Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and never to be cooperated with on anything. The lodestar for this school of advocacy is [...]]]>
Many participants in debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East have a lot invested in maintaining the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a bogeyman forever to be feared, despised, sanctioned, and shunned, and never to be cooperated with on anything. The lodestar for this school of advocacy is the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who proclaims to us nearly every day that Iran is the “real problem” underlying just about everything wrong in the region, and who adamantly opposes anyone reaching any agreement with Tehran on anything. Netanyahu does not want a significant regional competitor that would no longer be an ostracized pariah and that will freely speak its mind in a way that, say, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with the other equities they have in Washington, cannot. He does not want the United States to come to realize that it need not be stuck rigidly to the side of — and always defer to the preferences of — “traditional allies” such as Israel and that it can sometimes advance U.S. interests by doing business with those who have worn the label of adversary. And of course the more that people focus on the “real problem” of Iran, the less attention will be devoted to topics Netanyahu would rather not talk about, such as the occupation of Palestinian territory.
For those in Washington who wave the anti-Iranian banner most fervently, the waving is not only a following of Netanyahu’s lead but also a filling of the neoconservative need for bogeymen as justification and focus for militant, interventionist policies in the region. The neocons do not have Saddam Hussein to kick around any more, and they unsurprisingly would prefer not to dwell upon what transpired when they kicked him out. So it’s natural to target the next nearest member of the Axis of Evil — and even when the neocons were still kicking Saddam, they were already telling Iran to “take a number.” The anti-Iranian banner-waving of neocons, despite the abysmal policy failure of the Iraq War that should have closed ears to what they are saying today — finds resonance among a general American public that historically has had a need for foreign monsters to destroy as one way to define America’s mission and purpose.
The prospective reaching of a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program has been a major concern and preoccupation of those who want to keep Iran a hated and feared pariah forever. An agreement would represent a major departure in U.S. relations with Iran. So the anti-Iran banner-wavers have been making a concerted effort for several months to undermine the negotiations and torpedo any agreement that is reached. Not reaching an agreement has become such a major goal that the banner-wavers have no compunction about taking the fundamentally illogical stance of exclaiming about the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon while opposing an agreement that would place substantially more restrictions on the Iranian program, and make an Iranian weapon less likely, than without an agreement.
At least the anti-agreement forces have had a game plan, involving such things as hyping “breakout” fears and pushing Congressional action that is disguised as support for the negotiations when it actually would undermine them. Now suddenly along comes a security crisis in Iraq, in which parallel U.S. and Iranian interests and the opportunity for some beneficial U.S.-Iranian dialogue are clear. Oh, no, think the banner-wavers, we didn’t plan on this. One detects a tone of panic in their jumping into print with emergency sermons reminding us that Iranians are evil and we must never, ever be tempted into cooperating with them.
One of the more strident of these sermons comes from Michael Doran and Max Boot. The panicky nature of their piece is reflected in the fact that the first thing they do is to reach for the old, familiar Hitler analogy. The idea that the United States and Iran share any common interests is, they tell us, just like Neville Chamberlain working with Adolf Hitler.
The next thing they do is to match the most imaginative conspiracy theorists in the Middle East by suggesting that the government of Iran really is supporting and promoting the Sunni radicals of ISIS — yes, the same ISIS whose main calling card has been the beheading and massacre of the Iranians’ fellow Shiites. The logic behind this conspiracy theory, explain Doran and Boot, is that a threat from ISIS makes Prime Minister Maliki and Iraqi Shiites “ever more dependent on Iranian protection.”
Then Doran and Boot go way into straw-man territory, saying the United States would be making a “historic error” if it assisted “an Iranian-orchestrated ethnic-cleansing campaign” carried out by ruthless Revolutionary Guards. Of course, the Obama administration isn’t talking about doing anything of the sort. We weren’t flies on the wall when Deputy Secretary of State William Burns talked earlier this week with the Iranian foreign minister about Iraq, but it is a safe bet that a theme of U.S. remarks was the need for greater cross-community inclusiveness in Iraq and the need not to stoke the fire of the sectarian civil war.
