The Race for Iran

After our visit to Tehran a couple of weeks ago, we wanted to share some of our observations.  We highlight six points, in particular.    

First, we are struck by how much hope was invested in President Obama by a wide range of Iranians—from students to senior officials and other important elites.  Iranians were positively impressed by Senator Obama’s courageous campaign stand in favor of U.S. engagement with the Islamic Republic, which stood in stark contrast to Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran.  Like people in many other parts of the world, Iranians were struck by the election of the first African-American President of the United States, and by the many unique and compelling aspects of Barack Obama’s personal story.  The Tehran University graduate students in American studies with whom we spent time told us that both of Obama’s books had been required reading in some of their classes.  Moreover, we saw that Obama’s books were available in Persian translations, making them accessible to a much wider Iranian audience.  Even today, Iranian policymakers and other elites seem strongly inclined in private conversation to draw a distinction between Obama the individual—who is still seen as a highly intelligent and basically good man—and the American political system of which he is a part.  (And, of course, Obama’s name provides the basis for an Iranian pun—ū bā mā means “he is with us” in Persian.)    

Second, Iranian policymakers and other elites believe that their government tried to respond positively to President Obama’s early efforts at rhetorical outreach to the Islamic Republic.  In this regard, our Iranian interlocutors underscored the significance of the public remarks made by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei two days after Obama issued his Nowruz message last March.  Perhaps most importantly, Khamenei said in these remarks that, if the United States were to change its behavior toward the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Republic would change its behavior as well.  Our Iranian interlocutors emphasized that this statement represented a calculated and rapid response to Obama’s Nowruz message from the Islamic Republic’s highest level of authority.  Some of our interlocutors pointed out that Khamenei’s formulation—which left it up to Obama to determine what “change” in American behavior he was prepared to pursue—was deliberately crafted to maximize Obama’s room to maneuver.       

Third, we are struck by how much disappointment there is among Iranians that Obama now appears unwilling and/or incapable of changing U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic.  We wrote last week about the corrosive effect that the perception of continuing U.S. involvement with groups such as Jundallah is having on Iranian assessments of the Obama Administration’s seriousness and good intentions.  More broadly, from an Iranian perspective, there has been no substantively meaningful change in U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic during Obama’s presidency.        

In some cases, this perception has sparked a rhetorical backlash against President Obama.  This was perhaps most prominently displayed in January, when Mohammad Javad Larijani—a former parliamentarian and deputy Foreign Minister who is one of Iran’s leading physicists, head of the country’s human rights council, and brother to both the parliament speaker and the head of the judiciary—made a widely noticed statement while addressing the Islamic Society of Engineers in Tehran: 

“When Barack Obama was sworn into office he talked of verbally engaging Iran.  What has changed is that today the kaka siah [a racial term, described in some commentaries as ‘the equivalent of the N-word in Farsi’] talks of regime change in Iran…I am not a racist, but I must respond to this man somehow.” 

Some of our interlocutors put this observation in a more structural context, expressing concern that the U.S. political system will not allow Obama—however well-intentioned he may be—to take America’s Iran policy in a fundamentally different direction, and that these structural constraints may be more acute for Obama because he is African-American.        

Fourth, we believe even more strongly than before our trip that the Islamic Republic is in no way a society on the verge of fundamental political upheaval.  Since the Islamic Republic’s presidential election last June, we have come under much criticism for arguing that Mousavi’s supporters in that election and the Green Movement which arose in the election’s wake did not represent a majority of Iran’s population.  We were in Tehran just after 22 Bahman (February 11), the anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding, which was widely seen as a manifestation of the Green Movement’s attenuation and the extent of popular support for the Islamic Republic. 

For all of the critical discussion of Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, Tehran stores are fully stocked, with a wide range of consumer goods and foreign products, including automobiles, personal computers, and high-end Asian electronics. Notwithstanding the global financial crisis that broke in the summer of 2008, Iran’s economy has not gone into recession and continues to grow.  According to the IMF’s latest assessment of the Iranian economy, published last month,

“Iran’s economic performance was strong in recent years…at the same time inflation has declined significantly.  The current account surplus is estimated to have remained strong in 2008-09 despite the drop in oil prices reflecting good performance in non-oil exports.”

Unlike virtually every other large Middle Eastern city, there are no visible signs of grinding poverty in Tehran—e.g., slum neighborhoods, beggars on the streets, etc.     

Slowly and reluctantly, some of those who let themselves be swept up in a wave of enthusiasm for the Green Movement are beginning to acknowledge, however grudgingly, the accuracy of our analysis.  (Our favorite example of this so far is a sentence in a recent article about us by Michael Crowley in The New Republic.  While trying to muster as much criticism of us as he could, after summarizing our analysis of Iranian domestic politics since the June 12, 2009 presidential election, Crowley wrote, “It is not obvious that this analysis is wrong.”)  Conversations and observations in Tehran confirm our assessment that the Green Movement’s social base is shrinking, not growing.  We met a number of young people who claimed they had supported Mousavi’s presidential candidacy (and, in some cases, said they had participated in demonstrations against the results in the first few days after the election) but who now say they are deeply disappointed in Mousavi—in particular, for having continued protesting against the outcome after failing to produce evidence of electoral fraud. 

There is no significant elite challenge to the current political structure.  Mousavi is increasingly marginalized.  Former President Khatami has been publicly silent of late.  While we were in Tehran, the Islamic Republic’s Assembly of Experts—headed by former President and current chairman of the Expediency Council, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—convened for one of its regular, twice-a-year meetings.  In his opening address, Rafsanjani—whom a number of Western analysts had mistakenly estimated would lead a behind-the-scenes effort to remove the Supreme Leader—said that

“those who care for the revolution must clarify their position vis-à-vis supporters of regime change and opponents of the Supreme Leader, and must regard him as the center of unit.”

Fifth, Iranian assessments of President Obama’s seriousness and good intentions are also being negatively affected by the Obama Administration’s evolving positions on post-conflict stabilization in Afghanistan and Iraq.  With regard to Afghanistan, Iranian policymaking elites are appalled at the Administration’s willingness to engage the Taliban about prospective power-sharing with the Karzai government.  As one of our interlocutors put it to us, “if you [the United States] want to make a deal with the Taliban, why did you come to Afghanistan in the first place?”  Similarly, with regard to Iraq, Iranian policymaking elites are put off by the Obama Administration’s championing of the cause of former Ba’athists who have been disqualified from participation in the upcoming parliamentary elections.  In this regard, one of our interlocutors said that the United States would lose all influence in Iraqi affairs if it continued to champion the cause of the disqualified Ba’athists.  Iran, though, has such wide and deep influence in Iraq that it could work productively with virtually any of the Shi’a political slates.    

Sixth, President Obama’s statement in his State of the Union address linking the Green Movement and grassroots efforts to promote the status of Iranian women strikes us as both ill-informed and misleading about the issues confronting women in the Islamic Republic.  There are certainly restrictions on women in the Islamic Republic that we would challenge in our own society.  However, it would be a serious mistake for the United States to base its Iran policy on a faulty premise that the Islamic Republic is a misogynistic political order which systematically represses women and that the United States should, therefore, seek to “help” Iranian women by promoting regime change. 

As far as the status of women is concerned, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  It is also not Afghanistan.  Women in the Islamic Republic vote and are represented throughout the Iranian government, including at the ministerial level.  Women are now the majority of the students in many schools and departments in Iranian universities (including medical faculties); in the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran, which hosted us, women constituted a clear majority of the graduate students.  Women hold faculty positions at Iran’s leading universities, including as department chairs at the University of Tehran.  (We even saw a female bus driver in Tehran.)  From our conversations with female graduate students at the University of Tehran, we got the impression that those women see themselves as having real choices in life—e.g., what to study, what profession to enter, etc.  They also face dilemmas and challenges that would be very familiar to professional women in the United States today—such as how to find a husband who is as educated as they are. 

The political views of Iranian women seem to cut across the Islamic Republic’s political spectrum.  Certainly that was our impression of the political views of the educated, professionally-oriented young women we met at the University of Tehran.  In this regard, Western polling data suggest that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad carried the women’s vote in the June 12, 2009 presidential election.  While Western media exhibited a strong proclivity for posting pictures of Green Movement rallies in which women were prominently featured, a review of any reasonable sample of photos of “pro-government” demonstrations would suggest that at least as high a percentage of women were involved in those gatherings.  (Perhaps the women captured in photos of pro-government rallies are somewhat more conservatively dressed than those in the Green Movement gatherings, but they were present in large numbers.)      

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

We are pleased to publish this post from our friend and colleague, Jean-François Seznec, whom we consistently find to be a uniquely insightful analyst of the intersection of politics, economics, and energy in the Middle East.  Jean-François is currently Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where his scholarship and teaching concentrate on the influence of political and social variables in the Gulf on financial and energy markets.  He is currently focusing on industrialization in the Gulf and, in particular, the growth of the region’s petrochemical industry.  He has 25 years’ experience in international banking and finance, 10 of which were spent in the Middle East, and is currently Senior Advisor to PFC Energy as well as a founding member and Managing Partner of the Lafayette Group, LLC, a U.S.-based private investment company.  He holds a MIA from Columbia University and a MA and Ph.D. from Yale University.  In this post, Jean-François offers important observations about Saudi perspectives on a prospective U.S. military attack against Iran and the profound damage that a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation could do to America’s international economic position.        

******

Seen from Washington, Saudi Arabia seems to speak with a forked tongue on Iran.  On the one hand, the Saudis are telling the United States that under no circumstances should it bomb Iran, or allow Israel to do so.  On the other hand, the Saudis are also letting it be known that they are worried and quite sure that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

It seems that, in fact, the Saudis are more worried about potential U.S. military action against Iran than they are about the Iranians’ ability actually to obtain nuclear weapons.  The Saudis may not express this view clearly enough to change views on Capitol Hill, but the U.S. executive branch is probably quite aware of Saudi worries about the prospect of U.S. military intervention in Iran.

In a nutshell, and to paraphrase Talleyrand, U.S. military action in Iran would be more than a crime—it would be a mistake or, more precisely, a series of mistakes, which would quite rapidly lead to the United States losing its influence in the world.  The economic “blowback” from any U.S. military action against Iran would be enormous, causing great harm to the United States.  More generally, military strength is no longer the true basis of national power in the modern world.  In the aftermath of a U.S. military confrontation with Iran, the new economic powerhouses—China, India, and Saudi Arabia—would have a shared interest in constraining the United States so that it could not act again to cause such damage to their interests.  In acting to realize that shared interest, these states would effectively lock the United States out of both Asia and the Middle East.     

On the economic front, a U.S. attack on Iran would lead to a major increase in oil prices, whether the Straits of Hormuz get blocked or not.  If only Iranian exports were taken off line, prices could still reach $150 per barrel, as 3 million barrels per day would be removed from the market and insurance premiums would reach the levels seen during the “tanker war” of the early 1980s.  If the Straits were blocked for some time, prices could go above $200 per barrel, as 16 million barrels per day in exports from the Gulf as a whole would have to find new ways to get to international markets.  In this scenario, Saudi Arabia could export up to 5 million barrels per day through the Red Sea, which would still leave the markets short of 11 million barrels.  Within 18 months, it might be possible to lay new pipelines to the Gulf of Oman that would bypass the Straits of Hormuz (mainly for oil exports from the United Arab Emirates), and Iraq could repair its strategic North-South pipeline to export oil via the Mediterranean.  However, even with these extraordinary measures, international markets would still be short of about 6 million barrels per day, and the impact on Asian economies that rely very heavily on Gulf crudes would be extreme.

Although, as I will discuss in greater detail below, Saudi Arabia would see a dramatic increase in its oil export revenues in such a scenario, the Saudis are nonetheless opposed to U.S. military action against Iran because, in their view, it could unleash complete havoc in the region.  In response to an attack, Iran would undoubtedly promote violent unrest among Shi’a populations in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen [if they have not started to do so there already among the Houthis], Lebanon, and even in Saudi Arabia itself.  Qatar’s LNG trains would make a perfect target for Iranian missiles.  The extensive U.S. Navy base in Bahrain also would be an easy target for Iranian missiles, followed by mass upheavals in the country, pitting the royal family against unhappy and disaffected elements in Bahrain’s Shi’a-majority population.  U.S. military action against Iran would certainly strengthen the hands of Sunni extremists, even if it implied a temporary alliance between Iran and Al-Qa’ida-type groups.  Furthermore, an attack would lead to substantial flight of the private capital now developing the region.  The economic boom on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf would come to an end, and mass unemployment, unhappy foreign workers, large-scale bankruptcies would lead to the end of the world as it is known today in the region. 

In light of these considerations, one can speculate that the Saudis would take strong retaliatory measures against the United States for striking Iran—measures that could have a serious impact on America’s economic and strategic position.  The Saudis are very upset at the United States going back to the invasion of Iraq, its support for Israeli policy in the occupied territories, and its inability to push Israel into a just peace settlement with the Palestinians along the lines of King Abdullah’s peace plan.  An attack on Iran would be the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”, ensuring that the seemingly strong U.S.-Saudi alliance could dissolve very quickly.  

