The election of Hassan Rouhani has split Iranian analysts into three groups: the overly enthusiastic, the destructively pessimistic and the cautiously optimistic. The enthusiasts and the pessimists both present potentially inaccurate analyses of Iran’s current situation, views that could ultimately lead to disappointment and lost opportunities. The clearest path to meaningful change [...]]]>
The election of Hassan Rouhani has split Iranian analysts into three groups: the overly enthusiastic, the destructively pessimistic and the cautiously optimistic. The enthusiasts and the pessimists both present potentially inaccurate analyses of Iran’s current situation, views that could ultimately lead to disappointment and lost opportunities. The clearest path to meaningful change is through cautious optimism.
The enthusiasts see the election itself as an achievement. They advise the West, the US government and the Islamic Republic’s opposition to reward Tehran with new nuclear deals, a temporary freezing of the human rights issue and a suspension of expectations for some time.
Then there are the pessimists, who see Rouhani’s election as a continuation of the status quo; having selected a president from Iran’s ruling group, every proposed change will have to get the supreme leader’s approval. The pessimists believe that though the president’s appearance, literature and tone may have changed, the presidency won’t allow Rouhani to solve many of the crises the Islamic Republic faces, and that his background doesn’t lend itself to trailblazing or being all that different from Iran’s ruling class.
But the third group, the cautiously optimistic, sees Rouhani’s election as a check on Iran’s destructive internal and international policies. This check is an important development, no doubt, but this group is careful not to portray Rouhani as something he is not, nor to admire him for work he hasn’t yet done. This cautious group even includes individuals who played a serious role in Rouhani’s June 14 presidential victory.
Many reformists and academic figures I’ve spoken to over the past two weeks share one sentiment: “Don’t get too excited by the election of Rouhani.” They are, however, optimistic that Rouhani is seriously committed and dedicated to change, and that his ambitious personality will push him toward success. They hope he will use his intelligence, background and experience to project the image of a competent and effective president.
The overly enthusiastic individuals pushing for serious and immediate Western policy changes, simply because of Rouhani’s election, are moving in a direction many pro-democracy supporters — both inside and outside the country, including those hoping for Rouhani to succeed — find terrifying. They worry that sudden changes — even in tone and language — might cripple Rouhani and his policies; an outright removal of the dangers facing Iran could lead him to disregard the serious and practical efforts required from Tehran to mend relations with the international community, the region and its people.
The enthusiasts forget that despite Rouhani’s rare shift — considering his background and historical partisan affiliations – toward the reformists and those pushing for change in Iran, he never went beyond generalities. During his campaign, Rouhani made maximum use of his anonymity among the public. Despite enormous curiosity and eagerness about the individuals he intends to appoint to his administration and about the details of his campaign promise to improve civil and political liberties, he either kept silent or stayed away from specifics. This may work during an election campaign in Iran, where populism can offer a candidate without a proven track record a chance at success, particularly if he leans toward a widely popular sentiment. But now that Rouhani is selecting his cabinet, building his management team and preparing for his inauguration, he must know that the Iranian people — and those keeping an eye on developments in Iran — are waiting to see him take practical and meaningful steps.
Being cautious about Rouhani’s actions will more clearly define the present climate both inside and outside Iran. It will highlight the public disappointment and the waning trust and patience, clarifying for him that immediate and serious action is needed, not just dime-a-dozen sermons. Caution will draw Rouhani out of his victory bubble and generate sufficient domestic and international pressure to effect changes in tune with the demands of the Iranian people and the international community.
As many activists inside Iran have told me, social and political pressure on Rouhani can marginalize the extremists. Silence and the celebration of Rouhani’s very election as president can actually leave him powerless to create change. With Rouhani’s election alone, Iran’s power centers have not yet lost their power; they’re just watching the game from the sidelines, if not from the center, for now. If the supporters of change grow complacent, it won’t be hard for the conservatives to reclaim their stranglehold on power.
But a pessimistic approach can also overlook the very real opportunities Rouhani’s election can create for internal and international changes. Yes, Rouhani hasn’t done anything yet. It’s not clear what path he will take for Iran. But his agenda received 18 million votes from people demanding a lifting of the sanctions regime, a resolution to Iran’s nuclear crisis and respect for their civil, political and citizen rights. Rouhani has yet to act, but as one pro-democracy academic in Tehran told me, “He hasn’t disappointed his voters yet, either.” Ignoring the power of public opinion and international civil society in Iran can impede the serious prospect for change.