Besides dealing with straw men, Doran and Boot here exhibit another habit of the banner-wavers — which comes up a lot in discussion of the nuclear issue — which is to assume that Iran will do the worst, most destructive thing it is capable of doing regardless of whether doing so would be in Iran’s own interests. What advantage could Tehran possibly see in propping up an increasingly beleaguered and unpopular Nouri al-Maliki with rampaging Revolutionary Guards? What Iranian interest would that serve?
This gets to one of the things that Doran and Boot do not address, which is what fundamental Iranian interests are in Iraq, including everything those interests involve in terms of stability and material costs to Iran. Even if Iran had so much influence with Maliki that he could be said to be in Tehran’s pocket, what would Iran do with such influence? Here is displayed another habit of the banner-wavers, which is just to assume that any Iranian influence is bad, without stopping to examine the Iranian interests being served and whether they are consistent with, in conflict with, or irrelevant to U.S. interests.
The other major thing that Doran and Boot do not do is to mention what militant U.S. policies have had to do with Iranian behavior they don’t like. In the course of loosely slinging as much mud on the Iranians as they can, they state that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps “has been responsible for attacks against U.S. targets stretching back more than 30 years.” They do not offer any specifics. The only ones that come to mind involve a U.S. military intervention in Lebanon, U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, a U.S. troop presence in eastern Saudi Arabia, and the eight-year-long U.S. military occupation in Iraq.
Doran and Boot write that instead of having anything to do with the Iranians, we should develop a coalition of those “traditional allies” to prosecute a conflict on the “vast battlefield” that embraces Iraq and Syria. This sounds just like the talk of a coalition of “moderates” we heard during the George W. Bush administration. As then, the talk is apparently oblivious to ethnic, sectarian, and geographic realities. Doran and Boot suggest that clever covert work against “Iranian networks” would be enough to “pull the Iraqi government out of Iran’s orbit.”
This sort of thinking represents not only a missed opportunity to make U.S. diplomacy more effective but also a recipe for further inflaming that vast battlefield.
*This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Roohollah Vahdati
]]>by Jim Lobe
While this blog is devoted to U.S. policy toward the Middle East, it should come as no surprise to regular readers that I regard climate change as likely to be the greatest challenge faced by the United States and the world over for the coming century and beyond.
[...]]]>by Jim Lobe
While this blog is devoted to U.S. policy toward the Middle East, it should come as no surprise to regular readers that I regard climate change as likely to be the greatest challenge faced by the United States and the world over for the coming century and beyond.
The most recent news, including the latest government report on how climate change is already impacting the United States, and the studies that came out three weeks ago regarding the apparently irreversible collapse of the West Antarctica ice sheet, clearly underline the rising stakes, not only from a strictly environmental point of view, but also with respect to national security. After all, as Tom Friedman and others have argued, the civil war in Syria owes much to the extended drought conditions that have prevailed in that country over the past decade and more, driving millions of mostly Sunni small farmers from the countryside into the big cities where they were unable to earn a decent living in fast-growing shanty towns that have mushroomed over that period. (Obviously, western-backed neoliberal economic policies and corruption didn’t help.) While that drought, like a similar phenomenon in central Mexico that has sent hundreds of thousands of people across international borders in search of work, may not be 100% provably attributable to global warming, there is sufficient consistency in the predictions by increasingly refined computer models developed by climatologists over decades to conclude that there is almost certainly a strong connection between the amount of carbon being pumped up into our atmosphere and these changes in weather patterns over significant swathes of our planet.
And, as the indefatigable Tom Engelhardt, in an essay about “climate change as a weapon of mass destruction“, requested of anyone in Wyoming to ask former Vice President Dick Cheney if they should happen to run into him:
How would he feel about acting preventively, if instead of a 1% chance that some country with weapons of mass destruction might use them against us, there was at least a 95% — and likely as not a 100% — chance of them being set off on our soil?
