Dear Readers, As many of you know, we are working around the clock to finish a manuscript for our forthcoming book, Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are very excited about the project and look forward to its publication next year. Unfortunately, it has meant that we have been unable to post as often as we had and that we would like. We greatly appreciate your patience. We have every intention to resume posting regularly as soon as we finish the manuscript.
Earlier this month, the Washington Quarterly published an article by Ken Pollack and Ray Takeyh, titled “Doubling Down on Iran”. We had been contemplating a response to the article, but, a few days ago, Steve Walt took on Messrs Pollack and Takeyh at Foreign Policy. His response is so devastatingly sharp that we want to highlight it, see here.
As Steve describes the article, it calls for “a variety of new pressures, including the use of Special Forces and other military means to ramp up the pressure” on and, ultimately, to destabilize the Islamic Republic. The article
“portrays these escalated pressures as something of a last-ditch effort to convince Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program. Like U.S. policy itself, their article is rife with internal contradictions. As such, it provides a textbook illustration of the stale thinking that has shaped U.S. policy for a couple of decades.
For starters, Pollack and Takeyh admit that their past prescriptions have been a bust. They take credit for what they call the Obama administration’s “two track” approach, writing that ‘the two of us were among the very first to propose this policy.’ Then they freely admit ‘it is time to acknowledge that the current version of the two-track policy has failed.’ The chutzpah here is impressive: although their own policy recommendations have failed, they think we should continue to respect their insights and follow their advice. It would be hard to find a clearer example of the lack of imagination or accountability that bedevils U.S. policy on this issue.
Second, Pollock and Takeyh present a one-sided narrative of U.S. policy toward Iran that exaggerates the carrots we’ve supposedly offered and overstates Iranian recalcitrance…This formulation is at best misleading and at worst simply wrong. Obama & Co. were hardly ‘passionate; about emphasizing carrots; in reality, the United States made a couple of purely symbolic gestures but quickly reverted to mostly sticks when the symbolism didn’t produce immediate Iranian concessions. Moreover, the United States and its allies have never made Iran a concrete offer; the supposed ‘path’ to a deal was merely a list of topics Washington said it was willing to discuss as soon as Iran agreed to give us what we wanted (i.e., an end to nuclear enrichment).
In other words, when Pollack and Takeyh write that the administration was ‘offering the theocratic leaders a respectful path of out of their predicament,’ that ‘respectful path’ was defined as complete Iranian acquiescence to Washington’s demands. You surrender, and then we’ll talk…
Third, Pollack and Takeyh never confront the inherent contradiction in the ‘two-track policy’ (which, to repeat, they admit has been a failure). This policy is supposed to convince Tehran that the United States is not irrevocably hostile, and that we would really, really like to have a better relationship. It is also designed to convince Tehran that it has no need for a nuclear deterrent, or even a latent nuclear capability that could be used to get a bomb at some point down the road. But while we are supposedly trying to reassure Iran about our intentions, the United States has been ratcheting up sanctions, almost certainly engaging in covert action against the clerical regime, pointedly emphasizing that all options (including the use of force) are ‘on the table,’ and making it abundantly clear that we would be perfectly happy if regime change occurred.
It is hard to imagine a policy that is less likely to encourage Iran to compromise, and more likely to fuel Iran’s deeply rooted and understandable belief that it is us who cannot be trusted…The inconsistent policy prescribed by Pollack and Takeyh (and followed by Washington for many years) is probably the worst possible approach, because our crude attempts to combine half-hearted carrots with tangible sticks merely reinforces Iran’s belief that our positive gestures are simply tricks designed to gull them into unwise concessions…
Yet despite the protracted failure of this entire approach, Pollack and Takeyh now want us to “double down” on it: ramping up more sanctions, reaching out to the Green movement, possibly inserting Special Forces into Iran (!), and engaging in cyber-warfare and other forms of pressure…[T]hese steps are more likely to reinforce Iranian intransigence and make them think harder about the value of some sort of deterrent.
Pollack and Takeyh also fail to see the irony—or it is hypocrisy?—in their own prescriptions. They say at the beginning of their piece that the US must ‘compel Iran to relinquish its nuclear ambitions, adhere to prevailing norms on terrorism and human rights, and respect the sovereignty of its neighbors’ (my emphasis). Yet with a straight face they then proceed to outline a menu of options designed to violate Iran’s sovereignty for as long as it takes to produce the government there that we want. And yet we wonder why Iran’s leaders don’t see us as especially principled or worthy of trust…
In short, there is little reason to think that ‘doubling down’ will do anything more than increase Iran’s interest in moving closer to a latent nuclear capacity. It is a recommendation for more of the same policy that has been failing for over a decade. Instead of persisting with a failed policy, the United States ought to be rethinking both the goals it is trying to achieve and the means it is using to reach them. Ending enrichment is not in the cards, but it might be possible to convince Iran not to weaponize. That approach would require ratcheting down the pressure, making concrete offers instead of vague hints, and exercising a lot more patience instead of expecting a quick and decisive breakthrough. But because this approach—which has never been tried—is anathema inside the insulated Beltway mind-set, we end up with the endless recyling of failed approaches.
But my real concern goes deeper. It is hard to read this piece without hearkening back to Pollack’s The Threatening Storm, the book that convinced many liberals to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. What made that book especially persuasive was Pollack’s depiction of himself as a former dove who had oh-so-reluctantly concluded that there was no option but to go to war. Similarly, this article explicitly says that it is not yet time to bomb, and that we have time to try a few more options first. But by falsely portraying the United States has having made numerous generous offers, by dismissing Iran’s security concerns as unfounded reflections of innate suspiciousness or radical ideology, and by prescribing a course of action that hasn’t worked in the past and is likely to fail now, Pollack and Takeyh may be setting the stage for a future article where they admit that “doubling down” didn’t work, and then tell us—with great reluctance, of course—that we have no choice but to go to war again.”
Bravo, Steve.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
