by François Nicoullaud
Paris, France—This is not the first time that we may have trapped ourselves when drafting UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that were intended to trap another country—in this case, Iran. The present situation recalls in some respects the period around 1997 when most Security Council members would have liked to rescind, or at least amend, the sanctions adopted against the regime of Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, as their effects were obviously getting out of hand: widespread corruption, and the dramatic deterioration of the Iraqi population’s state of health, to name a couple. But any change in the sanctions would have required unanimity from the five permanent members of the Council, and that was definitely out of reach. The situation led French President Jacques Chirac to express his frustration. “We want to convince, not coerce,” he said. “I have never observed that the policy of sanctions can produce positive effects.”
We have not yet reached such a dramatic juncture with Iran. But should it become useful to rapidly lift the sanctions imposed by the four UNSC resolutions between 2006 and 2010 in order to secure a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Western negotiators may find themselves incapable of delivering and may instead try to kick the can down the road to some point in the distant future.
Aimed at halting Iran’s military, nuclear and ballistic activities, these UNSC resolutions are not the ones that hurt the most. More destructive are those unilateral measures imposed by the United States and the European Union, since they were designed essentially to destabilize the Iranian economy. But the UNSC sanctions carry with them a “pillory effect” that the Iranians perceive, quite correctly, as deeply humiliating. They also provide the legal bedrock upon which the European sanctions, in particular, have been constructed. The Iranians are therefore anxious to see them lifted as soon as possible through a decision by the Security Council to close the file it opened in 2006 and return it to the forum from which it should never have been taken: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The conditions for terminating these resolutions, however, are also overwhelming. In fact, the people who drafted them seem to have been pursuing two not necessarily compatible goals at the same time.
The first goal was to pile up all the preconditions that the authors believed were necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring a deliverable nuclear device, including:
- suspending all activities related to enrichment and reprocessing, including research, development, and construction of new facilities;
- suspending all activities related to the construction of a heavy-water research reactor;
- providing immediate access to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the IAEA in order to verify Iran’s compliance with the Security Council decisions and to resolve all outstanding issues related to the possible military dimensions (PMD) of the Iranian nuclear program;
- promptly ratifying the Additional Protocol to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA; and
- suspending all efforts to develop ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Considering the context in which these resolutions were adopted, there was little chance that the Iranians would comply with such an elaborate and comprehensive set of so-called “confidence-building measures,” which would have forced Tehran to abandon virtually all of its nuclear and ballistic-missile ambitions.
The second goal was substantively quite different from the first and indeed somehow contradictory. It aimed to push Iran into negotiations, as illustrated by the formula that was included in all the UNSC sanctions resolutions, which ritually expressed the “conviction” that Iran’s compliance “would contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution.” Moreover, if Iran suspended its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the Council declared its willingness in return to suspend at least some of its sanctions in order “to allow for negotiations in good faith” and “reach an early and mutually acceptable outcome.”
As we now know, a negotiation process ultimately was initiated, albeit through a radically different path, as the West dropped its demand that Iran fully suspend all its sensitive nuclear activities before entering into substantive talks. One can therefore assume that the second goal will be accomplished as soon as a comprehensive agreement, which will hopefully emerge from the current round of talks in Vienna, enters into force, thus rendering this dimension of the UNSC’s resolutions totally obsolete.
But of course, the resolutions’ first dimension—the exhaustive inventory of “confidence-building measures”—remains in place. Because confidence is essentially an elusive and subjective feeling, taking this path involves embarking on a long-term, winding and always reversible road, the end of which is only faintly discernible now. Such a process is also hardly compatible with the “on-off” mechanism of the Security Council: there is no chance that its resolutions, once cancelled, could be reintroduced. Hence the strong reluctance of the Western powers to commit themselves to such an outcome.
We also all know that the sanctions are much easier to adopt than to rescind, as they tend to create, in the meantime, their own logic and dynamics. They develop new balances of power and vested interests, if only among those in authority who have dedicated themselves so thoroughly to the sanctions’ implementation and enforcement. One has only to recall the notorious example of the general embargo imposed by the Allies against Germany during the First World War whose continuation for several months after the 1918 Armistice unnecessarily prolonged the suffering of the German people and deepened the bitterness of their defeat.
Are Iran’s negotiating partners ready to learn the lessons of history? The Gordian knot that the UNSC sanctions represent should be slashed asunder, if not immediately upon the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Iran, then at least after a moderately short period in which Iran’s determination to comply with its terms could be confirmed. Such a gesture could also be linked appropriately to the formal ratification by Iran’s parliament of the Additional Protocol that Tehran had signed during an unsuccessful round of talks back in 2003—the two moves being equally irreversible.
This would not mean that pending requests made to Iran, such as the ancient issue of the “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program, would have to be abandoned. But it would mean that these requests would thenceforward be dealt with exclusively by the IAEA. It would also mean that the Council, in light of the progress achieved after the signing of a final deal, would no longer consider the Iranian situation a “threat to the peace” under the terms of the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, the only chapter that authorizes the use of coercive measures against a Member State in order “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
]]>by Leila Piran
On February 25 Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani travelled to the southern province of Hormozgan, situated on the shores of the Persian Gulf. In a speech he promised to allocate sufficient resources toward boosting the province’s petrochemical exports. He explained that “focusing on the principles of a resistant economy means [...]]]>
by Leila Piran
On February 25 Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani travelled to the southern province of Hormozgan, situated on the shores of the Persian Gulf. In a speech he promised to allocate sufficient resources toward boosting the province’s petrochemical exports. He explained that “focusing on the principles of a resistant economy means facilitating exports of Iranian-made products, especially petrochemicals.” His administration intends to develop the petrochemical industry to curb Iran’s inflation rate and create jobs. The partial suspension of international sanctions on Iran as a result of the Geneva agreement has accordingly offered an opportunity to the current government, which has vowed to improve the country’s dismal economy and foreign relations.
According to the Geneva interim agreement, signed by Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) on November 24, 2013, sanctions on Iran’s manufacturing and petrochemical industries are suspended for six months while Iran implements its part of the deal. Iran says it is committed to achieving a final comprehensive deal that will result in all sanctions being lifted. Meanwhile, one of its top priorities has become overhauling its petrochemical industry.
