by Derek Davison
The resurgence of “Salafi-jihadist” terrorist groups is once again at the forefront of national security thinking in Washington. A report released this week by the RAND Corporation, “A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” explains why.
There were 20 active “Salafi-jihadist groups” around [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
The resurgence of “Salafi-jihadist” terrorist groups is once again at the forefront of national security thinking in Washington. A report released this week by the RAND Corporation, “A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” explains why.
There were 20 active “Salafi-jihadist groups” around the world in 2001, according to Rand; last year this number was 49. In 2007 there were around 100 attacks around the world by al-Qaeda and affiliated groups; in 2013 there were over 900. The report offers many of the same dire assessments as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s (CEIP) May 30 conference, “Al-Qaeda Transformed,” which featured a talk by Georgetown professor and terrorism expert, Bruce Hoffman, titled “Al-Qaeda’s Curious Comeback.” Not only is the number of terrorist groups at unprecedented levels, but their geographic reach has expanded as well, particularly into Africa.
What explains this turn of events? The key lies in the word the CEIP used in the title of its conference: transformation. Al-Qaeda is no longer the single, hierarchical group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. That hierarchy still exists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, but its direct role in carrying out terror attacks is negligible and its function is more an ideological totem than an active terror network. In its place is a network of local terror groups, who share a similar Salafi ideology and who to varying degrees have chosen to align themselves with al-Qaeda’s reputation or “brand.” These local groups may be directly affiliated with “core” al-Qaeda (like Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra) or may share only the barest of connections (like Nigeria’s Boko Haram). But the overall result is a global, ideologically similar, collection of terrorist “franchises” that can exploit any local opportunity to expand their reach and capabilities. The Arab Spring, which was arguably a repudiation of violent Salafi extremism in favor of civil protest and reform movements, has actually enabled the rise and development of many of these local groups. It has led to lawless chaos and anti-government violence in places like Syria and eastern Libya, and Salafi terror groups have thrived in those conditions.
The other conclusion that can be drawn from this resurgence of Salafi terrorism, and the reemergence of al-Qaeda in its new, atomized form, is that the US’ “War on Terror” is failing. Every face of America’s counterterrorism policy has to be called into question, from the War in Afghanistan, to drone strikes (which have very likely created more terrorists than they killed), to the indefinite detention and torture of suspected terrorists (which have only served as rallying cries for terror groups).
Yes, America has managed to avoid another 9/11-style attack, but the decentralization of terror networks explains that as well. Al-Qaeda has always had two targets: the “far enemy” (America, the West) and the “near enemy” (hostile and/or secular governments in the Middle East). As al-Qaeda’s organization has decentralized, its local networks have refocused their attention on the “near enemy,” sparing America the brunt of their efforts. These regional al-Qaeda affiliates recruit new followers based on local conditions, to join a local fight. But the danger is that, as their capabilities grow, these locally focused groups will shift their attention to the far enemy. The fact that so many Salafi groups see a benefit to being connected to Al-Qaeda’s name, its cause, and its reputation shows that al-Qaeda’s core ideology still has resonance with potential recruits, so the chance that at least some of these affiliates will eventually take up Al-Qaeda’s fight against the West is not insignificant.
Both Hoffman and Rand suggest a number of policies to counter the rising Salafi tide. They range from direct US military action to countering Salafi propaganda online, to the increasingly popular idea of aiding Middle Eastern governments as they try to develop governing institutions, to improve their internal security situations, and to stabilize regions (eastern Libya, for example) that are currently outside government control. The latter is the focus of President Barack Obama’s newly proposed “Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund,” a $5 billion program aimed at training local security forces to respond to internal threats. While improving governance and security is a worthwhile goal in the abstract, these funds should not be misused. It’s a cliché to say, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” but if US counterterrorism resources are used by authoritarian regimes to stifle legitimate political opposition, then this program, too, will only damage America’s reputation and work against its long-term national security goals.
