by David Collier*
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, recently cast fresh doubt on the possibility of a nuclear deal by the July 20 deadline for the ongoing talks between Iran and world powers in Vienna. This came after Iranian foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed the West was suffering from [...]]]>
by David Collier*
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, recently cast fresh doubt on the possibility of a nuclear deal by the July 20 deadline for the ongoing talks between Iran and world powers in Vienna. This came after Iranian foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed the West was suffering from illusions regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
Should the talks fail to reach agreement, what happens next? More sanctions, more enrichment, and more talk of military action are the most likely outcomes. What has been missing from the debate, and what could save the long-term relationship between Iran and the West, is more talk of enhancing “linkage” with Iran.
In a 2005 article in The Journal of Democracy, Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way defined linkage as the density of ties between two countries or regions. It forms a web of back and forth interaction on economic, geopolitical, social, and communication matters as well as amongst civil society. This interaction enhances mutual cooperation, trust, and understanding.
The current Western approach to Iran has centered on leverage, the use of overt tools for changing a country’s behavior through the use of sanctions, threats of military action, and attempts to isolate Iran from the international community. Linkage however, is more ethereal and subtle with a focus on deep connections and long-term relations. It can be understood as the soft power to the hard power of international leverage.
While some analysts and officials credit Western leverage with bringing Iran back to the negotiating table, others don’t regard this as a long-term solution. Patrick Clawson and Gary Samore have both cautioned that while sanctions may have helped kick-start negotiations, they do not guarantee their successful conclusion, or that Iran will stand by any agreement in the months and years ahead. It is to this end that the concept of linkage must join the debate.
Past Mistakes
The United States has historically enjoyed and abused the benefits of linkage with Iran, as well as suffered the consequences of its absence. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Iran was awash with American financial, military, and intelligence missions, as well as an active and influential embassy that maintained contacts with Iranians across the political spectrum.
It was this depth and scope of linkage, coupled with the leverage of the US’ position as a main source of financial aid to Iran, that allowed successive US administrations to greatly influence Iranian governmental policies, laws, cabinet position appointments, and even who should be prime minister. The success of the coup in 1953 against Iran’s only democratically elected prime minister would not have been possible without deep levels of linkage with Iranian society. While these policies proved ultimately disastrous for both the US and Iran in the long-term, Washington’s ability to achieve its aims, however misguided, was only possible thanks to the high level of linkage it maintained with Iran.
By the time the revolution began in 1978, however, this linkage had evaporated. Trust in the permanency of the Shah’s regime led to a decrease in contact and surveillance over Iranian society. As a result, the revolution came as a surprise to which Washington was unable to adequately comprehend or respond until it was too late.
This absence of linkage continued in the post-revolution era, with Iranian and American leaders refusing direct contact for close to 35 years. The tradition was not broken until late in 2013 when President Hassan Rouhani spoke briefly with his American counterpart by phone on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. This was a remarkable break from no presidential contact following the revolution and functions as an example of linkage that must be maintained and consolidated.
However, amid Tehran’s wariness of American desires to overthrow the regime, and the ongoing attempts by Iranian hardliners to scuttle the talks, establishing additional links will be difficult. Persistence will be necessary but is not a quality so far associated with Obama’s Iran policy. His engagement with Iran has instead been likened to a single roll of the dice with efforts made to reach out ending at the first sign of obstruction.
Engaging Iran
Instead, the US must be persistent and take every opportunity to engage Iran and Iranians on all levels. Influential American actors could take their lead from the scientific community, which has had numerous American-Iranian collaborations in recent years. Norman Neureiter, acting director for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, states that as a result of these efforts “Iranian and US scientists get along quite well.” More than that, one US Laureate invited to Iran was so feted by his hosts that he was measured for a sculptured bust, which now rests in the garden of the Pardis Technology Park outside of Tehran.
Another example of perhaps unexpected linkage was a meeting between the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Supreme Council of the Seminary Teachers of Qom in March of this year. Their dialogue led to a joint statement declaring opposition to violations of human life and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Sport has also transcended political obstacles; the US Wrestling Team was cheered on enthusiastically during the Greco-Roman World Cup in Tehran in May. American coach Steven Fraser was so moved that he gushed: “they love us Americans, and we love them!” Although the USMNT and Team Melli will not meet at the Estádio do Maracanã on July 13 to decide the 2014 World Cup, soccer diplomacy through friendly matches and tours could also be used to build relationships and understanding.
Collaboration in any form establishes linkages, both at the grass-roots level and between governments; Americans must seek every opportunity to reach out and create contacts with their Iranian counterparts. Recent reports of discussion between Iranian and American officials over Iraq is a perfect example of an unexpected window of opportunity that will hopefully be seized upon and lead to greater lines of communication on a wider range of issues in the future.
Such contact and collaboration, if taken, will help consolidate and institutionalize trust and cooperation. The primary goal of these endeavors should be the reestablishment of an embassy or interests section in Iran. Such a permanent and direct point of contact is the essential core of any linkage regime. Washington will hopefully be watching with interest when the United Kingdom reopens its own embassy in Iran that closed in 2011 following its ransacking by protestors.
If a deal is reached on July 20, establishing linkage with Iran will increase the probability of it being adhered to by both sides, even if future obstacles and disagreements present themselves. If no agreement is made, linkages must be established to prevent US-Iranian relations returning to the brink of conflict.
Creating this web of linkages between the United States and Iran will take time and can easily be destroyed by political rhetoric and grandstanding. However, through persistence and positivity, the two countries can rebuild trust and build peaceful relations in the long-term.
*David Collier holds a PhD in political science from Boston University and is currently working on a book on US-Iranian relations during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. He has studied Persian at Boston University and Ohio State University and is now based in Washington, DC.
]]>by Francois Nicoulaud
“No deal is better than bad deal:” that’s the mantra that has been heard ad nauseam in the recent past and presented as self-evident of U.S. toughness in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
But is it really so? Of course, everybody knows what “no deal” means. It is [...]]]>
by Francois Nicoulaud
“No deal is better than bad deal:” that’s the mantra that has been heard ad nauseam in the recent past and presented as self-evident of U.S. toughness in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
But is it really so? Of course, everybody knows what “no deal” means. It is more difficult to discern at what point a deal becomes bad, rather than good, or even average. But plenty of experts are ready to help. A bad deal, they tell us, is a deal which would allow the Iranians to produce the material necessary for a bomb in less than six months. A bad deal is a deal which would not clarify once and for all what kind of research the Iranians have been pursuing in the past for manufacturing a nuclear explosive device. A bad deal is a deal which would allow the Iranians to pursue their ballistic missile program. And so on… One ends up understanding that any deal less than perfect would amount to an unacceptably bad deal.