Of course, it’s Cheney and his neoconservative and right-wing friends (too often aided by liberal hawks like the Washington Post’s editorial board), who have consistently derided President Obama’s alleged timidity and failure to “lead” in foreign policy (by which they ordinarily mean using or threatening to use military force in dealing with any crisis). Indeed, just last week, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Cheney, who, next to George W. Bush, bears the greatest responsibility for the worst U.S. foreign policy debacle at least since the Vietnam War, remarked:
He’s a very, very weak president, maybe the weakest certainly in my lifetime. And I know from my own experience on a recent trip to the Middle East, spending several days talking with folks I’ve dealt with all the way back to Desert Storm, they all are absolutely convinced that the American capacity to lead and to influence events in that part of the world has been dramatically reduced by this president.
We’ve got a problem of weakness. It’s centered right in the White House.
This “weakness” is sometimes attributed by critics to Obama’s supposed left-wing worldview and/or naiveté. Arguing that Obama’s motivations are more cynical and political, others have noted its consistency with the general public’s allegedly “isolationist” tendencies and its disenchantment with the military “hammer”(that was used so promiscuously by Bush and Cheney), as expressed in countless surveys and polls.
In any event, this charge of Obama’s weakness, timidity, retreat, and lack of leadership has now become a neoconservative and Republican mantra repeated and recycled endlessly in the mass media as each new foreign policy challenge moves into the spotlight — from Benghazi to Beijing to Bergdahl. It has become the meta-narrative for analyzing Obama’s foreign policy, from which even many Democrats (watch Hillary Clinton carefully; it’s already out there that she opposed a deal to free Bergdahl) are now trying hard to distance themselves.
Of course, it is in this context that it’s important to ask how such a weak, timid, and “lead-from behind” president could also address climate change as he did earlier this week by taking executive action to curb emissions from coal-fired power plants — a move that appears to offer him no particular political advantage and may indeed prove counter-productive to his hopes of retaining Democratic control of the Senate. In his blog post at the National Interest, Paul Pillar, who, as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia, commissioned the pre-invasion study that predicted much of the fiasco that followed the Iraq invasion — only to be ignored by Cheney, Bush & Co. — was similarly struck by this apparent anomaly and wrote a blog post entitled “Leading from the Front on Carbon Dioxide.” It deserves more attention.
A constantly recurring theme in criticism of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is that he allegedly is a weak leader, or when he leads does so only from behind. An action such as his recent move on power plant emissions highlights how such accusations, insofar as they are not just opposition for the sake of opposition, really aren’t about leadership at all but instead about disagreement on the substance of whatever issue is at hand.
Much criticism of the president has combined an image of him as a weak, stay-in-the-rear leader on foreign policy with a picture of an over-reaching, rule-flouting chief on domestic policy. Opponents will catalog the new rules on power plants in the latter category. Efforts to curb destructive emissions are ultimately a foreign policy problem, however, because Earth is a single planet with a single atmosphere. Pollution problems vary with the locale, and it may be sensible practical politics for the president to talk about respiratory problems among American children, but climate change is global. The heaviest lifting will involve getting China and other heavy polluters to do their part. It is a task as troubling and challenging as any that involve China using dashed lines on maps to make territorial claims.
The task is hard enough given the belief of developing countries that the United States and other Western nations already had their opportunity to develop and to become prosperous and to pollute with impunity as they did so. It would be discriminatory, according to this belief, for late developers to be subject for environmental reasons to more economic restraints than early ones. The least the United States can do, to keep this task from being any harder than it has to be, is to exercise leadership by setting an example and cleaning up its own act.
President Obama also gets criticized for playing small ball in foreign policy, a criticism he partly brings on himself by talking about hitting singles and doubles rather than home runs. Stopping climate change is not small ball. Saving the planet would be a home run. Small ball is played by those, Democrats as well as Republicans, who would rather talk about the health of the coal industry in Kentucky than about the health of the planet. And small ball is played by those who cannot or will not see beyond the powering of most of the world’s economy through any means other than burning what alternative energy guru Amory Lovins has called “the rotten remains of primeval swamp goo.”