After 9/11, George W. Bush informed Americans that “they [the terrorists] hate our freedoms.” That notion, ridiculous when it was first uttered, appears all the more ridiculous today, after we’ve watched Arabs, Iranians, and Turks take to the streets to fight — and in some cases die — for their personal freedom over the past five years. It is accordingly past time for the US to reckon with how its own policies have legitimized Salafi/Al-Qaeda propaganda about “the far enemy.” Drones, detention, and torture may well have created more terrorists than they’ve killed or otherwise prevented, but there is more to it than that. A foreign policy that supports Israel regardless of what Israel does to Palestinians trapped in Gaza or forced into Bantustans in the West Bank creates anti-US sentiment. When US weaponry, whether wielded by American forces or by American clients, is killing civilians in places like eastern Libya, Gaza, and Sinai, anti-US sentiment will increase. American patronage of authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes absolutely creates anti-American sentiment. That sentiment is what will allow currently localized terror networks to shift their attention from the enemy at home to America, the enemy abroad.
It’s easy to rattle sabers about “freedom” and “human rights” when the target has already been cast as the villain, so it’s no surprise that US foreign policy has emphasized these issues when it comes to Bashar al-Assad, or Saddam Hussein, or the Iranian clerical regime. But unless America embarks on some hard choices about holding its allies to the same standards it demands of its enemies, its reputation will continue to suffer. The Leahy Amendment, a 1997 law that requires the US to cut off aid to foreign security forces that are suspects of human rights violations, ought to force these hard choices, but it needs to be applied consistently rather than ignored when it becomes inconvenient (as in, for example, Bahrain). The US military establishment chafes against Leahy’s restrictions, arguing that it constrains them from aiding foreign militaries that are confronting potential threats to the US, but this criticism is short-sighted. It’s far better for US security in the long-term if it can avoid links to acts of oppression or violence perpetrated by authoritarian regimes.
When US actions contradict US rhetoric, it damages America’s stature in the world and gives more ammunition to the message of groups like al-Qaeda. Without the political willingness to frankly and honestly examine America’s role in the world and the impact of US policy choices, then Salafi terrorism in all its forms will remain a potential threat.
Photo: Sinai militia carrying al-Qaeda flags head for a funeral of killed militants on August 10, 2013. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.
]]>via IPS News
Even with potential U.S. strikes against Iranian ally Syria looming, Washington and Tehran appear to be preparing for the resumption of nuclear talks.
U.S. foreign policy analysts have been bustling since the Aug. 4 inauguration of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who may have ushered in a new [...]]]>
via IPS News
Even with potential U.S. strikes against Iranian ally Syria looming, Washington and Tehran appear to be preparing for the resumption of nuclear talks.
U.S. foreign policy analysts have been bustling since the Aug. 4 inauguration of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who may have ushered in a new era of Iranian diplomacy and international relations.
“As the architect of the sole nuclear agreement between Iran and the West – a not inconsiderable achievement given the depth of mistrust – Rouhani presents a real chance for making progress in nuclear talks,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, told IPS.
“Under [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, although the two sides were sitting at the same table, one side played chess, the other checkers. Under Rouhani, they are more likely to play the same game, albeit according to different rules,” he said.
“To succeed, the two sides need to do what they never truly did during the past few years: bargain,” added Vaez.
Iran’s announcement on Thursday that its nuclear negotiating file would be moved from its Supreme National Security Council to its Foreign Ministry, which is headed by Mohammad Javad Zarif, has also received a cautious nod from the White House.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Thursday that the United States was aware of the reports.
“The inauguration of President Rouhani presents an opportunity for Iran to act quickly to resolve the international community’s deep concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme,” she added.
The implication that the Western-educated Zarif will be overseeing Iran’s nuclear dossier may boost an apparent growing conviction here that Rouhani, who appointed Zarif to the FM in August, is someone whom Washington can work with.
He made powerful acquaintances, including with then-senators Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel, during his tenure as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations (2002-2007), although his contacts with U.S. diplomats date back all the way to the 1980s when he helped negotiate the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.
“Zarif…is one of the smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met in professional life…and I don’t think he believes it’s in Iran’s best interest to have a nuclear weapon personally,” said nuclear policy expert George Perkovich, at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace briefing Thursday.