Optimism, moderated by serious caution, could be a constructive approach to shaping realistic policy and a series of demand-based campaigns for these extremely ambiguous and un-transparent times. Stating demands to Rouhani both domestically and internationally and showing that with every practical step from Tehran, the Iranian and international communities — including civil society — will also take a step forward, can effect meaningful change. More than anyone, it’s Rouhani who must build trust, take positive steps and show that he is an ambassador of reform, rationality and moderation.
*The Farsi version of this piece was published on Iran Wire
– Photo Credit: Amir Kholousi
]]>via IPS News
A review of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus [...]]]>
via IPS News
A review of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Metropolitan Books, 2013)
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony.
Both wrote memoranda in 2003 urging the George W. Bush administration to take the Iranian “roadmap” proposal for bilateral negotiations seriously but found policymakers either uninterested or powerless to influence the decision. Hillary Mann Leverett even has a connection with the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), having interned with that lobby group as a youth.
After leaving the U.S. government in disagreement with U.S. policy toward Iran, the Leveretts did not follow the normal pattern of settling into the jobs where they would support the broad outlines of the U.S. role in world politics in return for comfortable incomes and continued access to power.
Instead, they have chosen to take a firm stand in opposition to U.S. policy toward Iran, criticising the policy of the Barack Obama administration as far more aggressive than is generally recognised. They went even farther, however, contesting the consensus view in Washington among policy wonks, news media and Iran human rights activists that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in June 2009 was fraudulent.
The Leveretts’ uncompromising posture toward the policymaking system and those outside the government who support U.S. policy has made them extremely unpopular in Washington foreign policy elite circles. After talking to some of their antagonists, The New Republic even passed on the rumor that the Leveretts had become shills for oil companies and others who wanted to do business with Iran.
The problem for the establishment, however, is that they turned out to be immune to the blandishments that normally keep former officials either safely supportive or quiet on national security issues that call for heated debate.
In “Going to Tehran”, the Leveretts elaborate on the contrarian analysis they have been making on their blog (formerly “The Race for Iran” and now “Going to Tehran”) They take to task those supporting U.S. systematic pressures on Iran for substituting wishful thinking that most Iranians long for secular democracy, and offer a hard analysis of the history of the Iranian revolution.
In an analysis of the roots of the legitimacy of the Islamic regime, they point to evidence that the single most important factor that swept the Khomeini movement into power in 1979 was “the Shah’s indifference to the religious sensibilities of Iranians”. That point, which conflicts with just about everything that has appeared in the mass media on Iran for decades, certainly has far-reaching analytical significance.
The Leveretts’ 56-page review of the evidence regarding the legitimacy of the 2009 election emphasises polls done by U.S.-based Terror Free Tomorrow and World Public Opinon and Canadian-based Globe Scan and 10 surveys by the University of Tehran. All of the polls were consistent with one another and with official election data on both a wide margin of victory by Ahmadinejad and turnout rates.
The Leveretts also point out that the leading opposition candidate, Hossein Mir Mousavi, did not produce “a single one of his 40,676 observers to claim that the count at his or her station had been incorrect, and none came forward independently”.
“Going to Tehran” has chapters analysing Iran’s “Grand Strategy” and on the role of negotiating with the United States that debunk much of which passes for expert opinion in Washington’s think tank world. They view Iran’s nuclear programme as aimed at achieving the same status as Japan, Canada and other “threshold nuclear states” which have the capability to become nuclear powers but forego that option.
The Leveretts also point out that it is a status that is not forbidden by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – much to the chagrin of the United States and its anti-Iran allies.
In a later chapter, they allude briefly to what is surely the best-kept secret about the Iranian nuclear programme and Iranian foreign policy: the Iranian leadership’s calculation that the enrichment programme is the only incentive the United States has to reach a strategic accommodation with Tehran. That one fact helps to explain most of the twists and turns in Iran’s nuclear programme and its nuclear diplomacy over the past decade.
One of the propaganda themes most popular inside the Washington beltway is that the Islamic regime in Iran cannot negotiate seriously with the United States because the survival of the regime depends on hostility toward the United States.
