via IPS News
In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.
“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to [...]]]>
via IPS News
In the wake of a renewed diplomatic push on the Iranian nuclear front, shared interests in Iran’s backyard could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to work toward overcoming decades of hostility.
“I think that if Iran and the United States are able to overcome their differences regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, if there begins to be some progress in that regard, then I do see opportunities for dialogue and cooperation on a broader range of issues, including my issues, which is to say Afghanistan,” Ambassador James F. Dobbins, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told IPS at a briefing here Monday.
This summer’s election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric with centrist and reformist backing as well as close ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has been followed by signals that Iran may be positioning itself to agree to a deal over its controversial nuclear programme.
Rouhani’s appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to oversee Iran’s nuclear dossier has been received positively here by leading foreign policy elites who consider Zarif a worthy negotiating partner.
The Western-educated former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations is slotted to meet with his British counterpart William Hague at the U.N. General Assembly later this month, which could lead to a resumption of diplomatic ties that were halted following a 2011 storming of the British embassy in Tehran by a group of protestors.
Dobbins, who worked closely with Zarif in 2001 after being appointed by the George W. Bush administration to aid the establishment of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, told IPS that “Iran was quite helpful” with the task.
“I think it’s unfortunate that our cooperation, which was, I think, genuine and important back in 2001, wasn’t able to be sustained,” added Dobbins.
The U.S. halted official moves toward further cooperation with Iran following a 2002 speech by Bush that categorised Iran as part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and North Korea.
While President Barack Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009 indicated a move away from Bush-era rhetoric on the Middle East, the U.S.’s Iran policy has remained sanctions-centric – a main point of contention for Iran during last year’s nuclear talks.
Positive signs from both sides
But a recent string of events, which continued even as the U.S. seemed to be positioning itself to strike Iranian ally Syria, have led to speculation that the long-time adversaries may be edging toward direct talks, though the White House denied speculation that this could take place at the U.N. General Assembly.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham also verified the exchange but denied speculation that Syria was a subject.
“Obama’s letter was received, but it was not about Syria and it was a congratulation letter (to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani) whose response was sent,” Afkham told reporters in Tehran in comments posted on the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
That both leaders have publicly acknowledged such rare contact is an important development in and of itself, according to Robert E. Hunter, who served on the National Security Council staff throughout the Jimmy Carter administration.
“This is an effort as much as anything to test the waters in domestic American politics regarding direct talks, regarding the possibility of seeing whether something more productive can be done than in the past. And except out of Israel, I haven’t seen a lot of powerful protest,” Hunter told IPS.
“The Iranians have already backed off on the stuff about the Holocaust by saying it was that ‘other guy’. Now, and this is a reach, but keep in mind that as the slogan goes, the road between Tehran and Washington runs through Jerusalem,” said Hunter, who was U.S. ambassador to NATO (1993-98).
“A serious improvement of U.S.-Iran relations also requires Iran to do things in regard to Israel that will reduce Israel’s anxiety about Iranian intentions on the nuclear front, and on Hezbollah,” he said.
Hunter added that “compatible interests” between the two countries, including security and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom of shipping in the vital oil transport route, the Strait of Hormuz, could also pave the way to improved relations.
A shift in Iran
Even Khamenei, who has always been deeply suspicious of U.S. policy toward Iran, has given permission for Rouhani to enter into direct talks with the U.S., according to an op-ed published by Project Syndicate and written by former Iranian nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian.
During a meeting Monday with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei also said he was “not opposed to correct diplomacy” and believes in “heroic flexibility”, according to an Al-Monitor translation.
Adding to the eyebrow-raising remarks was Khamenei’s echoing of earlier comments by Rouhani that the IRGC does not need to have a direct hand in politics.
“It is not necessary for it to act as a guard in the political scene, but it should know the political scene,” said Khamenei, who has nurtured years of close relations with the powerful branch of Iran’s military.
Iran sends out feelers
On Sept. 12, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation Ali Akbar Salehi announced that Iran had reduced its stockpile of 20 percent low enriched uranium by converting it into fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).
This was described as “misleading” by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) based on how little LEU Iran had reportedly converted to fuel.
“As such, this action cannot be seen as a significant confidence building measure,” argued ISIS in a press release.
But Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (2000 to 2005), called this “an example of all-too-prevalent reductionism that seeks to fold political and psychological questions into technical ones.”