But Perkovich cautioned that Zarif is also a “formidable” negotiator who “unlike some of their predecessors” is neither “dumb” nor “ideological”.
“And so…we’re going to have to be sharp and on our game because if you’re trying to do stuff that’s just patently unfair and unbalanced, they’re just going to be able to slap us around the head rhetorically,” he added.
While no official date has been set, negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group could resume as early as this month, though it remains to be seen how U.S. military action against Syria might affect them.
For Vaez, “A limited U.S. strike on Syria is more likely to delay than derail nuclear talks with Iran.”
He also told IPS that that Rouhani has put aiding Iran’s ailing economy and ending its isolation at the top of his agenda and will not let Syria “spoil” his plan.
“Losing both Syria and an opportunity for sanctions relief will constitute a double blow to Iran’s strategic interests and its new president’s agenda,” said Vaez.
While Rouhani has not personally, unlike hardliners in Iran, cast blame on Syria’s rebels for the alleged chemical attack, he has stated that the issue should be handled by the U.N. and warned against foreign military action.
“Iran, as it has stated before, considers any action against Syria not only harmful to the region but also to U.S. allies and believes that such a measure will not benefit anyone,” said Rouhani at the 14th Summit of the Assembly of Experts on Wednesday.
The careful line that Iran is walking on Syria, considered a long-time partner in Iran’s resistance bloc toward Israel, could result in an Iranian shift away from its ally as it pursues its greater interests.
“Syria has become Iran’s Vietnam, and [Bashar al-] Assad’s extensive use of chemical weapons, in equal parts amoral and stupid, had magnified Tehran’s quandary,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told IPS.
“With the leadership divided over how to respond, the hardliners are doubling down on their unqualified support for Assad, while Rouhani and other pragmatists are distancing themselves. Those divisions mean Iran will not respond militarily to a limited U.S.-led attack, though the flow of Iranian military arms may intensify, if enough Syrian airfields survive the tomahawk strikes,” he said.
“However difficult the mess Obama has on his hands over Syria, it’s nothing compared to the trouble Rouhani has been presented by his ‘ally’ in Damascus,” said Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick added that while it’s not clear how such a move would play out, “Any real solution to the Syrian mess will have to involve the key outside players, including Iran.”
For now, Rouhani and Zarif at least appear to be holding true to what Rouhani said would be Iran’s policy of “constructive interaction with the world” during his first presidential press conference.
Rouhani’s eyebrow-raising Rosh Hashanah greeting on Twitter Wednesday was followed by a similar one by Zarif (his second official Tweet) who proceeded to tell U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter that she shouldn’t confuse his government with that of his predecessor.
“Iran never denied [the Holocaust],” Tweeted Zarif in response to a request by Christine Pelosi to “end Iran’s Holocaust denial”.
“The man who was perceived to be denying it is now gone. Happy New Year,” replied Zarif.
But the potential of additional sanctions on Iran pushed through by Congress during this critical time and the persistent negative effects of decades of mutual mistrust between Iran and the U.S. will temper hopes for a quick resolution to the nuclear issue regardless of what happens in Syria.
U.S. and Israeli fears that Iran could achieve the capability to dash toward a nuclear weapon by as early as 2014 according to worst-case assessments also increases urgency here.
To date, the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran has not made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons.
“The issue then is not whether Iran will make decision in 2014 to dash for nuclear weapons. We don’t know whether they will or whether they want to and probably the probability is that they won’t, but they might,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top Middle East advisor during Obama’s first term, told IPS at the Carnegie briefing.
“The issue is more, from a U.S. perspective, that this becomes the last moment that the intelligence community can come to the president and say, boss, we’ll know when they move to nuclear weapons,” he said.
“If we lose the ability to detect [Iran’s dash toward a weapon], the ability to prevent nuclear weapons goes down dramatically and the military option then slips off the table… if I’m right…whatever your assessment is, and say that’s the amount of time we have for a diplomatic deal, that means you have 12-18 months. So let’s get on with it,” Kahl told IPS.
