effectively allowed the then-Saudi- and UAE-funded Taliban to overrun the country, look increasingly to Iran for support, as people in the country feel that the United States has lost the war and that they will inevitably be forced to leave the country sooner or later.

I wrote the “then-Saudi-” funded Taliban, whereas I should have written simply “the Saudi-funded Taliban”. According to leaked documents on Wikileaks, Saudi Arabia is still the largest financial supporter of the Taliban. In fact, almost all of the undemocratic Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf region are still funding the Taliban.  This has always been an open secret in this part of the world. Indeed, not only are these states funding the Taliban, they are effectively funding the Taliban ideology, which has strong similarities to that of Al-Qaeda, throughout the world.  Many wonder how Americans presume that their alliance with the Saudi regime is in the long term interests of the United States. Is the spread of the Salafi ideology in the Horn of Africa, Yemen, Europe, and elsewhere unrelated to the yearly multibillion dollar ideological investment by these regimes, led by the Saudis?

Iranians believe U.S. foreign policymakers, by closing their eyes to Saudi support for hardliner Salafi groups worldwide, are making things more difficult for themselves. This is in addition to the tragic situation brought about as a result of what Iranians see as the foolish invasion of Iraq and the failed American strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is also in addition to what Tehran views as America’s blind support for the world’s final apartheid state, which jails and abuses women and children from the indigenous Palestinian population and kills rock-throwing young men trapped in concentration camp like conditions. All of this is making current U.S. policy in the Middle East unsustainable in the long run. This is especially true as America’s emerging strategic and economic competitors, such as the “BRIC” countries (China, India, Brazil and Russia) make gains at all levels while the United States continues to bleed.

Furthermore, this is playing out as mainstream Sunni and Shia organizations are under pressure throughout the region, as despotic regimes allied to the United States try to ensure their own survival. Under such conditions, hostility towards the United States increases and, ironically, Saudi-funded extremist ideologies thrive. For the time being, this “investment” buys stability for the Saudi royal family, but not for most of the rest of the world, including the United States. Of course, whether these American-backed regimes can actually survive or not is another question. If these regimes do not survive, how will the people in these countries react to America’s past policies of oppression?           

Hence, choosing Arab despots as allies—whether in Saudi Arabia, where women can’t drive or, for the most part, can’t even have an independent bank account, or in Egypt and Jordan—can have serious consequences for the United States in the future. The irony of this is not lost upon Iranians who live in a country where 63 percent of the undergraduate student population is female. Most of my own PhD students are women and the head of my faculty at the University of Tehran is a woman, too.

Iranians also watched how the United States responded to Egypt’s farce elections, yet simultaneously accused Iran of being undemocratic, even though all Iranian leaders are chosen directly by the public or by publicly elected bodies. In the case of last year’s Iranian presidential election, there is no doubt that Ahmadinejad won by a landslide; conclusive evidence of that has even been provided in the English language by scholars, academics, and pollsters. Given this reality, in the eyes of the vast majority of Iranians, the United States effectively supported and advocated mob rule on the streets of Tehran.

The United States accused the Iranian government of stealing the elections without providing any credible evidence whatsoever to back up this claim. The U.S. position is uncritically based on claims made by well-funded, so-called Iran “experts” in the United States who know little about the country and, for the most part, have a deep and unreasonable hostility towards the Islamic Republic. These people have been making claims and predictions about Iran for many years; a review of their past work reveals that they have a very poor track record. However, since they say what the American political establishment wishes them to say, there is no accountability for their misjudgments and flawed analysis, and they continue receiving generous funding. Interestingly, those among them who can speak in Persian use a very different language and tone when speaking on Western-funded or government-owned Persian language TV stations than when speaking in American think tanks or on American television. Basically, this is because they don’t wish to sound absurd to an Iranian audience.

Those commentators who venture to say something different and more reasonable to a western audience are severely attacked by the U.S. media and the so-called Iran experts, who continue to live in their fantasy world. Nevertheless, despite the threats, accusations, and slander, these commentators continued to tell the truth to Americans and Europeans, in order to prevent a foolish or even tragic miscalculation by western governments. But they have done so at a very high personal price. 