“Confidence-building measures can mean many things, but in general they have at least as much to do with perceptions and intentions as they do with gauging physical steps against some technical yardstick,” Pillar told IPS.
“Confidence-building measures…are gestures of goodwill and intent. They are not walls against a possible future ‘break-out’. If they were, they would not be confidence-building measures; they would be a solving of the whole problem,” he said.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Mehdi Ghasemi
]]>Notice the use of “nuclearizing” [...]]]>
The RAND Corporation has just released a report providing policy options for dealing with an Iran that is on the “nuclear threshold”. I haven’t read all of it yet, but following is a brief summary. I will add commentary and others analyses as they become available.
Notice the use of “nuclearizing” instead of “nuclear” in the title. That’s because authors James Dobbins, Alireza Nader, Dalia Dassa Kaye and Frederic Wehrey agree that it’s “not inevitable that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons or that it will gain the capacity to quickly produce them.” Still, they say the U.S. needs to reexamine options for dealing with an Iran that is working towards nuclear capability.
Many analysts will likely point out that the bulk of the study recommends more of the same with regard to current U.S. objectives and tactics:
The long-term objective should be to bring Iran fully into compliance with the NPT. The short-term objective should be to halt the Iranian program short of weaponization. Achievement of both objectives will require the deft employment of carrots and sticks.
Interestingly, “regime change” is referred to as the “best—maybe the only—path to achieving all three main U.S. objectives” for “restraining Iran’s external behavior, moderating its domestic politics, and reversing its nuclear weapon program.”
Included in the study is an analysis of the instruments that are currently available for policymakers. The pros and cons of diplomacy, economic sanctions, military and covert action and the various elements of soft power are examined as well. The thesis of the study is that that nothing should be used in isolation:
Pure engagement will get nowhere with the current Iranian regime. Containment constrains only Iran’s external behavior. Preemption deals only with the nuclear issue, and then only temporarily, while making progress toward the other two objectives more difficult. Deterrence is an appropriate complement to containment but, again, affects only Iran’s external behavior. Neither normalization nor regime change is an attainable short-term objective.
Containment is recommended as the base of all policy moves, accompanied by engagement only to the extent that it guards against potential clashes. Diplomacy, the authors argue, is “unlikely to yield substantial breakthroughs as long as the current Iranian leadership remains in power.” However, they reiterate Admiral Mullen’s recommendation that the U.S. open “reliable channels of communication” with Iran “in order to garner information, signal warnings, avoid unintended conflict, and be positioned to move on openings toward accord when and if one arises.”
Perhaps as an indirect reference to the Mujahedin-e Khalq’s (MEK, PMOI, MKO) ongoing lobbying campaign in Washington, the authors warn against the U.S. supporting “separatist elements and extremist groups, whom the vast bulk of the Iranian people reject”. (In 2009 the RAND Corporation produced a report devoted exclusively to the MEK “policy conundrum”.) Here the authors argue that covert and material support for any opposition group should also be avoided:
The MKO, still regarded by the United States (as well as Iran) as a terrorist organization, is widely disliked in Iran because of the support it received from and provided to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. U.S. support for the Green Movement will also result in it losing credibility, especially because the regime portrays it as a fifth column beholden to U.S. and Israeli interests. Even Iranians who oppose the regime might resent any sort of material U.S. support for Iranian opposition groups.
After reiterating the fact that even Iran’s reformers are unwilling to forgo their right to nuclear enrichment, the authors say it’s still possible to dissuade Iran from building nuclear weapons.
A “robust sanctions regime” is also endorsed even though the authors concede that sanctions have not changed Iranian policies.
]]>He said (my emphasis):
…[W]e have yet to see any signs that the tyrants of Tehran are reconsidering their pursuit of nuclear weapons. The only time that Iran suspended its nuclear program was for a brief period in 2003 when the regime believed it faced a credible threat of military action against it. And the simple paradox is this: if the international community, led by the United States, hopes to stop Iran’s nuclear program without resorting to military action, it will have to convince Iran that it is prepared to take such action. Containment will not work against Iran. It won’t work with a brazen regime that accuses America of bombing its own cities on 9/11, openly calls for Israel’s annihilation, and is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.