]]>by Farideh Farhi
From the looks of it, the second round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a complete failure, with both sides unable to even find a common language to begin a process of give and take. The sense I get is that the US side is rather [...]]]>
by Farideh Farhi
From the looks of it, the second round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a complete failure, with both sides unable to even find a common language to begin a process of give and take. The sense I get is that the US side is rather unhappy, even more than expected, with Iran. After all, it made a slight move during the first round by reportedly not demanding the complete dismantling of Fordo and rather asking for its suspension with provisions that would make its return to operation difficult. In return, it offered some sanctions relief regarding the gold trade and petrochemical industry.
The Iranian leadership did not think this was a balanced offer even if they acknowledged the US move as a positive step. The closure or non-operation of Fordo is a key component of a solution to the nuclear conflict while the slight sanctions relief offered in return hardly impacts the complex web of trade and financial sanctions that have been imposed on Iran. More importantly, for negotiation purposes, Fordo — an under-mountain site built in reaction to the repeated refrain of “all options are on the table” — is Tehran’s most important leverage for the talks. So, giving it away cheaply is just bad negotiating strategy.
There were attempts by some members of Iran’s foreign policy establishment to sell the US offer as a good first step to the Iranian public but that didn’t work out. In private conversations, even those hoping that Tehran would take the offer talked about the need for the Leader to take the “poisoned chalice,” a reference to Islamic Revolution founder Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous words when he accepted a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988. In other words, even those hoping for the acceptance of the offer considered it unbalanced and only necessitated through circumstances.
Subsequent efforts to make the offer more balanced during the technical talks in Istanbul failed. Hence, as they have done before, the Iranian negotiating team shifted gears and began talking about a comprehensive solution to the Iran question that will address other regional issues (i.e. Syria and Bahrain) as well as delineate what the end game will be. The endgame for Tehran since everything began in 2003 has always entailed the right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil. In retrospect, we should have expected Iran’s shift back toward a comprehensive discussion — which also happened in Moscow — after efforts during the technical talks to make the revised proposal more balanced failed.
As a result, the question of “now what?” will have to be on the table for the US. By moving a bit, the Obama administration has acknowledged that just making demands without at least appearing to address some of Iran’s bottom lines won’t move the process forward. Similarly, the presumption that a successful sanctions regime will convince Tehran to accede to a perceived bad deal in order to rescue Iran’s economy also just received a solid beating.
The US can of course continue to tighten the economic noose on Iran, although it is not clear how much more “useful” damage that will actually do. Two recent reports from completely divergent outlets — the National Iranian American Council and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy — suggest that Iran’s economy is adapting to the limits that have been imposed on its oil exports. Neither of these reports deny the harm sanctions have inflicted or the opportunity costs that have resulted, but they do acknowledge that Iran has been able to adjust and limp along at least in terms of macro trade and budget numbers. Even a recent joint-report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists — while focusing on the costs and risks of Iran’s nuclear program — ends up acknowledging that costs from the loss of oil exports and opportunity costs resulting from the loss of foreign investment has been absorbed by Iran.
Indeed, continuing with what hasn’t worked in the past with the hope that it will one day work is what Gary Samore, Obama’s former nuclear advisor, expects. I guess the hope is that something magical will happen with Iran’s June 14 election and a newly elected president who will take charge by August. Perhaps he will be able to convince the Iranian leadership across the board that the offer Iran just designated as neither balanced nor comprehensive needs to be accepted.
This expectation or hope is a risky one. It is premised on the belief that Iran is a contested political environment and the harshness of sanctions will eventually pave the way for folks who think it’s time to abandon Iran’s nuclear program in favor of economic riches to gain the upper hand or argument. But the logic of Iran as a contested political terrain actually brings us to the opposite conclusion. One can more easily argue that the inability to begin a process of give and take on the nuclear issue before Iran’s election provides incentive to those who insist on Iran’s nuclear rights — and also happen to be in charge of the country — to make sure that a president is elected who will continue to toe their established line. In other words, the further escalation of sanctions may end up impacting the Iranian election, but not in the way that was intended.