A potentially effective—and non-confrontational—form of retaliation by the Saudis would be for the Kingdom to reject any plea by the United States to increase its oil production to make up for an Iranian shortfall.  Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that can ramp up its oil production by 4 million barrels per day on short notice.  Even if the Straits of Hormuz stayed open following an attack on Iran, without a ramp up in Saudi production, the United States would have to contend with higher oil prices for some time.  Of course, the Far East, mainly China and Japan, would suffer most immediately from oil priced at $150 per barrel.  But the United States—the world’s largest importer of oil at over 12 million barrels per day—would see the cost of its oil imports increase by $350 billion per year, which would almost certainly throw the American economy into a deep recession.  For their part, the Saudis would see a transfer of wealth to them to the tune of an extra $180 billion per year.  With their great potential for internal economic growth, China and India could “pick up the pieces” and become the main international economic partners and interlocutors to the Gulf countries, marginalizing the United States and dramatically reducing American influence in this critical region. 

The Saudis could also retaliate through international financial markets.  Currently, the Kingdom holds close to $500 billion in short term U.S. government paper.  The Saudis do not invest in stocks or long-term corporate bonds in the United States, or anywhere else in the world.  Should they want to show disapproval of U.S. actions, they could decide to sell some or all of their holdings in U.S. assets.  It is unlikely that the Saudis would do so in a sudden and precipitous fashion, as that would hurt the value of their holdings.  However, they could start by limiting their purchases of U.S. government paper and then slowly decrease their outstanding portfolio in the United States—just like China is beginning to do.  Furthermore, the Saudis could begin reducing their dependence on the dollar by starting to price their oil in a basket of currencies.  This would also have a significant impact on the American economy, as the United States could no longer pay for its oil imports (or its foreign liabilities more generally) just by printing money. 

Altogether, the Arab countries of the Gulf are quite aware of the potential for disaster in the aftermath of a U.S. military confrontation with Iran.  Any U.S. attack against Iran would be followed be the mass desertion of U.S. allies trying to dissociate themselves from the deed.  The United States would lose its strategic influence in the region, leaving a vacuum to be filled by other great powers, whether economic or military.  Under these circumstances, China and India could very well step into the traditional U.S. role as the chief external arbiter of security and political issues in the Gulf. 

Saudi Arabia may not clearly articulate what its policy is vis-à-vis Iran.  Indeed, their simultaneous complaints about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program and warnings that the United States should not attack Iran are somewhat baffling.  However, Saudi Arabia’s real policy toward Iran may be a policy that can only work if it is not stated clearly.  Given Saudi views of the current Iranian political order, the Saudi leadership may be counting on the Islamic Republic’s economic failures and corruption to weaken Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime to the point of complete ineffectiveness.  The Saudis see an Iranian elite that is siphoning billions of dollars to Dubai every year.  They see Iran’s inability to complete any of its energy investments, whether refineries, gas fields, oil fields, or ambitious petrochemical plants.  They see the enormous waste in subsidies to the population.  They see that access to the Western technology essential for the large-scale development of Iran’s energy resources is being sacrificed by the Islamic Republic on the altar of locally-grown nuclear technology.  In other words, the Saudis may have concluded that the Iranians are their own worst enemies and will not be able to create a credible nuclear deterrent without at the same time making themselves irrelevant on the world stage—in effect, a Middle Eastern North Korea. 

From this perspective, pushing Iran militarily would only make the current political order there stronger.  Sanctions are not likely to work and could make the government more popular.  So, Saudi policy may be to do nothing and let the Islamic Republic crumble upon itself.  Of course, the Saudis may be willing to take steps to exacerbate Iranian economic weakness here and there.  But the Kingdom is not about to support anything like full-scale sanctions, where Saudi fingerprints would be readily visible. 

In conclusion, from a Saudi—and Gulf Arab—standpoint, a U.S. attack on Iran would fulfill Talleyrand’s ditty; it would be a real mistake.  From an American point of view, military action against Iran by the United States—or even by Israel—would irreparably damage American interests and presence in the Gulf.  It would also weaken dramatically the U.S. economy and America’s international financial standing—a critical element in American power since the end of World War II.

–Jean-François Seznec

Last week, the Atlantic Council hosted a debate between Race for Iran Publisher and New America Foundation/Iran Initiative Director Flynt Leverett and Foundation for Defense of Democracies Freedom Scholar Michael Ledeen. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius moderated the debate.

As promised, the video of the debate is embedded above and can also be found here.

– Ben Katcher

Robert Dreyfuss, writing at The Nation, explains that unless the United States and Iran arrive at some sort of agreement, Iran is likely to continue to play a “spoiler” role in Iraq.

He quotes a senior Iraqi official visiting Washington as saying yesterday that:

The Iranians have ties with nearly all of the main factions in Iraq…The Iranians, because of their geopolitical position in the region, will have a strong role in Iraq. So the United States, and the international community, need to reach an understanding with Iran.

This statement probably does not come as a surprise to our readers, and unfortunately the Obama administration’s Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Colin Kahl’s response probably won’t either. Dreyfuss quotes him as responding that:

It’s debatable whether a U.S.-Iran agreement is possible. But I don’t think it’s necessary…I don’t think there’s any probability of Iraq calling under Iranian hegemony.

However, as Dreyfuss points out “the point is that even though Iran may not be able to achieve hegemonic control in Iraq, it can use its muscle — from covert support to violent militias to its widely acknowledged ties to many leading Iranian Shiite religious parties — to make sure that Iraq remains unstable, violent, and prone to sectarian conflicts.”

Kahl’s comments suggest that Obama’s “engagement-lite” strategy is failing in part because the administration has not internalized the fact that none of the United States’ higher-order strategic priorities in the region – including stabilizing Iraq – can be achieved without Iranian cooperation.

– Ben Katcher

We were in Tehran on February 24—the day that Iranian authorities announced the capture of Abdol Malik Rigi, the head of Jundallah.  Jundallah (the name if Arabic for “soldiers of God”; the group is also known as the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran) is a Sunni Islamist group that claims to be fighting for the rights of Sunni Muslims in Iran.  Its activities are focused on Sistan-Baluchistan, which is the Islamic Republic’s only Sunni-majority province.  In recent years, the group has carried out a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in Iran.  These include a 2005 attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s motorcade in Sistan-Baluchistan (one of Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards was killed); a 2006 attack on a bus in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 18 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC); the abduction and execution of 16 Iranian policemen in 2007; a car bomb attack on a security installation in Sistan-Baluchistan in 2008 that killed at least four people; a 2009 ambush in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 12 Iranian policeman; and a 2009 bomb attack on a mosque in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 25 people and injured 125. 

Most recently, on October 18, 2009, Jundallah carried out a suicide bomb attack in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 42 people, including several senior IRGC officers.  We wrote on this attack at the time, as did Ben Katcher; we also published a guest post on the incident by Jasim Husain Ali.           

Two days after his capture was announced, Rigi appeared on Iranian television, where he said, among other things, that Jundallah receives financial and military support from the United States; U.S. Government officials have denied such support on the record (though they have not denied any relationship with Jundallah).  Some media reports claim that U.S. support for Jundallah is “indirect”, in that the support is channeled through Pakistan and Gulf Arab states allied to the United States.  Iranian officials have charged for several years that Jundallah receives support from the United States, as well as from Pakistan and Sunni Arab states allied to Washington. 

Our impression in Tehran last week was that the idea the United States has some sort of ties to Jundallah and other groups considered “terrorists” by most Iranians seems to be widely accepted in Tehran as a “social fact”, at least.  We observed a genuine, deep, and strongly positive popular reaction to the news of Rigi’s arrest that seemed to cut across class and political divides in Iranian society.  When news of Rigi’s capture broke, it was around midday in Tehran.  We were at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of World Studies, meeting with graduate students in a conference room that was equipped with a large-screen television.  We were interrupted by an incoming flow of students and faculty, who apologized for the intrusion but explained that there was an urgent news story which they wanted to see on television.  The television was turned on, and we watched the nationally-broadcast press conference at which the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Minister recounted Rigi’s arrest.  As we went through subsequent meetings and conversations over the course of the afternoon, it seemed clear that the news of Rigi’s arrest was a source of considerable popular satisfaction.  That evening, in some residential neighborhoods, there were impromptu parties, with individuals distributing cake to their neighbors and other similar gestures of celebration.  We were told that one of the senior IRGC officers killed in the Jundallah attack last October was a widely known and admired hero of the Iran-Iraq war.     

Iranian officials are not the only sources claiming that U.S. intelligence is linked to groups carrying out terrorist operations inside the Islamic Republic.  Some Western media reports—citing former CIA case officers—say that there are links between Jundallah and U.S. intelligence; for example, see this widely noted story published by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker in July 2008.  Some of these reports say that Jundallah is one of a number of ethnic separatist groups (including Arab, Azeri, Baluch, and Kurdish groups) receiving covert support from the United States, as part of a covert campaign authorized during the George W. Bush Administration to press Tehran over the nuclear issue and destabilize the Islamic Republic.  For a recent discussion of the issue by a retired CIA officer, see here.  As we ourselves have written, there is considerable evidence that President Obama inherited from his predecessor a number of overt programs for “democracy promotion” in Iran, as well as covert initiatives directed against Iranian interests. 

As we have noted, Obama has done nothing to scale back or stop these programs—a posture that has not gone unnoticed in Tehran.  We understand that, last year, the Obama Administration reviewed whether Jundallah should be designated a foreign terrorist organization, but decided not to do so.  Why was that?  And, even though the Muhahedin-e Khalq (MEK) retains its designation as a foreign terrorist organization, the Obama Administration continues to push the Iraqi government not to consider longstanding a longstanding Iranian request that MEK cadres in Iraq—which were granted special protective status by the George W. Bush Administration—be deported to Iran.  Why is the Obama Administration trying to protect members of a U.S. government-designated terrorist group?        

Could it be that at least some elements of the Obama Administration believe that U.S. connections to groups like Jundallah and the MEK are potentially useful policy instruments vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic?  Based on our conversations in Tehran, it seems clear that the perception of continuing U.S. involvement with and support for groups carrying out violent attacks inside Iran is having a corrosive effect on Iranian assessments of the Obama Administration’s seriousness about strategic engagement with Iran and its ultimate intentions toward the Islamic Republic.  When we wrote about Jundallah’s suicide bomb attack last October, we noted that

“the attack will exacerbate Iranian threat perceptions about its regional neighbors and the United States at a delicate point in the diplomatic process launched at the October 1 Geneva meeting between senior Iranian officials and representatives of the P-5+1.” 

At the time, Iran’s Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said publicly that “the terrorist attack is the result of U.S. efforts and a sign of U.S. hostility toward Iran”’ Larijani contrasted this hostility to President Obama’s offer of an extended hand to Iran, noting that the Iranian people rightly doubt America’s intentions. 

We return from Tehran persuaded that this analysis was even more correct than we appreciated when we wrote it, and that Jundallah’s suicide bomb attack on October 18, 2009—the day before technical discussions began in Vienna on the details of a “swap” arrangement to exchange Iranian low-enriched uranium (LEU) for new fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR)—has had a significant, negative impact on the course of multilateral diplomacy on Iran’s nuclear program.  On October 1, the P-5+1 political directors and the European Union’s then-foreign policy chief Javier Solana came together for discussions on nuclear issues with an Iranian delegation headed by Saeed Jalili, the secretary-general of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council.  At this meeting, there was a “one-on-one” between Jalili and the head of the U.S. delegation, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns.  Coming out of this meeting, Western diplomats said that Jalili had agreed “in principle” to a “swap” of Iranian LEU for new fuel for the TRR.  The details of such a “swap” were to be negotiated 2-3 weeks later, in technical discussions at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. 

At these discussions in Vienna—which convened on October 19, one day after Jundallah’s suicide bomb attack—the Iranian delegation was reluctant to accept several of the provisions of the “swap” as proposed by the United States and some of its partners.  In the end, the IAEA’s then-director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, pulled together a proposal that the Iranian delegation took back to Tehran.  It soon became clear that the Islamic Republic’s leadership was not prepared to accept the terms of ElBaradei’s proposal without modification; we and our colleague Ben Katcher have laid out some of the specific ways in which Iran has proposed modifying the ElBaradei proposal; for more detailed discussions, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. 

It has become conventional wisdom in Western commentary that Iran “reneged” from its commitment to a “swap” arrangement for refueling the TRR and “rejected” the generous ElBaradei proposal because of internal political conflicts that have left the leadership too divided to take clear decisions about important foreign policy matters.  We have challenged this conventional wisdom, pointing out that, since the Vienna meeting in October, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has consistently stressed Iran’s “positive view regarding the essence and nature of the [ElBaradei] proposal”, but wanted to negotiate specific details of the “swap”, regarding timing—in particular, when Iranian LEU would need to be turned over to the IAEA and when new fuel for the TRR would be delivered, where Iranian LEU would be held pending delivery of new fuel for the TRR, and how much LEU Iran would need to swap for a given amount of finished fuel.  More strategically, we have argued that Iran’s reaction to the ElBaradei proposal was inevitably conditioned by the ongoing insistence of the United States and its British and French partners on “zero enrichment” as the only acceptable long-term outcome from nuclear negotiations with Tehran.   

