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.
]]>Laura Rozen’s recent interview with former Mossad director Efraim Halevy focuses heavily on diplomatic options for the US, Israel and Iran in the impasse over the Iranian nuclear program. Halevy, like former Mossad director Meir Dagan and a number of past and present US and Israeli national security officials, opposes preventive [...]]]>
Laura Rozen’s recent interview with former Mossad director Efraim Halevy focuses heavily on diplomatic options for the US, Israel and Iran in the impasse over the Iranian nuclear program. Halevy, like former Mossad director Meir Dagan and a number of past and present US and Israeli national security officials, opposes preventive military action against Iran because he fears it will lead to the collapse of the international sanctions regime, a regional war and only embolden Iran to build and deploy nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the years following the attack.
Particularly interesting is Halevy’s description of Obama and Romney’s approach to the Iran issue.
Obama has placed emphasis on negotiations. In this current election for the US presidency, his hands are tied. He cannot proceed, because he cannot appear soft on Israel’s security.
Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel. That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent with other things he has said. […]
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Ari Shavit reports on his interview with former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one among several former Israeli intelligence and security officials who have infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making public statements against an Israeli strike on Iran. Halevy tells Shavit that his views about the threat that Iran poses to [...]]]>
Ari Shavit reports on his interview with former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one among several former Israeli intelligence and security officials who have infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making public statements against an Israeli strike on Iran. Halevy tells Shavit that his views about the threat that Iran poses to Israel are “complex”, but compared with Netanyahu’s statements, it’s strikingly apparent that Halevy wants to avoid a lone Israeli military venture with Iran:
…“I do indeed argue that a nuclear Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel. If one day we wake up and discover that Iran has nuclear weapons, that does not mean the start of the countdown to the end of Israel’s existence. Israel need not despair. We have deterrent capability and preventive capability. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Israel will be able to design a true operational response that will be able to cope with that. We will be able to prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv and we will prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv; so we must not talk about a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv, because prophecies like that are self-fulfilling. Nor must we draw baseless analogies with the 1930s.
“The true Churchillian way is not to talk about the possibility of a second Holocaust, but to ensure that there will be no holocaust here. I was a boy in Britain during the Blitz. I remember vividly Churchill’s speeches blaring from the radio. He did not talk about the possibility that Britain might not survive. On the contrary: even in the direst straits he said that Britain would have the upper hand. He promised that whatever happened, come what may, in the end Britain would win. Anyone who purports to be Churchill needs to talk like Churchill and project self-confidence.
“I am absolutely appalled when I hear our leaders talking as though there were no Israel Defense Forces and as though there were no State of Israel and as though Auschwitz is liable to be repeated. As I see it, the message we should be conveying to the Iranians − and to ourselves − is that we will be here in any event and in any scenario for the next two thousand years.
“But we must not become confused,” Halevy continues. “A nuclear Iran is not an existential threat, but a nuclear Iran is a grave matter. Nuclear weapons in Tehran’s hands upset the regional balance and create a very serious strategic situation. Nor can we completely rule out the possibility that if Iran possesses nuclear weapons it will ultimately use them. When the danger is very great, even if the risk that it will be realized is only 10 percent, we need to treat it as a risk of 100 percent. So I am not one of those who are indifferent to the Iranian danger. Under no circumstances am I ready to accept a nuclear Iran. But I maintain that the way to prevent nuclearization is not necessarily by means of force.
To prevent a “a generations-long war”, Halevy says that Iran can be deterred from building a nuclear weapon through more international pressure aimed at further weakening and isolating it:
]]>“There should have been cooperation with Turkey vis-à-vis Iran. There should have been action against Iran in Syria. The Russians should have been brought into the picture. If Israel had adopted a creative, active policy, and if the international community had held up to the Iranians a far richer package of threats and enticements, I think there would have been a chance to dissuade the Iranians from embarking on the dangerous road they have taken. And I believe it is not too late. The sanctions are very painful. The negotiations have not yet been exhausted. The threat of an American military option can also be more concrete. If instead of focusing on a military solution, Israel were to succeed in mobilizing the international community for complex and sophisticated political-economic action, I believe that the results might be surprising.”
Benn argues that Mubarak was an important, if not crucial, ally for Benjamin Netanyahu in holding together a Sunni axis that stood against a [...]]]>
Benn argues that Mubarak was an important, if not crucial, ally for Benjamin Netanyahu in holding together a Sunni axis that stood against a number of Israel’s enemies.
Netanyahu shared with Mubarak his concerns about the growing strength of Iran. Egypt played a key role in the Sunni, the “moderate,” axis, which lined up alongside Israel and the United States against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.