Photo: The melting of Mexico’s Orizaba glacier is another consequence of global warming. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS
]]>by Jim Lobe
Paul Pillar has a blog up at the National Interest on the possibility that Saudi Arabia and Iran are moving toward some form of rapprochement. The latest development, as Paul points out, is the long-awaited invitation this week by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal to his Iranian counter part Mohammad [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Paul Pillar has a blog up at the National Interest on the possibility that Saudi Arabia and Iran are moving toward some form of rapprochement. The latest development, as Paul points out, is the long-awaited invitation this week by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal to his Iranian counter part Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The Saudi-Iranian relationship is, of course, critical to any prospect of stabilizing the region, particularly the Levant, as Riyadh and Tehran have been the principal external supporters of the main protagonists in Syria’s catastrophic civil war. As noted by Paul, the Saudis’ decision to return their ambassador to Beirut offers another signal that they are interested in preventing the conflict next door from further destabilizing Lebanon, and perhaps a broader willingness to reduce Sunni-Shia tensions across the region.
Tom Lippman has been following the evolution of Saudi policy on this blog since last Fall when former and then-serving senior officials, including former Saudi ambassadors to Washington, Princes Bandar and Turki, were denouncing Obama’s failure to take strong military action against Syria after chemical weapons killed hundreds of people in a Damascus suburb last August. Beginning with Riyadh’s refusal to take its seat on the UN Security Council, you can find Tom’s analyses over the succeeding months here, here, and here.
At the end of March, however, Obama tacked on to his tour of Europe a stop in Riyadh for a meeting with King Abdullah, and while the press coverage of the visit maintained that things had gone poorly — Obama was greeted by lower-level officials and didn’t even get dinner — subsequent events suggest that there may indeed have been a certain meeting of the minds.
Thus, within a couple of weeks, Prince Bandar, reportedly much disliked by the Obama administration, was relieved of his post as the country’s intelligence chief — in which position he had been directing Saudi efforts to support the Syrian insurgency — while Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a favorite of Washington’s who had already replaced Bandar on Syria, appeared to have further boosted his position among the top policy-makers. Around the same time, the Obama administration announced that it was going through with the transfer of ten Apache helicopters to Egypt despite the military-backed regime’s deplorable human rights performance. Washington’s previous suspension of certain kinds of military assistance and cooperation with Cairo after the military coup that ousted the elected president, Mohammed Morsi, had infuriated Riyadh, which became and remains the regime’s most important financial backer and cheerleader.
Other U.S. gestures that may be meant to appease Saudi Arabia and put it in a more cooperative frame of mind include permitting the first-time delivery of advanced anti-tank, anti-armor TOW missiles (probably from Saudi Arabia’s own stocks, I am told) to allegedly carefully CIA-vetted “moderate” Syrian rebels, the upgrading of the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s (SOC) offices here to quasi-diplomatic status, and the reception of its president, Ahmad Jarba, here in Washington. Although he didn’t get the surface-to-air “MANPADs” he was seeking, Jarba did get a personal meeting with Obama, another sign of the kind of increased U.S. support — even if mainly symbolic — that Riyadh has been urging for months and months.
Moreover, we haven’t heard very many public complaints about U.S. policy in the region from Saudi princes since Obama’s visit. Meanwhile, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel is in Jeddah for the first meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) “joint defense council” where he is no doubt assuring his hosts that Washington is not about to sell them out and will continue plying them with lots of very expensive and sophisticated weapons systems, as well as guarding their borders and sea lanes with U.S. firepower for the indefinite future.