Of course, after the massive and unprecedented protests against Mousavi that were held throughout the country following the Ashura riots in December 2009, some people in the west finally began to open their eyes to the reality on the ground. Then came February 11, 2010, the anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, when the western media pinning their collective hopes on claims made by the so-called green movement. Green partisans claimed they would bring millions to the streets of Tehran and take over Azadi Square on live TV. However, when millions of people took to the streets in Tehran (simultaneous rallies were held throughout the country), there was no sign of Mousavi supporters anywhere. Western analysts grudgingly began to admit that they may have misread events in the Islamic Republic of Iran.     

Ironically, in the long run, last year’s events have made Iranians more unified than at any time since the early days of the Revolution. Most critics or opponents of President Ahmadinejad were outraged at Mr. Mousavi’s actions after the election, especially after he failed to show any meaningful evidence of fraud and effectively aligned himself to western-based and western-funded organizations, including ruthless terrorist organizations like the MKO or MEK (which served Saddam Hussain as mercenaries for over two decades), U.S.-based supporters of the former Shah, and violent rioters who killed, maimed, and humiliated police officers and disciplinary forces on the streets of Tehran. That is why, on the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, the size of the pro-Islamic Republic demonstrations held throughout the country were unprecedented and so highly emotional.

Indeed, contrary to what is widely believed in the west, most mainstream reformists have condemned Mousavi’s actions; from early on, they recognized the legitimacy and validity of the election results. Reformist members of parliament that I know and respect have repeatedly said this publicly and privately. The head of the reformist faction in parliament Mr. Tabesh has consistently stated this on numerous occasions. Reformist MPs such as Dr. Kavakebian, Dr. Khabbaz, and Dr. Pazeshkian, as well as many other reformists such Professor Aref, have also taken this position, despite their strong opposition to President Ahmadinejad. Nevertheless, western politicians and the western media for the most part only hear what they want, or need, to hear.

This does not mean that police brutality did not exist or that some government officials did not mismanage the situation. However, a very solid majority of Iranians put the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Mousavi for his actions and baseless accusations.

Indeed, the U.S. response to the election, which, as pointed out, was largely conditioned by dependence on ill-informed and agenda-driven “Iran experts”, has significantly decreased chances for any form of meaningful rapprochement between the two countries in the foreseeable future. Not that there was much chance in the first place; as the Wikileaks documents reveal, Iranian suspicions were correct and Obama’s claims to be interested in redefining U.S.-Iranian relations were, from the start, not really honest. This is also reflected in Obama’s written support for the Brazilian Turkish efforts and then his incredible about-face immediately after the signing of the Tehran Declaration. The Wikileaks cables also reveal how ill-informed the United States is about Iranian affairs. U.S. embassies in Iran’s neighboring countries, like most western embassies in Tehran, receive information from likeminded Iranians or those who tell their hosts what they wish to hear for practical purposes.

Miscalculations regarding Iran are not anything new and they are not limited to elections. U.S., policy regarding Iran’s nuclear program has been based on what is widely judged among Iranians to be a major miscalculation. Not only is the nuclear program seen by the general population as linked to Iranian national sovereignty, it is also a multibillion dollar investment that involves tens of thousands of Iranians and goes back decades. Consequently, it’s something that almost all Iranians support. Indeed, one of the reasons why Ahmadinejad won both presidential elections was because, in the eyes of most Iranians, he was unwilling to appease western powers on the nuclear issue. This was a key issue that hurt the legacy of President Khatami, who was often seen as weak in the face of western pressure.

Wishful thinking in some western countries about the state of Iran’s economy and its supposedly imminent collapse are exactly that—wishful thinking. In recent weeks, it has been repeatedly claimed by these so-called Iran experts and the western media that the Iranian subsidy reform program is a sign that sanctions are “biting”. This again shows a deep misunderstanding of reality in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranians well recognize that, contrary to claims made by Americans and European officials, the “crippling” sanctions have been put into place in order to make the Iranian people suffer.  The imposed sanctions have, in fact, increased anger and hostility toward the United States.  