Recently, Dr. Masoud Nili, Rouhani’s economic advisor, called on the private sector to identify an industry or a group of industries with the highest potential for economic growth until the end of this year and generate 3 percent growth until the end of next year. Iran’s top five industries include auto manufacturing, construction, agriculture, petrochemicals, and tourism. Many economists and business leaders responded to his question in a series of articles published in the daily, Tejarat-e Farda. Since the Industrial Development & Renovation Organization of Iran (IDRO) has a prominent role in revamping Iranian industries, Tejarat-e Farda interviewed the IDRO’s CEO, Gholam Reza Shafei, for his opinion as to which industry has the highest potential for growth. Shafeie believes that Iran should focus on developing an industry that enjoys access to a highly professional and technical labor force, has the capacity for mass production, and contributes significantly to the Gross National Product (GNP). Toward that end, he names other critical factors such as market demand for products, existing infrastructure (the supply chain, facilities, and technology), potential for job creation, and providing supplies for other industries. Based on the above criteria, Shafei suggested that the government should pay more attention to the following industries: auto manufacturing, construction, energy, mining, oil and gas, and petrochemicals. He added that executing infrastructure building projects and exporting engineering and technical services can also contribute to economic growth.
The petrochemical industry, however, has the most potential for profits in the short run because of its up-to-date and highly adaptable technical structure that has enabled that sector to offer a variety of products to foreign customers. In contrast to the auto manufacturing industry, this industry possesses two key advantages: first, easy access to raw materials and second, abundance of petrochemical equipment manufacturers. Shafei explained that it costs between 80 million to 100 million dollars to build a petrochemical plant, but the profits exceed Iran’s annual oil and gas sales by 10 times. He emphasized that if “we accept that the future of oil as the source of energy is on the decline, then the only way to exploit the country’s oil and gas resources is through the petrochemical industry.”
When asked about his reluctance to recognize the auto manufacturing industry’s high potential for growth, Shafeie stated that the petrochemical industry enjoys wider access to natural and human resources and has more extensive experience in resource management. In contrast, the auto industry is too dependent on one or two foreign suppliers of auto parts that have profited handsomely from Iran’s desperation due to international sanctions. Relying on a limited number of foreign suppliers that had a hostile relationship with Iran in the past and exploited Iran’s financial resources has made the auto manufacturing industry very vulnerable. Although Iran’s auto industry aimed at manufacturing a national car, that dream has not yet come true. Instead, customers only have the option to purchase cars partly manufactured as a result of joint ventures with foreign firms or through foreign licenses. Indeed, because of the auto industry’s dependence on foreign firms for parts, productivity and profitability levels have declined alarmingly.
Shafei’s views are also shared by other prominent business figures such as Yahya Al-e Eshaagh, the head of the Tehran Chamber, Pedram Soltani, the deputy head of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, and Mohammad Ali Behkish, the secretary general of the Iranian Chapter of the international Chamber of Commerce. They believe that Iran possesses the necessary infrastructure and the technical expertise for its petrochemical industry to succeed. Opponents of Shafei’s view who prefer development of the auto industry include Saeed Leilaz, a professional expert in the auto industry, and Ahmad Nemat Bakhsh, the secretary of the Auto Manufacturers Union. They emphasize that recent investments in the auto industry qualify it as the most robust choice.
This debate sheds light on the importance of prioritizing sanctions relief for Iran’s economy. According to the experts, the Iranian petrochemical industry holds the key to halting Iran’s recession and stimulating economic growth quickly, and there is clearly a strong consensus within the private sector to support the Rouhani administration’s drive to revive this industry, especially if current and future negotiations succeed.
– Leila Piran holds a Ph.D. in World Politics with focus on the Middle East from the Catholic University of America. She has taught courses in international affairs and political science at George Washington University. Prior to that, Dr. Piran served as a research fellow on Turkey at the Rethink Institute. Dr. Piran has lectured at American University and Catholic University. Her newly published book is titled, Institutional Change in Turkey: The Impact of EU Reforms on Human Rights and Policing
]]>Benjamin Netanyahu’s tiresome vilification of Iran has taken on the characteristics of a rote obsession that diverges farther and farther from truth, reality, and his own ostensible objective. It is as if—in pursuing his real objective of keeping Iran ostracized, preventing any U.S. agreements with it, and keeping the specter of an [...]]]>
Benjamin Netanyahu’s tiresome vilification of Iran has taken on the characteristics of a rote obsession that diverges farther and farther from truth, reality, and his own ostensible objective. It is as if—in pursuing his real objective of keeping Iran ostracized, preventing any U.S. agreements with it, and keeping the specter of an Iranian threat permanently overshadowing everything else he’d rather not talk about—he has been reduced to a ritual, repetitive chant of “Iran bad, very bad” and does not care whether or not reflection on what he is saying shows it to make any sense.
Outside of the anti-Americanism that is heard so widely and often, it is hard to think of any other leader or government so dedicated to heaping calumnies unceasingly on another nation, at least one not currently waging war on the heaper’s country. Maybe some American Cold Warriors fixated on the Evil Empire came close. Attacks on Iran occupied most of the first half of Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday to AIPAC. Haaretz accompanied a transcript of the speech with one of those graphics depicting the frequency with which particular words have been used. For the entire speech Iran was mentioned far more than any word other than Israel.
Maybe the relentlessness of this latest iteration of the chant reflects Netanyahu’s frustration over his recent failure to get the U.S. Congress to sabotage the nuclear negotiations with Iran by slapping on new, deal-breaking sanctions. Perhaps he also felt a need to amp up the attacks to bring attention back to the Iranian specter from the crisis in Ukraine.
Falsehoods continue to flow out of Netanyahu’s mouth on this subject. Maybe the technique of getting people to believe something if it is repeated often enough is working, as reflected by some of the same falsehoods coming out of the mouths of members of Congress. He referred, for example, to the need for pressure to get Iranians to “abandon their nuclear weapons program.” No: according to the U.S. intelligence community, Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and Israeli intelligence does not disagree.
Netanyahu said that “Iran openly calls for our [i.e., Israel's] destruction.” No: the former Iranian president who once made a metaphorical statement that got mis-translated into something along that line isn’t even around any more. Actually, the current Iranian government says if the Palestinian problem is resolved then it would be possible for Iran to extend formal recognition to the state of Israel.
Netanyahu asserted that Iran “continues to build ICBMs.” No: there is no evidence that Iran is building ICBMs or even intermediate range ballistic missiles. Iran does have medium range ballistic missiles, but testing and development even of those has been quiescent lately.