As noted by Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the GCC meeting was made somewhat more confusing by a major shake-up in Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry that, among other things, saw the departure of Prince Bandar’s half-brother, Deputy Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Sultan, who, according to Henderson, was Bandar’s “perceived alter ego”, particularly with respect to Riyadh’s Syrian operations. Henderson speculates that all of this may have to do with the continuing maneuvering around the succession of King Abdullah, but its coincidence with the invitation to Zarif “suggest that Saudi Arabia may be reconsidering its regional strategy.” He places the emphasis on the “may” in that sentence, arguing “…it is almost certainly too early to say that the kingdom is softening its tough approach to Iran, especially after its unprecedented April 29 parade display of Chinese-supplied missiles capable of hitting Tehran — a gesture that followed the largest military exercise in Saudi history, involving 130,000 men.” On the other hand, I would add, one always wants to go into negotiations after a show of strength.
Although Paul doesn’t mention these latest events, they form a larger context in which to understand his argument. And, if, as Paul suggests, we are seeing an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement on the horizon, it’s pertinent to recall Obama’s own words about his ambitions for the region when he spoke with the New Yorker’s David Remnick earlier this year:
“It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other,” he told me. “And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion—not funding terrorist organizations, not trying to stir up sectarian discontent in other countries, and not developing a nuclear weapon—you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.
In any event, here’s Paul’s post.
Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shakes hands with Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Tehran, Abdul Rahman Bin Garman Al Shahri on March 3, 2014. Credit: ISNA/Hamid Forootan
]]>Benjamin Netanyahu’s tiresome vilification of Iran has taken on the characteristics of a rote obsession that diverges farther and farther from truth, reality, and his own ostensible objective. It is as if—in pursuing his real objective of keeping Iran ostracized, preventing any U.S. agreements with it, and keeping the specter of an [...]]]>
Benjamin Netanyahu’s tiresome vilification of Iran has taken on the characteristics of a rote obsession that diverges farther and farther from truth, reality, and his own ostensible objective. It is as if—in pursuing his real objective of keeping Iran ostracized, preventing any U.S. agreements with it, and keeping the specter of an Iranian threat permanently overshadowing everything else he’d rather not talk about—he has been reduced to a ritual, repetitive chant of “Iran bad, very bad” and does not care whether or not reflection on what he is saying shows it to make any sense.
Outside of the anti-Americanism that is heard so widely and often, it is hard to think of any other leader or government so dedicated to heaping calumnies unceasingly on another nation, at least one not currently waging war on the heaper’s country. Maybe some American Cold Warriors fixated on the Evil Empire came close. Attacks on Iran occupied most of the first half of Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday to AIPAC. Haaretz accompanied a transcript of the speech with one of those graphics depicting the frequency with which particular words have been used. For the entire speech Iran was mentioned far more than any word other than Israel.
Maybe the relentlessness of this latest iteration of the chant reflects Netanyahu’s frustration over his recent failure to get the U.S. Congress to sabotage the nuclear negotiations with Iran by slapping on new, deal-breaking sanctions. Perhaps he also felt a need to amp up the attacks to bring attention back to the Iranian specter from the crisis in Ukraine.
Falsehoods continue to flow out of Netanyahu’s mouth on this subject. Maybe the technique of getting people to believe something if it is repeated often enough is working, as reflected by some of the same falsehoods coming out of the mouths of members of Congress. He referred, for example, to the need for pressure to get Iranians to “abandon their nuclear weapons program.” No: according to the U.S. intelligence community, Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and Israeli intelligence does not disagree.
Netanyahu said that “Iran openly calls for our [i.e., Israel's] destruction.” No: the former Iranian president who once made a metaphorical statement that got mis-translated into something along that line isn’t even around any more. Actually, the current Iranian government says if the Palestinian problem is resolved then it would be possible for Iran to extend formal recognition to the state of Israel.
Netanyahu asserted that Iran “continues to build ICBMs.” No: there is no evidence that Iran is building ICBMs or even intermediate range ballistic missiles. Iran does have medium range ballistic missiles, but testing and development even of those has been quiescent lately.