Moreover, the subsidy reform program, which is by far the most significant economic reform program in contemporary Iranian history, is, in reality, a clear sign that the current Iranian government is strong and self-confident. While the subsidy reform program has been discussed for years, successive governments have been afraid to implement it. The current administration, after much planning, has now begun its implementation.  There is no sign of unrest and most Iranians believe that the reforms will lead to a much stronger economy in the future. Critics of the government, whether Principlist or Reformist, support the program, for the most part. Significantly, Iranian currency and gold reserves are at an all-time high, as well.

This does not mean that Iran isn’t looking for a resolution to the nuclear standoff, but there is no doubt that, for something positive to happen, western countries must make the first move and recognize Iran’s rights to enrich Uranium for peaceful purposes. Contrary to western claims, this is the position of the international community, as Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states along with member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference officially support Iran’s position.

For roughly two years, Iran did more than halt the enrichment of Uranium; it effectively halted almost the entire nuclear program and implemented the Additional Protocol. It allowed the IAEA to carry out intrusive inspections, many of which had nothing to do with the nuclear program and looked more like intelligence-gathering operations on behalf of the U.S. government. The fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency, an undemocratic body largely under western influence, has not found any evidence whatsoever to show that Iran’s nuclear program has ever been anything but peaceful, yet continues to oppose Iran’s nuclear program, is another reason why Iranians have little trust in western governments. U.S. relations with the Israeli regime, India, and Pakistan, which all have nuclear weapons, are strong—even though, in the case of Pakistan, for example, a weak central government has called into question the army’s ability to prevent these weapons from falling into the hands of the Taliban or Taliban-like groups.

American leaders are deceiving themselves if they believe the Wikileaks cables describing the hostility of a number of Arab leaders towards Iran and its nuclear program actually strengthens the U.S. position regarding Iran. In fact, these documents do the exact opposite, as they diminish these already unpopular despots in the eyes of their own people. This becomes clear when one looks at the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll, which reveals that a very strong majority of Arabs support Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, the poll shows that, while 88 percent of Arabs view the Israeli regime as a threat 77 percent view the United States as a threat, only 10 percent view the Islamic Republic of Iran as a threat.  (By way of comparison, 10 percent also viewed Algeria as a threat).

Regarding Palestine and Lebanon, it is a also a major mistake for western experts to believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s support for the people of these countries, especially the people of Palestine, is in any way cynical. If one looks at the pre-Revolution statements of current Iranian leaders, one will see that the issue of Palestine was a central grievance of the opposition to the Shah. Indeed, one of the many mistakes of the so-called green movement was to miscalculate deeply the depth of public sympathy in Iran for the Palestinian people during last year’s riots in Tehran on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan. The kidnapping and murder of Iranian scientists and former government officials by Israeli agents has added further anger.

Iranian support for Palestine, Lebanon, and the Resistance movements is unwavering and any expectation in the west that, under certain circumstances, Iran will end this policy is unfounded. However, official Iranian policy has also always held that, while Iran will not recognize Israel, because it is an apartheid state (the same as its South Africa policy during apartheid), it will respect any decision made by the Palestinian people in this regard. From the Iranian perspective, any decision will have to include all Palestinians living both inside the country and outside it; that would include the millions who continue to live in refugee camps. With regard to Lebanon, the Islamic Republic of Iran supports the country’s independence and sovereignty and it believes that Lebanon and Lebanese civilians can only be protected from Israeli aggression through the Resistance in southern Lebanon. Therefore, the Islamic Republic of Iran will support Hezbollah at all costs.