So are there other options? Yes, according to another recent report by the Atlantic Council called Time to Move from Tactics to Strategy on Iran. It calls upon the Obama administration to “lay out a step-by-step reciprocal and proportionate plan that ends with graduated relief of sanctions on oil, and eventually on the Iranian Central Bank, in return for verifiable curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment and stocks of enriched uranium, and assurances that Iran does not have undeclared nuclear materials and facilities.”
Various sections of the report appear like they have been written by different members of the Council’s Iran Task Force, but the process laid out is pretty close to what the Iranians have articulated; if the issue is Iran’s nuclear program, then let’s lay out a roadmap and endgame for how the nuclear issue can be resolved to the relative satisfaction of all sides. The report also calls for opening an US Interests Section in Iran and increased people-to-people contact. Although it doesn’t come right out and say it, it effectively endorses various improved relations (people-to-people or government-to-government) as a companion to or simultaneous with a clearly defined step-by-step framework that reduces pressure on Iran in exchange for limitations on its nuclear program.
I’m not sure if the individuals who wrote the section on people-to-people contact and the need to use stepped-up public diplomacy to make Iranians “aware of the real reasons for sanctions” (to ensure the peacefulness of Iran’s nuclear program) understand how hard it is even for the most adept propaganda machine — and our country does have a pretty good one — to sell the idea that the US is justified in collectively punishing Iranians for the policies of their leaders. Nevertheless, making the case that the US is really not that bad while the sanctions regime is being relaxed through a step-by-step process of negotiations is a whole lot easier than what is being done right now: escalating the process of squeezing Iran while denying responsibility for it.
The Council report curiously does insist on maintaining one aspect of the Obama administration’s approach. It says that the majority of the Iran Task Force favors maintaining the military option as a last resort. It calls on the Obama administration to make sure that the option remains credible despite the acknowledgment that “While the drawbacks of a nuclear Iran are grave, the ramifications of a premature military strike—what the US military refers to as “second- and third-order effects”—could also be dire.” My dictionary tells me that “dire” is much worse than “grave” and I guess the report tries to ignore this by highlighting its rejection of a “premature” strike, whatever that means. But the dire effects of the premature strike are the same, I suppose, as a rightly timed strike.
Beyond this, I am truly puzzled by the inability of those promoting this type of public discourse to understand the corrosive impact that the language of “all options are on the table” has on the so-called international community that the Obama administration claims to represent, as well as various stakeholders in Iran, including the “Iranian people” who we apparently love and are so interested in establishing contact with. These fighting words do nothing to make the threat of military attack credible to those who run Iran’s nuclear policy precisely because of the “dire” effects that the Council report lays out. They also undercut any claim to righteousness regarding the nuclear row for the people who occupy the land and buildings that are being threatened. I cannot claim to know what the “Iranian people” think, but I can say that the overwhelming majority of Iranians I know, inside and outside of Iran, consider this language vulgar and appalling and reflective of an utter disregard for other people’s lives and livelihoods. Who else speaks this way nowadays? North Korea?
America’s “now what?” moment regarding Iran could be a productive moment if it begins to come to terms with the fact that the sanctions regime has not changed the calculation of the Iranian government — as evidenced by what just happened in Almaty. It can only do so, however, if it acknowledges that the military option cannot be made credible because the idea is both stupid and offensive.
]]>Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now [...]]]>
Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now the head of Iran’s nuclear agency.
Down at the end, Memarian speaks to the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour, who says the move is unlikely to affect Iran’s ongoing diplomacy with the West:
Analysts believe Ahmadinejad’s surprise move is very unlikely to affect the negotiations, as Mottaki had little say in the country’s major foreign policy positions over the past five years.
“Mottaki’s firing will have little substantive impact on Iranian foreign policy,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, told IPS. “The Iranian foreign minister doesn’t formulate policy. It’s the equivalent of the State Department spokesperson being replaced.”
“Salehi is much smarter and smoother than Mottaki and may prove more effective at creating divisions in the international community,” Sadjadpour added. “The Iranian foreign minister’s job these days is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It’s ugly no matter how you try and sell it.”