In an opening sequence in the speech in which Netanyahu referred to medical and other humanitarian aid that Israel furnishes overseas, he said that Iran doesn’t do any such thing because “the only thing that Iran sends abroad are rockets, terrorists and missiles to murder, maim and menace the innocent.” No: actually Iran does provide medical and similar humanitarian aid.
The prime minister’s analytical assertions are similarly divorced from reality. In arguing for the deal-breaking, impossible-to-achieve objective of no Iranian enrichment of uranium, he said that “letting Iran enrich uranium would open up the floodgates” of “nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and around the world.” But Iran already has been enriching uranium for some time, and no floodgates have opened. Even if Iran, contrary to its current policy, were to build a nuclear weapon, they still would be unlikely to open.
Netanyahu seemed to dare us not to take him seriously when, in a jarringly discordant note alongside all of the alarmism about a supposedly deadly and dire threat, he tried to crack a joke to accompany his falsehood about ICBMs: “You remember that beer commercial, ‘this Bud’s for you’? Well, when you see Iran building ICBMs, just remember, America, that Scud’s for you.” Hardy har har.
Glaringly absent from the tirade was any of the perspective of a person living in a glass house who should be careful about not throwing stones. For example, along with self-congratulation for medical aid Netanyahu said Israel has provided Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, there was no mention of the misery that Israel has inflicted on people living in the same territory through a suffocating blockade and military-inflicted destruction. And alongside all of the alarums about a possible Iranian nuclear weapon there was of course no mention of Israel having the only nuclear weapons in the Middle East, totally outside any international control regime and with their existence not even admitted.
Nor was there any real application of logic to implications for policy, given that the most important policy fixture at the moment is the nuclear negotiation. If Netanyahu’s objective really were to assure prevention of an Iranian nuke—rather than assuring persistence of theissue of a possible Iranian nuke—the conclusion would be to support the negotiations rather than to try to sabotage them. Even if one believed all the calumnies, they are either irrelevant to the nuclear talks or all the more reason to hope they succeed.
Listening to a speech such as this, it is a wonder that many Israelis condone a leader who is offering his country unending conflict and confrontation. And it is a wonder that many Americans, including ones with admiration and fondness for Israel, are influenced by him. He is not acting in the best interests of the state they admire and love, let along in the interests of the United States. The reciter of the primitive chants of hate against Iran has a narrower objective. As Henry Siegman observes, “To say that Netanyahu is not a visionary leader is an understatement. To be sure, he is a clever tactician who knows how to stay in office. That goal, which he believes is unbreakably linked to retaining his leadership of Israel’s political right wing, trumps every other domestic and international challenge that faces Israel.”
*This article was first published by the National Interest
]]>In the long story of the evolving Iran nuclear issue, we naturally tend to focus on whatever is the chapter immediately before us. Right now that mainly involves the negotiation-subverting Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, which President Obama in his State of the Union address explicitly threatened to [...]]]>
In the long story of the evolving Iran nuclear issue, we naturally tend to focus on whatever is the chapter immediately before us. Right now that mainly involves the negotiation-subverting Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, which President Obama in his State of the Union address explicitly threatened to veto if Congress passed it. But we also ought to keep a longer-term view of how opponents of an agreement with Iran have kept changing their tune and changing their arguments as their earlier arguments have become inoperative.
Back when the Iranian president everyone loved to loathe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was still in office, the go-to tactic for opponents was to cite whatever was the most recent outrageous rhetoric that had come out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth, whether or not it had anything to do with the substance of the nuclear issue. That tactic did not work so well after Hassan Rouhani replaced Ahmadinejad, although there still seems to be little hesitation in repeatedly going to the well of mistranslated vintage Ahmadinejad “wipe Israel off the map” comments. The emphasis has now become less on what Iranian leaders say than on what nefarious intentions supposedly lurk behind what they say—hence Benjamin Netanyahu’s “wolf in sheep’s clothing” formulation.