Coming back from our visit to Tehran, we are even more convinced of the validity of these analyses.  But we also appreciate more acutely the extremely negative impact that the October 18, 2009 Jundallah attack had on the climate for negotiations over refueling the TRR.  More generally, our discussions and observations in Tehran have deepened our awareness of the profound damage that can be done to the prospects for putting U.S.-Iranian relations on a more positive and productive trajectory by Washington’s ongoing attachments to elements of what is, simply put, a “regime change” strategy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic—whether or not the Obama Administration wants to acknowledge it as such.  It is worth recalling that, when Richard Nixon was inaugurated as President of the United States in January 1969, one of the first things he did to demonstrate his seriousness about realigning U.S.-China relations to the Chinese leadership in Beijing was to order the CIA to stand down from covert operations in Tibet.  Chinese leaders noticed this, and it helped prepare the way for a diplomatic opening between Washington and Beijing.  When will the Obama Administration show a similar measure of strategic seriousness toward the Islamic Republic of Iran?     

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.  (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.)  And, as accumulating media reports indicate (see, for example, here and here), she was politely but clearly rebuffed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim.

Brazil’s rejection of Secretary Clinton’s exhortations to support new sanctions against Iran are focusing media attention on a bigger issue that we have been identifying for some time—namely, that the Obama Administration will not be able to marshal the symbolically useful image of a unanimous Security Council endorsing further sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran (something which the George W. Bush Administration was effectively able to stage for the first three sanctions resolutions).  While, in the end, the Obama Administration will probably be able to muster the minimum nine affirmative votes in the Council to pass a new sanctions resolution, the Council will be deeply divided on the issue, with major powers in the developing world refusing to support further sanctions, and either voting “no” or abstaining. 

Let’s review the state-of-play on Iran sanctions within the 15-member Security Council.  Diplomatic sources tell us that, among the five permanent members, the United States, Britain, and France are all signed up to support an extremely tough draft resolution. 

U.S. and European officials express growing confidence that Russia will be “on board” for a new sanctions resolution.  But, already, Russian diplomats are demanding that most of the specific measures contained in the draft resolution supported by the United States, Britain, and France be removed.  (This is in keeping with statements from officials close to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and in Russia’s Foreign Ministry insisting that any new sanctions against Iran should—like previous sanctions authorized by the Security Council—be focused on individuals and entities directly involved in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and missile programs.)      

China has not yet formally responded to the draft resolution, but continues to express its opposition to any expansion of sanctions against Iran.  Obama Administration officials continue to assume that China will not want to be the only permanent member of the Council to veto a new sanctions resolution, and can ultimately be persuaded to abstain, rather than voting “no”.  However, getting China to abstain—which would, at least in theory, permit a sanctions resolution to move through the Council—is likely to require that the United States and its European partners scale back dramatically the scope of the specific sanctions contained in the resolution. 

If one assumes that Russia will ultimately support a watered-down resolution, along with the United States, Britain, and France, that makes for four affirmative votes among the Security Council’s permanent members.  Among the Council’s ten non-permanent members, Gabon, Japan, Nigeria, and Uganda are virtually certain to vote for a new sanctions resolution; added to the four prospective “yes” votes among the permanent members, that makes for eight affirmative votes.  (We believe that Japan, at least, is quietly anticipating that the draft resolution which is ultimately voted on by the Council will be significantly watered down from the current draft.)  Austria, Bosnia, and Mexico are not automatic affirmative votes, but the United States is likely to get at least one of these states to support a resolution, giving it the minimum nine votes required to pass anything in the Security Council. 

But Brazil is clearly indicating that it is not inclined to support new sanctions against Iran, as is Turkey (another non-permanent member).  Brazil is emerging as a global economic power in its own right; Turkey has emerged as an important regional power, both economically and politically.  The willingness of these two countries—both of them are members of the G-20 and have good relations with the United States—to chart their own course on important international issues is a tangible indicator of the ongoing decline in America’s relative power and influence.  The Obama Administration’s apparent failure to understand these countries’ positions on the Iranian nuclear issue is an indicator that President Obama and his most senior advisors fundamentally misunderstand the “race for Iran.”

Lebanon is also highly likely to abstain from voting on a new sanctions resolution.  So, assuming that China, in the end, abstains rather than voting “no” (thereby vetoing the resolution), the Obama Administration will still face significant opposition in the Security Council from important emerging powers in what we used to call the developing world.  And remember, any sanctions resolution that is ultimately passed by the Council will be substantially much weaker than the current U.S.-British-French draft. 

Why is the Obama Administration going down such a useless path?  In Brazil, Secretary Clinton said,

“Personally speaking, I think it’s only after we pass sanctions in the Security Council that Iran will negotiate in good faith.  That is my belief, that is our administration’s belief:  that once the international community speaks in unison around a resolution then the Iranians will come and begin to negotiate”. 

How could she possibly believe that?  There will not be “unison around a resolution”, and the sanctions which might ultimately be authorized by the Council will add relatively little to those that the Council has previously authorized. 

The Obama Administration needs to get serious about an Iran strategy that might actually accomplish something and advance the strategic position of the United States.       

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Jay Solomon has an informative report in this morning’s Wall Street Journal that highlights the Obama administration’s difficulties generating support for further sanctions against Iran.

Specifically, the administration is concerned that China, Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon – all Security Council members – may either oppose or insist on watering down any sanctions that the United States proposes.

From Solomon’s piece:

Officials involved in the diplomacy fear that China’s stated opposition to tough new sanctions, if reinforced by other players, could weaken any U.N. penalties against Tehran. Though Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon hold temporary seats and can’t veto sanctions—unlike permanent council members including China—they could make it harder for the U.S. to get agreement by sustaining the opposition campaign.

Senior U.S. diplomats have intensified discussions in recent weeks with leaders in China, Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon in a bid to push a sanctions vote at the U.N. on Iran by next month. But on Wednesday, Brazilian officials publicly rebuffed the U.S. during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to the capital, Brasilia. “It is not prudent to push Iran against a wall,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told reporters ahead of their meeting. Afterward, foreign minister Celso Amorim said sanctions “could be counterproductive.” Turkish and Lebanese officials have made similar comments in recent weeks.

Solomon’s report appears to support Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s analysis that “there is no way that the United Nations Security Council will approve anything approaching ‘very tough’ or ‘crippling’ sanctions on Iran.”

Solomon’s article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

Today, the Atlantic Council of the United States sponsored a debate, “Iran:  Engagement or Regime Change?”, between Flynt and Michael Ledeen.  David Ignatius of The Washington Post moderated.  Needless to say, Flynt argued for strategic engagement with the Islamic Republic, while Michael Ledeen made the case for regime change.  The Atlantic Council has already posted a transcript and audio of the debate; these are available here.  We hope to post a video of the debate in the next day or two.  We are also pleased that David Frum has already written about the debate on his FrumForum . 

We want to thank the Atlantic Council for organizing the debate and David Ignatius for moderating it.  We also want to express our gratitude to Michael Ledeen and David Frum.  Even though both Michael and David disagree with many of our analyses and policy recommendations about Iran, we deeply appreciate that they address our arguments on substantive grounds, in a thoroughly civil and constructive way, and without anyone’s motives ever being subjected to ad hominem attack.  We are learning from experience that those qualities are altogether too rare in contemporary policy debates.  We want to commend those we encounter who reflect those qualities in their engagement with us, and hope that we reciprocate.        

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

To follow up on our post from yesterday, “Syria’s Increasingly Strategic Partnership With the Islamic Republic: Diplomacy in the Post-Iraq/Post-Peace Process Middle East”, we wanted to bring to our readers’ attention an interesting Op Ed from Gulf News, by Sami Moubayed, the “Tripartite Alliance Stands Firm”.  Sami is, among other things, the editor of Forward Magazine an English-language magazine published in Syria.  He is a sharp political analyst and is well-connected with the Syrian leadership, including President Bashar al-Assad.  

The “Tripartite Alliance Stands Firm”, opens by noting the rather alarmist commentary in the West about the recent “resistance” summit in Damascus, involving President Assad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.  (HAMAS’s Khalid Mishal also met with Ahmadinejad while the Iranian President was in Damascus.)  Sami also notes a tone of perplexity in Western commentary on these meetings, which came on the heels of a visit to Damascus by U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns and Washington’s announcement that it would be posting a U.S. ambassador to Syria for the first time in five years. 

Sami insightfully explains Bashar al-Assad’s approach to foreign affairs as an adroit exercise in what, from a European historical perspective, could well be described as “classical diplomacy”, based on a nuanced reading of the regional and global balance of power and a flexible approach to individual bilateral relationships.  He also relates the “resistance” summit to the question of a possible war in the region later this year, a question that we took up a few days ago. 

“Syria wants to keep all doors to Damascus open, much like it did in the 1990s, when Syria enjoyed excellent relations with the US, France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and both HAMAS and Hezbollah.  Many in the West claim this is no longer possible, echoing words spoken by George W. Bush after 9/11, when he said:  ‘Either you are with us or with the terrorists.’  Syria thinks otherwise, however, arguing that Syrian-Iranian relations are in the best interest of the international community, and should be seen as a blessing in disguise for the United States. 

“King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia shares this view, believing that Syria can indeed walk the tightrope between the so-called moderate and radical camps in the Middle East, helping influence and moderate the behavior of HAMAS, Hezbollah, and Iran.  Syria has repeatedly used its influence with these players in meetings like the ones that just took place in Damascus (which perhaps were not as high profile) to get HAMAS to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, for example, or to get Hezbollah more involved in the political process in Lebanon.  In Iran, Syria used its influence to free 17 British sailors captured in 2007, as well as a French prisoner in the summer of 2009.  Syria, after all, doesn’t have a history of anti-Americanism, and has proven since 1990 that it is a credible peace partner, with whom the West can do business. 

“The Damascus Summit…is a reminder of how helpful Syria can be [to the United States and others] in dealing with these non-state players.  Nevertheless, it sends another strong message:  Think twice before waging another war on Lebanon, because neither Syria nor Iran will allow it.  Rather than escalate the conflict, the tripartite meeting in Damascus actually force Israel to recalculate, thereby minimizing the chances of war next summer.  The leaders assembled in Damascus are clearly very confident in their abilities, and feel that neither Israel nor the US can deal with them as they have in the past.  Much has changed since Obama came to power in 2009, but much remains the same, given that the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah alliance has outlived five US administrations since that of Ronald Reagan, and will likely outlive the Obama administration as well.  Persuading the US to pressure Israel into seeking peace is high on Syria’s agenda, and this explains the recent Damascus Summit.” 

Along the lines of Sami’s analysis, in our meeting with President Assad in Damascus two weeks ago, the Syrian leader underscored that his ties to Iran and to resistance groups like HAMAS and Hizballah should be seen by the United States as an asset—as something that could help open doors that would otherwise remain shut.  It was at a press conference in Damascus in 2006, after all, that Khalid Mishal began talking publicly about the 1967 lines as a potential basis for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict; during 2009, Mishal spoke openly about the prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  (Indeed, in our first meeting with Mishal last summer, he pointed out that HAMAS has offered Israel “a two-state solution on the 1967 lines”, and noted that “no Arab state has gone farther than that”.)   

President Assad presents himself as someone focused on solving problems.  He is clearly thinking in comprehensive terms about the Middle East’s core conflicts—as we discussed in our post yesterday, he believes a comprehensive settlement of the unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict is necessary, and that such a settlement will necessarily involve groups like HAMAS and Hizballah.  He also says that the challenge of U.S.-Iranian relations is, in some ways, a relatively simple problem, but could become the region’s “worst” problem if it is not solved.  In our view, President Assad is likely to be an important player in “the race for Iran”, and in Middle Eastern diplomacy more generally, for many years to come.       

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Last week, just after we had completed our regional tour to Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his own journey to Damascus, for highly publicized meetings with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, HAMAS Political Bureau chief Khalid Mishal, and a “resistance” summit with Assad and Hizballah Secretary General Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah.  Ahmadinejad’s trip to Damascus came on the heels of public statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Capitol Hill reiterating longstanding American demands on Syria

“for greater cooperation with respect to Iraq, the end to interference in Lebanon and the transport or provision of weapons to Hizballah, a resumption of the Israeli/Syrian track on the peace process which had been proceeding through the offices of the Turks, and generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran which is do deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States”. 

