By Mark Jansson
Although President Obama has another four years, he will surely continue to hear from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and a chorus of critics at home, that he has far less time to convince Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). But the administration [...]]]>
By Mark Jansson
Although President Obama has another four years, he will surely continue to hear from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and a chorus of critics at home, that he has far less time to convince Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). But the administration should not let the urgency of the matter drive it to a neurotic fixation on breakout timelines, which is likely to have a dumbing-down effect on policy and push a diplomatic solution farther into the future rather than hasten it.
Throughout the President’s first term, the issue of time dominated the narrative about Iran and continues to do so. Obama himself has said that the “window is closing” for Iran to address contentious issues properly, but that there’s “still time” to do so. The focus on time has gradually become an obsession – one that crescendos intoxicatingly in the post-IAEA report number-crunching frenzies that determine the time intervals comprising the worst-case scenario of Iranian nuclear breakout. More recently, some have extrapolated (erroneously) a “cripple date” for how soon the United States must take drastic steps to force capitulation by ruining Iran’s economy.
Yet, as the nuclear drama has played out during Obama’s first term — punctuated by inflammatory speeches, abortive diplomatic initiatives, spellbinding unveilings of “Bibian” art and long intermissions for US sanctions and Iranian centrifuges to do what they do — it has left in its wake a sort of desultory urgency. Clearly, the issue is serious, but the recent history of failed negotiations is less-than-heartening and there is no obvious or specific reason to believe that talks will go better in the future.
An important step for the Obama administration before it starts grasping for diplomatic straws is to refresh the framing of the issue and think longer term. One takeaway from Obama’s first term is that the framing of engagement with Iran as a race against the clock has outlived its usefulness. The same time-delimited urgency of the Iranian nuclear issue that has led to severe economic sanctions and brought Iran to the negotiating table has, arguably, had the unintended side effect of preventing negotiations from going anywhere once they begin.
While a sense of urgency can help focus the mind, too much will lead to mistakes by forcing the adoption of approaches that are fast and simple but less accurate. At present, the consuming fear that time is running out to solve the Iranian nuclear problem seems to have become a barrier that confines the search for a solution to shallow waters, wherein the prevailing theory is reducible to one radically simple notion: just add pressure.
Pressure tactics might have been good enough to get Iran to agree to talks, but prolonging this approach in the way that we have is a recipe for escalation. Overall, US engagement with Iran has been erratic during Obama’s first term — negotiations one week, sanctions and cyber attacks the next. From what is known about the talks that have transpired, it’s apparent that neither side has shown much courage in tabling offers that stood a chance of gaining traction. If anything, the US position hardened over time rather than the other way around, perhaps because it bought into the notion that the duress Iran was experiencing from choking sanctions would eventually force it to accept anything.
But the only recent accomplishment of the ‘add pressure and wait’ approach has been to fuel a dangerous pattern of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby perceptions of Iranian intransigence become more extreme with every moment that passes between added punishment and its capitulation. The perception of Iranian defiance has now reached near-mythical status and driven supposedly mainstream policy discussion into the realm of outright belligerence. Even moderates have argued unblushingly that only “existential angst” brought on by the specter of total economic collapse (or perhaps that ever-elusive “truly credible” threat to attack) will get Iran to give in on the nuclear issue.
But it should be clear by now that the United States and Iran are far better off taking steps to moderate their behavior rather than make it more extreme. A conflict with Iran could be exceedingly dangerous for the US, Israel, and the global economy. Isolating Iran, encircling it, sabotaging its nuclear facilities and pushing its economy to the brink of collapse has become not just inhumane but strategically counterproductive as well. It has left Iran’s leaders with less to lose for retaliating aggressively if attacked, making military action riskier for the US and any threat to carry it out less believable for Iran. It’s time to give up on the machismo.
Another reason to jettison the notion that the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue is rapidly closing is because, frankly, it is not. Even if Iran decides to “come clean” on everything, fully cooperate with the IAEA and implement the Additional Protocol, it will retain the technical talent to produce nuclear weapons, if it so chooses, for some time to come. There is no silver bullet solution — be it a collapsed Iranian economy, a successful military strike or a brilliantly orchestrated deal– that can undo that. So, letting breakout timelines drive policy — as if Iran does not really have nuclear weapon potential until it has the potential to make them quickly — actually belies the larger reality that Iran is, and will be, capable of making nuclear weapons, regardless of whether or not it ever crosses Bibi’s red line.