There also once was much doubt expressed about whether the Iranian leadership would ever want to negotiate seriously. Then when serious negotiations got under way last fall, there was doubt expressed about whether Iran would make significant concessions about its nuclear program. Then when Iran made major concessions in the Joint Plan of Action concluded in November, opposition tactics had to be adjusted again.
The tactics in the wake of the JPA have taken several forms. One is outright misrepresentation about this preliminary agreement, including talk about its unbalanced and disproportionate nature—which is true, except that it was Iran that made disproportionately large concessions. Another is sabotage disguised as support for negotiations, which is what the Kirk-Menendez bill is all about. Another tactic is the moving of goalposts, and in particular the deal-killing demand to end totally any Iranian enrichment of uranium. Yet another is in effect to change the subject and to pretend that the question is not the pros and cons of a prospective nuclear agreement but instead a popularity contest about the Iranian regime—and anything else it may be doing that we don’t like.
Netanyahu provided in a speech this week [4] a particularly vivid example of complete abandonment of a previous argument that has been negated by accomplishment at the negotiating table. His centerpiece imagery used to be the famous cartoon bomb he displayed before the United Nations General Assembly. That cartoon would be an excellent prop for describing what has been achieved with the Joint Plan of Action, with its end to 20 percent enrichment of uranium and elimination of existing stocks enriched to that level. Except that the lines on the cartoon are moving down, not up. As Joseph Cirincione has put it, the Joint Plan of Action “drained” Netanyahu’s bomb.
So Netanyahu is now arguing that what matters is not the level to which Iran is enriching, but instead the sophistication of its centrifuges. And he has changed his imagery to railroads. Netanyahu puts it this way: “What the Iranians did, and this is what the agreement determined, is that they would return the train to the first station, but at the same time, they are upgrading the engine and strengthening it so that they will be able to break through all at once, without any stations in the middle, straight to 90%.” Boris and Natasha have been replaced by Thomas the Tank Engine.
Several lessons should be drawn from all this argumentative shape-shifting. One is that those making the arguments have repeatedly been proven wrong. Another is that much of what we hear from them does not reflect genuine views or any analysis but is simply flak shot up to try to impede or kill the process at whatever place it happens to be at the moment. Yet another lesson is that the opposition will never end, no matter the terms of an agreement, because the opponents want no agreement at all. If it’s not one thing we are hearing about, such as enrichment levels, it will be something else, such as the particular models of centrifuge.
And if it’s not nuclear weapons, it will be other things disliked about Iran. If a final agreement based on the terms of the Joint Plan of Action gels, making it harder than ever to argue against the concept that such an agreement is the best way to preclude an Iranian nuclear weapon, expect to hear more about how, with or without a nuclear weapon, the Islamic Republic of Iran is so bad that it must be kept pressured and ostracized. Netanyahu laid some groundwork for such a future position in his speech when he said, “Now of course the Iranian threat is not just an unconventional threat.”
One of the unfortunate effects of the endless opposition is that it constitutes another form of sabotage. The Iranians may be understandably reluctant to make more concessions knowing there are elements on the other side determined to destroy any deal no matter what the terms, no matter how long it takes, and no matter what new arguments have to be conjured up.
]]>According to the AIPAC list, which is reproduced below, 53 senators, including 36 Democrats and the two independents who normally vote with the Democratic caucus, have not agreed to co-sponsor the bill, or, in the dreaded moniker used by AIPAC to score lawmakers’ voting records (presumably for the benefit of the “pro-Israel” PACs that decide how to dole out campaign cash), are labeled “DNC.” They will undoubtedly be the top targets for AIPAC’s legendary powers of persuasion when the Senate reconvenes early next week.
What is remarkable about this list, however, is that very few of the 47 co-sponsors have chosen to publicize their support for the bill to their constituents through local media or other means. A handful of the original co-sponsors put out press releases, as did Rob Portman, a late joiner. Lamar Alexander, another late-comer, courageously “tweeted” his backing for the bill. “If this were a bill senators were excited about; that is, something they thought they’d earn a lot of credit for — and not draw a lot of heat — from their voters, you’d think all of the co-sponsors would be proudly touting their support,” one veteran Hill observer told me. “Clearly, even for the Republican [co-sponsors], that doesn’t seem to be the case with this bill.”