While some hawks have warned that the Egyptian revolution could be co-opted by the Muslim Brotherhood, Benn sees the revolution as a largely secular movement. But that doesn’t mean that the new Egyptian leadership will be helpful in backing Israeli attempts to pressure Iran or supportive of a military strike.
On the contrary: they will listen to Arab public opinion, which opposes a preemptive war against Iran. Israel will find it difficult to take action far to the east when it cannot rely on the tacit agreement to its actions on its western border. Without Mubarak there is no Israeli attack on Iran. His replacement will be concerned about the rage of the masses, if they see him as a collaborator in such an operation.
With the supposed Israeli “consensus” over the existential threat posed by Iran quickly melting away—see recent comments by former Mossad chiefs Efraim Halevy and Meir Dagan—Mubarak might be offering Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu the ultimate face-saving solution.
Benn concludes:
]]>Whoever is opposed to a strike, or fear its consequences – even though they appear to be in favor, like Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak – now have the ultimate excuse. We wanted to strike Iran, they will write in their memoirs but we could not because of the revolution in Egypt. Like Ehud Olmert says that he nearly made peace, they will say that they nearly made war. In his departure Mubarak prevented a preemptive Israeli war. This appears to have been his last contribution to regional stability.
The article is a look into the possible reasons that Israel has pushed back the nuclear timeline for Iran. I quote Tony Karon at length (which appears at TB) and list my own thoughts (some via Jim):
That notion — [...]]]>
The article is a look into the possible reasons that Israel has pushed back the nuclear timeline for Iran. I quote Tony Karon at length (which appears at TB) and list my own thoughts (some via Jim):
That notion — that you can’t whip up your own population into a fearful frenzy, then not do anything — tracks with comments made in the past by top Israeli officials casting aside the “existential threat” meme. Along with Barak, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy sounded a confident note in late 2009: “It is not within the power of Iran to destroy the state of Israel — at best it can cause Israel grievous damage. Israel is indestructible.”
But there are other possibilities to consider, most of them speculative. Perhaps Israel was merely gloating about its covert actions against Iran. Many mainstream commentators suggest Israel is behind the Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian centrifuges as well as a campaign of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Maybe, as Jim Lobe suggested to me in a conversation, there was some kind of quid pro quo between the U.S. and Israel over the public extension of Israel’s nuclear clock.
There are certainly many pawns on the board to trade between Israel and the U.S. at the moment: an Israeli settlement freeze (whether including East Jerusalem or not), the fate of imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. offer of an Israeli wish list of military hardware (as discussed in earlier failed talks on a freeze), or maybe even some sort of agreement for Israel to drop mounting preconditions for yet another round of direct talks. All are possibilities, though some quite unlikely.
It’s worth noting, that as a source close to high-ranking Israelis put it to LobeLog, Israel has shifted its focus from the threat of Iran to the threat of “delegitimizers.” The latter is an amorphous and misleading catchall phrase that the Israeli right and their Stateside defenders use to indict the motives of anyone who even comes near the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
I also add that Paul Pillar, writing on the website of the National Interest, has an interesting post listing some possibilities:
One is that they are more or less straightforward reflections of careful, straightforward analysis by Israeli experts of the actual state of the Iranian program. Not every statement by a public official needs to be a disingenuous manipulation of the facts in pursuit of a policy objective. Sometimes we need to resist the tendency to overanalyze someone else’s motives.
Given Israel’s track record, I’m skeptical of this lack of skepticism. But some of Pillar’s other possibilities track with the ones I enumerated, and all are well worth reading.
Matt Duss at The Wonk Room, meanwhile, picks up on an interesting Der Spiegel interview with new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. Duss notes that Amano told the German daily, “Despite all unanswered questions, we cannot say that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.”
You’ll recall, of course, that Amano told U.S. officials that “he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision” — including Iran — according to U.S. diplomatic cables. As Duss points out, this aligns perfectly with the view Amano espoused in his Der Spiegel interview — because the “U.S. court” on this particular “key strategic issue” corresponds with a public acknowledgment by the CIA (PDF) that the U.S. does “not know whether Tehran will eventually decide to produce nuclear weapons.”
On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal‘s neoconservative editorial board recently declared (falsely) that Iran had already “announced its intention to build a nuclear bomb.”
As I wrote on Tehran Bureau, none of the recent developments seem to have had much impact on U.S.-based Iran hawks, who are perfectly content to keep beating the war drums. No matter what Iran does or how its nuclear program advances (if at all), the hawks want to attack it. No matter how effective sanctions are, they will never be enough.
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