Getting over the preoccupation with timelines and red lines would give the US and the six power P5+1 the space to enter future negotiations with multiple options, not just one proposition, and be flexible about mixing and matching their various elements as appropriate. It is obvious that any deal must include prompt sanctions relief for Iran, but figuring out what sanctions to lift and what can be received in exchange will probably take time. As former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy recently put it, “you have to understand what it is that makes Iran tick.” Coming up with multiple options is a good way to discover what the other side really values and for zeroing in on a mutually acceptable agreement.
At the end of the day, any diplomatic progress that may be made over the next several years will only be the beginning of a very long process of convincing Iran to turn its back on nuclear weapons and, just as importantly, to not relapse. For now, it will be hard enough to figure out what will work without having to do it under stultifying pressure created by a loudly ticking clock and timelines that unnecessarily drive policy towards extremes and the desperately oversimplified solutions found there.
- Mark Jansson is the Special Projects Director for the Federation of American Scientists, the country’s longest-serving organization committed to reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
]]>According to the Associated Press, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday in Europe that his country wouldn’t take part [...]]]>
According to the Associated Press, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday in Europe that his country wouldn’t take part in more sanctions aimed solely at crippling Iran’s broader economy.
What’s more, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov swore off the “threat of” and the “use of force” as “effective tool(s)” against Iran.
So much for a new coalition of the willing. If the U.S. or Israel decides to go after Iran militarily, it will be like Iraq — a unilateral move largely considered illegal by the international community. Without Russia, you can count UN support unequivocally out of the question.
From the AP report, via MSNBC (my emphasis):
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “any new proposals … would basically be aimed at suffocating the Iranian economy.”
He said that “was not part of the agreement” when the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany started trying to allay doubts over Iran’s nuclear intentions with a combination of incentives and pressure.
Lavrov argued that the Istanbul meeting was “not a total failure.” And Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov also insisted that there is “very limited and fragile progress,” while emphasizing that Russia was against a nuclear-armed Iran.
“There is no alternative to further talks,” Ivanov said at a security conference in Munich. “We believe that neither stronger sanctions nor the threat of or, more than that, the use of force can be considered as an effective tool.”
(Hat tip to Dr. Walter Posch of SWP, a research institute in Berlin.)
]]>A recent neoconservative meme has been to assert that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that are imperiling dictatorial regimes owe a debt of gratitude to President George W. Bush’s efforts to bring democracy [...]]]>
A recent neoconservative meme has been to assert that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that are imperiling dictatorial regimes owe a debt of gratitude to President George W. Bush’s efforts to bring democracy to Iraq by making war on it.
This rather silly talking point (a partisan one, of course) has been promulgated by hard-liners like Elliott Abrams and Jennifer Rubin, and ably beaten back by Matt Duss.
But, lo, here comes Rubin and Abrams’s comrade to put them in their place: none other than Paul Wolfowitz. Rubin recently asked, ”How much did the emergence of a democratic Iraq have to do with this popular revolt in Tunisia?”
Her and Abrams’ revisionism contends that the rise of democratic Iraq was the central tenant of Bush’s unyielding campaign to invade the country. Actually, Wolfowitz tells us, it was an afterthought:
We did not go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan to promote democracy, but rather to remove regimes that were dangerous to us and to the world. Having done that, we have attempted to enable the Iraqi and Afghan people to enjoy the benefits of free and representative government.
And, in case you didn’t get the point, he adds:
It is wrong to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought to promote democracy. Whether right or wrong, they were fought to protect ourselves and others from dangerous regimes, but once those regimes were removed we could not reimpose dictators. At the same time, we did believe that peaceful democratic change, of the kind I’ve mentioned earlier, could help to change the conditions in the Middle East that were breeding terrorists and support for terrorism.
(FYI, Paul, they were wrong: The Iraqi ‘threat’ was predicated on non-existent WMDs.)