I covered some other reactions yesterday — mostly speculative at this point, and unlikely to become any more certain before the upcoming round of negotiations in Istanbul next month.
]]>Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: [...]]]>
Duss also takes note of another great point from Sadjadpour: Just as neoconservative Iran hawks can’t have it both ways — boosting the Green movement and calling for bombing Iran — those Arab leaders who call for a U.S. attack on Iran probably don’t care a whit about democracy in Iran either. (And why should they? Their countries aren’t exactly democracies nor do they care what their own citizens/subjects think).
In fact, a democratic Iran would probably be bad news for these Gulf dictatorships.
Sadjadpour (emphasis by Duss):
The WikiLeaks revelations make clear that Arab officials believe Iran to be inherently dishonest and dangerous. The feeling is probably mutual. But they hide perhaps a more interesting issue, namely what type of Iranian government would actually best serve Gulf Arab interests.
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and the Islamic Republic may be loathed, but equally the advent of a more progressive, democratic Iran would enable Tehran to emerge from its largely self-inflicted isolation and begin to realise its enormous potential. In the zero-sum game of Middle Eastern politics, a democratic Iran would pose huge challenges to Persian Gulf sheikhdoms.
The irony that someone like Benjamin Wienthal, who’s at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, doesn’t recognize this in his National Review post says something about how the hawkish agenda drives neoconservatives — and not utopian notions of freedom and democracy.
Weinthal writes:
While Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Oman have long privately conveyed such warnings to diplomats, they never had the courage to flex their muscles in public.
Right! And that’s because these are dictatorships, and these Arab leaders are wildly out of step with their publics.
Neoconservatives, being neoconservatives, will gather allies in their campaign for war with Iran wherever they can find them.
]]>Duss agrees with Sadjadpour’s conclusion that the Soviet Union is the best historical model to apply to Iran, but adds something: If [...]]]>
Duss agrees with Sadjadpour’s conclusion that the Soviet Union is the best historical model to apply to Iran, but adds something: If this is the comparison, one must acknowledge the relative minuteness of the Iranian “threat” as compared to the USSR.
Duss concludes (with my emphasis):
I think this makes a lot of sense, but, having established a rough model for predicting Iran’s behavior, it’s necessary to go the next step and recognize that Iran is far, far weaker than the Soviet Union was, and doesn’t pose anything like the global threat to U.S. interests that the Soviet Union once did.
While Iran’s power in the region has clearly increased and the U.S.’s diminished as a result of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. is still dealing from a position of considerable strength against a far weaker power in Iran, in a geopolitical environment that’s less conducive to the sort of power projection to which Iran seems to aspire. Clearly, Iran represents a challenge to a number of U.S. interests, but there are also areas of mutual interest to explore, such as its recent offer to help stabilize Afghanistan. So it’s important that we not allow ourselves to be talked into believing that the apocalypse is upon us.
]]>To act on these observations will require a far more nuanced Iran policy — one with a horizon of decades instead of months or years. [...] A more visionary policy would look back at the U.S.’s experience in the Cold War and examine the lessons learned from decades of détente with an enemy whose collapse was ultimately self-imposed.
Sadjadpour, an associate the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, starts by laying out the three accepted analogies most often employed by American analysts. Namely: Iran is like China and can be coaxed into modernity through rapprochement; Iran is like Nazi Germany and should “pre-emptively” attacked to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons; and Iran is like the Soviet Union and will change or collapse under the weight of its own insular policies and expansive domestic security apparatuses.
The most clear parallels, he says, can be drawn between Iran and the Soviet Union. Iran shares neither the military capabilities nor the expansionist ideology of the Nazis, and Ahmadinejad and Obama don’t face a common enemy as Mao and Nixon did with the threat of the Soviet Union.
Instead, Sadjadpour says that Iran most clearly resembles the Soviet Union and, in reading George F. Kennan’s 1947 essay on the Soviet Union, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” comes up with “10 striking examples of Kennan’s text anticipating today’s Iran.”