In an opening sequence in the speech in which Netanyahu referred to medical and other humanitarian aid that Israel furnishes overseas, he said that Iran doesn’t do any such thing because “the only thing that Iran sends abroad are rockets, terrorists and missiles to murder, maim and menace the innocent.” No: actually Iran does provide medical and similar humanitarian aid.
The prime minister’s analytical assertions are similarly divorced from reality. In arguing for the deal-breaking, impossible-to-achieve objective of no Iranian enrichment of uranium, he said that “letting Iran enrich uranium would open up the floodgates” of “nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and around the world.” But Iran already has been enriching uranium for some time, and no floodgates have opened. Even if Iran, contrary to its current policy, were to build a nuclear weapon, they still would be unlikely to open.
Netanyahu seemed to dare us not to take him seriously when, in a jarringly discordant note alongside all of the alarmism about a supposedly deadly and dire threat, he tried to crack a joke to accompany his falsehood about ICBMs: “You remember that beer commercial, ‘this Bud’s for you’? Well, when you see Iran building ICBMs, just remember, America, that Scud’s for you.” Hardy har har.
Glaringly absent from the tirade was any of the perspective of a person living in a glass house who should be careful about not throwing stones. For example, along with self-congratulation for medical aid Netanyahu said Israel has provided Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, there was no mention of the misery that Israel has inflicted on people living in the same territory through a suffocating blockade and military-inflicted destruction. And alongside all of the alarums about a possible Iranian nuclear weapon there was of course no mention of Israel having the only nuclear weapons in the Middle East, totally outside any international control regime and with their existence not even admitted.
Nor was there any real application of logic to implications for policy, given that the most important policy fixture at the moment is the nuclear negotiation. If Netanyahu’s objective really were to assure prevention of an Iranian nuke—rather than assuring persistence of theissue of a possible Iranian nuke—the conclusion would be to support the negotiations rather than to try to sabotage them. Even if one believed all the calumnies, they are either irrelevant to the nuclear talks or all the more reason to hope they succeed.
Listening to a speech such as this, it is a wonder that many Israelis condone a leader who is offering his country unending conflict and confrontation. And it is a wonder that many Americans, including ones with admiration and fondness for Israel, are influenced by him. He is not acting in the best interests of the state they admire and love, let along in the interests of the United States. The reciter of the primitive chants of hate against Iran has a narrower objective. As Henry Siegman observes, “To say that Netanyahu is not a visionary leader is an understatement. To be sure, he is a clever tactician who knows how to stay in office. That goal, which he believes is unbreakably linked to retaining his leadership of Israel’s political right wing, trumps every other domestic and international challenge that faces Israel.”
*This article was first published by the National Interest
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
Today, while Iran and six world powers resumed talks over a comprehensive nuclear deal in Vienna, here in Washington the possibility of an US diplomatic presence in Tehran was discussed at a prominent think tank. Two years ago a lede like that would have made you look twice, but [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
Today, while Iran and six world powers resumed talks over a comprehensive nuclear deal in Vienna, here in Washington the possibility of an US diplomatic presence in Tehran was discussed at a prominent think tank. Two years ago a lede like that would have made you look twice, but since the Rouhani government took power in June 2013 and an interim nuclear deal was reached between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) on November 24, this seems more possible than ever.
According to Ramin Asgard, a former US foreign service officer who worked on a range of Iran-related issues during his recent 16-year career at the State Department, re-establishing an official US presence in Iran would benefit US national security as well as US citizens. He explains why in a new report commissioned by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), which conducts essential polling of Iranian-Americans as well as related advocacy and outreach.
Asgard essentially argues that due to the continued absence of a US diplomatic presence in Iran, for the last 35 years the US’ Iran policy has been informed largely by intelligence, governments, think tanks and other third-hand information rather than the reality on the ground. This has resulted in a “lack of a locus of policy discipline in America’s Iran policy, directly decreasing America’s ability to advance its foreign policy goals.” But Asgard points out that some of the benefits of a US diplomatic presence in Iran include the ability to directly engage with the Iranian government on important US national security issues and the possibility of a US Public Affairs Section in Tehran, which could engage local media in explaining US policy positions as well as support US-Iran academic and cultural exchanges.
Of course, just this month millions of Iranians, according to the Iranian government, were celebrating the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which kicked off with the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by Iranian students and the detainment of US hostages for over a year — so there would need to be assurances by the Iranian government that this wouldn’t happen again, along with several other important agreements. As for Iranian opposition to this venture, Asgard responds that this “wouldn’t be a unilateral measure” and that the Iranian government also has interests in this project, including an upgraded Iranian diplomatic presence in the US (at present, Iranian officials at their UN headquarters in New York are limited to travel within a 25-mile radius of the building).
To be sure, Asgard addresses the greatest cons of his proposal in his report, including the argument that re-establishing an US official presence in Iran betrays its opposition — in response he asks, has the US-Iran cold war actually led to the improvement of Iranian human rights? Ultimately, the point that more than 3 decades of hostility between the two countries has actually advanced the interests of destructive forces for many Iranians and US interests is undeniable, but the question remains: is re-establishing an official US presence in Iran even possible?
Going beyond expected US and Iranian domestic opposition, according to John Limbert, an academic and former US hostage in Iran, while Asgard’s proposal is ideal, it’s too soon to pursue. He argued today on the panel he shared with Asgard at the Atlantic Council, which hosted the release of PAAIA’s report, that US diplomats could be used as “pawns” if something goes wrong between the US and Iran as it often has at critical stages in their collective history. At the same time, Limbert also noted that US engagement with Iran “shouldn’t be held hostage” to progress on the nuclear issue.
Perhaps most interestingly, Asgard repeatedly stated that establishing an official US presence in Iran doesn’t have to involve rapprochement — the establishment of US diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union support that notion — and that could also help reassure Iranian hardliners. Still, it does make the prospect of better US-Iran relations seem all the more possible, which is why this discussion will no doubt continue — as a debate — especially as Iran and world powers try to inch towards that final nuclear deal…
Photo: The US embassy compound in Tehran, known as the “den of spies” in Iran, which has been out of US control since its seizure by Iranian students in 1979.