But Wolfowitz is not finished. Rubin wants to justify invasion of a country as a way of bringing about democratic reform — that’s at the heart of her Iraq revisionism and recommendations for Iran policy. For the latter, she claims that democratic aspirations of Iranians are paramount, second even to nuclear concerns (the latter merely accelerates the need for the former).
Wolfowitz, however, is not backing down, exposing Rubin’s dishonesty (as well as others) that we can somehow drop democracy bunker-busting bombs:
Support for peaceful reform by the people themselves is the right way to promote democracy, not the use of force. To repeat again, we did not go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq to promote democracy.
I look forward to Rubin and Abrams explaining away Wolfowitz’s perspective on their blogs.
]]>Iran blamed the United States for a suicide attack in the Islamic Republic’s restive Southeast. While Iran is mostly a Shia country, the Southeast is home to a Sunni ethnic Baluchi population that straddles the border with Pakistan.
Iran [...]]]>
Iran blamed the United States for a suicide attack in the Islamic Republic’s restive Southeast. While Iran is mostly a Shia country, the Southeast is home to a Sunni ethnic Baluchi population that straddles the border with Pakistan.
Iran accused the United States of responsibility for a suicide attack on Wednesday that killed at least 39 people and wounded many more at a highly symbolic and emotionally charged mourning ceremony near a mosque in southeastern Iran.
“The advanced equipment and facilities of the perpetrators show that this attack was supported by the regional intelligence services of the United States,” said Ali Abdolahi, deputy for security at the Interior Ministry, in comments published on the official IRNA news agency Web site.
Mr. Abdolahi confirmed earlier news reports that two bombers detonated explosive-packed belts on Wednesday morning among crowds that had gathered outside the Imam Hussein Mosque in the city of Chabahar near the border with Pakistan. One of the attackers was said to have been identified by police and shot before setting off his explosives, to little effect. Reports from semi-official news agencies said that a third attacker was arrested by police.
While no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, the Times suggests that Jundullah may have been involved because one of the dead was from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gorps (IRGC), a group frequently targeted by Jundullah.
Jundullah, from the borders with Pakistan, claims to fight for the rights of Iran’s Sunni minority. Rumors have long circulated of U.S. support for Jundullah, a charge the government has emphatically denied. The group was placed on the U.S. list of foreign terror organizations in November.
Late-breaking updates: According to press reports, Jundullah has indeed taken credit for the attack.
President Barack Obama issued a statement on the attacks, according to multiple news sources. AFP reports:
WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday strongly condemned an “outrageous terrorist attack” by a suicide bomber at a Shiite religious procession in Chabahar, Iran, which killed at least 39 people.
“I strongly condemn the outrageous terrorist attack on a mosque in Chabahar, Iran,” Obama said in a written statement.
“The murder of innocent civilians in their place of worship during Ashura is a despicable offense, and those who carried it out must be held accountable. This is a disgraceful and cowardly act.”
Obama said such acts recognized no religious, political, or national boundaries, adding that the United States condemned terrorism wherever it occurs.
“The United States stands with the families and loved ones of those killed and injured, and with the Iranian people, in the face of this injustice,” he said.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran also condemned the attacks:
“This deplorable murder of innocent people cannot be justified, and violates the beliefs and values of all who seek peace and justice in Iran,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the spokesperson for the Campaign.
“We hope this grotesque act will not lead to reprisals harming other innocent citizens,” he added.
The Campaign said the attack was aimed at stoking ethnic tensions in Iran.
]]>I haven’t read the book yet, [...]]]>
I haven’t read the book yet, but got an overview from the authors on Monday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. What seems to be remarkable about the book is that Allin and Simon — from the U.K. and Washington’s establishment think tanks – wrote it. And their views are eminently reasonable.
Take this statement from Allin: “War with Iran would be a mistake, not just bad or tragic, but a mistake in the sense that it would be worse than not going to war.”
That was just the launching point.
Allin and Simon gave a frank talk — at a Congressionally-funded establishment think tank, no less — about the need to reevaluate the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. Namely, because war is worse than not going to war, they think that perhaps it’s time to address “containment” as a potential policy.