1. Iran’s sense of siege is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“[I]deology, as we have seen, taught them that the outside world was hostile and that it was their duty eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their borders. Then powerful hands of Russian Iranian history and tradition reached up to sustain them in this feeling. Finally, their own aggressive intransigence with respect to the outside world began to find its own reaction.… It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.”
2. The security apparatus designed to protect the state has begun to subsume it.
“The security of Soviet the Islamic Republic‘s power came to rest on the iron discipline of the Party Supreme Leader, on the severity and ubiquity of the secret police Basij and Revolutionary Guards, and on the uncompromising economic monopolism of the state. The ‘organs of suppression,’ in which the Soviet Iranian leaders had sought security from rival forces, became in large measures the masters of those whom they were designed to serve.”
3. The looming foreign enemy is needed to justify domestic suppression.
“[T]here is ample evidence that the stress laid in Moscow Tehran on the menace confronting Soviet Iranian society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.”
4. Revolutionary ideology has not evolved.
“Of the original ideology, nothing has been officially junked. Belief is maintained in the basic badness of capitalism liberalism, in the inevitability of its destruction, in the obligation of the proletariat downtrodden believers to assist in that destruction and to take power into its their own hands.”
5. The Islamic Republic may make tactical offers of compromise, but its enmity toward the West is strategic.
“It must inevitably be assumed in Moscow Tehran that the aims of the capitalist Western world are antagonistic to the Soviet regime Islamic Republic, and therefore to the interests of the peoples it controls. If the Soviet Iranian government occasionally sets its signature to documents which would indicate the contrary, this is to [be] regarded as a tactical maneuver permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is without honor) and should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor. Basically, the antagonism remains.”
6. The United States must focus on a long-term strategy, rather than short-term tactics.
“Soviet Iranian diplomacy [is] at once easier and more difficult to deal with than the diplomacy of individual aggressive leaders like Napoleon and Hitler. On the one hand it is more sensitive to contrary force, more ready to yield on individual sectors of the diplomatic front when that force is felt to be too strong, and thus more rational in the logic and rhetoric of power. On the other hand it cannot be easily defeated or discouraged by a single victory on the part of its opponents. And the patient persistence by which it is animated means that it can be effectively countered not by sporadic acts which represent the momentary whims of democratic opinion but only [by] intelligent long-range policies on the part of Russia’s Iran’s adversaries — policies no less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and resourceful in their application, than those of the Soviet Union Islamic Republic itself.”
7. Ideological fatigue has set in.
“The mass of the people are disillusioned, skeptical and no longer as accessible as they once were to the magical attraction which Soviet Iranian power still radiates to its followers abroad.”
8. The succession of power in the Islamic Republic is uncertain.
“[A] great uncertainty hangs over the political life of the Soviet Union Islamic Republic. That is the uncertainty involved in the transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to others.
“This is, of course, outstandingly the problem of the personal position of Stalin Khamenei. We must remember that his succession to Lenin’s Khomeini’s pinnacle of pre-eminence … was the only such transfer of individual authority which the Soviet Union Islamic Republic has experienced.… Thus the future of Soviet Iranian power may not be by any means as secure as Russian Iranian capacity for self-delusion would make it appear to the men of the Kremlin Islamic Republic.”
9. You can’t reach an accommodation with a regime that needs you as an adversary.
“It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet Iranian regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union Iran as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect that Soviet Iranian policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist Islamist and capitalist liberal worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and weakening of all rival influence and rival power.”
10. U.S. policies can expedite, but not engineer, political change in Iran.
“It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist Islamist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power the Islamic Republic in Russia Iran. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet Iranian policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin Islamic Republic a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet Iranian power.”
To act on these observations will require a far more nuanced Iran policy — one with a horizon of decades instead of months or years. In the near term according to Sadjadpour’s analysis, neither sanctions, a military strike or rapprochement will bring meaningful change to a country which defines itself as in resistance to Western demands. Hooman Majd has discussed the same. A more visionary policy would look back at the U.S.’s experience in the Cold War and examine the lessons learned from decades of détente with an enemy whose collapse was ultimately self-imposed.
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