In Tehran, there is a strong belief that the region is changing dramatically in favor of Hezbollah, the Palestinians, and the Resistance. The rise of an independent Turkey, whose government has a worldview very different from that of the U.S., German, British, and French governments, along with the relative decline of Saudi and Egyptian regional influence, signals a major shift in the regional balance of power. Saudi military incompetence during the fighting with Yemeni tribes along the border between the two countries, the general decline of the Egyptian regime in all respects, and the almost universal contempt among Arabs as a whole for  the leaders of these two countries and other pro-western Arab regimes and their corrupt elites, are seen as signs that the center cannot hold. The fact that the Iranian president and the Turkish prime minister are so popular in Arab countries, while most Arab leaders are deeply unpopular, is a sign that the region is changing.

Some speculate that as the so-called axis of moderation declines alongside the declining fortunes of the United States, Washington may be tempted to move towards limited military confrontation with the Islamic Republic before the U.S. presidential election in 2012. Iranians believe this to be highly unlikely. But Iranians also believe that stability or instability from the Mediterranean to the boarders of India is inextricably linked to peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region. A look at a map makes clear that Iran has the ability to respond to threats throughout region and even beyond. If there is no security for Iranians, then, in the eyes of Iranians, there will be no security for Iran’s antagonists in the region. Under such conditions, the United States should not expect oil or gas to flow out of the Persian Gulf, northern Iraq, or Central Asia. Iran is increasingly confident in the face of regular US military threats. It is also increasingly convinced that western governments recognize that it has the ability to protect its citizens. Western governments must recognize that Iran is looking for peace, but it is not intimidated by the threat of war; in fact, such threats make western governments look crude and uncivilized. The stunning defeat of the Israeli regime against the much smaller and much less well-equipped Resistance in Southern Lebanon is something that is remembered with pride in Tehran.

Iran is prepared to continue living without relations with the United States in the years to come, and more and more young Iranians and businessmen are looking to Asia and countries like China, India, Brazil, and South Africa for higher education, business, and trade. Nevertheless, there are those who still wonder if there is a potential partner in the United States, who can rethink U.S. foreign policy and bring about real change in U.S.-Iranian relations.

Over the last few weeks, some senior figures in Israel’s national security establishment have made—in an Israeli context—relatively moderate statements about their perception of the Iranian “threat” to their country.  Last month, Deputy Prime Minister (and former IDF chief of staff) Moshe Yaalon said that, because of technical difficulties and the impact of international sanctions, the Islamic Republic is at least three years away from attaining the capability to fabricate nuclear weapons, see here. Earlier this month, Meir Dagan, speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the eve of his retirement as head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, said that the Islamic Republic would not be able to construct a nuclear weapons until 2015, see here.  

We note, as we have many times on www.RaceForIran.com, that Iranian officials have consistently rejected the charge that the Islamic Republic intends to build nuclear weapons.  We also reiterate our own view that there is no evidence indicating the Islamic Republic is seeking to fabricate nuclear weapons, and many reasons to take Iranian officials’ statements on this matter seriously. 

The recent pronouncements by high-level Israeli officials reverse a trend, over the past few years, toward increasingly alarmist Israeli analyses of Iran’s nuclear timeline.  As Haaretz summarizes it,

“The Israeli intelligence community’s assessments of Iran’s nuclear capability have changed during Dagan’s tenure…In 2003, Israeli intelligence officials thought Iran would have its first bomb by 2007.  In 2007, they thought it would be 2009, and a year later they put it at 2011.  Now, the date has moved to 2015.”

Paul Pillar has offered some thoughtful observations about why Dagan and Yaalon might have advanced less alarmist assessments of Iran’s nuclear activities than those recapitulated by Haaretz, see here.  We would offer a different perspective on the recent Israeli statements:  while the views put forward by Yaalon and Dagan reverse a recent trend toward more alarmist readings of the situation, in the end, these relatively more relaxed assessments merely return us to what passes for a “normal” state of affairs, with Israeli intelligence claiming that the Islamic Republic is 3-5 years from building nuclear weapons.  In fact, until the last three years or so, Israeli intelligence has been pushing the same analytic bottom line—that the Islamic Republic is 3-5 years away from the bomb—since the early 1990s.  This means that, according to Israeli estimates, Iran is 13-15 years “overdue” in acquiring nuclear weapons.       