“The U.S. will have to build and rely on a regime of contaiment aginst Iran, whether or not it succeeds in building a nuclear weapon,” Allin said.
Containment means two things: 1) Living with a potentially nuclear Iran; and 2) making sure the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stops being the gift that keeps on giving for Iran — that is, contra Israeli and neoconservative statements, linkage is very much a concern.
“In thinking about containment, there is an important element of linkage to the Israel-Palestine issue,” said Allin. He quoted Mark Heller, an Israeli researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who told the New York Times over the weekend that linkage is “a total illusion.” But Allin said Heller’s construction was setting up a “straw man.” Allin responded that if Heller wants to talk about “illusions,” it is also appropriate to speak of “delusions”:
It is a delusion to deny that there are things Israel can do and has been doing that makes the US ‘s challenges in the Middle East more difficult… The building of settlements in the Occupied Territories is near the top of the list.
Containment, as constructed by Allin and Simon, is not some policy of quiescence to all Iranian demands. Rather it’s a multi-pronged strategy of conventional power, nuclear superiority, and political deterrent. As Allin said, their plan is intentionally ambiguous about whether it seeks to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or using one once it does — because the plan seeks to do both.
However, containment presupposes a rational actor in Iran — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with all his blustering about the “tyrants of Tehran” and the “messianic apocalyptic cult” that is the government, might be loathe to accept.
Nonetheless, Simon explicitly does not view Iran this way:
I think I’m speaking for both of us here: We tend to see Iranian foreign policy as essentially cautious and opportunistic… We tend less to see the Iranians as doing something really outrageous. Against this background of caution and opportunism, they can do some nutty things.
Simon went on to say that, obviously, the Israeli calculus is that a nuclear armed Iran will be emboldened to do even more “nutty things.”
“When we talk about an undeterrable, crazy, messianic regime, it is a little scary to acknowledge those elements,” added Allin. “On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that we throw strategic cost benefit out the window.”
And therein lies the rub: Simon and Allin didn’t take on the usual mantra that U.S. and Israeli interests dovetail perfectly — instead, there was a brutally honest discussion of where they diverge, bringing linkage back into the fold.
“The respective issues of Israel and Palestine and what to do about the Iranian nuclear question raise questions about what are the reciprocal obligations of allies,” said Allin. “Jerusalem does not trust Washington when Washington says that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, particularly because there are now people in this city, like now [Simon] and I, who are writing that the U.S. may have to live with a nuclear Iran.”
“There are differing threat perceptions at work,” acknowledged Simon. “At the end of the day, Iran is simply not as threatening to the U.S. as Israel. This differential threat perception is something that concerns Israelis quite a lot.”
“The second [issue] is a gap between U.S. redlines and Israeli redlines on the Iranian nuclear program. It seems that at the moment, our red line is a breakout capability and their red line is an enrichment capability,” he went on.
Allin added: “We hedge it and we’re mushy in the end, but we do argue that our version of redlines include weaponization” — or taking the actual step of turning a breakout capability into a nuclear weapon.
It’s worth noting the Israeli red line posited here — enrichment — has already been (and continues to be) transgressed by the Iranians. What exactly would drive Israel to act militarily against Iran to enforce an end to enrichment? Or, as Simon put it: “The question is: under what circumstances do they do it?”
“There’s a poster that is ubiquitous in the Israeli Defense Ministry and Air Force (offices) of Israeli warplanes overflying Auschwitz,” he said. ”This is a useful image to have in mind when you think about how Israelis view the stakes.”
The first Israeli consideration, said Simon, would be what the U.S. thought about an attack — it’s not in the interest of any Israelis to “fundamentally alienate the U.S.” That said, Simon acknowledged the possibility that Israel could nonetheless take action that “would disappoint any U.S. administration” — noting that former President George W. Bush opposed an Israeli attack on Iran during his tenure at the White House.
Secondly, said Simon, Israel has its own cost-benefit analysis: “Israelis would have to think that they’re going to get three to five years relief out of a raid. That is to say that they’d push back the Iranian (nuclear) program three to five years before having to go back and mow the lawn.”