The Leveretts debunk that notion by detailing a series of episodes beginning with President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s effort to improve relations in 1991 and again in 1995 and Iran’s offer to cooperate against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and, more generally after 9/11, about which Hillary Mann Leverett had personal experience.
Finally, they provide the most detailed analysis available on the 2003 Iranian proposal for a “roadmap” for negotiations with the United States, which the Bush administration gave the back of its hand.
The central message of “Going to Tehran” is that the United States has been unwilling to let go of the demand for Iran’s subordination to dominant U.S. power in the region. The Leveretts identify the decisive turning point in the U.S. “quest for dominance in the Middle East” as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which they say “liberated the United States from balance of power constraints”.
They cite the recollection of senior advisers to Secretary of State James Baker that the George H. W. Bush administration considered engagement with Iran as part of a post-Gulf War strategy but decided in the aftermath of the Soviet adversary’s disappearance that “it didn’t need to”.
Subsequent U.S. policy in the region, including what former national security adviser Bent Scowcroft called “the nutty idea” of “dual containment” of Iraq and Iran, they argue, has flowed from the new incentive for Washington to maintain and enhance its dominance in the Middle East.
The authors offer a succinct analysis of the Clinton administration’s regional and Iran policies as precursors to Bush’s Iraq War and Iran regime change policy. Their account suggests that the role of Republican neoconservatives in those policies should not be exaggerated, and that more fundamental political-institutional interests were already pushing the U.S. national security state in that direction before 2001.
They analyse the Bush administration’s flirtation with regime change and the Obama administration’s less-than-half-hearted diplomatic engagement with Iran as both motivated by a refusal to budge from a stance of maintaining the status quo of U.S.-Israeli hegemony.
Consistent with but going beyond the Leveretts’ analysis is the Bush conviction that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq had shaken the Iranians, and that there was no need to make the slightest concession to the regime. The Obama administration has apparently fallen into the same conceptual trap, believing that the United States and its allies have Iran by the throat because of its “crippling sanctions”.
Thanks to the Leveretts, opponents of U.S. policies of domination and intervention in the Middle East have a new and rich source of analysis to argue against those policies more effectively.
*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Photo: Tehran skyline in Iran.
]]>Both Iran and the United States are playing an extremely dangerous game based on misperceptions. Each side seems to be misreading the strength and resolve of the other. In this game of chicken, small errors in [...]]]>
]]>Both Iran and the United States are playing an extremely dangerous game based on misperceptions. Each side seems to be misreading the strength and resolve of the other. In this game of chicken, small errors in judgment can result in military confrontation. And in game theory, the opponent that seems “irrational” or “crazy” can win. That perception in Tehran could heighten the danger.
For the Islamic Republic, this has been the underpinning of its approach since Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency in 2005. It is also one reason why the Iranian system did not try to contain him until recently. During my tenure at the State Department, it was unmistakable that Ahmadinejad’s image of being ideological and seeking to drive Iran into a war to expedite the Hidden Imam’s return had crystallized within the Washington policy-making community. Few could understand why the Islamic Republic did not contain him to the degree that it could, given how fragile the U.S.-Iran impasse had become.
Iran knows that it is playing a risky game, but its self-confidence vis-à-vis the United States has grown since it survived what it saw as eight years of antagonism and confrontation from the George W. Bush administration. Adding to that confidence is the widespread regional upheaval. Thus, Tehran will likely continue waiting for what it perceives as appropriate U.S. moves toward dialogue. These misperceptions and miscalculations will likely prevent the Iranian government from backing down in the current standoff because it believes that, if Iran does not give up, geopolitical realities will cause America to change course at some point in the foreseeable future.
While serving in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs, I learned the 10 percent [...]]]>
While serving in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs, I learned the 10 percent rule: intelligence is meant to make up approximately 10 percent of the overall information used to analyze strategic issues. The remaining 90 percent consists of embassy reporting and unclassified, open-source information.
As a whole, this symbiotic process is meant to provide a balanced, broader context to policymakers. Intelligence is supposed to be the missing piece of the puzzle — not the only piece. Overreliance on intelligence to support key policy decisions results in skewed or incomplete analysis that lacks the fuller context needed for sound decision-making. As this information vacuum grows over time, so too does the likelihood of misperceptions, miscalculations and dangerous mistakes.
Intelligence is not a substitute for the critical work of diplomats on the ground — and perhaps no foreign policy issue demonstrates this more forcefully than Iran. Simply put, a vital national security process has been broken for over three decades, and American politicians are exacerbating rather than repairing it.