]]>by Jim Lobe
The Iran Project has just published the first in a series of “Short Reports” on Iran, its negotiations with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), and U.S. policy, which it plans to put out over the next few months. This one, entitled “Assessing Claims [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
The Iran Project has just published the first in a series of “Short Reports” on Iran, its negotiations with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany), and U.S. policy, which it plans to put out over the next few months. This one, entitled “Assessing Claims and Counter Claims over New Sanctions,” reviews the recent debate over the Kirk-Menendez bill. S. 1881, which I called the “Wag the Dog Act of 2013.” Among other conclusions, the report, which was drafted by Jim Walsh, an international security expert at MIT, finds that new sanctions at this time would likely undermine the prospects for a successful negotiation, particularly given the fact that all of the parties in the P5+1 are themselves clearly opposed to the legislation. It also found that new sanctions may yet prove useful, but not when negotiations are just getting underway, as they did today in Vienna. And it noted that some critics of the bill, presumably including some administration officials, probably overstated the intentions of many of the bill’s 59 co-sponsors as deliberately wanting to sabotage the negotiations (as opposed, presumably, to deliberately wanting to sabotage President Obama). In any event, you can find the new report here.
The Iran Project, which has involved an impressive number of foreign policy veterans led by Amb. William Luers (ret.) and Amb. Thomas Pickering (ret), who served as Washington’s chief envoy in virtually every hot spot — from Moscow to San Salvador and from Lagos and Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay (in the run-up to and during the first Gulf War) — has itself conducted Track II diplomacy with leading Iranians over the past decade or so, including and especially many of the same Iranians, such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who have filled key posts in Hassan Rouhani’s government. The group has also played a key role in shaping the elite debate here over Iran during the past few years. Although it has maintained a relatively low public profile, opponents of the engagement policy, of which AIPAC and the Israel lobby are the most important, know how effective the Project has been.
In addition to Luers, Pickering and Walsh, the new report is signed by Amb. Frank Wisner (ret.); Paul Pillar, the CIA veteran who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president Jessica Tuchman Mathews; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz. Upcoming reports will include an analysis of the Nov. 24, 2013, accord between Iran and the P5+1 (the Joint Plan of Action, or JPA); the issues that must be addressed in a comprehensive agreement; and the challenges of lifting sanctions if a comprehensive agreement is indeed reached.
]]>The stakes could not be higher—or the issues tougher—as the world’s six major powers and Iran launch talks February 18 on final resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The goal “is to reach a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful,” says the temporary Joint [...]]]>
The stakes could not be higher—or the issues tougher—as the world’s six major powers and Iran launch talks February 18 on final resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The goal “is to reach a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful,” says the temporary Joint Plan of Action, which calls for six months of negotiations. If talks fail, the prospects of military action—and potentially another Middle East conflict—soar.
Six issues are pivotal to an accord. The terms on each must be accepted by all parties—Iran on one side and Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States on the other—or there is no deal. The Joint Plan notes, “This comprehensive solution would constitute an integrated whole where nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
1. Limiting Uranium Enrichment
Iran’s ability to enrich uranium is at the heart of the international controversy. The process can fuel both peaceful nuclear energy and the world’s deadliest weapon. Since 2002, Iran’s has gradually built an independent capability to enrich uranium, which it claims is only for medical research and to fuel an energy program. But the outside world has long been suspicious of Tehran’s intentions because its program exceeds its current needs. Iran’s only nuclear reactor for energy, in the port city of Bushehr, is fueled by the Russian contractor that built it.
Centrifuges are the key to enriching uranium. In 2003, Iran had fewer than 200 centrifuges. In 2014, it has approximately 19,000. About 10,000 are now enriching uranium; the rest are installed but not operating. To fuel a nuclear power reactor, centrifuges are used to increase the ratio of the isotope U-235 in natural uranium from less than one percent to between three and five percent. But the same centrifuges can also spin uranium gas to 90 percent purity, the level required for a bomb.
Experts differ on how many centrifuges Iran should be allowed to operate. Zero is optimal, but Iran almost certainly will not agree to eliminate totally a program costing billions of dollars over more than a decade. Iranian officials fear the outside world wants Tehran to be dependent on foreign sources of enriched uranium, which could then be used as leverage on Iran—under threat of cutting off its medical research and future nuclear energy independence.
Most experts say somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000 operating centrifuges would allow many months of warning time if Iran started to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels. The fewer centrifuges, the longer Iran would need to “break out” from fuel production to weapons production.
So the basic issues are: Can the world’s major powers convince Iran to disable or even dismantle some of the operating centrifuges? If so, how low will Iran agree to go? And will Iran agree to cut back enrichment to only one site, which would mean closing the underground facility at Fordow?
A deal may generally have to include:
- reducing the number of Iran’s centrifuges,
- limiting uranium enrichment to no more than five percent.
- capping centrifuge capabilities at current levels.
In short, as George Shultz and Henry Kissinger say, a deal must “define a level of Iranian nuclear capacity limited to plausible civilian uses and to achieve safeguards to ensure that this level is not exceeded.”
2. Preventing a Plutonium Path
Iran’s heavy water reactor in Arak, which is unfinished, is another big issue. Construction of this small research reactor began in the 1990s; the stated goal was producing medical isotopes and up to 40 megawatts of thermal power for civilian use. But the “reactor design appears much better suited for producing bomb-grade plutonium than for civilian uses,” warn former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Los Alamos Laboratory Director Siegfried Hecker.
For years, Iranian officials allowed weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, intermittent access to Arak. Inspectors have been granted more access since the Joint Plan of Action went into effect on January 20. But satellite imagery can no longer monitor site activity due to completion of the facility’s outer structure.
The reactor will be capable of annually producing nine kilograms of plutonium, which is enough material to produce one or two nuclear weapons. However, the reactor is at least a year away from operating, and then it would need to run for 12 to 18 months to generate that much plutonium. Iran also does not have a facility to reprocess the spent fuel to extract the plutonium. In early February, Iranian officials announced they would be willing to modify the design plans of the reactor to allay Western concerns, although they provided no details.
3. Verification
The temporary Joint Plan allows more extensive and intrusive inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. U.N. inspectors now have daily access to Iran’s primary enrichment facilities at the Nantaz and Fordow plants, the Arak heavy water reactor, and the centrifuge assembly facilities. Inspectors are now also allowed into Iran’s uranium mines.