Evaluated from this longer-term perspective, the record of Israeli assessments of Iran’s nuclear program confirms our view, see here and here, that Israeli leaders’ agitation about Iran’s nuclear activities is not driven primarily by concern that they pose a genuinely “existential threat” to Israel.  Rather, Israeli leaders’ agitation is driven by perceptions that Iran’s nuclear development works against Israel’s own push to consolidate and maintain a hegemonic position in the region. 

For many years now, one of the foundational pillars for Israel’s hegemony over its regional neighborhood has been the perpetuation of a regional balance of power in which Israel enjoys virtually unconstrained freedom of unilateral military initiative—meaning that it can use military force first, anywhere and anytime it chooses, for whatever purpose it deems desirable.  Iran’s ongoing nuclearization—particularly if it generates a widespread perception that the Islamic Republic had achieved a nuclear “breakout” capability—could begin to constrain that freedom, at least on the margins. 

In this context, the recent assessments of Iran’s nuclear program advanced by Yaalon and Dagan reflect, at least in part, a judgment by important elements of Israel’s national security establishment that Israel has succeeded in ensuring that the Islamic Republic will be kept “in a box” for the next 3-5 years.  (And, yes, Israeli intelligence is that thoroughly politicized.)  This judgment refers not just to Iran’s nuclear program; it runs much more broadly than that. 

The Netanyahu government and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States have decisively undermined chances for successful U.S.-Iranian engagement.  This, in turn, means that Iran will be kept “in a box”, at least to some degree, in terms of the scope of its regional relations.  While we anticipate that the Islamic Republic’s already substantial regional influence will continue to grow in coming years, Israeli political and policy elites calculate/hope it will be difficult for Iran to normalize fully its relations with states across the region as long as its relations with the United States remain strained.  There has been another round of multilateral sanctions imposed on Tehran.  Moreover, the European Union has agreed to measures of its own that effectively “cut off” the Islamic Republic from Europe—a major victory, from Israel’s perspective (see Dennis Ross’ book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace, p.225-227, for his view on how important the EU role is in any international campaign to isolate Iran on Israel’s behalf.)      

Under these circumstances—certainly for those Israeli elites, like Dagan, who have long believed that Israel should be maximally restrained in provoking a military confrontation with Iran—Israel does not need to take on the downside risks of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.  Hence, we see new assessments that take a more relaxed view of the Iranian nuclear “threat”. 

Neither Yaalon nor Dagan should be counted as a “dove”, even by Israeli standards.  Yaalon continues to argue that the United States eventually will have to take actions beyond sanctions to stop Iran—actions that will force Iran to “choose between continuing to seek nuclear capability and surviving”, see here.  Dagan, during his tenure at Mossad, has been thoroughly amenable to crafting delusionally alarmist views of Iran’s nuclear activities when that was deemed politically necessary to push back against any relaxation of anxiety about Iran in Washington or any possibility that the United States might consider seriously engaging Tehran.  This, we believe, helps to explain the tone and substance of Israeli intelligence assessments on Iran’s nuclear activities in late 2007, 2008, and early 2009—that is, after the release of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear program and the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in November 2008.  If Iran turns out not to be in quite as tight a box as many Israeli elites believe is currently the case, expect to see Israeli intelligence turn on a dime and revert to over-the-top alarmism about the Iranian “threat”. 

For us, it continues to be alarming to see the naiveté and/or calculated political considerations of U.S. officials—with long experience dealing with the Israeli politicians and Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus and who, therefore, should know better—who keep buying into the same sort of manipulation and manufactured alarmism, time and time again. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

We are pleased to publish the following post from Peter Jenkins, who has previously contributed outstanding posts to www.RaceForIran.com.  Peter is a partner in ADRgAmbassadors, an international dispute resolution partnership, and a former member of the British diplomatic service who served as the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency from 2001 to 2006—a critical period in the development of the Iranian nuclear issue.  We thank him for another fine piece. 