Read more.
]]>The article is a badly organized stream-of-consciousness collage written from an ossified Washingtonian narrative that offers very little, if any, fresh input on actual policy. It is really far more emblematic of the collapse of U.S. regional strategy as opposed to being a new course. And although Stephen Walt has already done a masterful job at debunking the faulty logic of the article in Foreign Policy, it is also useful to consider a few points concerning the overall U.S.-Iran relationship, for they are often either taken for granted from both critics and advocates of current U.S. policy towards Iran, or confused altogether – hence why U.S. policy towards Iran has never really succeeded.
…containment [sanctions and military posturing] and the use of military force are not opposing perspectives but two faces of the same policy, viewpoints that both lie along a continuum principally rooted in hostility. Since 1979, American policy toward Iran has oscillated between these two points, usually landing somewhere in the ambiguous middle. During the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War, the United States actually intervened militarily against Iran. In the war’s aftermath, the Clinton administration employed a dual containment approach, imposing stringent trade and financial sanctions on both Iran and Iraq. Yet whatever its varying strategy — “pure” containment, the use of military force, or the ambiguous middle — American actions have failed to deter Iran from pursuing what it has deemed to be its justifiable policies, including its nuclear program.
In other words, from imposing sanctions, threatening the use of force, or actually using force, the U.S. has utilized all of these policy tools against Iran and none succeeded. Again, these are not individual separate policies, but tactical subsidiaries that comprise one overall strategy, characterized by hostility towards the said country. After 32 years of the same policy of sanctions/threats of war/intervention, one would think that the mainstream U.S. punditry would have fresh approaches, but if Pollack and Takeyh are in any way representative, the poverty of ideas is what currently reigns.
Moreover, democracy, as the adage goes, is not only a messy process, but also a long-drown out evolution, filled with uncertainty and always susceptible to regression. Most importantly, it is ultimately an affair between two actors: the state and its civil society. In Iran’s case, the most salient example of this was in the 1990s. While the U.S. still kept the sanctions regimen upon Iran and even stopped all Iran-U.S. trade, there was a lessening of tension between both countries (i.e. an end to the talk of regime change and virtually no interference in Iranian domestic affairs) which slowly helped the reformists to attain power in 1997. And while the tenure of the reformists was riddled with inaction and tepidness, in many aspects, the press laws, social constrictions, and the overall political space became relatively relaxed. It was only until the invasion of Afghanistan, the axis of evil premise, the Iraq imbroglio, and most consequently, the collapse of the nescient post 9/11 Iran-U.S. regional cooperation that gave way to the rise of the Iranian neo-conservatives.
The [Obama] administration started out, properly, by offering to repair relations through a process of engagement. When Tehran rebuffed these overtures, Washington switched over to the path of pressure…
Yet, in the next paragraph they admit that there was very little authentic engagement that differed from the Bush years:
In truth, Obama’s approach to Iran was another variant of the basic strategy embraced by the George W. Bush administration – a carrot-and-stick policy designed to create a combination of incentives and disincentives which would convince the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear program (and hopefully its support for terrorism and other anti-status quo gambits).
This last statement by Pollack and Takeyh is accurate, but why then construct a supposed ‘new’ Obama “outreach” when essentially the Bush approach never changed?
Equally disingenuous is Pollack and Takeyh’s next assertion that, “… Iran…, refus[es] to consider any limits on its nuclear program.” However, with his recent trip to the U.S., Iranian President Ahmadinejad explicitly said that given a deal with the U.S., Iran would halt enrichment at 20%. This was buttressed by the proposal of Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, that Iran would allow international inspectors full supervision over the country’s nuclear activities for the next five years – a major concession of sovereignty.
There is much more to consider regarding the contours of this complex interaction between the U.S. and Iran and equally charged critiques do exist on the Iranian side. And unfortunately, most of the much-needed nuance gets subsumed under a simplistic wrong vs. right or good vs. evil narrative that exists in both capitals. Yet, when one sums up both the failed policies that the U.S. and its punditry has pushed on Iran, along with diminishing American influence in the region, a troubled economy at home, economic and strategic challenges on the Iranian side, and the ostensive merging of key areas of interests with Iran and the U.S., one wonders how long the narrative fostered by Pollack and Takeyh will hold.
]]>