But many analysts think an airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would delay the program less than three years, due to the dispersal of Iranian nuclear assets and the difficulty in simultaneously wiping them out. Furthermore, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted, an attack on Iran “will make them absolutely committed to obtaining nuclear weapons.” Many analysts think that, absent an attack, the Iranian regime will stop short of a weapon and be satisfied with a breakout capability.
Simon added three further conditions for an Israeli strike: that diplomacy had run its course (in order to protect what’s left of Israel’s international standing); that no one else (i.e., the United States) was going to strike; and that the prospects for regime change in Iran become very dim, meaning so too would prospects for a regime that is less threatening even with bombs.
Simon added, “Historically Israel has acted when it sees its back against the wall. In 1981 (attack on Iraqi reactor) and (a 2007 strike on a Syrian facility) are examples of this. Each of these bold military moves took place when the Israeli cabinet sees their backs as against the wall.” Simon said the U.S. should try to “keep them from feeling this way.”
And how to do this? The aforementioned “containment regime,” for one. But there is also another tack that hasn’t been fully tried — and can’t be tried in ernest amid military threats (despite the latest version of an old canard that Arabs only understand force, as articulated by Netanyahu’s calls for a “credible threat of military action” to back up diplomacy).
“There is an argument you hear made that real game-changing engagement with Iran has not yet been tried,” said Allin. “That might be true. If you wanted real game-changing engagement with Iran you wouldn’t be talking about military options and tightening the noose of economic sanctions.”
]]>But there was a noticeable difference in the tone of this conversation versus those in the run-up [...]]]>
But there was a noticeable difference in the tone of this conversation versus those in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: Whereas establishment figures tended to capitulate to the hawks in 2003, on “This Week,” both liberal pundits at the round table pushed back against an attack on Iran.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, in his usual bellicose form, predicted Israelis and Palestinians need to have a “civil war” to get to peace (echoes of his prescriptions for Islam at large) and that the U.S. has at its disposal
an Arab world that’s obsessed with Iran, OK? And so you have a natural Sunni-Israel alliance building. So all I’m saying is, let is [sic] breathe. Don’t be smarter than the story. I make no predictions, but we could be surprised.
The notion of a growing Arab hostility toward Iran — largely based on “out of context” comments of one U.A.E. minister and other unnamed Arab officials — was thoroughly debunked last month by Amjad Atallah at Foreign Policy‘s Mid East Channel blog last month, where he enumerated the ways that such an assertion oversimplifies factors like the difference between autocratic Arab regimes and their leaders.
After Amanpour raised Iran again, this time as the focus of discussion rather than a tangential matter in Arab-Israeli peace, liberal New York Times pundit Paul Krugman broke into the crosstalk and said a U.S. attack on Iran is not a popular notion:
[...T]his is not 2003. People in this country, people are — you know, the public no longer believes that drop a few bombs, shock and awe, and we can remake the world in — in our image. So I think there’s — people are just not willing to cede this.
Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, who’s recently been in Jerusalem spending time with and channeling Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, disagreed with Krugman and stated, contra assessments of almost any serious Iran analyst, that “regime change, I think, is coming to Iran.” But he acknowledged that this may not come before Iran’s nuclear maturity and that, as a result, “the Israelis are not going to wait on regime change to save them from a nuclear weapon.” Asked by Amanpour to expand on the Israeli perspective, Will went on to say:
I think they’re prepared to cut the administration some slack and move as far as they can in this way on the assumption that, A, that these sanctions, which are more severe than they had thought they would get, are going to work and, if not, that they would have a partner in attacking Iran. But they will attack Iran, if that is the option.
Mary Jordan, a Washington Post editor, broke in and again brought up Krugman’s point that a U.S. or U.S.-supported attack on Iran is not likely to be politically popular:
…America is very war-weary. You know, a servicemen and women have served now, Americans, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people are really tired. There is fatigue of war.
If Sunday talk shows, as they are thought to do, indicate the zeitgeist underlying U.S. politics, there is a very important distinction to be drawn between the liberal reaction to the drumbeat for war with Iraq and that for the U.S. to attack Iran: It seems that some liberals, if not all, have learned from the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are ready to speak out about the political infeasibility of an attack, if not the potentially disastrous strategic fallout.
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