As Presidents Assad and Ahmadinejad signed agreements suspending visa requirements for Syrian nationals traveling to Iran and Iranians traveling to Syria, the Syrian leader responded to Secretary Clinton’s demand that Syria roll back its relations with the Islamic Republic: 

“We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreements to cancel the visas.  I find it strange that they [Americans] talks about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other”.      

A week before Ahmadinejad’s arrival in Damascus, we had our own conversation with President Assad—a conversation that came one day after U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns met with the Syrian leader.  In our session with him, Assad expressed satisfaction over his meeting with Undersecretary Burns.  However, Assad also made clear that Syria’s relations with Iran, as well as its ties to Hizballah and HAMAS, are not on the table. 

Syria’s relationship with the Islamic Republic seems increasingly strategic in character.  Over the past year, key advisers to President Assad have told us as much; one of them went so far as to describe Syrian-Iranian relations with the French adjective, “intime”.  If the Obama Administration is unable or unwilling to acknowledge this reality and the regional dynamics that have given rise to it, the already limited effectiveness of American diplomacy in the Middle East will be further undermined. 

To understand Syria’s increasingly strategic partnership with Iran, a bit of history is in order.  The late Hafiz al-Assad inaugurated Syria’s relationship with the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq war.  The elder Assad was motivated to side with the Islamic Republic by several considerations, including his interest in winning Iranian clerical endorsement for his Alawi sect’s Islamic legitimacy while he confronted a Sunni Islamist insurgency at home and his interest in resisting American efforts to bolster Iraq as a bulwark against Iran.  This latter interest flowed naturally from Assad’s chronic concern about his country’s potential strategic marginalization by the United States and Israel.  As Flynt described this concern five years ago in his Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial By Fire,

“The Assad regime’s inclination to challenge U.S. Middle East policy has not stemmed primarily from the personal obstreperousness of Syrian leaders, but from a particular assessment of what defending Syrian interests required in the face of the U.S. posture toward the region.  The United States is, of course, the chief external backer of the state of Israel—from a Syrian perspective, an expansive power seeking regional hegemony.  U.S. military and political support has been critical to allowing Israel to expand its territorial holdings and occupy these lands in defiance of what Syrian leaders frequently describe as “international legitimacy”. 

“From a Syrian vantage point, U.S. policy in the Middle East for much of the last thirty-five years has aimed principally at ensuring Israel’s ability to consolidate and maintain its hegemonic position in the region.  Given this interpretation of the underlying rationale for America’s Middle East policy, the Assad regime has long been concerned to forestall a worst-case scenario in which Syria would be encircled by regimes hostile to its interests, allied to the United States, and docile toward Israel (that is, a Lebanon that has made a separate peace with Israel, a pro-Western Turkey cooperating strategically with the Jewish state, an Iraq with a regime supported by and supportive of the United States, a Jordan ruled by pro-American Hashemites who have sold out the Palestinian cause and forged security ties to Israel, and a rump Palestinian entity).  Under these conditions, Syria would be marginalized in regional affairs, with other states free to ignore or undermine its interests.”

Seen through this prism, cooperation with Iran proved enormously valuable to Syrian interests during the balance of Hafiz al-Assad’s tenure, on multiple fronts—resisting U.S. and Israeli military incursions in Lebanon; cultivating Hizballah as a military and political asset; using Palestinian Islamist resistance groups like Islamic Jihad and HAMAS to press the United States, Israel, and the PLO not to neglect Syrian interests in the Arab-Israeli peace process; and, in general, underscoring the potential costs to the United States, Israel, and other regional actors of ignoring or threatening Syria’s regional interests.  Nevertheless, at the end of Hafiz al-Assad’s life, the Syrian-Iranian relationship still seemed as much tactical as strategic in character. 

Following the end of Cold War, the elder 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 under U.S. mediation.  Assad saw such a course as instrumental to achieving his real post-Cold War foreign policy objective—a fundamental strategic realignment toward the United States, which had emerged from the Cold War as a superpower of seemingly unprecedented proportions.  In his last years in office, the elder Assad seemed prepared to modify significant aspects of Syria’s relationship with Iran, including Syrian ties to 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 hypothesis was never put to the test, as the Syria track effectively collapsed just two months before Assad’s death in 2000). 

Bashar al-Assad’s accession to the Syrian presidency in 2000 took place near the beginning of what has proven to be a still ongoing period of dramatic shifts in the Middle East’s strategic environment.  These shifts include the effective collapse of the traditional Arab-Israeli peace process, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the rise of Hizballah and HAMAS as important political actors in their national and regional contexts, 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.  In a previous post, we have described these developments as conditioning the emergence of a new regional “Cold War”. 

Following Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005, the Islamic Republic was able to take advantage of these developments to effect a significant boost in its own regional standing.  And, as we and our colleague Ben Katcher have discussed in a number of posts (here, here, here and here), Turkey has intensified its diplomatic engagement in the Middle East, in ways not always congruent with U.S. strategic preferences, thereby boosting its own regional standing.    

For Bashar al-Assad, these developments have created both enormous challenges and, over time, new strategic opportunities.  In this context of daunting challenges and emerging opportunities, Syria’s diplomatic calculations have shifted in at least three important ways during Bashar’s presidency; one consequence of these shifting diplomatic calculations has been an ever greater inclination in Damascus to see Syria’s relationship with the Islamic Republic as a unalloyed strategic partnership. 

First, Syria’s ties to regional “resistance” forces—including groups like Hizballah and HAMAS that are also closely linked to Iran—have taken on an increasingly strategic character during Bashar’s tenure.  As we have discussed previously, with the removal of Syrian military forces from Lebanon following the Hariri assassination, Hizballah has become an even more valuable asset for Syria.  Similarly, on the Palestinian front, it is hard to imagine that, at this point, Bashar would agree to expel Khalid Mishal from Syria as part of a purely bilateral peace settlement with Israel—as, it would seem, his father had been prepared to do.  (For our assessment of the strategic implications of HAMAS’s rise as a force in Palestinian politics, click here.)    

On this point, it is noteworthy that, since late 2008, Bashar has adopted a rhetorical position on Arab-Israeli issues emphasizing the need for a “comprehensive” Arab-Israeli settlement, along the lines indicated in the 2002 Arab League peace initiative, and with HAMAS playing a central role on the Palestinian side.  When we asked him about this evolution in his rhetoric, President Assad said that, if Israel were prepared to conclude a peace treaty with Syria meeting his longstanding requirements (full return of the occupied Golan Heights to the June 4, 1967 line, etc.), he “could not say ‘no’.”  He noted, though, that, while Israel could get a “peace treaty” with Syria, such a settlement would give Israel little more than a “ceasefire” and, perhaps, a heavily guarded embassy in Damascus.  For real “peace”, according to President Assad, Israel will need to negotiate a comprehensive settlement, including on the Palestinian track.    

Second, the Islamic Republic has proven its steadfastness to Syria in recent years.  Syria and Iran were the two regional states which argued most vociferously that the United States would face serious difficulties in its occupation of post-Saddam Iraq, and their stance was widely viewed in the region as having been vindicated by events.  More practically, Syria’s ties to Iran were critical in fending off the heavy pressure applied on the Assad regime by the United States, most of Europe, and moderate Arab states in the wake of the Hariri assassination.  As another of Bashar’s advisers said to me recently, it would be hard for Syria to forsake Iran, as Iran, in the period following Hariri’s assassination, had “stood by us when no one else did”.  This should not be interpreted as a sentimental statement.  Rather, it is a statement that, in an uncertain strategic environment, Syria will continue to need the “hedge” provided by its close relationship with the Islamic Republic. 

Third, the perceived value in Damascus of strategic realignment with the United States through a carefully conditioned peace deal with Israel is slowly declining as America’s hegemonic standing and influence erode.  Certainly, the Syrian leadership was relieved by President George W. Bush’s departure from office and his replacement by President Obama.  But, with a right-leaning coalition headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in power in Israel, expectations in Damascus for what Syria would see as major improvements in America’s Middle East policy are not high.  And, as President Assad noted to us, poor policy choices in the Middle East by the United States over the last decade have created “vacuums” which “others [Iran and Turkey] filled”.  (In this context, Assad argued that Iran’s evolving regional role does not represent “new ambitions” on Tehran’s part.)  This has expanded Syria’s strategic optionality.  In this context, Assad underscored that the rise of Iran and Turkey to new levels of regional influence has not come at Syria’s expense; rather, all three states have been able to improve their own relations and bolster their regional influence.     

This is not to say that Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option of realignment toward the West through a “principled” peace with Israel does not remain deeply attractive to his son and successor.  But, the longer that Damascus must wait for the United States to deliver on its end of the peace process, the more time that Bashar and his advisers have to internalize what they see as the reality of America’s slow decline.  And that has a palpable effect on the price they are willing to pay for realizing Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option.          

In closing, we would note that we had not had an in-depth meeting with President Assad for five years.  Flynt’s Inheriting Syria—for which he interviewed President Assad—was published in 2005, shortly after the Hariri assassination.  At the time, many U.S. and Western commentators were predicting the downfall of the Assad regime.  We visited Damascus in June 2005, immediately following the withdrawal of Syrian military forces from Lebanon, to observe the Ba’ath Party congress.  We came away from that visit convinced—contra the conventional wisdom in Washington—that the Lebanon withdrawal had been well internalized in Syria, that President Assad was more in control of the Syrian government than he had been before Hariri’s assassination, and that U.S.-French efforts to isolate Syria from regional affairs would ultimately fail.  That assessment has been powerfully validated with the passage of time.  Bashar al-Assad has weathered the storm unleashed in the aftermath of the Hariri assassination and has emerged as a masterful player of the regional game.  It is striking that many of the people who argued in 2005 that the Syrian leadership was internally conflicted and uniquely vulnerable to external pressure are now making the same arguments about the Islamic Republic of Iran. They were wrong then; they are wrong now.      

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Stratfor’s George Friedman, recognizing that neither sanctions nor a military strike will produce enduring, strategically significant outcomes for the United States, considers whether there is a third option.

The diplomatic approach consists of creating a broad coalition prepared to impose what have been called crippling sanctions on Iran. Effective sanctions must be so painful that they compel the target to change its behavior. In Tehran’s case, this could only consist of blocking Iran’s imports of gasoline. Iran imports 35 percent of the gasoline it consumes. It is not clear that a gasoline embargo would be crippling, but it is the only embargo that might work. All other forms of sanctions against Iran would be mere gestures designed to give the impression that something is being done. The Chinese will not participate in any gasoline embargo…Since all other sanctions are gestures, the diplomatic approach is therefore unlikely to work.

The military option has its own risks. First, its success depends on the quality of intelligence on Iran’s nuclear facilities and on the degree of hardening of those targets. Second, it requires successful air attacks. Third, it requires battle damage assessments that tell the attacker whether the strike succeeded. Fourth, it requires follow-on raids to destroy facilities that remain functional. And fifth, attacks must do more than simply set back Iran’s program a few months or even years: If the risk of a nuclear Iran is great enough to justify the risks of war, the outcome must be decisive….

As long as the problem of Iran is defined in terms of its nuclear program, the United States is in an impossible place. Therefore, the Iranian problem must be redefined. One attempt at redefinition involves hope for an uprising against the current regime. We will not repeat our views on this in depth, but in short, we do not regard these demonstrations to be a serious threat to the regime. Tehran has handily crushed them, and even if they did succeed, we do not believe they would produce a regime any more accommodating toward the United States. The idea of waiting for a revolution is more useful as a justification for inaction — and accepting a nuclear Iran — than it is as a strategic alternative.

Friedman also posits that Iraq – not the nuclear issue – is the key strategic issue between the United States and Iran. I agree that Iran’s future role in Iraq is of immense importance to the United States, but would also add that Iran possesses the power to play a “spoiler” role in two other conflicts of immense importance to the United States: Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan.

Friedman’s key insight is that pushing Iran to give up a key instrument of leverage (its nuclear program) without any significant concessions on our part is simply not going to happen. We will not know whether “engagement” can work unless the United States recasts the nuclear issue as part of a broader set of strategic issues between the United States and Iran.

Friedman’s entire article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

There has been much talk in recent weeks about the possibility of another war between Israel and Hizballah and/or HAMAS (the Middle East’s two most prominent resistance movements, both supported by Iran) in coming months.  Perhaps most notably, President Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, told a Washington think tank audience last month that

“when regimes are feeling pressure, as Iran is internally and will externally in the near future, it often lashes out through surrogates, including, in Iran’s case, Hizballah in Lebanon and HAMAS in Gaza.  As pressure on the regime in Tehran builds over its nuclear program, there is a heightened risk of further attacks against Israel”. 

Just today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Damascus for discussions with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  It is widely anticipated that, while he is in Damascus, Ahmadinejad will meet with both Hizballah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and the head of HAMAS’s Political Bureau, Khalid Mishal.      