Over the next six months, negotiations will have to define a reliable long-term inspection system to verify that Iran’s nuclear program is used only for peaceful purposes. A final deal will have to further expand inspections to new sites. The most sensitive issue may be access to sites suspected of holding evidence of Iran’s past efforts to build an atomic bomb. The IAEA suspects, for example, that Iran tested explosive components needed for a nuclear bomb at Parchin military base.
Iran may be forthcoming on inspections. Its officials have long held that transparency—rather than reduction of capabilities—is the key to assuring the world that its program is peaceful. They have indicated a willingness to implement stricter inspections required under the IAEA’s Additional Protocol—and maybe even go beyond it. But they are also likely to want more inspections matched by substantial sanctions relief and fewer cutbacks on the numbers of centrifuges in operation. At least four of the six major powers—the United States, Britain, France and Germany—will almost certainly demand both increased inspections and fewer, less capable centrifuges.
4. Clarifying the Past
The issue is not just Iran’s current program and future potential. Several troubling questions from the past must also be answered. The temporary deal created a Joint Commission to work with the IAEA on past issues, including suspected research on nuclear weapon technologies. Iran denies that it ever worked on nuclear weapons, but the circumstantial evidence about past Iranian experiments is quite strong.
Among the issues:
- research on polonium-210, which can be used as a neutron trigger for a nuclear bomb,
- research on a missile re-entry vehicle, which could be used to deliver a nuclear weapon, and
- suspected high-explosives testing, which could be used to compress a bomb core to critical mass.
Iran may be reluctant to come clean unless it is guaranteed amnesty for past transgressions—and can find a way to square them with its many vigorous denials. And any suspicions that Iran is lying will undermine even rigorous new inspections that verify Iran’s technology is now being used solely for civilian purposes.
On February 8, in a potential breakthrough, the IAEA and Iran agreed on specific actions that Iran would take to provide information and explanations of its past activities. “Resolution of these issues will allow the agency to verify the completeness and correctness of Iran’s nuclear activities,” says Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association, “and help ensure that Tehran is not engaged in undeclared activities.” Resolving all past issues before a final agreement may prove difficult, however. Negotiations may instead produce a process for eventual resolution.
5. Sanctions Relief
Iran’s primary goal is to get access to some $100 billion in funds frozen in foreign banks and to end the many sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. Since the toughest U.S. sanctions were imposed in mid-2012, Iran’s currency and oil exports have both plummeted by some 60 percent.
The temporary Joint Plan of Action says a final agreement will “comprehensively lift UN Security Council, multilateral and national nuclear-related sanctions…on a schedule to be agreed upon.” (It does not, however, address sanctions imposed on other issues, such as support for extremist groups or human rights abuses.) The United States and the Europeans may want to keep some sanctions in place until they are assured that Iran is meeting new obligations.
The specter of the U.S. Congress will overshadow negotiations. Its approval will be required to remove the most onerous sanctions over the past five years. “The U.S. Congress will have to allow meaningful sanctions relief to Iran, just as Iran’s hard-liners are going to have to be convinced not to stand on principle when it comes to their ‘right’ to enrich and their demand to have all sanctions lifted,” says Brookings Institution scholar Ken Pollack, “The U.S. Congress is going to have to agree to allow Iran’s economy to revive and Tehran’s hard-liners are going to have to be satisfied with the revival of their economy and some very limited enrichment activity.”
6. The Long and Winding Road
The final but critical issue is timing: How long is a long-term deal? It will clearly require years to prove Iran is fully compliant. But estimates vary widely from five to 20 years. Another alternative is a series of shorter agreements that build incrementally on one another.
For all the big issues ahead, both sides have an interest in negotiating a deal. The world’s six major powers want to curtail more of Iran’s program, while Iran wants to revive its economy and normalize its international relations. If the negotiators succeed, they will make history. Their failure could open the path to a nuclear-armed Iran or a new war in the Middle East – or both.
– Joseph Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund and author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World before It Is Too Late
This article was originally published on the Iran Primer
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
As I mentioned here, the debate over US military action to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon was mostly on the back burner last year, but as Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 head to Vienna to negotiate a comprehensive solution, it’s rearing its head [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
As I mentioned here, the debate over US military action to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon was mostly on the back burner last year, but as Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 head to Vienna to negotiate a comprehensive solution, it’s rearing its head again. That’s because we’re at an unprecedented, pivotal moment in this conflict’s history. If a final deal is reached, the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon will become highly unlikely; if no deal is reached, those chances increase along with the prospect of some kind of war.
“Diplomacy is so much cheaper than using the military instrument,” said ambassador Peter Galbraith, who has been heavily involved in peace negotiations for more than two decades, on a call today hosted by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
“But a more important point is that in all these things, you need to consider what your alternatives are and frankly, there is no good alternative to a negotiated solution,” he added.
A US military campaign to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons would likely be another expensive, resource-heavy, prolonged conflict in the Middle East. This has been the conclusion of reputable US military and intelligence experts, and no matter how much Israel beats its chest, it can’t effectively go at it alone. What’s more, striking Iran could actually compel it to rush for a bomb, which the leadership — after all these years — has not decided to do as of yet.
“What is keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons is not a technological ability,” notes Galbraith, who served for 5 years as a senior advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Near East and South Asia. “It’s that it has made a political decision for the time being not to develop them.”
That political decision is being verified as we speak while the interim deal known as the “Joint Plan of Action” (JPA) reached in Geneva on Nov. 24 is being implemented.
“People who think this is a waste of time overlook fact that the interim agreement gives us a far better view of whats going on in Iran than without it,” said Lt. General Robert Gard (ret.), who saw saw combat in the Korean and Vietnam Wars during his 31-year military conflict, also on the call.
Under the JPA, Iran has halted and even rolled back parts of its program as well as opened itself up to inspections and verification visits by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in addition to those already imposed on it by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran is even cooperating with the IAEA on the contentious issue of past possible military dimensions to its program.
Laicie Heeley, a policy expert at the Center who moderated the call, said people shouldn’t expect a “perfect agreement” because as with all negotiations, “compromises will need to be made”. But the fact remains that if a mutually acceptable deal is reached, “we’re avoiding an Iranian nuclear weapon and another war in the Middle East.”
Who can argue against that?
Photo: The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, shakes hands with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, right, on Nov. 13, 2013 after signing an agreement in Tehran to allow inspectors broader access to Iranian nuclear sites.
]]>The brewing rapprochement between the United States and Iran, signified by the Geneva nuclear deal signed in January, seems likely to scramble American strategic priorities in the South Caucasus, especially for Azerbaijan.