What Netanyahu chose to leave out of his cursory summary of recent U.S./Israel/Iran relations is that, as Stephen Walt reminded us earlier this week, in 2003, Iran sent a letter (PDF) to the Bush administration offering a grand bargain which included a deal on Iran’s nuclear program and an end to Iranian support of Hezbollah militants and Hamas. (IPS’s Gareth Porter reported on the offer, and the brusque rejection it received from the Bush administration.)
While it’s impossible to determine whether the Iranians would have followed through on their offer, the lack of an Iran-strategy which could capitalize on Iranian offers of cooperation (even if out of concern of a military attack) is still evident, seven years later, in Netanyahu’s speech. Indeed, in light of the passed up opportunity in 2003, Netanyahu’s speech might be interpreted as promoting a military attack instead of the threat of a military strike.
Netanyahu suggests that “containment will not work” against the “tyrants of Tehran” and that Iran will only respond to the threat of force. But the passed up opportunities for rapprochement–a series of Iranian attempts at outreach have been cataloged by Ambassador James Dobbins–tells a different story with doesn’t fit as neatly with Netanyahu’s generalizations and stereotypes of Iranian leadership or their behavior.
]]>The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who [...]]]>
The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who called the allegation defamation even as he admitted it was true.
But what exactly does the exchange of cash mean?
Iran has long been involved in post-Taliban Afghanistan. As Amb. James Dobbins recounts in his section of the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Iran Primer, which was also published at Tehran Bureau, Iran’s relationship with the Northern Alliance allowed the December 2001 Bonn Conference to end successfully with the creation of an Afghani government. It was also Iran, says Dobbins, who represented the U.S. at the conference, and suggested adding language about elections to the interim Afghan constitution created in Bonn.
Most analysts seem to agree that the “bags of cash” pseudo-scandal only reinforces the notion that Iran and the U.S. share an interest in a stable Afghanistan, or at worst, that the cash handed over pales in comparison to what the U.S. throws around with Karzai unlikely to be beholden to Iranian demands.
“Worries about geopolitical bogeymen can overwhelm good sense,” writes Foreign Policy‘s Steve LeVine on his blog about oil geopolitics. “Just who is Tehran endangering by keeping Karzai lubricated with pocket change? For one, the fellows U.S. troops are fighting: the Taliban.”
“Today’s alarmism is partly over Karzai’s use of some of the Iran money to buy off Taliban leaders. To which one can rightly reply, So what? The strategic payoff is how power operates in Afghanistan,” he adds.
Michigan professor Juan Cole blogs that the revelation underscores several realities, among them “that the US and Iran are de facto allies in Afghanistan (in fact both of them are deeply opposed to the Taliban and their backers among hard line cells of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence).”
“US military spokesmen have sometimes attempted to make a case that Iran is helping the hyper-Sunni, Shiite-killing, anti-Karzai Taliban, which is not very likely to be true or at least not on a significant scale,” he continues. “The revelations of Tehran’s support for Karzai give credence to Iranian officials’ claims of having been helpful to NATO, since they both want Karzai to succeed.”
Even Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, doesn’t think the revelation is a big deal, despite underscoring the Karzai’s “venality”: “On the bright side, the Iranian money probably doesn’t influence Mr. Karzai’s policy or Afghan actions any more than, say, our money does,” she writes on a New York Times online symposium on the subject. “The Afghan president has always had a ‘strategy of tactics,’ playing one powerbroker off against another to make sure he stays afloat.”
Thought she concludes that the money might be intended to hasten a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Marlowe acknowledges the ‘bags of money’ don’t pose a great threat to the United States: “The bogyman of Iranian influence in Afghanistan is overhyped. The Iranians have every interest in a relatively stable neighbor.”
This is just about the same view as neoconservative Council on Foreign Relations scholar Max Boot, who writes in Commentary: “These cash payments hardly mean that Karzai is a dupe of Iran. He gets much more money and support from the U.S. than from the Iranians, and he knows that.”
“In a way, what the Iranians are doing, while undoubtedly cynical, is not that far removed from conventional foreign-aid programs run by the U.S., Britain, and other powers that also seek to curry influence with their donations,” Boot notes. He does, however, have concerns that the Iran-Karzai relationship is an indication of what is to come for Afghanistan should the U.S. “leave prematurely.”
So there you have it. Not much on the left, not much on the right. The “bags of cash” scandal has ended up being little more than the rare confirmation of business as usual.
]]>