But, contra General Jones, after spending much of last week in Lebanon and Syria, we are struck by how disinclined both Hizballah and HAMAS are to provoke another round of military conflict with Israel.  The day before we arrived in Beirut last week, Nasrallah gave a speech on the second anniversary of Imad Mughniyah’s assassination that also commemorated Hizballah fighters who fell in the fight against Israeli occupation (including one of Nasrallah’s own sons).  In the course of the speech, Nasrallah addressed Israel directly, declaring that

“if you destroy buildings in Dahiyeh [a large Shi’a neighborhood south of Beirut], we will demolish buildings in Tel Aviv…If you strike martyr Rafiq Hariri’s international airport in Beirut, we will strike your Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.  If you hit our ports, we will hit your ports.  If you attack our refineries or factories, we will bomb your refineries and factories”. 

Western media reports characterized Nasrallah’s speech as “throwing down the gauntlet” to Israel, while pro-Saudi commentators in the regional media denounced Nasrallah’s speech—and Ahmadinejad’s endorsement of it—as inviting war.  Writing in Al Hayat and Al Arabiyya, one of these commentators argued that  

“previous experience has shown that Iran’s talk of war has been serious when the matter concerns the regime’s interests.  The summer 2006 Lebanon war erupted after economic sanctions were imposed on Tehran, and there is nothing preventing such a scenario from being repeated, a scenario which produced a ‘victory’ Iran and its allies still boast of”.      

But this reading of Nasrallah’s speech is diametrically opposed to the prevailing local interpretation of the Hizballah leader’s rhetoric.  In his address, Nasrallah stressed that, while Hizballah would respond to any Israeli aggression, it does not seek war.  Nasrallah noted that “since July 2006, nothing has happened on the South Lebanon front”.  A prominent Hizballah parliamentarian described Nasrallah’s speech as “historic and crucial”, underscoring that, while Hizballah was not fearful of another war, it was not seeking one.  Another Lebanese politician with close ties to Nasrallah told us that, the day after the speech, people throughout south Lebanon “breathed a sigh of relief” because, in their perception, the Hizballah leader’s speech had substantially reduced the risk of conflict with Israel over the next several months. 

The message that local resistance forces are not out to provoke another round of confrontation with Israel also came through clearly during a meeting with Khalid Mishal in Damascus.  Mishal was very explicit in stating that, while HAMAS is prepared to deal with another Israeli military incursion into Gaza, it “does not want another war”—among other reasons, to spare Palestinians in Gaza the suffering that would come with another conflict, especially so soon after the 2008-09 Gaza war.  Mishal said he had given instructions to HAMAS in Gaza not to fire rockets or do anything else that would give Israel a pretext for military action. 

It was notable that, in our meeting with him, Mishal did not say a word about the murder of a prominent HAMAS figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai last month.  In the immediate aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, HAMAS publicly pressed Emirati authorities to launch a homicide investigation.  That investigation has yielded substantial evidence that Mabhouh was assassinated by Israel’s Mossad, creating tensions between Israel and several European countries—including the United Kingdom— as well as Australia over the Mossad’s apparent use of forged passports for their agents.  In times past, the assassination of a prominent HAMAS figure would have been taken as a casus belli prompting retaliatory action.  One can easily speculate that Mabhouh’s assassination resonates deeply with Mishal, who himself survived an assassination attempt by the Mossad in 1997 in Jordan—an episode that boosted his standing within HAMAS as “the martyr who did not die”.  But, today, Mishal and his colleagues seem intent on using Mabhouh’s assassination to focus international attention on Israel’s provocative stance, while holding off pressures from within HAMAS to retaliate.     

In this context, steps by various regional players that Israel and its friends in Washington are seeking to portray as provocative—Nasrallah’s speech, a recent statement by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallim that Israeli military action against Syria “would move to [Israeli] cities”, Ahmadinejad’s visit to Damascus—are better understood as efforts by regional resistance forces to bolster their own deterrent posture by reminding Israel of the potential consequences of another large-scale attack on Lebanon and/or Gaza.  (In this regard, Mishal suggested to us that one consequence of the Goldstone Report about violations of international humanitarian law during the 2008-09 Gaza war might be that Israel is now more likely to attack Lebanon than Gaza—where Israeli military action would probably generate higher numbers of civilian casualties.)  In his speech last week, Nasrallah noted with apparent satisfaction that,

“when Israel threatened Syria with war, the foreign minister, who is the top diplomat, responded.  This was intentional and not just a coincidence.  I am sure that Israel and Arab regimes were stunned when they heard the Syrian response because it was clear and transparent.  Two hours after the response, everyone in Israel was denying threatening Syria.  This is an example.  You remember [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak speaking about a swift and decisive victory…But what we are hearing today is that any Israeli war should have “modest objectives”.   

If Hizballah and HAMAS are not seeking an armed confrontation with Israel in coming months, does Israel want another war in Lebanon and/or Gaza?  Certainly, the Israeli posture toward both Lebanon and Gaza has grown increasingly provocative.  Violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli military aircraft are not new, but have increased dramatically in recent weeks.  For the past several weeks, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been warning of escalating Israeli threats against Lebanon.  On a state visit to Italy earlier this week, Hariri said explicitly that Israel is seeking war with “Lebanon, Syria, and Iran”.  Likewise, earlier this month, Syrian President Assad said that Israel is “pushing the region toward war”.  Israel also appears to be stepping up the pace of its military incursions in Gaza and engaging in more skirmishes with HAMAS fighters there.  Mabhouh’s assassination in Dubai indicates that Israel has not abandoned its policy of targeted killings, and is now prepared to violate longstanding agreements with European countries not to forge these countries’ passports in order to facilitate Mossad operations. 

Why is Israel doing these things?  Three possible explanations suggest themselves. 

First, it is possible—though, in our view, not likely—that Israel is deliberately laying the predicate for major military action against Hizballah and/or HAMAS later this year.  Israeli intelligence estimates that Hizballah has more than replenished its military stockpiles since the 2006 war, and has acquired longer-range and more capable rockets that significantly increase the damage it could do to Israel in a conflict.  In the wake of last year’s elections in Lebanon, Hizballah showed that it remains indispensable to the country’s political stability, and Hariri’s government has formally endorsed Hizballah’s weapons as an integral part of Lebanon’s national security posture.  Israel also believes that HAMAS is rebuilding its military capabilities in Gaza.  Politically, Egyptian efforts to force HAMAS to accept a blatantly pro-Fatah “unity” agreement have blown up, damaging the credibility and standing of both Egypt and Fatah in the eyes of many Arab observers.  Under these circumstances, it is not wholly implausible that the Israeli security establishment (the IDF, the intelligence services, and the Foreign Ministry) and the Netanyahu Government calculate that Israel needs to strike before the region’s two most prominent resistance groups—as well as their chief regional backers, Syria and Iran—grow even stronger.        

But all-out war in the Levant during the next several months is a high-risk and potentially high-cost option for Israel.  Consequently, Israel may have adopted a more aggressive posture toward Lebanon and Gaza with the aim of bolstering what Israeli military commanders like to describe as their country’s deterrent edge.  Current and former senior Israeli military officers tell us that, in the view of the Israeli security establishment, Israel’s military initiatives in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09—along with its 2007 air attack on an alleged nuclear facility in Syria—actually “worked”.  As Nasrallah himself acknowledges, the Israeli-Lebanese border has been quiet since 2006.  Furthermore, since the 2008-09 Gaza war, HAMAS has been substantially observing a ceasefire with Israel.  Against this backdrop, the Israeli security establishment—now with the backing of the decidedly right-leaning Netanyahu government—may well calculate that a more aggressive day-to-day posture toward Hizballah, HAMAS, and Syria could extend the deterrent benefits of the Israeli military’s most recent engagements. 

Finally, Israel’s more aggressive posture toward Lebanon and Gaza may be part of a broader strategy for dealing with the Obama Administration regarding Iran.  This strategy grows out of two assessments that seem to be becoming consensus positions among political and policymaking elites in Israel. 

–First, conversations with a range of Israeli interlocutors indicate that there is profound skepticism within the Israeli establishment that President Obama will deal effectively with Iran.  Israeli elites do not expect that there will be successful diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program; likewise, they do not expect international sanctions to effect significant change in Iran’s nuclear activities. 

–Second, at the same time, Israeli politicians and national security experts judge that it is increasingly likely Obama will be a one-term President. 

Given these assessments, Israeli political and policymaking elites anticipate that the next two years in U.S.-Israeli relations will be—as an Israeli colloquialism puts it—“garbage time”, particularly with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue.  For the Israeli security establishment and the Netanyahu Government, the strategic priority for the “garbage time” will be to prepare the ground so that the United States will be more favorably disposed to the imperative of eventual military action to contain the Iranian nuclear threat.  (This could mean preparing the ground so that President Obama’s successor will be inclined to support military action against Iran.  It could also mean preparing the ground so that, if Israel decides it must strike before President Obama’s term is over, public opinion and the political establishment in the United States are so strongly supportive of military action against the Islamic Republic that Obama cannot effectively oppose an Israeli unilateral initiative.) 

The Israeli agenda to prepare the ground so that the United States will be more favorably disposed to the imperative of military action has several interlocking elements. 

–The Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States will continue pressing for a “maximalist” U.S. agenda in whatever nuclear talks with Iran that might take place—including a complete suspension of Iran’s fuel cycle activities.  This position clearly reflects the strategic preferences of the Israeli government; if pursued by the United States, it also would undercut any prospects for a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.  

–The Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States will continue to push for tougher sanctions against Iran.  While Israeli political and policymaking elites are deeply skeptical that sanctions could actually leverage Iranian decision-making about the nuclear issue, they nonetheless believe that it is necessary to go through the process of debating and imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic in order to focus U.S. and Western opinion on the futility of sanctions and the imperative for military action against Iranian nuclear threats.     

–Alongside these steps, the Israeli security establishment and the Netanyahu government will work through multiple channels to condition American policymakers and public opinion to be more receptive to the possibility of military action against the Islamic Republic. 

–And, of course, the Netanyahu Government will continue to be unforthcoming on the Palestinian issue.  The position clearly reflects the government’s strategic and political preferences; it also is calculated to compound Obama’s image in the United States as a foreign policy “failure” in addition to his domestic policy break downs.   

–In this context, keeping tensions relatively high between Israel, on one side, and Hizballah, HAMAS, Syria, and Iran could also fit into the Netanyahu Government’s emerging “garbage time” strategy. 

We are inclined to believe that Israel’s current actions reflect both the IDF’s interest in boosting Israeli deterrence and the Netanyahu Government’s interest in pursuing its “garbage time” strategy.  But, even if the Netanyahu Government is not deliberately seeking to spark a military confrontation in the next few months, Israel’s more aggressive posture increases the risk of such a confrontation.  This is a situation that cries out for “adult supervision” of Arab-Israeli security affairs.  Is the Obama Administration up to the task?       

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

We just returned from a trip to the Middle East, which included stops in Lebanon, Syria, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  We will be writing about our meetings, discussions, and observations on this trip in future posts.  First, though, we want to express our gratitude to the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran for inviting us to come and meet with their students and faculty. 

We particularly want to say how impressed we were with the graduate students in American studies with whom we had the opportunity to spend some time.  University admissions in Iran are done on the basis of competitive national examinations.  Those Iranian students who end up at the University of Tehran are among the brightest young people in the country.  But, beyond their obvious intelligence and talent, the graduate students in American studies impressed us with their seriousness and determination to explore their subject as deeply as possible. 

One of our favorite moments came when two female graduate students (most of the graduate students we met are women) asked us for advice.  The two were preparing for an exercise in one of their classes, in which students would—in English—hold a mock U.S. congressional debate about health care reform legislation.  These two students were tasked to represent the Republican side of the debate.  They had already done extensive research; they were, for example, aware of editorial differences among CNN, MSNBC, and Fox in these networks’ coverage of the health care debate in the United States.  But, while these two students had the opportunity to talk with a couple of American political analysts, they wanted to deepen their understanding of the nuances of conservative argument about health care reform in the United States.  So, we did our best to channel our inner David Frum and tell them what we could about conservative perspectives on health care issues.  We hope those students got something useful out of the conversation.  (They were nice enough to say that they did.)  We also wish that more Americans could encounter young Iranians like those we met. 

Shortly before we arrived in Tehran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Islamic Republic is turning into a “military dictatorship”.  As we drove around Tehran, we looked hard to see a soldier anywhere on the street but did not see a single one—except for a couple at the entrance to the Behest-e Zahra cemetery just south of Tehran, where many of the Iranian soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq War are buried.  Over the years, we have spent a lot of time in a lot of Middle Eastern capitals.  We have never been in one—including in Egypt and Israel—that has fewer guys in uniform on the streets than in Tehran right now.   

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Lee Smith has published another personal attack on us in The Tablet.  To rebut, point by point, Mr. Smith’s allegations by innuendo would not be appropriate here, and would distract us from addressing the many important Iran-related issues currently on the public agenda.  However, because Jeffrey Goldberg has again used the platform that the prestigious The Atlantic has given him to give wider circulation to Mr. Smith’s attacks against us, we feel compelled to respond to the title of the post in which Mr. Goldberg links to Mr. Smith’s piece.  That title is, “Are the Leveretts trying to do business with Iran?”  It is categorically untrue that we are “trying to do business with Iran”.  For us, as Americans, to “do business with Iran” would be a violation of U.S. law.  We have not broken the law, and we will not do so.  For Mr. Goldberg to insinuate that we might be breaking the law, simply because he disagrees with our analysis, is untrue, vicious, and the essence of McCarthyism.   

