Sometimes our political leaders act so contrary to their declared purposes, even in the face of repeated explanations and clear reasoning as to why what they are doing is counterproductive, that we have to move beyond the oft-ignored reasoning, squarely address the motives and politics involved, [...]]]>
Sometimes our political leaders act so contrary to their declared purposes, even in the face of repeated explanations and clear reasoning as to why what they are doing is counterproductive, that we have to move beyond the oft-ignored reasoning, squarely address the motives and politics involved, and think about how the leaders in question can be shamed if not coaxed into doing their jobs more responsibly. We have such an occasion with the passage in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, by a vote of 400 to 20, of H.R. 850, the “Nuclear Iran Prevention Act,” which among other pressures would endeavor to end what is left of Iran’s oil exports by coercing remaining customers to cease their purchases.
The promoters of the legislation say they are acting in the name of precluding an Iranian nuclear weapon. In fact they are acting in the opposite direction, by significantly damaging the prospects of negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran—an agreement that would be by far the most assured way of precluding an Iranian nuclear weapon. If simply piling on still more sanctions were ever to get the Iranians to cry “uncle” and unilaterally abandon all nuclear activities, this would have happened long ago as a result of the countless previous rounds of sanctions that Congress has imposed. No matter how much sanctions hurt, Iranian leaders have no incentive to make concessions unless they are presented with proposals in which concessions mean significant relief from the sanctions. This measure in the House will be further evidence to Tehran that the United States does not want an agreement and instead only wants to punish Iranians and to change their regime. In short, it helps to kill, not to elicit, the sorts of concessions we supposedly want from Iranian leaders. It also is a further indication of the sort of hostility that stokes whatever interest there might be in Tehran in building a nuclear weapon.
These realities do not have to be explained again here. I have addressed some of the relevant principles in the past. The role of negotiations and the conditions needed for them to succeed are addressed in a letter from former senior U.S. security officials and in a letter that more than a quarter of the members of the House of Representatives itself sent to the president just within the past fortnight. The damaging effects of H.R. 850 in particular are addressed in more recent commentaries, such as from Mark Jansson of the Federation of American Scientists and from Usha Sahay of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.
Maybe there are a few members of Congress who actually believe they are acting on behalf of the stated purpose of preventing an Iranian nuke. Maybe some think that a good cop, bad cop approach by the executive branch and Congress will aid western negotiators. But if it did, one would expect the administration to encourage this sort of legislation at least privately, and there is no indication that has happened. Maybe some other members simply look on sanctions as an alternative to war. But in addition to overlooking what it takes to make sanctions support a negotiation rather than undermining it, this approach also overlooks the view of pro-war people that sanctions and failed negotiations are boxes to be checked before going to war.
Most members of Congress are smart people, as comes through much more readily in private conversation than when microphones and cameras are on. I doubt that many of them honestly believe that what they are doing in supporting a measure such as this week’s legislation is actually reducing the chance of an Iranian nuclear weapon. (Some might believe that any damage to prospects for negotiations would be small enough that they won’t feel too bad about the position they have taken.) H.R. 850 reflects the preferences of elements, some foreign and some domestic, that do not want a negotiated agreement with Iran and are trying to use actions such as this bill to kill the chances for such an agreement. They do not want an agreement because they welcome continued attention to the Iranian nuclear issue, partly to distract attention from other issues. Some of them would welcome a war with Iran. Many members of Congress go along with all this to stay in good graces with the elements in question, and because expressions of hostility to Iran win votes while anything that might look as being soft on Iran risks losing votes.
The timing of the introduction of this bill, rushed onto the floor and to a vote before the August recess and just before the new Iranian president takes office, reinforces this interpretation. Amid a few hopeful indications of fresh goodwill and reason in both Tehran and Washington, the anti-agreement forces decided this was a time they needed to push back with more legislative sabotage. The timing of the bill also serves as a slap in the face of the new management in Tehran, further reducing the prospects for negotiating success. And it’s not as if the House of Representatives does not have other things it ought to be doing before the recess, such as passing appropriations bills.
In short, many members of Congress are, for these sorts of political reasons, knowingly acting against their declared purpose, and in so doing also acting against U.S. interests. They ought to be ashamed for doing so. As M. J. Rosenberg suggests, we ought to be angry with them for doing so.
]]>The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.
Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan [...]]]>
The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.
Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan economic and national security experts, the findings showed the effects of U.S. escalatory action against Iran could range from 64 billion to 1.7 trillion dollars in losses for the world economy over the initial three-month term.
The least likely scenario of de-escalation, which would require U.S. unilateral steps showing it was willing to make concessions to resolve the standoff, would result in an estimated global economic benefit of 60 billion dollars.