In recent years, the United States deemphasized democratization in its dealings with Azerbaijan on account of Baku’s strategic position as [...]]]>
The brewing rapprochement between the United States and Iran, signified by the Geneva nuclear deal signed in January, seems likely to scramble American strategic priorities in the South Caucasus, especially for Azerbaijan.
In recent years, the United States deemphasized democratization in its dealings with Azerbaijan on account of Baku’s strategic position as Iran’s northern neighbour, a position that made it a key cog in the West’s containment policy against Tehran. But now that the United States — along with other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany – are taking the first steps toward re-establishing a working relationship with Iran, the justification for Washington’s tolerance of Baku rights abuses is starting to recede.
The Joint Action Plan, also known as the Geneva interim agreement, is designed to roll back aspects of Iran’s controversial nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. This deal is seen as a stepping stone to a comprehensive pact that ensures the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. Prior to reaching agreement, the nuclear standoff had prompted increasingly tight US-led sanctions against Iran, and raised the prospects of military action.
If developments now unfold as envisioned, the regional order in the Middle East and Caspian Basin could turn upside down. Diplomatic normalization would certainly change the region’s existing energy-export calculus. Since the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the ensuing diplomatic break with Tehran, the exclusion of Iran from regional security plans and energy-related projects has been a permanent feature of American policy.
Many regional players have come to see opposition to Iran and alignment with the United States as strategically beneficial for them. Azerbaijan is a case in point. Since it gained independence in 1991, Baku has sought the West’s support to achieve its overriding national objective: regaining control over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Striving to burnish its pro-Western credentials, Baku was happy to accommodate the United States by excluding Iran from Western-led energy consortia and the regional pipelines that bring Caspian oil and gas to the world markets. US laws forbidding US companies to partner with Iranian entities made that a necessity.
Establishing a partnership with NATO and developing close security cooperation with Israelhelped bolster Baku’s strategic importance for Washington: Lots of experts speculated that Azerbaijan could emerge as a forward operating area for military operations, in the event of a US and/or Israeli strike against Iran. In exchange, President Ilham Aliyev’s administration expected, and mostly got, the West to turn a blind eye to its authoritarian governing practices, especially its muzzling of a free press and its crackdown on political dissent.
The Geneva interim agreement challenges existing arrangements. Not only the probability of a military strike is fading, but also the rise of Sunni jihadist groups in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East is pushing the US and Shi’a Iran towards at least some sort of tacit cooperation — even without waiting for a final agreement on the nuclear issue. While a full-fledged strategic realignment is still far off, there is an obvious convergence of interests in countering the Al-Qaeda-type groups, and, at least in Iraq, some behind-the-scenes cooperation seems already to be occurring.
In this context, emphasising Azerbaijan’s anti-Iranian credentials as a strategic asset for the United States, as some American neoconservative pundits do, is counter-productive to US national security interests. Previously, few questioned those promoting a “strategic” alliance with Azerbaijan to counter Iran. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s war-mongering rhetoric and actions made it easy for anyone in Washington to be an unquestioning backer of Baku. But a more moderate Iranian incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani, now makes it far harder to argue that Iran is a perpetual enemy of the United States and a threat to Western interests.
For its part, Azerbaijan is unlikely to welcome a possible US-Iranian rapprochement. As it is, Azerbaijan is facing an uncertain future as an energy supplier. The shale gas boom in North America and declining demand in Europe threaten the profitability of Azerbaijani energy resources and pipeline projects. Iran’s potential re-emergence as a global energy player could seriously choke Azerbaijan’s existing revenue streams, as investors could easily find Tehran a more appealing option than Baku.
While Aliyev’s administration might not be happy about recent developments, there is little it can do to derail them. Unlike Israel and Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan has no leverage to publicly oppose the rapprochement between the US and Iran without paying a steep price in terms of its relations with Washington. And sitting back and quietly hoping that Israel can torpedo the deal, as seems to be the preference of some policymakers in Baku, is probably not a winning strategy. The Obama-Kerry team has shown that it is determined to make the final agreement happen.
For Aliyev’s team, this means that it will have to find a different basis to articulate its strategic importance for the West. Changing geopolitical circumstances, especially if the nuclear deal places Iran on a more liberal domestic political trajectory, will make it much more difficult for the Azerbaijani government to justify its authoritarian tendencies.
The way to redefine the strategic partnership with the United States and EU would be for Azerbaijan to commit itself to shared values of democracy, human rights and the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Such a commitment could pay some diplomatic dividends in itself, as the case of neighbouring Georgia has shown. And in the context of engagement with Iran, a democratizing Azerbaijan, with its mainly Shi’a Muslim population, would remain a strategic asset in Washington’s eyes.
Instead of seizing an opportunity, Baku is currently sending all the wrong messages: there are still dozens of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, including a former presidential candidate Ilgar Mammadov, and President Aliyev is maintaining a bellicose posture on the Karabakh question.
While the anti-Iranian rationale for the strategic partnership between the West and Azerbaijan is starting to crack, the Azerbaijani government is showing neither the vision nor the political will to redefine its strategic priorities. Failure to adjust could, sooner or later, render Azerbaijan geopolitically irrelevant.
– Richard Kauzlarich is a former US ambassador in Azerbaijan and is currently Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University.
*Originally published by Eurasianet
]]>Looking back over the past year, Moscow appears to have good reason to congratulate itself on the success of its foreign policy toward Iran and Syria in particular, and toward the Middle East in general. Indeed, while they did not necessarily do so at Moscow’s behest, several actors that play an [...]]]>
Looking back over the past year, Moscow appears to have good reason to congratulate itself on the success of its foreign policy toward Iran and Syria in particular, and toward the Middle East in general. Indeed, while they did not necessarily do so at Moscow’s behest, several actors that play an important role in the Middle East have come around to adopting policy approaches that Russian leaders have been urging on them.
The Russian position on the Iranian nuclear issue has long been that while Moscow does not want Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, it does not want America and its allies to pursue this goal either through the use force or further ratcheting up of economic sanctions against Iran. Moscow has long called for a negotiated settlement to this issue involving Tehran taking steps to reassure the international community that it is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for a relaxation of the international sanctions regime.
In the past few months, this is exactly what has happened. Secret Iranian-American negotiations led to an interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue, and to subsequent negotiations for a permanent settlement. The prospects for armed conflict over the nuclear issue, which Moscow has sought to prevent, have definitely receded.