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

“Getting to Yes” with Iran

The US and its European partners are continuing to set stiff conditions for recognising Iran’s nuclear rights and addressing issues of concern to Iran.  That is the implication of the stress in recent statements on Iran “meeting its international obligations”, since it must be assumed that Western capitals believe that the UN Security Council has turned various demands made of Iran by the IAEA Board of Governors into “international obligations” (though whether they are right to believe that can be disputed).  These demands include suspending uranium enrichment work at Natanz and Qom and reactor construction at Arak, re-applying and ratifying the Additional Protocol, and transparency measures that extend beyond the formal requirements of the standard IAEA safeguards agreement and the Additional Protocol.

These stiff conditions make it hard to be optimistic about the P5+1/Iran talks that are due to resume later this month.  Iranian spokesmen have been reiterating that they are not prepared to discuss a halt to uranium enrichment.  Tehran’s unwillingness to re-apply the Additional Protocol as long as Iran remains subject to UN sanctions is well-documented.  And experience suggests that Iran’s leaders are resilient enough to withstand the “pressures” (sanctions) to which they have been subjected.

Back in 1981 two Harvard academics, Roger Fisher and William Ury, produced a guide to success in negotiations: “Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement without Giving In”.  They argued against what they called “positional bargaining” and in favour of “principled bargaining”.  The essence of principled bargaining, they maintained, is to focus on interests, not positions, and to invent options for mutual gain.  Their book is still in print, over two million copies later, and their thesis has stood up well to the test of experience.

For confirmation of the sterility of positional bargaining one can do worse than study the last five years of negotiation on the Iranian nuclear issue.  The West has not varied its core demands.  Iran has as steadily insisted that these demands infringe Iranian rights and amount to an illegitimate elaboration of the NPT.

So a switch of approach is overdue.  It is time to give principled bargaining a try. 

Western negotiators would not have to look far to find areas where Iranian and Western interests overlap.  Both sides have an interest in Iran addressing and resolving questions that still hang over aspects, past and present, of its nuclear programme. Both sides would benefit from measures to mitigate the fears that Iran’s nuclear activities have aroused in neighbouring Arab states, as these fears could lead some of those states to seek nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons capability.  (References to Saudi Arabia in the new Iranian foreign minister’s first press conference suggest that this is well understood in Tehran.)

The challenge would be to give expression to these shared interests in ways that were mutually acceptable.  In 2003 application of the Additional Protocol was both an obvious and a mutually acceptable way for Iran to set about accounting for 18 years of undisclosed nuclear activity.  Now alternative arrangements, to allow IAEA inspectors to complete their audit, would have to be devised, as in Iran the Additional Protocol has become a symbol of Western double standards and duplicity.  It would be surprising if a formula could not be found.

To mitigate fears and reduce proliferation risks negotiators could draw on past non-proliferation and US/USSR arms control practices.  Nuclear weapon free zones now cover much of the Non-Aligned world.  They have proved their worth as neighbourhood reassurance schemes.  They do not have to be regional in extent; a variant which covered part of a region could serve as well.

Equally, arrangements for mutual reassurance through reciprocal inspections or visits have acquired a sound diplomatic pedigree.  They do not depend on the elimination of all the issues that divide pairs or groups of states, or on old enemies discovering the blessings of friendship.

Of course the chances of any of this coming to pass are close to nil.  As was pointed out on this site and elsewhere last month, the Obama administration appears to have lost whatever appetite it may once have had for a creative approach to the Iranian nuclear issue.  Its instinct is to play safe.  “Playing safe” means sticking to well-established positions, reiterating familiar demands, offering Iran “incentives” that Iran is bound to reject, proclaiming Iran “intransigent” when the rejection occurs, and ratcheting up “pressure” a further notch.