“The study’s findings suggest that there are potential costs to any number of U.S.-led actions and, in general, the more severe the action, the greater the possible costs,” Mark Jansson, FAS’s special projects director, told IPS.
“That being said, even among experts, there is tremendous uncertainty about what might happen at the higher end of the escalation ladder,” added Jansson, the second author of the report after Charles P. Blair, an FAS senior fellow on state and non-state threats.
The six plausible scenarios of U.S.-led actions against Iran included isolation and a Gulf blockade, which would include U.S. moves to “curtail any exports of refined oil products, natural gas, energy equipment and services”, the banning of the Iranian energy sector worldwide (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 325 billion dollars), and a comprehensive bombing campaign that would also target Iran’s ability to retaliate (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 1.082 trillion dollars).
The report is explicit in not endorsing any particular policy recommendation, although others are not so reticent.
United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are leading hardline Washington-based advocacy groups arguing for sweeping economic measures against Iran.
“The White House must build on this momentum, intensifying economic warfare in an effort to shake the Islamic Republic to its core,” wrote FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz in June.
Paul Sullivan, an economics professor specialising in Middle East security at Georgetown University, told IPS that, “The fact that the hardest core of the neoconservative ‘strategists’ have not thought through the costs of escalating conflict with Iran is proof of their group intellectual inadequacy.
“The main effects to the U.S. if there is escalation is through the price of oil and increased military and other national security costs,” said Sullivan, who evaluated the scenarios as an expert but could not comment on the specific figures due to Chatham House Rules.
“If there is an attack on Iran, with the expected counterattacks the price of oil could quite easily go to 250 dollars or higher. This could push the U.S. right back into a recession,” he said.
As tensions rise over the decades-long dispute over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, analysts are increasingly examining a range of costs associated with escalating the so-far cold conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
The Iran Project Report released in September showed that the cost of Iranian retaliation would be “felt over the longer term” by the U.S. and could result in a regional war.
“In addition to the financial costs of conducting military attacks against Iran, which would be significant…there would likely be near-term costs associated with Iranian retaliation, through both direct and surrogate asymmetrical attacks,” according to the report, which was endorsed by a long list of high-level, bipartisan national security advisers.
The Iran Project report’s findings support the notion that greater escalatory action will result in greater costs – shown in financial terms by the FAS findings: “A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war,” notes the report.
An Oct. 19 event on the economic and military considerations of war with Iran at the Center for the National Interest (CNI) offered similar assessments.
“You could lose eight million barrels a day of production, and it would not come back quickly,” said J. Robinson West, who has also held senior positions in the White House, the Energy Department, and the Pentagon under various Republican administrations. “We believe the price of oil will go above 200 dollars a barrel.”
On Oct. 20, the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Iran had “agreed in principle for the first time” to direct negotiations.
But Tehran and Washington did have “limited bilateral talks” in 2009 “when the Iranian leadership saw a potential in the newly elected Obama administration to address some of Iran’s bottom lines regarding the country’s right to enrichment,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar and affiliate graduate faculty at the University of Hawai’i, told IPS.
On Wednesday, President Obama denied the Times report but did not dismiss the notion of one-on-one talks. In fact, he strongly suggested that the U.S. would seriously engage if the Iranians proved their sincerity.
“If Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they’ll be in a position to resolve it,” he said during his first press conference following his successful presidential re-election campaign.
“The situation is different now insofar as the Iranian leadership is much more sceptical of Obama’s words regarding his desire to resolve the nuclear issue instead of going for the Islamic regime’s jugular after a show of desire for talks,” said Farhi.
“To be sure, there will always be hardline naysayers in Tehran no matter what. A similar situation exists in the U.S.. But if the past is any guide, Tehran will come around and abandon its current resistance to bilateral talks if it sees a potential for breakthrough,” she said.
]]>By Mark Jansson
Although President Obama has another four years, he will surely continue to hear from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and a chorus of critics at home, that he has far less time to convince Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). But the administration [...]]]>
By Mark Jansson
Although President Obama has another four years, he will surely continue to hear from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and a chorus of critics at home, that he has far less time to convince Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). But the administration should not let the urgency of the matter drive it to a neurotic fixation on breakout timelines, which is likely to have a dumbing-down effect on policy and push a diplomatic solution farther into the future rather than hasten it.
Throughout the President’s first term, the issue of time dominated the narrative about Iran and continues to do so. Obama himself has said that the “window is closing” for Iran to address contentious issues properly, but that there’s “still time” to do so. The focus on time has gradually become an obsession – one that crescendos intoxicatingly in the post-IAEA report number-crunching frenzies that determine the time intervals comprising the worst-case scenario of Iranian nuclear breakout. More recently, some have extrapolated (erroneously) a “cripple date” for how soon the United States must take drastic steps to force capitulation by ruining Iran’s economy.
Yet, as the nuclear drama has played out during Obama’s first term — punctuated by inflammatory speeches, abortive diplomatic initiatives, spellbinding unveilings of “Bibian” art and long intermissions for US sanctions and Iranian centrifuges to do what they do — it has left in its wake a sort of desultory urgency. Clearly, the issue is serious, but the recent history of failed negotiations is less-than-heartening and there is no obvious or specific reason to believe that talks will go better in the future.
An important step for the Obama administration before it starts grasping for diplomatic straws is to refresh the framing of the issue and think longer term. One takeaway from Obama’s first term is that the framing of engagement with Iran as a race against the clock has outlived its usefulness. The same time-delimited urgency of the Iranian nuclear issue that has led to severe economic sanctions and brought Iran to the negotiating table has, arguably, had the unintended side effect of preventing negotiations from going anywhere once they begin.
While a sense of urgency can help focus the mind, too much will lead to mistakes by forcing the adoption of approaches that are fast and simple but less accurate. At present, the consuming fear that time is running out to solve the Iranian nuclear problem seems to have become a barrier that confines the search for a solution to shallow waters, wherein the prevailing theory is reducible to one radically simple notion: just add pressure.
Pressure tactics might have been good enough to get Iran to agree to talks, but prolonging this approach in the way that we have is a recipe for escalation. Overall, US engagement with Iran has been erratic during Obama’s first term — negotiations one week, sanctions and cyber attacks the next. From what is known about the talks that have transpired, it’s apparent that neither side has shown much courage in tabling offers that stood a chance of gaining traction. If anything, the US position hardened over time rather than the other way around, perhaps because it bought into the notion that the duress Iran was experiencing from choking sanctions would eventually force it to accept anything.
But the only recent accomplishment of the ‘add pressure and wait’ approach has been to fuel a dangerous pattern of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby perceptions of Iranian intransigence become more extreme with every moment that passes between added punishment and its capitulation. The perception of Iranian defiance has now reached near-mythical status and driven supposedly mainstream policy discussion into the realm of outright belligerence. Even moderates have argued unblushingly that only “existential angst” brought on by the specter of total economic collapse (or perhaps that ever-elusive “truly credible” threat to attack) will get Iran to give in on the nuclear issue.
But it should be clear by now that the United States and Iran are far better off taking steps to moderate their behavior rather than make it more extreme. A conflict with Iran could be exceedingly dangerous for the US, Israel, and the global economy. Isolating Iran, encircling it, sabotaging its nuclear facilities and pushing its economy to the brink of collapse has become not just inhumane but strategically counterproductive as well. It has left Iran’s leaders with less to lose for retaliating aggressively if attacked, making military action riskier for the US and any threat to carry it out less believable for Iran. It’s time to give up on the machismo.
Another reason to jettison the notion that the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue is rapidly closing is because, frankly, it is not. Even if Iran decides to “come clean” on everything, fully cooperate with the IAEA and implement the Additional Protocol, it will retain the technical talent to produce nuclear weapons, if it so chooses, for some time to come. There is no silver bullet solution — be it a collapsed Iranian economy, a successful military strike or a brilliantly orchestrated deal– that can undo that. So, letting breakout timelines drive policy — as if Iran does not really have nuclear weapon potential until it has the potential to make them quickly — actually belies the larger reality that Iran is, and will be, capable of making nuclear weapons, regardless of whether or not it ever crosses Bibi’s red line.
Getting over the preoccupation with timelines and red lines would give the US and the six power P5+1 the space to enter future negotiations with multiple options, not just one proposition, and be flexible about mixing and matching their various elements as appropriate. It is obvious that any deal must include prompt sanctions relief for Iran, but figuring out what sanctions to lift and what can be received in exchange will probably take time. As former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy recently put it, “you have to understand what it is that makes Iran tick.” Coming up with multiple options is a good way to discover what the other side really values and for zeroing in on a mutually acceptable agreement.
At the end of the day, any diplomatic progress that may be made over the next several years will only be the beginning of a very long process of convincing Iran to turn its back on nuclear weapons and, just as importantly, to not relapse. For now, it will be hard enough to figure out what will work without having to do it under stultifying pressure created by a loudly ticking clock and timelines that unnecessarily drive policy towards extremes and the desperately oversimplified solutions found there.
- Mark Jansson is the Special Projects Director for the Federation of American Scientists, the country’s longest-serving organization committed to reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
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