But such an approach goes against any diplomatic process in which compromise and give and take are key notions. It leads to the conclusion that a perfect deal is a deal which does not have to be negotiated, a deal in which the winner takes all. And indeed, there are people who believe that non-proliferation is too important a question to be submitted to any kind of compromise. It deserves only perfect deals.
History, though, does not confirm this approach. The mother of all non-proliferation agreements, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), concluded in 1968, was in each and all its articles one big compromise. A few countries were allowed to develop nuclear arsenals, others not. The countries that agreed to forsake any military nuclear ambitions were allowed to bring their nuclear capabilities up to the thin red line beyond which could start the manufacturing of an explosive nuclear device. Nobody was happy at the result when the Treaty was signed and nobody is satisfied today by the state of affairs that has developed since.
Thus, the NPT was a deeply imperfect agreement, and indeed, a kind of bad deal. But would a “no deal” have been better? Obviously not. In a different field, the strategic arms limitation agreements concluded during and after the Cold War between the US and the USSR, later on Russia, and signed on the US side by Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Obama… were certainly deeply imperfect. But, again, would “no deals” have been better?
Considering the Iranian negotiation, one could risk being provocative by saying that almost any deal (at least in the ambit of the current negotiation) could be better than no deal at all. No deal means the unchecked development of the Iranian program, the continuing increase of its enrichment capacities and stock of enriched uranium, the completion of a reactor of the plutonium-production type, and eventually the resumption of active research on engineering a nuclear device. By way of consequence, it would mean a growing tension between the international community and the Islamic Republic, possibly culminating in strikes on its nuclear facilities and in armed confrontation.
Compared to such a prospect, a far less-than-perfect agreement could appear indeed as highly desirable. Let us remember that international relations are nurtured by iterative and evolutionary processes. “Solve-all”, perfectly designed agreements, the epitome of which could well have been the Treaty of Versailles, seldom produce brilliant and lasting results. What is critical is to grab at the right moment the maximum of what is within reach. The art of diplomacy lies precisely in the ability to first discern, and then to join and knit together the extremes of what can be willingly accepted by the conflicting parties. It incorporates also the humility of leaving to others the task of solving at a later stage questions not yet fully addressed or wholly answered, in the knowledge that new circumstances created by an agreement will create new possibilities for progress. It keeps in mind that even an imperfect agreement, if faithfully implemented by the parties, can be a kind of confidence-building machine, opening the way to further advances. This is precisely what happened with the November 24 Joint Plan of Action between the P5+1 and Iran: that accord was transitory and therefore essentially imperfect, but it created the proper atmosphere for a more ambitious step forward.
Given the current state of the negotiations, how can these general considerations be translated into concrete terms? Let us limit ourselves to the most difficult point; that is, the acceptable level of Iranian enrichment activities. Here, the obvious line of compromise turns around capping them for a few years the present level of employed enrichment capacity – expressed in Separation Work Units (SWU) in order neutralize the consequences of the possible introduction of more efficient centrifuges. The figure to be retained would then be between 8,000 and 10,000 SWU per year.
For this, the Iranians have to admit that they do not need to develop an enrichment capacity on an industrial scale (about 50,000 SWU per year and over) as long as do not break ground on the main structures of their future nuclear power plants. And they should take advantage of this interval to develop more productive and more secure centrifuges than the primitive, outdated model that forms the bulk of their present stock of working centrifuges. They also need to progress significantly in the technology of nuclear-fuel manufacturing in order to be ready in due time if they want to meet at least partially the needs of their future nuclear power plants.
On the other side, the West should consider the enormous political difficulty the Iranian government would face if it had to dismantle even part of the nation’s hard-won enrichment capacity. It is true that accepting the preservation of this capacity at its present level would open the theoretical risk of the Iranians quickly acquiring significant quantities of highly enriched uranium, thus opening the way to the bomb. But considering the self-destructive consequences of such a blatant breach of agreement, the risk is very limited indeed, and by all means much more limited than the risks raised by the absence of any deal. Is this risk really unmanageable for the coalition of the world’s most powerful countries, given the sophistication of their diplomatic, intelligence, and contingency-planning capacities? Of course, such a compromise could be easily depicted with equal vehemence as a bad deal on both sides. And that is why it is probably the right compromise, and a fair deal.
Photo: The P5+1 foreign ministers, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif at United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 24, 2013. Credit: State Department photo/Public Domain
]]>Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and never to be cooperated with on anything. The lodestar for this school of advocacy is [...]]]>
Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and never to be cooperated with on anything. The lodestar for this school of advocacy is the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who proclaims to us nearly every day that Iran is the “real problem” underlying just about everything wrong in the region, and who adamantly opposes anyone reaching any agreement with Tehran on anything. Netanyahu does not want a significant regional competitor that would no longer be an ostracized pariah and that will freely speak its mind in a way that, say, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with the other equities they have in Washington, cannot. He does not want the United States to come to realize that it need not be stuck rigidly to the side of — and always defer to the preferences of — “traditional allies” such as Israel and that it can sometimes advance U.S. interests by doing business with those who have worn the label of adversary. And of course the more that people focus on the “real problem” of Iran, the less attention will be devoted to topics Netanyahu would rather not talk about, such as the occupation of Palestinian territory.
For those in Washington who wave the anti-Iranian banner most fervently, the waving is not only a following of Netanyahu’s lead but also a filling of the neoconservative need for bogeymen as justification and focus for militant, interventionist policies in the region. The neocons do not have Saddam Hussein to kick around any more, and they unsurprisingly would prefer not to dwell upon what transpired when they kicked him out. So it’s natural to target the next nearest member of the Axis of Evil — and even when the neocons were still kicking Saddam, they were already telling Iran to “take a number.” The anti-Iranian banner-waving of neocons, despite the abysmal policy failure of the Iraq War that should have closed ears to what they are saying today — finds resonance among a general American public that historically has had a need for foreign monsters to destroy as one way to define America’s mission and purpose.
The prospective reaching of a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program has been a major concern and preoccupation of those who want to keep Iran a hated and feared pariah forever. An agreement would represent a major departure in U.S. relations with Iran. So the anti-Iran banner-wavers have been making a concerted effort for several months to undermine the negotiations and torpedo any agreement that is reached. Not reaching an agreement has become such a major goal that the banner-wavers have no compunction about taking the fundamentally illogical stance of exclaiming about the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon while opposing an agreement that would place substantially more restrictions on the Iranian program, and make an Iranian weapon less likely, than without an agreement.