This is understandable.  The average Congressperson views Iran’s Islamic regime with deep suspicion and even deeper distaste; he or she would sooner engage in principled negotiation with the devil. US media comment and reporting rarely deviate from a line honed in Israel: the Islamic regime has firm plans to acquire nuclear weapons and is a mortal threat to all that Americans hold dear.  Prime Minister’s Putin’s statement on Larry King Live on 2 December (“we do not have grounds to suspect that Iran aspires to possess nuclear weapons”) seems to have passed almost unnoticed.  (It is unlikely that on a matter such as this the Russian Prime Minister would be less well-informed than the President of the USA or the Prime Minister of Israel.)

Yet it is a mistake to imagine that for the US or Europe playing safe is a low-cost option.  It is not.  The longer a majority of Americans are left believing that Iran is a nuclear threat, the greater the risk that the White House will have to bow to pressure for extreme measures to deprive Iran of its enrichment capability.  At least one of the current crop of aspirants to the Presidency would require little inducement to declare Iran guilty as charged and round up a lynching party.  The likely consequences for the US and Europe of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities have been spelled out often enough for readers to need no reminder.

The same perception – that Iran is a nuclear threat – appears to be driving, at least in part, costly investments in a missile defence screen for Europe, with unhelpful implications for NATO/Russian relations.  In time it may also, if left unaddressed, drive proliferation in states neighbouring Iran – the very outcome that the West has long sought to avert.

Non-Aligned support for the Western position is a pale relic of what it was in 2003.  Most NAM states have come to doubt that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons.  They dislike the Western emphasis on suspending or halting enrichment, because they cannot find justification for it in the NPT, because they detect a whiff of victimisation, and because they see a glaring double standard.  So Western handling of Iran is not consolidating NAM support for the NPT; it is sapping it.

As the executive-director of the International Energy Agency warned in October, sanctions are hampering much-needed investment in Iran’s oil and gas sectors, and this threatens global energy security and price stability.  The ability of non-Western companies to make up for the absence of Western investment is uncertain.  Meanwhile, in other sectors, as a result of sanctions, Western companies have lost market share to Newly Emerging competitors.  The impact on employment in the West, on corporate profits and on economic growth is measurable.

Playing safe is also a lost opportunity.  America’s reputation has suffered over the last decade.  America’s moral authority – a belief in the US as a force for good – used to win respect for US leadership in most parts of the world.  That stock of moral authority is now lower than it once was.   The Iranian nuclear issue offers an opportunity to replenish it (and quell criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s 2009 choice). An agreement with Iran that reduced the risk of conflict and proliferation in South West Asia, in the teeth of populist American prejudice, would be seen far and wide as a fine achievement.

I am not advocating the resolution of all the West’s differences with Iran. There is no reason to think that at this stage the Islamic regime is ready to recognise Israel’s right to exist, or to cut off support for Hezbollah and Hamas, or to start complying with human rights obligations.  I am merely making a case for taking the first steps in an incremental process, as President Nixon did when he went to China in 1972, and as President Kennedy did in negotiating the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty.  Even if the first fruits of a “principled” negotiation with Iran are modest, as they probably will be, a negotiation can generate significant cost savings (see above) and political gains.

Nor am I suggesting that Iran should be allowed to violate its NPT obligations. Demanding full compliance with the NPT is one position that the West may legitimately, and should, hold firmly. There needs, however, to be a better understanding that NPT obligations are not synonymous with the “international obligations” to which Western speakers like to allude. The NPT requires Iran to accept IAEA safeguards on all source or special fissionable material in its possession, and to refrain from the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices. It does not require Iran to refrain from enriching uranium or to abandon construction of heavy water reactors. It requires Iran to re-apply Code 3.1 of its Subsidiary Arrangement; it does not require Iran to re-apply the Additional Protocol or implement exceptional transparency measures.

Finally, I am not proposing that the West drop its guard.  On the contrary the West should maintain all the measures that are in place to complicate Iran’s acquisition of nuclear and ballistic missile technology (just as it did after taking the first steps towards détente with Russia and China).  The US should continue to extend protection to any state that feels threatened by Iran.  And Iran’s leaders should have impressed upon them that, were evidence to emerge that they were attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, all but a handful of states would be united in making them regret their folly.

–Peter Jenkins

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–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett