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.
]]>via IPS News
Thirty-five years ago today, millions of Iranians embraced a religious leader promising freedom from a corrupt monarchy and national independence. Now many want a better standard of living and improved civil rights.
“Living standards are 50 percent higher today than they were before the revolution, [...]]]>
via IPS News
Thirty-five years ago today, millions of Iranians embraced a religious leader promising freedom from a corrupt monarchy and national independence. Now many want a better standard of living and improved civil rights.
“Living standards are 50 percent higher today than they were before the revolution, but so are expectations, which is why the average person believes they had a better time before the revolution,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist who regularly visits Iran.
After years of sanctions targeting Iran’s Central Bank and integral oil revenue, and government mismanagement of funds, the country is financially devastated, with a depleted budget and unemployment above 14 percent (25 percent for youth).
“Early on, revolutionaries focused their attention on the provision of health, education, and infrastructure [electricity, clean water, and roads] for underprivileged areas,” the Virginia Tech professor told IPS.
“These developments have helped move large sections of the poor into the middle class and a modern life style,” he said.
Today, citizens from that expanding middle class and across Iranian society — now more educated than ever — desire better social and civil freedoms in addition to improved work opportunities.
“The Iranian president [Hassan Rouhani] has released a citizen bill of rights and one positive thing he did is put this out there and ask for comments, but it really falls short on women’s rights and the rights of minorities,” said Sussan Tahmasebi, an Iranian women’s rights activist and the co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), an NGO dedicated to women’s rights.
Tahmasebi, who lived and worked in Iran from 1999-2010, also decried the continued imprisonment of student activists and reformist leaders, as well as Iran’s high rate of executions, which have increased in recent months.
“Iranians want to live in an environment that’s safe, where the law is there to protect them rather than punish them,” she told IPS.
Still, Tahmasebi acknowledges that the Rouhani government’s top agenda items are resolving the nuclear issue and improving Iran’s economy.
“Once he has made serious progress at the international level, he will have more clout to push for more controversial issues at home,” she said.
Iran’s ruling elite has meanwhile experienced a major overhaul since the June 2013 presidential election of Rouhani, a centrist cleric promising “hope,” “prudence” and “moderation.”
While Rouhani’s election would have been unlikely without the backing of reformist and centrist leaders, he must now maintain their support while also dealing with hardliners eager to regain their upper hand in politics.
Iran is currently implementing the first-phase “Joint Plan of Action”, a deal achieved with world powers known as the P5+1 in Geneva on Nov. 24, 2013. Talks for a comprehensive solution to the nuclear issue are set to begin in Vienna on Feb. 18.
Meanwhile, some of Iran’s most stalwart revolutionaries have raised the volume on their criticism of the Rouhani government’s handling of the nuclear issue.
Members of the Revolutionary Guard, a powerful paramilitary unit, and several parliamentarians claim that Rouhani has given much more than Iran has received in negotiations.
On Tuesday, anniversary commemoration rallies attended by millions in Tehran, according to state media, featured banners and posters responding to a Barack Obama administration mantra on Iran: “all options are on the table,” a reference to military force.
“We are eager for all options on the table,” read some of the placards.
Marchers also reportedly shouted an Iranian revolutionary mantra, “Death to America,” while others added, “Death to [Wendy] Sherman,” the U.S.’s lead negotiator and under secretary of state for political affairs.
But despite domestic criticism, the Rouhani administration enjoys the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who has repeatedly urged unity and faith in the government.
“Considering the fact that it is only a few months [since] the administration has taken charge of the country, we should give executive officials time so that, by Allah’s favour, they can move things forward in a firm and powerful way,” said the Grand Ayatollah in a Feb. 9 speech to air force commanders posted on his website.
“We should not allow the enemies’ agents inside the country to take advantage of weak points and to create disorder,” he added.
Since last week, Iranian news outlets have been featuring stories on Iran’s military, showcasing comments by commanders stressing Iran’s preparedness to respond to military threats, and military weapons tests, such as the test-firing of domestically made missiles on Monday.
In a speech celebrating the revolution on Tuesday morning to a rally at Tehran’s Freedom Square, Rouhani declared, “Today, if any side plans to launch aggression against Iran, it should know that the Iranian nation will stand against aggressors with its full might and make them sorry,” according to the Iranian Student News Agency.
The president also emphasised Iran’s willingness to engage in “fair” and “constructive” talks on the nuclear issue.
“Our negotiations with the P5+1 have all been based on Iranians’ peace-seeking nature,” he said.
“We wanted to convey the Leader’s Fatwa [a religious decree against the creation of nuclear weapons] to the whole world during the negotiations and help them understand the Iranophobia project is a big lie,” stated Rouhani.
“While negotiating with the world powers, we want to say sanctions against Iranians are cruel and inhuman,” he added.
In Washington on Monday, a former hostage from Iran’s seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, John Limbert, noted at a Wilson Center event that some Iranian participants in that divisive event, “now older and wiser”, joined reformist administrations in Iran.
Limbert, a historian who speaks fluent Persian, added that the recent opening of the embassy to the public “may be symbolic of larger changes in the Islamic Republic’s relations with the rest of the world, especially with the U.S.”
“Both sides, after 34 years, have made a very startling discovery, that diplomacy — long-neglected tools of listening, of seeking small areas of agreement, of careful choice of words — can actually accomplish more than shouting insults, making threats and the wonderful self-satisfaction of always being right,” he said.
Photo: Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani greets a rally in commemoration of the Islamic Republic’s 35th anniversary of its 1979 revolution in Tehran, Iran on Feb. 11, 2013. Credit: ISNA/Hamid Forootan
]]>via IPS News
For Washington, obsessed with matters Iranian, it may be hard to accept a simple fact: Iran’s Jun. 14 presidential election is an Iranian event. If we attempt to make it about us, we will find ourselves on the same road that has previously led to [...]]]>
For Washington, obsessed with matters Iranian, it may be hard to accept a simple fact: Iran’s Jun. 14 presidential election is an Iranian event. If we attempt to make it about us, we will find ourselves on the same road that has previously led to multiple failures: Iran-contra; “goodwill begets goodwill”; and a non-existent two-track policy.
In other words, we will continue the futility of the last three decades when we thought we could pick winners and losers in Iran’s elections or become involved in the country’s internal politics. If we do the same now, we will again get tied up in knots of our own bad assumptions and uninformed decisions.
So what, if anything, should the United States do and say about Iran’s election?
First, we should shut up about everything but the basics and stick to the universal principles of good government.
We should not help the Islamic Republic make the election about us.
The ideologues in Tehran would love to paint a vote for this or that candidate as a slap in the face to “world arrogance” (the U.S.), or to portray a candidate who advocates rationality as an U.S. agent.
Second, if we must say something about the election, we should say as little as possible and choose our words cautiously.
To begin with the obvious, the election will give Washington an opportunity simply because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will no longer be in office.
As long as he was, his outrageous statements on the Holocaust, Israel and other matters made him too toxic for U.S. officials to deal with on any issue and at any level. In Washington, officials dismissed anything – reasonable or not – with Ahmadinejad’s fingerprints on it.
Of course late-night comics and those who would turn the Islamic Republic into a superhuman threat to civilisation will miss him.
His love of the absurd and his divisiveness made him a liability even for his own countrymen, who criticised him for talking without thinking and for his needless provocative rhetoric that could drag Iran to destruction.
The reality is that the Iranian president has almost always been a minor figure in Iranian politics. True power lies elsewhere, and the sooner the president accepted his unimportance, the smoother his tenure would be.
Even Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, reportedly complained about his powerlessness when he was Iran’s president from 1981 to 1989.
Real change will come not when one Iranian figurehead replaces another. It will likely come with the end of Iran’s senior clerical elite and the network of financial, judicial and security institutions it controls.
It’s worth noting that the group of about 25 oligarchs who have held the key positions in the Islamic Republic since 1979 is now much smaller, and that one of its key figures – former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani – has taken the unlikely role of outsider.
But those members of the men’s club who do remain – including figures such as Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati, and Ali Khamenei himself – continue to wield considerable power.
Thus far they have shown little inclination to change either the foreign or domestic policies that have kept them in their palaces for the past 34 years.
The U.S. would certainly like to see free and fair elections in Iran. But until that blessed day arrives, we will have to deal with a less ideal world.
If the Jun. 14 Iranian election is ultimately “good enough” (that is, if it is better than Iran’s 2009 election and no worse than the 2000 U.S. presidential election), President Obama should send a note of congratulation to the winner.
In that note he should chose his platitudes carefully and avoid gratuitous insults like “odious regime”, “change your behaviour” or “stop support for terrorists”.
Judicious language about “mutual respect” and “mutual interest”, which the president used in the first years of his administration, puts the ideologues of the Islamic Republic in a most uncomfortable place.
Although they know well (with more than 30 years of practice) how to respond to American insults, thoughtful U.S. language discredits their rhetoric and neutralises their anti-U.S. slogans.
After all, how can the Islamic Republic make a believable enemy of someone who seeks discussions based on “mutual respect”, something the Iranians have always said they want as a condition of engagement?
I am always optimistic that the U.S, and Iran can somehow end their unique 34-year estrangement – an estrangement that has done no one any good and threatens to descend into an armed conflict that neither side says it wants.
A recent “Iran Project” study, endorsed by three dozen former U.S. officials and scholars, says of the U.S.-Iran relationship: “The [American] goal would be to build a practical relationship that could over time help the United States achieve its principal objectives without resort to force.”
Such a relationship would be a major break with the past three decades of hostility and exchanges of empty slogans, threats, insults and occasionally worse.
That break, however, is unlikely to happen as a result of this June’s Iranian presidential election.
There was no break in the U.S.-Iran estrangement even after Mohammad Khatami’s election in 1997, although both sides lowered the volume of their rhetoric for a time and spoke about “dialogues” and “roadmaps”.
At that time the two countries began exchanging artists, scientists, and sports teams, but somehow those worthy programmes did not result in any change at the political level. Wrestlers and filmmakers came and went, but the silent treatment and hostility remained among officials.
So what should the U.S. do or say about the Iranian election?
Keep focused on our own goal, which, as the above-noted study says, is to achieve principal American objectives without resorting to the use of force.
Doing so requires saying as little as possible and ensuring that official statements emphasise the principle that Iranians, like the rest of us, deserve a government that does not steal elections and allows its citizens to express themselves without fear of the club and the goon squad. Everyone will get the point.
– John Limbert is Class of 1955 Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. During a 34-year diplomatic career, he served in Tehran (where he was a hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 1979-81) and, in 2009-2010, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern (Iranian) Affairs.
]]>Jim Lobe and I wrote a report yesterday for IPS News about the expected US decision to delist the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (aka MEK, PMOI and NCRI) from its foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. Most analysts we interviewed predicted that the removal would only worsen already abysmal relations with Iran and possibly make [...]]]>
Jim Lobe and I wrote a report yesterday for IPS News about the expected US decision to delist the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (aka MEK, PMOI and NCRI) from its foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. Most analysts we interviewed predicted that the removal would only worsen already abysmal relations with Iran and possibly make any effort to defuse the gathering crisis over its nuclear programme yet more difficult. Here’s a round-up of what they had to say beginning with statements that came in following the article’s publication:
John Limbert, a retired career foreign service officer and former embassy hostage in Tehran who served as the first-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran from 2009 to 2010 when he returned to teach at the US Naval Academy:
There may be reasons, but it’s a strange and disappointing decision.
I know the group claims it has abandon its violent and anti-American past. I wish I could believe them. They have a very dubious history and a similarly dubious present.
Farideh Farhi, Iran expert at the University of Hawaii:
As to the MEK delisting, especially after high-level leaks by members of the US intelligence community that the MEK was involved in terror operations inside Iran, the decision will no doubt make the Iranian leadership even more distrustful of US intentions regarding the future of Iran, particularly given the congressional support for the MEK to spearhead regime change. Less trust will make compromise less likely, presumably a preferred outcome for the high profile supporters of the MEK in Congress and elsewhere.
Note that the Obama Administration’s humanitarian argument for delisting says very little about the future operation of this group in the US and how their well-funded operation and agitation for regime change will be promoted or managed in the US. This ambiguity by itself will be a source of tension and will be used by hardliners inside Iran to further delegitimize all efforts to agitate for political reform from inside and outside of the country.
The issue is not about whether something needed to be done to help the poor souls caught in Iraq, abused by everyone including their own cult-like organization. The issue has to do with the wisdom of linking the highly political and politicized process of de-listing to a humanitarian effort.
Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005:
“Delisting will be seen not only by the Iranian regime, but also by most Iranian citizens, as a hostile act by the United States.”
“The MEK has almost no popular support within Iran, where it is despised as a group of traitors, especially given its history of joining forces with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War,” Pillar, who now teaches at George Washington University, added.
“Any effect of the delisting on nuclear negotiations will be negative; Tehran will read it as one more indication that the United States is interested only in hostility and pressure toward the Islamic Republic, rather than coming to terms with it.”
Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator currently at Princeton University:
“The Iranian security establishment’s assessment has long believed that foreign intelligence agencies, specifically the CIA, Israeli Mossad, and the UK’s MI6 utilise the MEK for terror attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists, nuclear sabotage and intelligence gathering,”…
“Therefore, the delisting of MEK will be seen in Tehran as a reward for the group’s terrorist actions in the country,” he wrote in an email exchange with IPS. “Furthermore, Iran has firmly concluded that the Western demands for broader inspections (of Iran’s nuclear programme), including its military sites, are a smokescreen for mounting increased cyber attacks, sabotage and terror of nuclear scientists.
“Delisting MEK would be considered in Tehran as a U.S.-led effort to increase sabotage and covert actions through MEK leading inevitably to less cooperation by Iran with the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency).”
He added that government in Tehran will use this as a way of “demonstrating to the public that the U.S. is seeking …to bring a MEK-style group to power” which, in turn, “would strengthen the Iranian nation’s support for the current system as the perceived alternative advanced by Washington would be catastrophic.”
Karim Sadjadpour, analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
…said the move was unlikely to be “game-changer” in that “the MEK will continue to be perceived inside Iran as an antiquated cult which sided with Saddam Hussein during the (Iran-Iraq) war, and U.S. Iran relations will remain hostile.”
“It doesn’t help (Washington’s) image within Iran, certainly, and some Iranian democracy activists may misperceive this as a U.S. show of support for the MEK, which could have negative ramifications,” he noted.
Mila Johns, a researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland:
“The entire atmosphere around the MEK’s campaign to be removed from the FTO list – the fact that (former) American government officials were allowed to actively and openly receive financial incentives to speak in support of an organisation that was legally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, without consequence – created the impression that the list is essentially a meaningless political tool,” she told IPS.
“It is hard to imagine that the FTO designation holds much legitimacy within the international community when it is barely respected by our own government,” she said.
No other group, she noted, has been de-listed in this way, “though now that the precedent has been set, I would expect that other groups will explore this as an option.”
]]>
While discussing Natasha Bahrami and Trita Parsi’s recent article in the Boston Review (also a must-read), professor of international politics at Tufts University, [...]]]>
While discussing Natasha Bahrami and Trita Parsi’s recent article in the Boston Review (also a must-read), professor of international politics at Tufts University, Daniel Drezner, notes that the Obama administration’s sanctions policy may be taking on a life of its own:
It’s still possible for the sanctions to work. Those that are imposed multilaterally tend to take a longer time to have a policy effect. The target state will first try to break the multilateral coalition apart — and only after that policy fails will they consider concessions. Recent reportage suggest that Iran was not expecting this kind of multilateral pressure — and so it’s possible that Tehran will reconsider.
That said, the sanctions policy is pushing the United States into a policy cul-de-sac where the only way out is through regime change. In the abstract, that might sound great, but in reality, pushing for that option could be both messy and expensive.
Drezner’s piece somewhat echoes arguments made regularly by intelligence veteran Paul Pillar that are critical of Obama’s sanctions policy. (Pillar produces several articles a week about U.S. foreign policy in the National Interest where Drezner is a senior editor.)
Also published in Foreign Policy this week was John Limbert, a former hostage in Iran and State Department official who speaks fluent Persian. According to Iran expert Gary Sick, Limbert “probably knows more about Iran than any living American diplomat.” Last month Limbert and another former hostage, L. Bruce Laingen, provided 5 reasons why the U.S. “must avoid war with Iran” in the Christian Science Monitor. Now Limbert explains how the P5+1 could more effectively conduct negotiations with Tehran. An excerpt:
]]>If these future talks — or any talks — deal only with Iran’s nuclear program, they will fail. For better or worse, the nuclear program has become highly symbolic for the Iranian side. Exchanges on the subject have become an exercise in “asymmetric negotiation,” in which each side is talking about a different subject to a different audience for a different purpose. The failure of such exchanges is certain, with both sides inevitably claiming afterward, “We made proposals, but they were not listening.”
For Americans, the concern is technical and legal matters such as the amounts of low- and high-enriched uranium, as well as the type and number of centrifuges in Iran’s possession. For Iranians, the negotiations are about their country’s place in the world community — its rights, national honor, and respect. As such, any Iranian negotiator who compromises will immediately face accusations of selling out his country’s dignity. Such was the case 60 years ago between Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadegh and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company when the British insisted on the sanctity of contracts and the Iranians sought to rectify a relationship out of balance for over a century. Today, the United States risks falling into the same trap of mutual incomprehension.
At PBS/Frontline‘s Tehran Bureau, I laid out what I think is a pretty compelling case that the [...]]]>
At PBS/Frontline‘s Tehran Bureau, I laid out what I think is a pretty compelling case that the United States should put a confidence-building deal — specifically some new version of the long discussed fuel-swap arrangement — on the table.
From the Tehran Bureau piece:
If, in Istanbul next month, Iran balks at U.S. and P5+1 efforts to arrange a confidence-building fuel swap, the Islamic Republic’s intransigence will be put on full display. If, on the other hand, Iran agrees to such a deal, little harm will be done to the West’s longterm prospects of ending the nuclear standoff without drastic measures – and Iran will turn over a sizable chunk of its nuclear material. If the United States and the rest of the P5+1 make the Iranians an offer they can’t refuse, it could be a win-win situation.
John Limbert, a Naval Academy professor and distinguished former foreign service officer who was an Iranian hostage and later ran the Iran desk at Obama’s State Department, is fond of saying, “They always zig when we zag.” The inverse is also true and, at this moment, the United States seems to be the one doing the zigging. But a zigging line and a zagging line just might cross paths, and the Obama administration should take advantage if the opportunity arises in Istanbul. It may not work, but to do nothing, and to try nothing, is to passively slide down the path to confrontation.
Check out the whole thing here.
]]>Limbert, who [...]]]>
Limbert, who was held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Hostage Crisis, shows that while both the U.S. and Iran have made several attempts at diplomacy, longstanding misunderstandings between the two countries and domestic political obstacles have all stood in the way of meaningful negotiations. He lists these as:
- Never say yes to anything. You will look weak. Insist the other side must change first.
- Anything the other side proposes must contain some subtle trick. Its only goal is to cheat us.
- The other side is infinitely hostile, devious, and irrational. Its actions prove its implacable hostility.
- Whenever the smallest progress is made, someone or some diabolical coincidence will derail it.
Limbert summarizes the major opportunities, and wasted attempts at outreach, during the Obama administration as:
- During his campaign and after taking office, President Obama repeatedly declared his determination to break the 30-year downward spiral in U.S.-Iranian relations.
- During his first two years in office, Obama twice wrote Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but did not receive a response to his second letter. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad twice wrote Obama, but did not receive a reply.
- Iran, beset by internal political battles, has had trouble changing the patterns of the past. At the same time, the Obama administration faced congressional pressure to take tougher action against Tehran.
- Both sides claim the other is not responsive to its messages, and both risk falling into the familiar, dysfunctional ways of the past when confronted with perceived intransigence by the other.
The preview for Limbert’s Iran Primer is well worth a read for those who want an understanding of both the Obama administration’s Iran policy for the past two years but also those seeking insight into why U.S.-Iran relations have been so fraught with mistrust and misunderstanding for the past 30 years.
]]>Her comments, says NSN, are part of an attempt to treat Iran as a “political football to scare [...]]]>
Her comments, says NSN, are part of an attempt to treat Iran as a “political football to scare voters and intimidate policy makers into taking military action against Iran.” The report counters her statements with those of former civilian and military Pentagon officials and former Foreign Service officers who all think such an attack would be a disaster. (We referred to NSN’s list here).
From the NSN report (with my emphasis):
Today, on a Newsmax broadcast, Sarah Palin proclaimed that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons would result in a battle between good and evil, leading to “Armageddon.” Palin’s remarks are the most recent in a litany of bellicose rhetoric made by extreme conservatives about how to deal with Iran. Yet despite the attempts to use Iran as a political football to scare voters and intimidate policy makers into taking military action against Iran, national security experts and military leaders disagree with such an approach. In addition, the voters aren’t buying this argument, as a recent poll showed that only two in ten Americans would go to war with Iran if that country tested a nuclear bomb. [...] Nonetheless, despite the fact that the Obama administration’s dual-track approach towards Iran of sanctions and diplomacy is beginning to bear fruit, the loudest conservative voices continue to be the most militant ones. However, policymakers should be wary of these arguments during this election season, as we have seen them before in the context of Iraq, where the most militant rhetoric won out during the midterm congressional campaign season of 2002. A skeptical eye needs to be drawn towards those who would use military action against Iran as a political tool rather than treating it as the serious national security issue that it is.
[...] “We have to realize that at the end of the day that a nuclear weapon in [Iran's] hands is not just Israel’s problem or America’s problem – it is the world’s problem,” [Palin] said. “It could lead to Armageddon. It would lead to World War III that could decimate so much of this planet.”
At last week’s “War With Iran?” conference at Columbia University, I asked if either side in the nuclear stand-off — the Iranian leadership or the U.S. administration — was capable of cutting a nuclear deal while facing domestic political constraints. John Limbert, a former Iranian hostage who went on to serve as a Foreign Service officer and an Obama administration State Department official, responded that Iran is not an election issue. He cited the attempts of both Hillary Clinton (in the primaries) and Sen. John McCain (in the general election) to score points against Obama on the issue, noting that both failed and Obama won.
Limbert might be right. But it looks like Iran hawks won’t stop trying to make war with Iran a politically polarizing issue.
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