At least the anti-agreement forces have had a game plan, involving such things as hyping “breakout” fears and pushing Congressional action that is disguised as support for the negotiations when it actually would undermine them. Now suddenly along comes a security crisis in Iraq, in which parallel U.S. and Iranian interests and the opportunity for some beneficial U.S.-Iranian dialogue are clear. Oh, no, think the banner-wavers, we didn’t plan on this. One detects a tone of panic in their jumping into print with emergency sermons reminding us that Iranians are evil and we must never, ever be tempted into cooperating with them.
One of the more strident of these sermons comes from Michael Doran and Max Boot. The panicky nature of their piece is reflected in the fact that the first thing they do is to reach for the old, familiar Hitler analogy. The idea that the United States and Iran share any common interests is, they tell us, just like Neville Chamberlain working with Adolf Hitler.
The next thing they do is to match the most imaginative conspiracy theorists in the Middle East by suggesting that the government of Iran really is supporting and promoting the Sunni radicals of ISIS — yes, the same ISIS whose main calling card has been the beheading and massacre of the Iranians’ fellow Shiites. The logic behind this conspiracy theory, explain Doran and Boot, is that a threat from ISIS makes Prime Minister Maliki and Iraqi Shiites “ever more dependent on Iranian protection.”
Then Doran and Boot go way into straw-man territory, saying the United States would be making a “historic error” if it assisted “an Iranian-orchestrated ethnic-cleansing campaign” carried out by ruthless Revolutionary Guards. Of course, the Obama administration isn’t talking about doing anything of the sort. We weren’t flies on the wall when Deputy Secretary of State William Burns talked earlier this week with the Iranian foreign minister about Iraq, but it is a safe bet that a theme of U.S. remarks was the need for greater cross-community inclusiveness in Iraq and the need not to stoke the fire of the sectarian civil war.
Besides dealing with straw men, Doran and Boot here exhibit another habit of the banner-wavers — which comes up a lot in discussion of the nuclear issue — which is to assume that Iran will do the worst, most destructive thing it is capable of doing regardless of whether doing so would be in Iran’s own interests. What advantage could Tehran possibly see in propping up an increasingly beleaguered and unpopular Nouri al-Maliki with rampaging Revolutionary Guards? What Iranian interest would that serve?
This gets to one of the things that Doran and Boot do not address, which is what fundamental Iranian interests are in Iraq, including everything those interests involve in terms of stability and material costs to Iran. Even if Iran had so much influence with Maliki that he could be said to be in Tehran’s pocket, what would Iran do with such influence? Here is displayed another habit of the banner-wavers, which is just to assume that any Iranian influence is bad, without stopping to examine the Iranian interests being served and whether they are consistent with, in conflict with, or irrelevant to U.S. interests.
The other major thing that Doran and Boot do not do is to mention what militant U.S. policies have had to do with Iranian behavior they don’t like. In the course of loosely slinging as much mud on the Iranians as they can, they state that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps “has been responsible for attacks against U.S. targets stretching back more than 30 years.” They do not offer any specifics. The only ones that come to mind involve a U.S. military intervention in Lebanon, U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, a U.S. troop presence in eastern Saudi Arabia, and the eight-year-long U.S. military occupation in Iraq.
Doran and Boot write that instead of having anything to do with the Iranians, we should develop a coalition of those “traditional allies” to prosecute a conflict on the “vast battlefield” that embraces Iraq and Syria. This sounds just like the talk of a coalition of “moderates” we heard during the George W. Bush administration. As then, the talk is apparently oblivious to ethnic, sectarian, and geographic realities. Doran and Boot suggest that clever covert work against “Iranian networks” would be enough to “pull the Iraqi government out of Iran’s orbit.”
This sort of thinking represents not only a missed opportunity to make U.S. diplomacy more effective but also a recipe for further inflaming that vast battlefield.
*This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Roohollah Vahdati
]]>One of the most famous zingers in American political history is Lloyd Bentsen’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” line in his 1988 vice presidential candidates’ debate with Dan Quayle. Quayle’s preceding remark in the debate actually had not made any overall claim to comparability with Kennedy. Instead [...]]]>
One of the most famous zingers in American political history is Lloyd Bentsen’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” line in his 1988 vice presidential candidates’ debate with Dan Quayle. Quayle’s preceding remark in the debate actually had not made any overall claim to comparability with Kennedy. Instead he was responding to a question about his relative youth and perceived inexperience, and about his ability to take over the presidency if necessary, by observing that his length of service in Congress was already comparable to that of Kennedy when the Massachusetts senator had been elected president. But nobody remembers that context — only Bentsen’s immortal jibe.
A somewhat similar forced effort to be more comparative than a comparison being criticized comes from Ali Alfoneh of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which these days endeavors not so much to defend democracies as to frustrate diplomacy of the most important democracy. His target is a recent piece of mine that, according to Alfoneh, makes an incorrect analogy between China and Iran and thus between Richard Nixon’s opening to China and any thawing of U.S.-Iranian relations in connection with the nuclear deal currently under negotiation. I was in turn criticizing an op ed by Eric Edelman, Dennis Ross, and Ray Takeyh that argued for involving Congress earlier and more heavily in the nuclear negotiations. Edelman, et al. were the ones who mentioned Nixon’s China policy, while contending that U.S.-Soviet strategic arms negotiations, in which there was significant Congressional involvement, was the most instructive precedent for how the Iran talks ought to be handled. I suggested instead that the China opening, which was prepared in great secrecy and did not involve Congress at all, was a more apt comparison for any rapprochement with a previously distrusted and ostracized regime, which is what Nixon’s diplomacy in the 1970s was about.
Alfoneh says nothing about secrecy or Congressional involvement, and gives no clue that this was the subject of my essay. Instead he presents a catalog of various ways in which China differs from Iran, and Mao Zedong differed from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He could have mentioned many more differences. Chinese leaders, for example, speak Mandarin, while Iran’s leaders speak Persian. Khamenei is a slender man, whereas Mao was rather corpulent. And so on. But Alfoneh does not explain how any of the differences, including the ones he mentions, have any significance for whether striking a nuclear deal is wise, or whether a larger rapprochement stemming from a deal with Iran would be wise, let alone implications for Congressional involvement or other aspects of how the Obama administration is handling Iran diplomacy.
One can read between the lines about what is going on here. The folks at FDD do not want any agreements with Iran, they want Iran to continue to be ostracized, and they are trying to torpedo the nuclear negotiations. The China opening is today widely and rightly seen as a significant and positive achievement by Nixon. So FDD endeavors to beat back any tendency to think of agreements or rapprochement with Iran in the same light as the China opening.
Okay, if they want to do full-blown comparisons between Iran and China, let’s do that. But our friends at FDD ought to be careful what they wish for. There are, for one thing, Alfoneh’s factual errors — such as saying Henry Kissinger was secretary of state at the time of the China opening, when in fact he was not. The man who was — William Rogers — was cut out of preparations for the initiative just as much as Congress was.
Then there is this interesting paragraph from Alfoneh:
“It’s also worth noting that the U.S.-China rapprochement came at a time when the Communist regime already possessed the nuclear bomb, and its military ambitions would not clash with American policies for nonproliferation. In the case of Iran, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions are likely to remain a constant source of tension between the two states.”
So an improved relationship with Iran would be less of a problem — and more similar to the favorable U.S.-China rapprochement — if Iran did have nuclear weapons than if it did not? Are we to conclude that we thus should condone the Iranians building such weapons or even encourage them to do so, and then we could talk about a better relationship afterward? (Of course, removing the issue as a source of tension by keeping the Iranian nuclear program peaceful is part of the purpose of the current talks.)
Alfoneh tells us, as another item in his catalog of differences, that Khamenei is less powerful than Mao was. Interestingly, this seems to go against the thrust of what FDD’s fellow opponents of an agreement habitually assert about internal Iranian politics, which is that we are foolish to be negotiating with President Hassan Rouhani because it is the supreme leader who really calls the shots. Alfoneh’s picture of Iranian politics with contending factions and with a supreme leader who is far from an absolute dictator is a much more accurate description—and is all the more reason to be sensitive to how the nuclear negotiations will affect those politics. Successful conclusion of a deal will significantly help Rouhani’s side of that political contest, and will tend to push the supreme leader and the rest of the regime more in Rouhani’s — and our preferred — direction.
Alfoneh also wants us to know that Khamenei sees the United States as the biggest threat to Iran (supposedly another difference with Mao’s China, which he says saw the USSR as a bigger threat). That statement about Khamenei’s perceptions is undoubtedly true, and would make Iranian acceptance of a better relationship with the United States all the more of a strategic change for both countries (although Alfoneh wants us to believe that for Iran it would be only “tactical.”) Most conspicuously missing from Alfoneh’s treatment is any explanation of whyKhamenei and other Iranian leaders see the United States as a threat. It is not because hatred or suspicion of the United States is embedded in Iranian DNA. It is because the United States has given Iran ample reason to see it as a threat. Siding with the aggressor Iraq in an extremely bloody war, imposing years of debilitating economic sanctions, making repeated threats of military attack, making shows of force in Iran’s immediate neighborhood, talking frequently about regime change, and tacitly condoning an anti-Iranian assassination campaign have a way of doing that.
In his piece Alfoneh says I have something to learn from National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn, who, citing the late British historian A.J.P. Taylor, warned against erroneous historical analogies. I can’t claim to have known A.J.P. Taylor personally (although when I was at Oxford a friend of mine was writing his dissertation under Taylor’s supervision). I do know Jacob Heilbrunn. Jacob Heilbrunn is a friend of mine. Mr. Alfoneh, you’re no Jacob Heilbrunn.
This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Once again revelations concerning the genesis of Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program are attracting notice.
Two nuclear experts, Victor Gilinsky and Roger J. Mattson, have again raised questions as to how Israel might have acquired the nuclear materials needed to build its nuclear [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Once again revelations concerning the genesis of Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program are attracting notice.
Two nuclear experts, Victor Gilinsky and Roger J. Mattson, have again raised questions as to how Israel might have acquired the nuclear materials needed to build its nuclear bombs in a provocatively titled article, “Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States?”
Why now? The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), the nation’s highest classification authority, has released a number of top-level government memoranda that may provide additional grounds for suspecting that during the 1960s, bomb-grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) reprocessing plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania made its way into Israel’s nuclear weapons program. “The newly released documents also expose government efforts, notably during the Carter administration, to keep the NUMEC story under wraps, an ironic twist in view of Jimmy Carter’s identification with opposition to nuclear proliferation,” write Gilinsky and Mattson in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Four years ago, in March 2010, the two researchers wrote “Revisiting the NUMEC Affair” for the Bulletin. They contended there was abundant evidence available from declassified documents to support suspicions that at least some of the 337 kg. of radioactive materials that had gone missing from NUMEC in the 1960s from the plant in Apollo had been stolen and taken to the nuclear research reactor in Dimona, Israel. The cited documents also reveal that the FBI, CIA, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and members of the top echelons of the U.S. national security establishment were aware that NUMEC’s founder and president, Zalman Shapiro, not only had ties to Israeli intelligence officers and operatives with science-related job descriptions, but had also allowed them into the NUMEC plant.
Among them was Rafael Eitan, a “chemist” for Israel’s Defense Ministry who also happened to be a former Mossad officer, as well as the handler of naval intelligence spy, Jonathan Pollard, who has been in the news recently. Just how much was already known about Eitan’s role in NUMAC’s “diversion” of nuclear materials to Israel, and the extent of Israeli espionage activities conducted in the U.S. — second only to that of the KGB according to one top-level source quoted by name — is evident from a 1986 article by Washington Post reporter Charles Babcock about the Pollard case.
Grant W. Smith, Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) followed up Gilinsky and Matson’s 2011 disclosures with a report based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other documentary evidence including corporate filings, office diaries and unguarded interviews. The report was published in January 2012 as a book titled, Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of US weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons Program. According to Smith, former CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden claimed that NUMEC was “an Israeli operation from the beginning.”
Gilinksy and Mattson, initially more circumspect in drawing conclusions than Smith — in part because the released documents are highly redacted – credited Smith with having kept up the pressure for the release of more declassified documents. On March 18 the ISCAP released 84 additional pages (PDF) of previously classified documents related to concerns about the illegal diversion of weapons-grade nuclear material from NUMEC to Israel’s nuclear weapons program. The new documents include:
In their most recent article for the Bulletin, Gilinsky and Mattson sum up what the various declassified documents, including those most recently released, confirm about NUMEC’s probable role in providing Israel with highly enriched uranium with which to produce nuclear weapons:
NUMEC’s unexplained losses were a significantly larger proportion of its output of highly enriched uranium than was the case for other firms that dealt with nuclear materials. Sloppy accounting and lax security made the plant easy to rob without detection. NUMEC had commercial relationships with Israel’s defense and nuclear establishments and regularly made sizeable nuclear shipments to Israel, which at that time were not checked by the AEC. NUMEC’s owners and executives had extremely close ties to Israel, including to high Israeli intelligence and nuclear officials. Israel had strong motives to obtain the highly enriched uranium before it was producing enough plutonium for weapons. High-level Israeli intelligence operatives visited the NUMEC plant. Israeli intelligence organizations were used to running logistically complicated, risky operations to support nuclear weapons development, and it would have been very much out of character for them to pass up an opportunity like this.
Why does it matter now?
Despite its continuing denials, it is almost universally recognized that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, and there’s next to zero likelihood Israel will give them up. Does it matter how Israel got its nuclear materials half a century ago, and if so, why?
1. The environmental disaster NUMEC left behind. NUMEC’s carelessness in handling its toxic nuclear waste left behind an environmental disaster that has barely been addressed. Cleaning up the Shallow Land Disposal Area in Parks Township, Pennsylvania, contaminated by radioactive leakage from drums of toxic chemical and radioactive waste dumped by NUMEC and its successors — the Atlantic Richfield Co. and BWX Technologies (also known as Babcock & Wilcox) – may cost as much as half a billion dollars, according to the Army Corps of Engineers and the Wall Street Journal. The cleanup began in 2011 but was halted soon afterwards, and it won’t resume until 2015. In the hands of a new contractor, the cleanup may last a decade, and even then the chances of success are uncertain. Declassification of more NUMEC-related documents could facilitate the cleanup and even reduce its cost by disclosing details about where and how the toxic nuclear materials were discarded.
2. The proposed release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. A CIA damage assessment of the Pollard case was declassified in December 2013. Although Pollard himself was only a small cog in the Israeli espionage network, Smith points out that none of the files handed over by Pollard to his handler, Rafael Eitan, part of the Israeli team visiting NUMEC in 1968, have ever been returned. He recommends that “if President Obama releases Pollard, it should be preceded by the belated return of the massive trove of classified documents he stole for Israel as well as all purloined nuclear materials and technologies.”
3. Undermining assertions of U.S. commitment to transparency in governance. “Nearly 50 years have passed since the events in question,” Gilinsky and Mattson contend. “It is time to level with the public. At this point it is up to the president himself to decide whether to declassify completely the NUMEC documents, all of which are over 30 years old. He should do so. We know that is asking a lot given the president’s sensitivity about anything involving Israel, and especially anything relating to Israeli nuclear weapons. But none of his political concerns outweigh his responsibility to tell the US public the historical truth it deserves to know.”
4. Undermining U.S. commitment to nuclear nonproliferation. “We’ve lost a great deal of respect around the world on the subject of nonproliferation,” Gilinsky told Global Security Newswire (GSN) in an e-mail interview. “The president doesn’t even acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons, which means no one in the government can…Leveling on [this] affair, painful as it might be in the short run, would be a step toward what you might call a reality-based policy in this area.”
5. Future relations with Iran and North Korea. Mattson opined to GSN that disclosure of whatever the U.S. knows about the disappearance and diversion of nuclear materials from NUMEC would be to Washington’s advantage in dealing with Iran and North Korea, irrespective of whether or not Israel was the perpetrator of nuclear theft. In negotiating with Iran and North Korea, “it is important for all sides to come to the table openly and honestly, as they declare their various interests in the deal they are trying to strike.” U.S. credibility would be enhanced by the full declassification of documents from the 1960s and 70s, especially if these documents were to reveal that the U.S. has been frank and forthright about NUMEC. If the U.S. hasn’t been honest up until now, Mattson sees the NUMEC document declassification as an opportunity to “atone for past mistakes and go back to the negotiating table refreshed by the experience” thereby setting an example for states that it accuses of duplicity.
]]>by Derek Davison
Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) are meeting for a third round of negotiations on April 8-9 in Vienna as part of an attempt to reach a final nuclear deal by their self-set July deadline. LobeLog has been
by Derek Davison
Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) are meeting for a third round of negotiations on April 8-9 in Vienna as part of an attempt to reach a final nuclear deal by their self-set July deadline. LobeLog has been charting these talks extensively, especially since the start of talks that led to the November 24, 2013 Joint Plan of Action, but for those who are just beginning to follow this issue or need a refresher, let’s examine some of the details around Iran’s nuclear program and the ongoing international efforts to reach an agreement over its future size and scope.
What are the current talks about?
At stake is the future of Iran’s nuclear program within international nonproliferation safeguards, and the easing or total removal of economic sanctions that have been levied against Iran by the United States, European Union and the United Nations.
Who are the main players?
You can’t spell “Iranian nuclear program” without “Iran,” so we should probably start with them. Iran’s negotiating team is led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who reports to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The final say on foreign policy decisions rests with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and both Rouhani and Zarif must ensure that any deal will be met with Khamenei’s approval.
The Iranians are negotiating with a coalition of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, UK, France, Russia, China) and Germany, which is typically called the P5+1, but is sometimes also called the E3+3 (the three EU members plus the US, Russia, China). The P5+1’s point person for the talks is Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, but the foreign secretaries of the six nations will also have to sign-off on a final deal. The internal cohesion of the P5+1 has been crucial in maintaining sanctions against Iran, and will be tested given the tensions that now exist between Russia and the US/EU over Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea.
Other key players that are not directly involved in the talks include Israel, which claims it’s deeply concerned about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia, which considers a sanctions-free Iran to be a potential rival for regional hegemony, and is worried about what it sees as a major shift in US foreign policy away from Saudi interests.
When did the talks start?
Iran has been negotiating on and off with the European Union (specifically the UK, France, and Germany) and on related but separate issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 2003 under then Presidents Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13). In 2006, the talks were widened to include the US, Russia, and China, though the US refused to fully participate until Iran met certain pre-conditions like an indefinite halt to its uranium enrichment program.
The current round of talks began after Rouhani’s election as president in June 2013; he had run promising to increase the transparency of Iran’s nuclear program in order to convince the P5+1 to draw down its sanctions regime. Iran and the P5+1 met in Geneva in early November, and an interim agreement (with a term of 6 months plus the possibility of renewal), the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), was announced on November 24. Under the terms of the JPA, Iran agreed to substantially slow down its nuclear activity in exchange for partial sanctions relief, and a plan was made for future talks toward a long-term resolution. The JPA went into effect on January 20 of this year, and the first round of talks on a long-term deal between the principal negotiators took place in Vienna from February 18-20, with the second round taking place from March 17-20. See this timeline of diplomatic efforts related to Iran’s nuclear program for more details.
What are the key issues to be negotiated?
Brookings Institution arms control expert Robert Einhorn, who served as Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recently issued a report outlining the remaining challenges in the talks, and highlighting the two biggest. First and most important is the level of uranium enrichment that Iran will be allowed to undertake. “Light water” nuclear reactors (which use water as coolant and to mediate the nuclear reaction) for civilian use need to be fueled with low enriched uranium (LEU), which is uranium that has been modified via centrifuge so that around 5% of its weight is made up of the more radioactive Uranium-235 isotope (less than 1% of naturally occurring uranium is U-235, the rest is the less radioactive U-238). Nuclear weapons require highly enriched uranium, where 85% or more of the uranium is U-235 (uranium enriched below 20% is considered LEU, anything above that is HEU). In order to reduce Iran’s ability to produce HEU, Einhorn says a deal must limit Iran to 2000-6000 centrifuges, which is far below the 10,000 it currently operates and even farther below the 19,000 Iran says it plans to operate once all its centrifuges are in place. The ideal solution from a non-proliferation standpoint would be for Iran to completely give up its enrichment program, but the Iranians have been consistent in saying that they will not do so under any circumstances, and the US has conceded that Iran will continue to enrich uranium under a comprehensive deal.
The other major challenge is the status of a proposed “heavy water” reactor at Arak (around 150 miles southwest of Tehran), which uses deuterium oxide as coolant and mediator rather than water. Iran claims that it plans to use Arak to produce medical isotopes, but because heavy water reactors produce large amounts of plutonium (an alternative to HEU for weapons making) as byproduct, there are fears that Arak could be used to produce fuel for weapons (though Iran denies this and has pledged not to build the kind of facilities that would be necessary to reprocess that plutonium for weapons use). There are ways to modify Arak’s design to produce substantially less plutonium, and some kind of modification will likely be necessary in a final deal.
How did Iran come to have a nuclear program in the first place?
Iran began developing a nuclear program in the 1950s with American assistance, under President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program. This was an effort to head off the possibility of nuclear proliferation by offering American research, infrastructure, and expertise to countries that were interested in developing nuclear programs for peaceful use. Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968, which obliges it not to pursue nuclear weapons. After Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, an American ally, was removed from power by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, all cooperation between Iran and the United States on nuclear power was halted. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became Iran’s new leader after the revolution, showed little interest in the nuclear program, but it did continue. Today, Iran’s primary nuclear facilities include a civilian power plant at Bushehr, four medical reactors at Isfahan, a research reactor at Tehran, and uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow. See this timeline of the Iranian nuclear program for additional details.
So the Iranians are trying to develop nuclear weapons, right?
Well, not so fast. In the 1970s, American intelligence agencies believed that the Shah was interested in developing nuclear weapons, but the revolution interrupted those plans and limited Iran’s access to foreign expertise and material. Iran restarted its nuclear program with the help of a Pakistani scientist named Abdul Qadeer Khan, who sold uranium enrichment technology to several countries in the late 1980s. The consensus of the American intelligence community seems to be that Iran stopped any direct nuclear weapons program in 2003. Since then, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei (Khomeini’s successor) has issued a religious declaration (fatwa) saying that the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam. The former chief of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has also repeatedly said there is “no credible evidence” that Iran has resumed pursuing nuclear weapons and the US intelligence community continues to rule that while Iran is moving towards developing a nuclear weapons capability, it has not yet decided to do so, which is why diplomacy, which can impact Iran’s decision-making process, is so important.
I notice that you didn’t just say “no” there.
Okay, you got me there. Former director ElBaradei’s statements notwithstanding, the IAEA has also consistently said that it does not have enough evidence to rule out the possibility that Iran has been pursuing a weapon. Additionally, while Ayatollah Khamenei has repeatedly denied that Iran seeks a nuclear weapon, he has also said that, should it choose to pursue one, “no power could stop us.” Ultimately, though, what the P5+1 are worried about is Iran’s “breakout capacity,” which is the time it would take Iran to build a weapon if it decided to pursue one. Elements of a final deal that put limits on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and permit intrusive inspections of Iranian nuclear sites would ideally leave Iran with a breakout capacity of at least 6 months, preferably closer to 12.
What are the chances that the talks will succeed?
Any of the remaining obstacles to a comprehensive deal could prove insurmountable, particularly over the issue of how much uranium enrichment Iran will carry out. Khamenei and US President Barack Obama have both previously expressed pessimistic sentiments about the potential for success. However, both Iranian and American officials have recently sounded more optimistic.
Why are the talks important?
A negotiated settlement that allows Iran a limited enrichment capacity with significant inspections and verification requirements is, as Einhorn writes, “not ideal, but better than the alternatives.” If these talks fail, there will be a push for tougher sanctions on Iran, but it is unclear how much more pressure sanctions can bring to bear, and it is even less clear that the P5+1 will hold together to implement tougher sanctions. If harsher sanctions don’t, or can’t, work then limited military action against Iran’s nuclear sites could follow, though experts have explained why that’s the least favorable option. Such an act would end all possibility of negotiations and likely push the Iranians to kick nuclear inspectors out of the country and race toward building a weapon. Even if limited strikes could temporarily slow Iran’s progress toward a weapon in the event that it actually chose to make one, they cannot eliminate the related technical knowledge and expertise that Iran has developed.
These talks will also have longer term implications, particularly in terms of setting a precedent for future such agreements and in terms of Iran’s ability to incorporate itself into the wider international community.
*This post was revised on April 10 to correct presidential terms.
Representatives of Iran and the P5+1 are photographed at the signing ceremony of the Joint Plan of Action, the interim nuclear agreement that was reached in Geneva, Switzerland on November 24, 2013. Credit: Credit: ISNA/Mona Hoobehfekr
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States has ended in an unprecedented failure. On the Palestinian front, the Iranian front and the domestic US front, Netanyahu’s efforts last week ran badly aground. Let’s review the categories.
Iran
Netanyahu himself illustrated his greatest failure: his attempt to [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States has ended in an unprecedented failure. On the Palestinian front, the Iranian front and the domestic US front, Netanyahu’s efforts last week ran badly aground. Let’s review the categories.
Iran
Netanyahu himself illustrated his greatest failure: his attempt to divert the conversation about Iran by making a big show of intercepting a ship carrying rockets, ostensibly, according to Israel, headed for the Gaza Strip. Bemoaning the lack of global outrage that he had hoped would sabotage the talks between Iran and world powers on the nuclear issue, Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet upon his return that: “”The goal of seizing the arms ship was to expose Iran’s true face. I say this in order to bring it to the attention of Ms. Ashton, who is now visiting Tehran, and I wish to ask her whether she asked her hosts about the shipment of weapons to terrorist organizations.”