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss takes down Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz’ op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which the two writers argue that the United States should lead an international campaign to impose gasoline sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Duss’ post can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

(Armymil’s photostream)

In a previous post on this blog, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett described what they identify as the increasingly polarized strategic environment in the Middle East. They explained that

On one side of this divide are those states willing to work in various forms of strategic partnership with the United States, with an implied acceptance of American hegemony over the region. This camp includes Israel, those Arab states that have made peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan), and other so-called moderate Arab states (e.g., Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council).

On the other side of this divide are those Middle Eastern states and non-state actors that are unwilling to legitimize American (and, some in this camp would say, Israeli) hegemony over the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran has emerged in recent years as the de facto leader of this camp, which also includes Syria and prominent non-state actors such as HAMAS and Hizballah. Notwithstanding its close security ties to the United States, Qatar has also aligned itself with the “resistance” camp on some issues in recent years. And, notwithstanding Turkey’s longstanding membership in NATO and ongoing European “vocation”, the rise of the Justice Development Party and declining military involvement in Turkish politics have prompted an intensification of Ankara’s diplomatic engagement in the Middle East, in ways that give additional strategic options to various actors in the “resistance” camp.

While the “pro-American” camp retains considerable resources and influence, the “resistance” camp has made impressive strategic gains since the turn of the millennium—in no small part, because of the George W. Bush Administration’s strategically counterproductive approach to the region. Against this backdrop, the “pro-American” camp clearly hoped that President Obama would re-legitimate America’s leadership role in the Middle East and deal effectively with the region’s most pressing strategic challenges—with the Palestinian issue and Iran at the top of that list. But, as we have met with senior diplomats and officials from the “pro-American” camp in recent weeks, we have been struck by the accelerating pace at which our interlocutors’ concern about the direction of the Obama Administration’s Middle East policies is mounting. They are becoming increasingly dubious that President Obama will “deliver” in the Middle East—on Palestine, on Iran, in Afghanistan, and on other important regional issues.

The importance of this analysis has been laid bare by Secretary Clinton’s recent trip to the Middle East and the United States’ growing arms sales to its allies in the region.

In this context, I thought I’d share this “Strategic Comment” published by The Institute for International and Strategic Studies back in November.

The report documents the large arms purchases by the Gulf countries and notes that in 2008, UAE and Saudi Arabia spent more than any other developing countries on arms-transfer agreements, committing $9.7 billion and $8.7bn respectively. The report goes on to explain key trends in Middle Eastern arms purchases including the deployment of missile defense systems.

Here is what the report concludes:

The bases and weapons purchases illustrate the dichotomy of Gulf thinking regarding Iran. Some Gulf states fear that Iran, with its size and wealth, aspires to the status of regional superpower. Were Iran to have nuclear weapons – or a ‘break-out’ capacity that could quickly furnish it with weapons – rulers fear Tehran could dictate to them in military and economic matters. They do not want a nuclear Iran. At the same time, however, they are concerned about the possible consequences of a hard Western line against Iran, and especially of military action aimed at disabling its nuclear programme. They fear that Tehran’s response would be to lash out not at the West, but at the West’s friends in its neighbourhood. Hence their increased expenditure on defence, missile shields and foreign bases.

Confronting this dilemma by tightening their embrace of the West – and doing so openly – represents a gamble for the Gulf’s rulers: it is an implicit acknowledgment that however much they may spend on weapons, their security, ultimately, lies with outside powers. With the closure of American facilities in Saudi Arabia and, eventually, Iraq, and an accompanying scaling-down of operations in Kuwait, the trend is obviously towards a smaller overall US footprint in the region. This, however, must be balanced against the new wave of weapons sales, the French base in Abu Dhabi and the significant expansion of American naval facilities in Bahrain. When the dust settles there may well be fewer foreign troops in the Gulf than there were a decade ago, but with Iraq no longer a strategic threat to its neighbours this was to be expected. The remaining forces are very openly focused on Iran. It is too soon to say whether Iran, looking from across the water, sees a threat or a deterrent.

You can read the full “strategic comment” here.

– Ben Katcher

(Photo Credit: Defense Department Photostream)

CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus stated on Meet the Press yesterday that the United States is now pursuing the “pressure track” as a means to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

It appears that the administration is banking on one of two things happening. Either increased sanctions will make life so difficult for the Islamic Republic that it will capitulate and somehow give up or alter its nuclear program in a way that is beneficial to Western interests, or the Islamic Republic will collapse and a new government will emerge that is more eager to deal with the United States.

Last Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor General Jim Jones made comments directly linking sanctions to regime change in Tehran – suggesting that they think the second scenario above is a likely outcome. But what if the regime, which has persisted for 30 years despite immense international pressure and war, survives?

Even if more sanctions compelled Iran agreed to concessions on the nuclear issue, the United States has other very important interests with regard to Iran. The only way to prevent Iran from continuing to play “spoiler” in other areas such as peace with Israel and stabilizing Iraq is to fundamentally reorient and improve U.S.-Iranian relations.

The question we should be asking is, “What if the Islamic Republic manages to survive and does not agree to major concessions with regard to its nuclear program?” Then “the pressure track” will have only served to exacerbate the mutual hostility between Washington and Tehran and we will be even further from the kind of strategic opening that is so important for American interests.

– Ben Katcher

I have pasted a copy of yesterday’s IAEA Board of Governors Report on Iran below.

IAEA Report Iran 18Feb2010

– Ben Katcher

The International Crisis Group published an “Update Briefing” yesterday on “The Iran Nuclear Issue: The View From Beijing.”

The report is an excellent summary of the strategic, political, and economic sources of China’s policy toward the Iranian nuclear issue.

Its conclusions are largely consistent with, “Moving (Slightly) Closer to Iran
China’s Shifting Calculus for Managing Its “Persian Gulf Dilemma,” a mongoraph written by Race for Iran Publishers Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, along with Georgia Tech University Professor of International Relations John Garver.

It should also be noted that the report sources substantially both from the monograph and from this blog.

Some notable highlights from the report:

General Zhang Zhaozhong of China’s National Defense University told the ICG that “the enrichment technology of Iran is very primitive…Iran does not have very large quantities of uranium ore… And it’s a very long process from processing nuclear materials to actually developing nuclear weapons. Iran does not have the required facilities, equipments, or technology.”

The ICG reports that “[Chinese] analysts also had no qualms suggesting that China does not mind the [Iranian nuclear] issue tying up U.S. resources and attention.” This calls to mind The Washington Note Publisher Steve Clemons’ conversation with the Deputy Director of the Policy Planning staff of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who told Clemons that “We are trying to figure out how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.”

The report refers to Iran’s “binding” strategy, by which Iran is attempting to “bind” China to its economy and hydrocarbon resources by inducing Chinese investment. The latest evidence of this is Sinopec’s deal with NIOC to provide $6.5 billion for the joint development of two refineries.

The ICG concludes that while economic factors are key to China’s relations with Iran and opposition to sanctions, containing U.S. influence in the Middle East and maintaining a balance of power in the region are also central goals of Chinese strategy.

The full report is absolutely worth a read and can be found here.

One is left with the conclusion that supporting “crippling sanctions” does not fit into China’s management of its “Persian Gulf Dilemma.”

– Ben Katcher

Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times reporter and author of an endearing book about Turkey called Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds, is spot on in his analysis of the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran.

In laying out the American approach to Iran, Clinton showed how little US foreign policy has changed since the last years of the Bush administration. President Bush famously explained that he would not negotiate with unfriendly regimes because he didn’t want to “reward bad behaviour”. He wanted states like Iran to change of their own accord, not as a result of negotiation but as a pre-condition for being allowed to negotiate….

A more promising approach would be to tell Iran what President Nixon told China 35 years ago: if you agree to consider all of our complaints, we will consider all of yours. Clinton has made clear that the US will make no such offer. Instead it clings to the decades-old American policy toward Iran: make demands of the regime, threaten it, pressure it, sanction it, seek to isolate it, and hope for some vaguely defined positive result.

Some of America’s most seasoned diplomats are eager for the chance to see what kind of a “grand bargain” they could strike with Iran. An ideal one would curb the nuclear programme, guarantee some measure of protection for brave Iranians who are being brutalised for defending democratic ideals, and give Iran security guarantees that might lure it out of its isolation and lay the groundwork for a new security architecture in the Middle East. Instead the US has fallen back on sabre-rattling. This pleases Israel, war hawks in Washington, so-called American allies like Saudi Arabia – and most of all, President Ahmadinejad and his reactionary comrades in Tehran. They thrive on confrontation, and are doing all they can to bait the US into attacking their country. It is a strategy as effective as it is dangerous.

Kinzer’s short article can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

We have pasted below the text of an analysis of Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to the Middle East by Rami Khouri for Beirut’s The Daily Star.

The link to Khouri’s column is here.

Why Chuckles Greet the Hillary Show
by Rami G. Khouri

BEIRUT — American secretaries of state have been coming to the Middle East to create all sorts of complex alliances against Iran for most of my happy adult life, and every time this show passes through our region I learn again the meaning of the phrase “lack of credibility.” Hillary Clinton is the latest to undertake this mission, and like her predecessors her comments often are difficult to take seriously.

We are told that her trip to the region has two main aims: strengthen Arab resolve to join the United States and others in imposing harsh new sanctions to stop Iran’s nuclear development program, and harness Arab support for resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. These important issues also represent two critical diplomatic arenas where the United States has both taken the lead and also achieved zero results. Either the actors involved — Arabs, Israelis, Iranians — are all chronically or even chromosomally dysfunctional (for which there is some evidence) or the United States is a particularly inept party to assume leadership in these endeavors.

The weakness in both cases, I suspect, has to do with the United States trying to define diplomatic outcomes that suit its own strategic objectives and political biases (especially pro-Israeli domestic sentiments in the US). So Washington pushes, pulls, cajoles and threatens all the players with various diplomatic instruments, except the one that will work most efficiently in both the Iranian and Arab-Israeli cases: serious negotiations with the principal parties, based on applying the letter of the law, and responding equally to the bottom-line rights, concerns and demands of all sides.

Two Clinton statements during her Gulf trip this week are particularly revealing of why the United States continues to fail in its missions in our region. The first was her expression of concern that Iran is turning into a military dictatorship: “We see that the Government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship.”

Half a century of American foreign policy flatly contradicts this sentiment (which is why Mrs. Clinton heard soft chuckles and a few muffled guffaws as she spoke). The United States has adored military dictatorships in the Arab world, especially states dominated by the shadowy world of intelligence services. This has become even more obvious since Sept. 11, 2001, when the US has intensified cooperation with intelligence services in the fight against Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East are military and police states where men with guns rule, and citizens are confined to shopping, buying cell phones, and watching soap operas on satellite television.

Countries like Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, the entire Gulf region, and others are devoted first and foremost to maintaining domestic order and regime incumbency through efficient multiple security agencies, for which they earn the friendship and cooperation of the United States. When citizens in these and other countries agitate for more democratic and human rights, the US is peculiarly inactive and quiet.

If Iran is indeed becoming a military dictatorship, this probably qualifies it for American hugs and aid, rather than sanctions and threats.

Mrs. Clinton badly needs some more credible talking points than opposing military dictatorships. (Extra credit question for hard-core foreign policy analysts: Why is it that when Turkey slipped out of military rule into civilian democratic governance it became more critical of the United States and Israel?)

The second intriguing statement during her Gulf visit was about Iran’s neighbors having three options for dealing with the “threat” from Iran:
“They can just give in to the threat; or they can seek their own capabilities, including nuclear; or they ally themselves with a country like the United States that is willing to help defend them…I think the third is by far the preferable option.”

This sounds reasonable, but it is not an accurate description of the actual options the Arab Gulf states have. It is mostly a description of how American and Israeli strategic concerns and slightly hysterical biases are projected onto the Arab Gulf states’ worldviews. These Arab states in fact have a fourth option, which is to negotiate seriously a modus vivendi with Iran that removes the “threat” from their perceptions of Iran by affirming the core rights and strategic needs of both sides, thus removing mutual threat perceptions.

This is exactly the same option the United States used when it negotiated détente and the Helsinki accords with the Soviet Union for decades (and whose results ultimately caused the collapse of Communism). Why the United States does not use the same sensible approach to the perceived threat from Iran is hard to explain, other perhaps than two reasons: The United States would have to deal with Iran (and other defiant Middle Easterners) through negotiations rather than haughty neo-colonialism, and, Israel would have to submit to nuclear inspections and stop its aggressive behavior.