Since the inception of the Arab Spring conflict in Syria, Putin and his associates have claimed that the Assad regime, despite its problems, is better than the opposition forces seeking to replace it, which Moscow has characterized as consisting largely of radical Sunni Islamists whose victory would threaten Western interests as much as Russian ones. While not outwardly agreeing with Moscow on Assad, several other governments that have called for him to step aside have grown increasingly nervous about the nature of the Syrian opposition.
Further, three governments in particular have made policy changes that support the Russian goal of keeping Assad in power. In Egypt, the ouster of the elected Islamist President, Mohamed Morsi, by Egypt’s secular military also resulted in Cairo moving from being sympathetic to unsympathetic toward the Syrian opposition.
After the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its opponents in August 2013, the Obama administration first threatened the use of force against it but then accepted the Russian proposal for an internationally sanctioned effort to remove chemical weapons from Syria. Since this process depended heavily on the cooperation of the Assad regime, the Obama administration’s support for it resulted in tacit American acceptance of its continuation in power — something that the Syrian opposition and their supporters in the Gulf resented bitterly.
In addition, while the Turkish government has previously been strongly supportive of Syrian opposition efforts to oust Assad, recently Ankara launched military strikes against jihadist forces inside Syria — thus signaling it may be coming round to accepting the Russian view that the Assad regime is better than that which seeks to replace it.
Regarding both Iran and Syria, then, policy changes by others have recently become more supportive of Russian foreign policy preferences. There is no guarantee, however, that this will remain the case going forward.
The US Government has recently expressed concern that the Assad regime is dragging its feet on the chemical weapons agreement. If this continues, Russian interests could be hurt. If the US Government comes to believe that Moscow is supportive of the Assad regime’s lack of cooperation in this matter, a decidedly negative image of Russian intentions is likely to re-emerge in Washington. Under these circumstances, the Obama administration might well be unable to resist the likely rise of demands in Congress and by some US allies to seek retaliatory measures against Moscow for having duplicitously led Obama to believe that Assad would cooperate on the chemical accord. But even if Moscow were not blamed for the Syrian government’s recalcitrance, Washington would still come to see Putin as unable to deliver Assad on the chemical issue (as had been previously believed) — and thus there would be no point in further coordinating with Moscow on this issue.
While a deterioration of the situation regarding Syria could serve to marginalize Russia, an improvement of the situation regarding Iran could do so too. If indeed real progress is made in resolving the nuclear issue, then economic sanctions against Iran will be lifted either in whole or in part and Iranian cooperation with the West will increase. To the extent that Iranian relations with the West (especially the U.S.) improves, the less need Iran will have for relying on Russia — with which it has had a prickly relationship up to now despite their common animosity toward the U.S.
Furthermore, reduced economic sanctions on Iran could well result in Tehran producing and exporting far more oil than it does now, thus depressing oil prices and reducing the income of other oil exporters, including Russia. The desire to avoid this may have motivated Moscow to enter negotiations with Tehran over a bilateral exchange agreement worth $1.5 billion per month whereby Russia would reportedly buy up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day in exchange for Russian goods. But even if such a Russian-Iranian agreement comes into force, Tehran is hardly likely to forego the opportunity to increase oil exports to the rest of the world if the sanctions regime is relaxed.
So while Russian foreign policy toward Iran and Syria has benefited from recent events going Moscow’s way, its success is highly fragile as it could easily be damaged by the situation in Syria further deteriorating or by the situation regarding Iran improving.
]]>by Jim Lobe
The year of 2014 is starting well for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier organization of this country’s Israel lobby.
Not only has it been clearly and increasingly decisively defeated — at least for now and the immediate future — in its bid to persuade [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
The year of 2014 is starting well for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier organization of this country’s Israel lobby.
Not only has it been clearly and increasingly decisively defeated — at least for now and the immediate future — in its bid to persuade a filibuster-proof, let alone a veto-proof, super-majority of senators to approve the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act that was designed to torpedo the Nov. 24 “Joint Plan of Action” (JPA) between Iran and the P5+1. It has also drawn a spate of remarkably unfavorable publicity, a particularly damaging development for an organization that, as one of its former top honchos, Steve Rosen, once put it, like “a night flower, … thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”
Consider first what happened with the Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, named for the two biggest beneficiaries of “pro-Israel” PACs closely associated with AIPAC in the Congressional campaigns of 2010 and 2012, respectively. Introduced on the eve of the Christmas recess, the bill then had 26 co-sponsors, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, giving it an attractive bipartisan cast — the kind of bipartisanship that AIPAC has long sought to maintain despite the group’s increasingly Likudist orientation and the growing disconnect within the Democratic Party between its strongly pro-Israel elected leadership and more skeptical base, especially its younger activists, both Jewish and gentile. By the second week of January, it had accumulated an additional 33 co-sponsors, bringing the total to 59 and theoretically well within striking distance of the magic 67 needed to override a presidential veto. At that point, however, its momentum stalled as a result of White House pressure (including warnings that a veto would indeed be cast); the alignment behind Obama of ten Senate Committee chairs, including Carl Levin of the Armed Services Committee and Dianne Feinstein of the Intelligence Committee; public denunciation of the bill by key members of the foreign policy elite; and a remarkably strong grassroots campaign by several reputable national religious, peace, and human-rights groups (including, not insignificantly, J Street and Americans for Peace Now), whose phone calls and emails to Senate offices opposing the bill outnumbered those in favor by a factor of ten or more.
The result: AIPAC and its supporters hit a brick wall at 59, unable even to muster the 60 needed to invoke cloture against a possible filibuster, let alone the 77 senators that AIPAC-friendly Congressional staff claimed at one point were either publicly or privately committed to vote for the bill if it reached the floor. By late this week, half a dozen of the 16 Democrats who had co-sponsored the bill were retreating from it as fast as their senatorial dignity would permit. And while none has yet disavowed their co-sponsorship, more than a handful now have (disingenuously, in my view) insisted that they either don’t believe that the bill should be voted on while negotiations are ongoing; that they had never intended to undercut the president’s negotiating authority; or, most originally, that they believed the mere introduction of the bill would provide additional leverage to Obama (Michael Bennet of Colorado) in the negotiations. Even the bill’s strongest proponents, such as Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe, conceded, as he did to the National Journal after Obama repeated his veto threat in his State of the Union Address Tuesday: “The question is, is there support to override a veto on that? I say, ‘No.’”
The Democratic retreat is particularly worrisome for AIPAC precisely because its claim to “bipartisanship” is looking increasingly dubious, a point underlined by Peter Beinart in a Haaretz op-ed this week that urged Obama to boycott this year’s AIPAC policy conference that will take place a mere five weeks from now. (This is the nightmare scenario for Rosen who noted in an interview with the JTA’s Ron Kampeas last week that the group’s failure to procure a high-level administration speaker for its annual conference “would be devastating to AIPAC’s image of bipartisanship.”) According to Beinart:
The appearance of bipartisanship is essential to AIPAC’s business model. And yet that bipartisanship is, in some ways, a ruse. The group’s hawkish foreign policy stances on both Iran and the Palestinians are far more in line with Republican than Democratic public opinion. Demographically, AIPAC is increasingly populated by Orthodox Jews, who – in contrast to American Jewry as whole—generally vote Republican. It’s true that the Iran sanctions bill AIPAC is pushing has garnered 19 [sic] Democratic—along with 43 Republican—co-sponsorships. But congressional sources say bluntly that many of those Democratic senators are only supporting the bill because AIPAC, and like-minded groups, want them to.
Indeed, the growing tension between AIPAC, which takes its orders from Bibi Netanyahu and whose leadership is probably to the right even of him, and Democrats has become increasingly apparent, especially in ways that must make the organization acutely uncomfortable. Thus, earlier this month, Rabbi Jack Moline, the director of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), which normally toes AIPAC’s line on any Israel-related issue, publicly accused it of using “strong-arm tactics, essentially threatening people that if they didn’t vote a particular way, that somehow that makes them anti-Israel or means the abandonment of the Jewish community.” Moreover, AIPAC’s pressure tactics — bolstered by Bill Kristol’s neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) — against the head of the Democratic National Committee, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, appear to have backfired badly, as the head of the group’s Southeastern states director, Mark Kleinman, felt compelled to issue a public defense of the congresswoman earlier this week as it became clear the bill was actually losing support among Democratic lawmakers. “People don’t forget these kind of attacks,” one veteran Capitol Hill lobbyist told me last week. “There is a cost to pay.” Finally, the fact that AIPAC, after a full month of all-out lobbying, was able to add only three Democrats to the initial list of co-sponsors, while all but two Republican senators (Paul and Flake) signed on, leaves the bill with an overwhelmingly partisan look. (This, of course, raises once again, as M.J. Rosenberg has been reminding us, the question of where Hillary Clinton stands on the most important foreign policy issue of Obama’s second term and why she won’t speak out.)
As Doug Bloomfield, a former chief AIPAC lobbyist told me at the end of last week about the bill:
It turned out to be a Republican game of gotcha. Iran is really a secondary issue; it’s all just gotcha. That’s the politics; you want to make the other side look bad, in this case, to portray Obama as soft on Iran and an unreliable friend of Israel.
…Take a look at AIPAC today. In the early years, there were no strings with $200 donations, but a $200,000 contribution, that comes with chains. The biggest contributors now are Likud and Republican. That doesn’t come with strings; it comes with chains. In my experience, it was taken over by a board of major contributors who are micro-managers.
…When Reagan came in and had a Republican Senate, one of the board members urged firing all of the staff associated with Democrats. Now they’re working with the Republicans in the Congress to undermine a President. What is the message? The great irony of this whole campaign on sanctions is that its raison d’etre was to put pressure on the Iranians to come to the table. It worked, so why don’t they declare victory? Why push for more sanctions that, as the president warned, could scuttle these talks? The first reason is that this has been their primary issue. Like the old cliche about real estate, “Location, location, location,” for them it’s been “Iran, Iran, Iran.” Israel and the peace process is in a distant second place… Number two is that this institution is very tight with Bibi Netanyahu, and it’s also his Number One issue. He says we can’t do anything with the Palestinians until we remove the nuclear threat from Iran. And how? To totally dismantle its nuclear program. As long as you hold to that, you don’t have to deal with the Palestinians.
Moreover, the disconnect between AIPAC and Democrats also mirrors what appears to be happening within the Jewish community itself. This was demonstrated in part by the fact that, of the 11 Jewish members of the Senate, only four co-sponsored the bill (and three of them have been among those who have retreated from full-throated support), while six, including Levin and Feinstein, publicly backed Obama. Moreover, this was one issue in which the upstart J Street came out early and unequivocally against AIPAC and prevailed. And then there was the remarkable letter obtained by Mondoweiss from nearly 60 prominent Jewish New York celebrities, artists, religious figures, donors, and philanthropists to newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio admonishing him for kissing AIPAC’s ring during a recent off-the-record meeting with senior officials of the organization:
…[W]e do know that the needs and concerns of many of your constituents–U.S. Jews like us among them–are not aligned with those of AIPAC, and that no, your job is not to do AIPAC’s bidding when they call you to do so. AIPAC speaks for Israel’s hard-line government and its right-wing supporters, and for them alone; it does not speak for us.
This is not the kind of publicity AIPAC enjoys.
Nor can it be happy that the trips to Israel for promising politicians and lawmakers sponsored by AIPAC’s “educational” arm, the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), and specifically whether they should be publicly disclosed, have become an issue in the Republican primary campaign for the attorney-general of Nevada, in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home state, as disclosed in this JTA item Thursday. Like AIPAC and its meeting with de Blasio, AIEF, which took 81 members of the House — or about 20 percent of all House members — on an all-expenses paid trip to Israel during the August recess in 2011, much prefers to maintain a low profile, at least in this country.
For Bloomfield, AIPAC’s entire management of the Iran issue has been characterized by “inept handling and poor judgment”, and, instead of claiming victory for its sanctions strategy, it looked like “another rightwing group that prefers war over negotiations, domestic partisanship over diplomacy.”
Of course, none of this means that the battle over Iran policy is won, but it does suggest that AIPAC’s membership has some serious thinking to do about the group’s relationship to Democrats and to the broader Jewish community. Nor does it necessarily mean that we have finally reached a “tipping point” regarding the lobby’s hold over Congress and U.S. Middle East policy. But this is unquestionably a significant moment. (Rosenberg has a good analysis about AIPAC’s defeat out on HuffPo today that is well worth reading.)
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