In fact, there are very serious questions about the incident that are not being raised. It may be best that they’re not, because it is a reflection of the minor impact the incident has thus far had on the talks with Iran. The timing of the Israeli intercept was obviously staged to coincide with Netanyahu’s visit to the US to speak at the annual AIPAC conference and to meet with US President Barack Obama. As Amir Rappaport points out, the operation was being planned for months and was carried out far outside of Israeli waters, so the timing was no accident.
The plan fails in its very conception, though. At no point did Iran agree to stop its support for Hezbollah and Hamas in order to pursue these talks, nor did anyone expect them to. But other questions can be raised here as well. Was this, as Netanyahu alleges, Iran showing its “true face” as it masquerades behind the apparent moderation of Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif or was it, as many observers suspect, an attempt by Iranian hardliners to undermine the efforts of the moderates? Indeed, there is some question as to whether the weapons were even intended for Gaza.
It is also odd that weapons from Syria are brought to Iran to be smuggled all the way back to Gaza; the point of the Iran-Syria connection is for such flows to run in the opposite direction, although this could, perhaps, be explained by the ongoing civil war in Syria. In part, that explanation is connected to increased Israeli surveillance of Syrian munitions. That, however, raises the question of why Iran, knowing how closely Israel is watching Syria, would engage in such an operation now.
There are many questions about this incident, not the least of which is the veracity of Israel’s version of events, absent any proof they have made public about the weapons’ destination; they could have been heading for Hamas, to Islamic Jihad (as Israel claims) in Gaza, to anti-government militias in Egypt, to groups in Sudan… There is a lot here that is unclear at best in the Israeli version of events, although certainly nothing to prove that any part of it is untrue.
But what is clear is that the response from the United States and Europe is considerably less than Netanyahu had hoped for. No one believes this shows Iran’s “true face” because no one ever believed that engagement on the nuclear issue by itself was going to change Iran’s position and policy vis–à–vis Israel. What can do that, as Zarif has strongly indicated, is an agreement that the Palestinians clearly accept. So, where are we with that?
Palestinians and the Kerry peace plan
Netanyahu didn’t have much to say about peace with the Palestinians, but what little he did say was a clear attempt to negate any possibility of success on the part of US Secretary of State John Kerry. His very first remark to the fawning crowd at the AIPAC conference was a greeting “from Jerusalem, the eternal, undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people.” Not surprisingly, this did not sit well outside the hall of sycophants at AIPAC. His only other substantive statement was a call on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” something neither Jews nor Israelis can even agree to a definition of and that everyone knows is a non-starter for Abbas.
This demand is a threadbare attempt to get the Palestinians to acknowledge, before an agreement, that they have no claim to a return of refugees (fair for Israel to try to win in talks if they want, but unreasonable to demand as a precondition, as Israel generally has), that Palestinian citizens of Israel must be content with second-class status and most of all, that the Zionist historical narrative is more legitimate than the Palestinian one. No leader of any people would ever agree to such a thing, and Netanyahu is well aware of this.
But outside of the lock-step supporters of Israel in AIPAC and their fellow travelers to the right of that organization, no one is buying into this demand even though its crucial for Netanyahu. For months now, it has been getting clearer and clearer that Kerry’s efforts were likely to fail and much of what both Netanyahu and Abbas have been doing and saying has been geared toward escaping blame, especially US blame, for this likely failure. Bibi needs the demand for recognition of a “Jewish state” to be seen as reasonable, but he’s not winning the battle.
“The level of mistrust is as large as any level of mistrust I’ve ever seen, on both sides,” Kerry told a House of Representatives Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday. With Netanyahu now back in Israel and Abbas slated to come to Washington next week, this is a clear statement of pessimism from the one man who, whatever the reality of the talks, has insisted on maintaining a show of optimism. The prospect of failure is becoming more certain, but thus far, Netanyahu has failed to gain the upper hand in escaping blame, as Ehud Barak did with Bill Clinton in 2000.
The US domestic audience
On the US front, the situation is unprecedented. The good wishes most US citizens hold for Israel remain steady, indicating the same widespread support for Israel’s security that has always existed. But the war-weary United States is withdrawing into itself and the diminishing support for Israeli policies is a reflection of this. However, that’s far from the only cause of the new situation Israel finds itself in.
Relationships between Israeli leaders and US presidents have varied. Barack Obama is not the first to have a rocky relationship with an Israeli Prime Minister. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush did not always get on well with Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, respectively. On the other hand, Bill Clinton was practically a groupie for Yitzhak Rabin and had a very warm relationship with his political successor, Ehud Barak. Similarly, George W. Bush called Ariel Sharon a mentor, and continued to get along famously with Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert. Yet through all these relationships, bad and good, Israel always maintained warm ties with both major US parties. AIPAC prided itself for decades on its bi-partisan reach.
Netanyahu has severely damaged that bipartisanship. From his deep ideological connection to US neoconservatives, to his barely hidden meddling in US electoral politics, he has alienated Democrats. Those Democrats remain dedicated to Israel’s security, or, in some cases, to AIPAC-directed campaign contributions. But with his repeated attempts to draw the United States into deepening conflict and possibly war with Iran, Netanyahu has forced Democrats to choose between their constituents and AIPAC. That’s a battle AIPAC would never win, but Netanyahu seemed to believe that AIPAC could do anything. For all those who accused John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt of demonizing “Jewish power” in their book on the Israel lobby, it seems it was Netanyahu who imagined an omnipotent lobby for his country in the US and wildly overestimated their power.
While Bibi spoke to AIPAC and other US audiences, article after article — in the Huffington Post, Foreign Policy, the Washington Examiner, Israel’s YNet, and other sites – proclaimed AIPAC’s diminishing influence. It really isn’t surprising. Bibi has tried to increase US involvement in the Middle East at a time when most in the US, despite being willing to continue to fund Israel and help it out at the United Nations, want to reduce our involvement in the region. And, while Bibi can talk the talk of the US right-wing, most Jews in the United States are liberals. With voices who support the rights of Palestinians as equal to Israelis gaining prominence, US Jews are looking for ways to reconcile their liberalism with their support of Israel in a way they have not had to in the past. Bibi is trying to push them back to the old narratives, and they aren’t working.
What if Netanyahu fails?
That’s a reasonable question. Right now, there is no serious challenger to Netanyahu on the horizon, but that can change if his bungling of the US relationship becomes more of a problem for the average Israeli. The challenge could come from the right, as Avigdor Lieberman is trying to position himself to make a run at the Prime Minister’s office. But if failure with the Palestinians and with the US is at issue, Lieberman wouldn’t be the answer, and no one more moderate than Bibi is currently poised to make any kind of challenge.
Still, it is now much more likely that the peace talks are going to collapse at the end of April. Netanyahu won’t be directly blamed by the Obama administration, but if they do think it is his fault they can easily communicate that in Israel and Europe, with profound consequences for Netanyahu. Meanwhile, more and more of Europe is turning against Israel’s increasingly right-wing and rejectionist policies. That could cost Bibi dearly.
Failure might not only harm AIPAC, but it could seriously harm more moderate groups in the US like J Street. If the two-state solution appears unrealistic, J Street will have little to hang their hats on. And without the moderate alternative, US support, apart from the annual military aid, is likely to diminish as well. Unfortunately, without a Palestinian strategy to take advantage of this changing state of affairs (beginning with unifying their body politic), it’s not going to lead to better days. And such does not seem to be forthcoming.
Bibi’s gone back home now. But his trip here was notable for how much was at stake and how badly he did with it.
]]>by Derek Davison
Prominent neoconservative writers Bret Stephens and Reuel Marc Gerecht called for a much tougher approach to talks with Iran over its nuclear program in a debate hosted here by the McCain Institute on March 11, one week before talks aimed at a final deal between Iran and world powers [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
Prominent neoconservative writers Bret Stephens and Reuel Marc Gerecht called for a much tougher approach to talks with Iran over its nuclear program in a debate hosted here by the McCain Institute on March 11, one week before talks aimed at a final deal between Iran and world powers resume in Vienna.
Stephens, the deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, were up against the Brookings Institute’s arms control expert Robert Einhorn who served as a top non-proliferation adviser at the State Department in Obama’s first term and the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sajadpour, both of whom argued that now is the right time to give diplomacy a chance to succeed.
The neoconservative writers hammered the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) in Geneva on November 24, 2014 as a surrender of sanctions for few, if any, Iranian concessions. Gerecht, who wrote in 2002 that an invasion of Iraq and the installation of a democratic government there would “probably” cause regime change in Iran, characterized the difference between those who support the JPA and those who oppose it as all related to a single question: “are you prepared to pre-emptively strike Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon?” Supporters of the JPA, he contended, are not, implying that they’re not tough enough to extract a favorable deal from the Iranians either. Stephens, a supporter of the Iraq War who still insists that the war was based on sound intelligence, took an even harder line against the negotiating process, contending that “the whole strategy of Iran since negotiations began in 2002 has been to delay and delay and delay” in order to continue developing its nuclear program without risking a military response.
On the other side, Einhorn commended the JPA, calling it “a very promising first step that halts movement in Iran’s nuclear program for the first time in twelve years” that also greatly improved access for international monitors, in exchange for relatively light sanctions relief. Sajadpour added that instead of criticizing the JPA for not being “the ideal deal,” opponents “have to look at the reasonable alternatives,” which are not favorable. A harder American line on issues like uranium enrichment, according to Sadjadpour, would also risk splintering the international consensus that has supported the sanctions regime thus far and might embolden Iranian hardliners to stop talking and fully pursue a nuclear weapons program.
The question of reasonable alternatives to the JPA — whether there were any and whether those would have been preferable to the deal that was reached — permeated the discussion. Both Einhorn and Sajadpour stressed the degree to which America must be seen as allowing room for diplomacy to work in order to build international support for tougher actions (whether economic or military) down the road, if needed. Stephens and Gerecht, on the other hand, supported stronger sanctions even at the risk of Russia and China abandoning the P5+1 altogether. When Einhorn pointed out that China is the largest importer of Iranian crude and would undoubtedly increase its imports if they were to pull out of the sanctions coalition, Gerecht countered with the argument that neither Russia nor China’s departure from the coalition would have much impact on the most painful banking sanctions. This assertion, an interesting one given that the Bank of Moscow just agreed to pay a $10 million fine to the Treasury Department for violating sanctions against the Iranian banking industry, was left unchallenged.
The moderate Einhorn did, however, support a general “toughening” of the US negotiating position, proposing that Congress could pass a “prior authorization to use force” resolution to empower President Barack Obama to strike Iran if it violates its obligations. No one mentioned what happened the last time Congress gave a president prior authorization to use military force over a Middle Eastern nation’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program.
Another hotly contested point had to do with the efficacy of international monitoring. Einhorn praised the JPA for its verification provisions and for laying the groundwork for even tougher monitoring in a permanent agreement. He pointed to successes in identifying the facilities at Natanz, Arak, and Fordow as evidence that monitoring and intelligence gathering has worked, while Stephens pointed to America’s failure to predict India’s 1998 nuclear tests as evidence that verification can easily fail. Gerecht argued that Iran will resist more stringent monitoring in a permanent agreement, and warned that the US intelligence community likely has no sources in high positions either in the Iranian government or its nuclear program, and therefore lacks the ability to check what international monitors find.
The debate over monitoring highlighted what seems to be a fundamental flaw in the neoconservative position: by their logic there seems to be no circumstance under which negotiations can be allowed to work. After all, according to their argument the Iranians cannot be trusted, verification does not work, and toughening sanctions is always better than easing sanctions. If there is no way to trust that verification can work, and no way to trust the Iranians themselves, then how can there be a diplomatic solution to this situation? Gerecht’s question about pre-emptive military action could easily be reframed for opponents of the JPA: “are you prepared to ease sanctions on Iran, ever, in exchange for any Iranian concessions?” Are sanctions, and the implicit threat of military action they contain a means to the end of preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon (or rapid breakout capacity), or are they the end in themselves?
The two sides did find common ground in supporting a policy of regime change in Iran, but had drastically different ideas as to implementation. Sajadpour suggested that, if the West pursues policies that cultivate goodwill among Iranians, and especially the Iranian youth, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have no choice but to acquiesce to internal pressure to improve relations. On the other hand Gerecht and Stephens argued that a military strike that drastically set back Iran’s nuclear program would severely damage the regime’s credibility at home, a questionable assumption that has been challenged by moderate Iranian leaders. Einhorn cautioned that there is no way to know how far back a strike could set Iran’s nuclear program, but that it would certainly end any chance of a negotiated nuclear settlement and put Iran inexorably on the path toward developing a nuclear weapon.
]]>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.
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