– Ben Katcher

The New York Times’ White House correspondent Helene Cooper appears to confirm Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s suspicion that the Obama administration is using “engagement” with Iran as a way to garner international support for tougher sanctions, rather than as a means to open negotiations on a comprehensive set of issues between the two countries.

Here is what Cooper says in her New York Times piece:

But Iran is where the administration is pinning most of its hopes about the perception of American engagement. At a news briefing on Thursday, the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, presented this latest metamorphosis of the administration’s thinking: that engagement is not necessarily about the two adversaries, but rather, about the worldview on America. The White House, he said, is trying to get Russia and China to join the United States, Britain, France and Germany — a group referred to in diplomatic circles as the P5+1, for the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany — in imposing harsher sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of a nuclear program. While it remains unclear whether the effort will succeed, Mr. Gibbs said Mr. Obama’s outreach to Iran had paved the way for a united Security Council resolution.

“We would not be here unified in the P5+1 were it not for engagement,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Because we engaged, it demonstrated to the world that the choices that Iran made were choices that it alone had to vouch for.”

That is a far cry from the argument Mr. Obama has made in the past about why American and Iranian leaders needed to talk. In his speech to the Muslim world from Cairo last June, Mr. Obama spoke of the need for both nations to overcome decades of mistrust.

“There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect,” he said. Mr. Obama even acknowledged that the role the United States played in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953 was a source of some of the tension, then added that “rather than remain trapped in the past, I’ve made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward.”

You can read Cooper’s full news analysis piece here.

– Ben Katcher

The National Journal Online is hosting a forum for national security analysts that asks “What Should Obama Do Next on Iran?”

The forum includes responses from Michael Brenner, Paul Pillar, Steven Metz, James Jay Carafano, Robert Baer, and Daniel Byman.

National Journal suggested that each contributor choose one of the four options below:

1. Continued gradual pressure from the U.N. Security Council, combined with other U.S.-led, non-U.N.-approved sanctions targeted narrowly at the Revolutionary Guards and hardliners associated with Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
2. “Crippling” sanctions, to include a ban or even embargo on refined petroleum imports to Iran, as urged by the U.S. House and Senate and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
3. Full open and clandestine support for the opposition “green movement.”
4. Military strikes against Iran’s nuclear complex.

Sadly, engaging in comprehensive negotiations with the Islamic Republic is not even on the menu of options to be considered.

Only University of Pittsburgh Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner endorsed a ‘grand bargain’ approach. He said

The only avenue that holds out any hope of reaching a modus vivendi with the current regime (and perhaps a successor – if there is one) is a comprehensive approach. That is to say, for the West to put on the table the elements of a grand bargain that may entail: lifting the economic and diplomatic embargo; and fashioning a place for Iran in a Gulf security arrangement. The Iranians, in turn, would have to put in play everything that concerns us. Anything short of that is shadow play, and a waste of energy.

The full forum can be read here.

– Ben Katcher

The Race for Iran Publisher Flynt Leverett and Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation Author Barbara Slavin debated the state of the opposition movement in Iran, the latest on the Iranian nuclear issue, and Obama’s Iran policy.

Leverett criticized the Obama administration for failing to offer a comprehensive agenda that could provide a strategic opening to the Islamic Republic and for continuing Bush-era overt and covert efforts to destabilize the Islamic Republic – noting that President Nixon ordered the CIA to stand down covert operations in Tibet prior to his historic trip to China.

Slavin claimed that the two letters President Obama sent to the Supreme Leader constitute a serious offer of engagement, and questioned the comparison to Nixon’s opening to China. According to Slavin, China was prepared for an opening, while the Islamic Republic today is not.

The full video can be watched above or at this link.

– Ben Katcher

We want to highlight a three-part exchange about our post, “Misreading Iranian Politics in Washington,” that took place recently on two other blogs.  First, Andrew Sullivan, a frequent critic of our work, wrote in The Daily Dish on February 13 that we were gloating about the Green Movement’s rather weak display on February 11, the anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding, which most commentators and analysts thought would be the occasion for a major popular challenge to Iran’s political order.  Sullivan elaborated,

“Obviously the argument that the Tehran junta is not going away is a legitimate area of debate.  But there is a glee with which the Leveretts write about this that I find somewhat callous given the suffering and deaths and torture of so many young lovers of freedom in that imprisoned country.” 

Second, Daniel Larison wrote on February 14 in Eunomia that Sullivan was being “extremely unfair”:

“The Leveretts are not expressing “glee” or anything like it when they say that the regime is not going anywhere. They are acknowledging a reality that far too many Westerners have had enormous difficulty acknowledging.

“Iraq war opponents were not gleeful when the political chaos and sectarian violence some of them predicted broke out. We were not pleased when the disaster we opposed unfolded. They were going to draw attention to the mistaken judgments of the people who up until the previous hour had denounced them as so many water-carriers for despotism and agents of foreign governments. The Leveretts are doing no more than re-stating their original arguments and pointing out that all those legions of pundits and bloggers who mocked them were rather impressively wrong on the main questions of the strength and potential of the Green movement and of the endurance of the current regime. Of course, the Leveretts know just as well as everyone else that there is no real accountability in foreign policy commentary. Their basically correct analysis will not make people more interested in their arguments, and the basically flawed analysis of dozens of others will not prejudice the reading public against their arguments in the future.”

Third, today Andrew Sullivan linked to and quoted extensively from Larison’s February 14 post. Sullivan presented Larison’s arguments straightforwardly for his readers’ consideration. 

We would like to make three points about this exchange. 

First, we want to thank Daniel Larison for his many expressions of support for our analysis of Iranian issues and our arguments about an optimal Iran policy for the United States.  His response to Sullivan was on the mark in terms of its understanding of what we tried to do in the “Misreading Iranian Politics in Washington” post. 

Secondly, we want to thank Andrew Sullivan for presenting Larison’s criticisms of Sullivan’s February 13 post—and presenting those criticisms in a manner indicating that Sullivan thought they warranted a fair hearing, at least.  This indicated an openness to genuine discussion that we respect and hope we can reciprocate.

Third, we would like to address the issue that Sullivan raised regarding our being “somewhat callous” in the way we write about Iranian politics.  We do not intend to come across as callous in our work.  We certainly do not take glee in anyone’s death, injury, or incarceration.  Every death is a tragedy, especially when the life lost is a young one.  But, in our view, our first responsibility as analysts is to be right.  We would ask people to judge our work by its clarity, rigor, and whether the bottom-line judgments and supporting analyses stand the test of time.

Two of the Obama Administration’s most senior figures on national security and foreign policy issues recently have voiced support for “regime change” in Iran as a near-term outcome.  To be sure, the Administration continues to stop short of full-throated embrace of regime change as the formal goal of America’s Iran policy, as Richard Haass and a host of neoconservatives have urged.  Nevertheless, shifting rhetorical trends from the Administration indicate that various aspects of U.S. policy toward Iran—in particular, the push for additional sanctions against the Islamic Republic—are now being shaped with the goal of encouraging regime change in mind. 

On February 2, when asked by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell whether the Obama Administration wanted to see regime change in Iran, Vice President Joseph Biden said that “the people of Iran are thinking about, the very people marching, they’re thinking about regime change”. Biden went on to charge that Iran’s leaders had “lost their moral credibility in their own country and around the region and I think they’re sowing the seeds for their own destruction…in terms of being able to hold onto power”. Then, most strikingly, Biden linked the Administration’s ongoing push for additional multilateral sanctions against Iran to the encouragement of regime change there:

“We are moving with the world including Russia and others to put sanctions on them. I think that we’ve moved in the right direction in a measured way…We’re going to end up much better off than we would have had we tried to go in there and physically tried to change the regime.”

Of course, many Washington hands would hold that Biden has an extensive record of undisciplined public remarks.  Given that record, perhaps there was not too much significance in his statement linking sanctions and the encouragement of regime change in Iran.  But, today, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, President Obama’s national security adviser, retired Marine Corps General James Jones, made the link between new sanctions and the encouragement of regime change explicit. Specifically, Jones said that

“we know that internally there is a very serious problem [in Iran]…we’re about to add to that regime’s difficulties by engineering, participating in very tough sanctions, which we support. Not mild sanctions. These are very tough sanctions. A combination of [internal and external problems] could well trigger a regime change.”

Jones’ remarks are troubling on two levels.  First, there is the sheer detachment from reality that is reflected in them.  As we have written frequently on www.TheRaceForIran.com and elsewhere, there is no way that the United Nations Security Council will approve anything approaching “very tough” or “crippling” sanctions on Iran.  In the interview, Jones acknowledged that “we need to work on China a little bit more.”  He went on to declare, though, that “China wants to be seen as a responsible global influence, and on this issue they cannot be non-supportive.” 

As we’ve also argued before, it is possible that, in the end, Moscow and Beijing will acquiesce to a new sanctions resolution—among other reasons, to keep the Iranian nuclear issue in the Security Council, where, as permanent members, they have significant influence.  But, if Russia and China acquiesce, they will only do so after they have ensured that the new sanctions actually authorized by the Council do not impede them in the pursuit of what they see as their most important interests vis-à-vis Iran.  And that precludes anything close to “very tough” sanctions.  Furthermore, we think the notion that non-“very tough sanctions” will combine with “internal problems” to produce regime change in Iran is a misreading of both what sanctions can accomplish and the true state of the Islamic Republic’s internal politics.         

Second, Jones’ remarks are troubling because they strongly suggest that the linkage drawn by Biden between new sanctions and the encouragement of regime change in Iran was not a fluke.  Until recently, the dominant argument in the Obama Administration’s rhetoric about additional sanctions against Iran held that movement on the “pressure track” was needed to get Tehran to be more forthcoming on the “diplomatic track”.  In other words, additional sanctions are a tactical tool to be employed instrumentally to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table in a more “cooperative” posture.  Of course, we think that this argument, too, is nonsense.  In our view, sanctions will do nothing to generate strategic leverage over Iranian decision-making and will further undermine prospects for what the Obama Administration should be doing—pursuing comprehensive, strategically-grounded engagement with the Islamic Republic to achieve a fundamental realignment of U.S.-Iranian relations.  But, at least until recently, the Administration’s rhetoric about sanctions tried to link them to the goal of productive diplomatic engagement. 

Now, the remarks by Biden and Jones indicate that the Obama Administration is looking at sanctions as a tool for encouraging regime change.  As Flynt argued last week on The Newshour, “the Obama Administration goes down a very dangerous path if it lets support for this Green Movement take over its Iran policy…The United States needs to be doing serious strategic business with the Islamic Republic as it is, and not as some might wish it to be. That’s what the Obama Administration needs to be focused on, and not give in to what is, frankly, an illusion that Iranian domestic politics are going to produce some government that we’re going to find much, much easier to deal with”.  

–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

In two previous posts on this blog, “Explaining the Concept of ‘Learning Curve’ to Jeffrey Goldberg” and “Explaining the Concept of ‘Facts’ to Jeffrey Goldberg”, Hillary Mann Leverett responded to a pair of truly shoddy pieces of “journalism” written about her by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.  Now we write jointly in response to a third such offfense, “The Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Flynt Leverett Connection”, which Mr. Goldberg posted on his blog yesterday.  Goldberg’s post both links to and quotes from an “article” published by one Lee Smith earlier this week in The Tablet—an online publication which, until this week, we had never heard of.  Mr. Goldberg, it turns out, is a contributing editor to The Tablet (according to the publication’s website). 

In Mr. Goldberg’s previous attempts to write about Hillary (with whom he has, to this day, never spoken or sought to speak), he displayed a fact-free approach to journalism that we found truly unfortunate from someone who works for such a historically august publication as The Atlantic.  In his current effort to portray Flynt (with whom Mr. Goldberg has also never spoken or sought to speak), Mr. Goldberg stoops to a new low in attempted character assassination—a low set by Mr. Smith.  Mr. Smith’s “article” is chock full of unsubstantiated statements and  fabricated allegations.  For the record, we would like to respond to these unsubstantiated statements and fabricated allegations lies here. 

We will start by quoting the paragraphs from Mr. Smith’s article which Mr. Goldberg reprints in his post: 

“The opposition camp has been critical of Leverett for his collaborations with Mohamed Marandi, director of Tehran University’s Institute for North American Studies and the son of Khamenei’s personal physician, who appears to have facilitated Leverett’s upcoming visit. “The University of Tehran is the institution which has applied for our visas,” Leverett explained to me.

Leverett was offended when I asked if the Revolutionary Guard had played a role in his invitation, and yet there’s little doubt that his co-author is personally and professionally close to the regime–and publicly justifies some of its most brutal actions. Since the June elections, Marandi has been the Ahmadinejad government’s key spokesperson in the English-language media, and he recently defended the regime’s sentencing opposition members to death. His true occupation may be even more unsavory. “He passes himself off as an academic, but he’s with the Ministry of Intelligence,” says Ramin Ahmadi, co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentary Center and a professor of medicine at Yale.”

Where to begin?!  By way of background, we should inform our readers that we are planning a trip to the Middle East next week.  Our itinerary includes Beirut and Damascus.  If our application for visas is approved, we might also be going to Tehran.  (As Middle East specialists, we travel to the Middle East multiple times each year.  We have been wanting to visit Iran for some time, and accepted an invitation from the University of Tehran to do so.)  It seems strange to us that people we don’t know have become so interested in our travel plans of late.  Mr. Smith is certainly very focused on the subject.  He bizarrely asserts that “Western scholars and policy wonks alike understand that access to the [Iranian] regime is a form of currency that can make you powerful or rich or both…all see access to the Iranian regime as the biggest prize in the foreign policy game”.   

Considering the amount of grief we have to put up with because we actually want to talk to Iranians, including government officials, both inside Iran and outside the country, we are tempted to conclude that Mr. Smith is describing some parallel universe to the one that we live in.  We don’t know of a single “Western scholar” or “policy wonk” (and we know a lot of people in both categories) who thinks that access to the Iranian regime is going to make them powerful, rich, or both. 

To return to the passages quoted by Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Smith’s claim that Flynt was “offended” when Smith asked if the Revolutionary Guard had played a role in our invitation from the University of Tehran is not accurate.  What Mr. Smith asked Flynt—and we quote from the email in which he asked it—was “to check information I have from two sources that your trip was facilitated via Muhammad Marandi on behalf of the IRGC”.  What offended Flynt was Smith’s claim that he had two sources telling him this nonsense.  There was no way that other human beings to whom Smith would have access could have been telling him this except that they made it up; alternatively, Smith himself made up his two “sources”.  Under either scenario, Smith is peddling lies. 

Regarding our “collaboration” with Mohammad Marandi—a professor of literature who, indeed, directs the University of Tehran’s Institute for North American Studies—we have written one article with him.  We remain quite proud of this article, which we believe should be viewed now and will be viewed in retrospect as one of the seminal pieces of fact-based analysis of Iranian politics in the wake of the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election.  We think that Mohammad’s analyses of Iranian politics and U.S.-Iranian relations are informed, interesting, and important.  We count him among our Iranian friends (we have friends across the political spectrum in Iran.)  It is execrable that Mr. Smith would print an unsubstantiated assertion that Mohammad is working for Iran’s Intelligence Ministry; Mr. Smith clearly did so with the sole aim of demeaning Mohammad.  We certainly have no reason to believe that Mohammad is anything other than what he says he is.  The statement by Dr. Ahmadi—a well-known expatriate advocate of regime change in Iran—that Mohammad is working for the Iranian Intelligence Ministry is completely unsourced.  Unless Dr. Ahmadi has his own employment relationship with Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, he would have no basis for knowing whether Mohammad or anyone else was on the Ministry’s payroll.  We hope that Mr. Smith misquoted Dr. Ahmadi.  But, we are learning that a disappointingly high percentage of those who want to apply the Iraq model of regime change to Iran seem to think that there is nothing wrong with lying in order to discredit their opponents.   

We also can’t resist responding to Mr. Smith’s references to Mohammad’s father, because they show so well how utterly disinterested Mr. Smith—and Mr. Goldberg—are in basic, factual truth.  There is a clear implication in Mr. Smith’s “article” that, because Alireza Marandi is Khamenei’s “personal physician”, then his son Mohammad’s integrity must be suspect.  Now, we have never met Dr. Marandi.  However, the claim that he is Khamenei’s “personal physician” seems strange given that Dr. Marandi is known both in Iran and the United States as a highly regarded pediatrician, specializing in neonatology—the care of premature infants and other newborns.  (Surely, Ayatollah Khamenei can find a competent internist somewhere in Iran).  Dr. Marandi—who lived for several years in the United States before returning to Iran after the 1979 revolution—did serve as health minister under then-Prime Minister Mousavi and then-President Rafsanjani.  He is widely known for his careful promotion of birth control in Iran, which has helped to lower the country’s historically very high rate of population growth (during his tenure as health minister, Iran allowed the U.S.-based Population Council to operate there).  Even The New York Times reported on Dr. Marandi’s leadership in this area.  (Did Mr. Smith even bother with a Google search on Dr. Marandi?  Are Messrs. Smith and Goldberg interested in and capable of accessing even the most basic factual data about their subjects?)  Since leaving his post as health minister, Dr. Marandi has also been one of Iran’s leading advocates of breast feeding.  If we actually get to go to Iran, we would look forward to meeting Dr. Marandi, as well as seeing his son again.   

The portions of Mr. Smith’s “article” that are not directly quoted by Mr. Goldberg contain an even higher concentration of lies and basic factual errors.  Frankly, we do not want to take the time to correct every single one of them.  However, we do want to address two that are particularly relevant to discussions of U.S. policy toward Iran.  One of Mr. Smith’s bigger lies is that we fabricated the “legend” that Iran sent in a “grand bargain” offer through Swiss intermediaries and peddled this false story to boost our standing as Iran experts.  This claim is dishonest on at least three levels. 

• First, there is the question of physical reality—there was, indeed, a document from the Iranians that came to the State Department via the Swiss (Switzerland is the “protecting power” for the United States in Tehran, where there is no U.S. diplomatic representation).  That document was reported on by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post in 2007 (link is here).  The link to a pdf of the document that the Post also published along with the story appears not to be easily accessible anymore from the Post’s website.  However, it can be accessed on Steve Clemons blog, The Washington Note, from a post that Steve wrote on the Glenn Kessler story (link here)–go to the part where Steve writes, “Here is a PDF of the actual “Roadmap” faxed by Guldimann”).  The document captured in that PDF is the document we read at the State Department after it had been sent in by the Swiss.  Now, of course, one may argue that the document would not have been a good basis for U.S.-Iranian negotiations (we obviously disagree with those arguments), but the document exists.  That Mr. Smith claims to have found an (anonymous) NSC staffer who was at the White House after we left and who says he never saw this document does not alter the reality of the document’s existence.  (We know for a fact that the document was sent from the State Department to the NSC.  What happened to it after that we cannot address, as we were no longer working at the White House at that time.) 

• Second, Mr. Smith is not telling the truth when he claims that we lied about the document coming from the Iranians, since, in his parallel universe, the document—which, you will remember, never existed in the first place, according to Mr. Smith—was really written by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran at the time.  The Swiss ambassador’s cover letter that came in with the Iranian document—and which you can read yourself as part of the PDF referenced above–about how he received the document from the Iranian side couldn’t be clearer.  Maybe one doesn’t want to believe him, or one thinks he was duped.  But there is no way to say that the document was a substantive (if not a physical) fabrication without having tested the basic proposition that the text was sent to the United States by the Iranians as a basis for negotiations.  And that, in fact, is something the Bush Administration declined to do—as Secretary Powell, Richard Haass, and other senior Bush Administration officials have publicly confirmed. 

• Third, it is not true that, as Mr. Smith alleges, the Iranian document was shot down by our purported “allies”, Secretary Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage, and not by neoconservatves.  Powell’s own Chief of Staff at the time, Larry Wilkerson, told the BBC that Powell and others at the State Department thought “it was a very propitious moment” to respond to the Iranian offer. “But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President’s office, the old mantra of ‘We don’t talk to evil’… reasserted itself.“

Another of Mr. Smith’s canards that is categorically false is that Flynt was fired from the National Security Council because “his desk was notoriously messy” and for other administrative deficiencies.  Three months before Flynt left the NSC, the White House publicly announced that it was promoting him, from acting senior director for Middle East affairs to senior director.  (Shortly before this, Flynt’s home agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, from which he was seconded to the NSC staff, promoted him to the Senior Intelligence Service, the equivalent of promotion to general-grade rank in the uniformed military.)  Flynt’s desk was messy when he was promoted to SIS rank.  His desk was messy when then-national security adviser Condoleeza Rice promoted him to full-fledged senior director status.  Why would she have promoted Flynt after he had been at the NSC for almost a year, only to decide a few weeks later that his desk was unacceptably messy and his work of unacceptably poor quality? 

No one disputes the facts that Flynt was strongly critical of the direction of the Bush Administration’s policies on a number of Middle East issues, and concluded, in the end, that he could not stay on at the NSC to promote these policies.  Mr. Smith may have found a neoconservative alumnus of the Bush NSC or Secretary Rumsfeld’s staff who continues to be in denial about the serious policy debates at the time, and wants to dismiss Flynt’s critique of the Bush Administration’s policies by telling stories about a messy desk.  (The Tablet does not disclose that Mr. Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, where his colleagues include Doug Feith—the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who, in the run up to the Iraq war, peddled false (indeed, fabricated) information about an alleged but nonexistent relationship between Saddam Husayn and Al-Qa’ida—and Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of the “Bomb Iran” movement.)

Mr. Smith’s “article” is nothing but a gossip column meant to undermine a genuine debate in the United States about what is in America’s interests in the Middle East and how best to deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Mr. Smith asserts at the end of his “article” that we have become “instruments through which the [Iranian] regime might influence Washington”.  That statement is categorically untrue and nothing more than a blatant attempt at character assassination.    

This kind of McCarthyite tactic was used by Mr. Goldberg, among others, in the run up to the Iraq war, in a largely successful effort to ensure that there was no serious questioning of the lies about Iraqi WMD and links to Al Qaida that Mr. Goldberg, among others, worked hard to disseminate. We will continue to do our best to ensure that Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Smith, and others like them do not get away with such profound and dangerous dishonesty this time around.       

 –Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett

Flynt Leverett, appeared on PBS’ NEWSHOUR last night with Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright and University of California Riverside Professor Reza Aslan to discuss events in Iran yesterday – the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic – in the context of U.S. policy.

In the clip above, Leverett argues that the Islamic Republic is more stable than many western commentators have indicated.

He compares events since the June 11 elections to the revolution of 1978-79 that overthrew the Shah, noting that in the twelve months prior to that revolution, Iranian security forces gunned down tens of thousands of protesters. In contrast, slightly more than 100 people have been killed since last year’s June 11 elections.

Leverett’s bottom line is that support for the opposition in Iran should not get in the way of doing “serious strategic business with the Islamic Republic as it is and not as some might wish it to be.”

The 11 minute clip is available here.

– Ben Katcher

Yesterday was the 31^st anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding—an annual celebration that comes as the culmination of a preceding 10-day commemoration of the “days of dawn” between Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran from exile on February 1, 1979 (the Shah had departed the country on January 16) and the proclamation of the Islamic Republic on February 11. Many Western-based Iran watchers and Western journalists covering Iran anticipated that this would be the occasion for mass protests that would rock the Iranian government to its foundations—marking, as one journalist put it just a few says ago, the “beginning of the end” of the Islamic Republic. The most prominent establishment figures associated with the Green Movement—Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohammad Khatami—all called for their supporters to come out on February 11 to show the strength of their cause.

The anniversary observances have now concluded in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran, and the strength manifested by the Green Movement was hardly noticeable. There is nothing new about this. Ever since the Green Movement emerged in the run up to the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election, Western observers have been describing the rise of a broad-based social movement that would bring about fundamental change—perhaps even “regime change”—in Iran. These observers told us, among other things, that the 3-, 7-, and 40-day mourning observances for those protestors who were killed in clashes with security forces would prompt ever larger protests—as was the pattern during the revolution that ultimately overthrew the Shah. But that has not occurred. The protests on the Shi’a holy day of Ashura (December 27) were much smaller than some previous demonstrations by the Green Movement. Furthermore, no demonstrations of any significance were seen in Iran on the anniversary of the Shah’s departure from Iran on January 16 or for Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s arbaeen (40-day mourning observance) on January 29.

Since the Iranian election, we have never saw evidence that the Green Movement commanded the support of a majority of Iranians. This judgment was in keeping with our assessment that President Ahmadinejad certainly could have commanded the support of the majority of the Iranian electorate in his re-election bid and that no hard and credible evidence of election fraud that would have fundamentally changed the outcome had been presented. But, the rush to judgment by the vast majority of Western observers, that the election result could only have been the product of fraud which “stole” victory from Mousavi, skewed much subsequent analysis of the relative strengths of the government and the Green Movement. This distorted perception afflicted not only neoconservatives and other Green Movement partisans, but also some of our realist friends, like Richard Haass and Steven Walt.

Read the full post »

Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran. Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards . The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, in that it has enabled the United States to consolidate some measure of Western support for additional sanctions against the Islamic Republic. In reality, though, U.S. policy on Iran-related sanctions—unilateral, multilateral, and secondary sanctions directed against third-country entities investing in the Islamic Republic—is stuck in an anachronistic model of the global economic order.

In this anachronistic model, America’s ability not just to keep U.S. companies out of Iran but also to limit the willingness of other Western (primarily European) companies to invest there put real constraints on the Islamic Republic’s capacity to develop its hydrocarbon resources and other important sectors of its economy. Now, of course, non-Western countries from what we used to call the developing world—e.g., China—have emerged as increasingly critical players in the global economy. This is catalyzing a shift in the worldwide distribution of both economic and political power that has serious implications for the American approach to Iran.

Read the full post »