In other words, the co-sponsors appear to be targeting a very narrow constituency — AIPAC, which is now touting their names — rather than their voters back home, most of whom probably have no idea of what their senator’s position is or what may be at stake. Which raises an interesting question: If the folks back home knew that their senator was supporting a bill that would make another war in the Middle East more, rather than less likely, would there be an outcry as there was after Obama (and AIPAC) asked Congress to approve military action against Syria? Would some senators feel compelled to reassess their support?
One other point: others — most recently and convincingly, Colin Kahl and Paul Pillar — have argued just how counter-productive and potentially dangerous this bill is, and we have republished their arguments for the benefit of LobeLog readers in recent days. But it should be stressed that the 47 co-sponsors of this bill, most notably the 14 Democrats who have signed on to it, have effectively decided that Bibi Netanyahu and AIPAC are more credible sources about Iran and what it is likely to do in the P5+1 negotiations if this sanctions bill becomes law than either the U.S. diplomats who are directly involved in the talks or the U.S. intelligence community. Which is a rather startling fact, especially given, for example, Bibi’s predictive record on Iraq in the run-up to the U.S. invasion and his quarrels with his own intelligence community with respect to Iran.
U.S. officials beginning at the top with Obama, then running through John Kerry and Wendy Sherman have stated repeatedly that passage of a new sanctions bill — even one that would take effect prospectively — would not only violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Nov. 24 agreement; it would also call into serious question Washington’s good faith; quite possibly isolate the U.S. within the P5+1 with disastrous results for the existing sanctions regime; and sufficiently strengthen hardliners in Tehran to force its government to toughen its demands at the negotiating table, if not abandon the diplomatic path altogether (and with it the chances of a peaceful diplomatic settlement). As the most recent assessment by the intelligence community, for which these same 47 senators have approved annual budgets ranging as high as 70 billion dollars in recent years, concluded: “[N]ew sanctions would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.”
Of course, that’s precisely why Netanyahu and AIPAC are pushing the new sanctions package.
Below is a list of senators who have cosponsored or indicated their intention to cosponsor The Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013.
| First Name | Last Name | State | Party | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lamar | Alexander | TN | R | C |
| Kelly | Ayotte | NH | R | C |
| Mark | Begich | AK | D | C |
| Richard | Blumenthal | CT | D | C |
| Roy | Blunt | MO | R | C |
| Cory | Booker | NJ | D | C |
| John | Boozman | AR | R | C |
| Benjamin | Cardin | MD | D | C |
| Bob | Casey | PA | D | C |
| Saxby | Chambliss | GA | R | C |
| Daniel | Coats | IN | R | C |
| Thomas | Coburn | OK | R | C |
| Susan | Collins | ME | R | C |
| Chris | Coons | DE | D | C |
| Bob | Corker | TN | R | C |
| John | Cornyn | TX | R | C |
| Ted | Cruz | TX | R | C |
| Joe | Donnelly | IN | D | C |
| Michael | Enzi | WY | R | C |
| Deb | Fischer | NE | R | C |
| Kirsten | Gillibrand | NY | D | C |
| Lindsey | Graham | SC | R | C |
| Kay | Hagan | NC | D | C |
| Orrin | Hatch | UT | R | C |
| Jim | Inhofe | OK | R | C |
| Johnny | Isakson | GA | R | C |
| Mike | Johanns | NE | R | C |
| Mark | Kirk | IL | R | C |
| Mary | Landrieu | LA | D | C |
| Mike | Lee | UT | R | C |
| Joe | Manchin | WV | D | C |
| John | McCain | AZ | R | C |
| Bob | Menendez | NJ | D | C |
| Jerry | Moran | KS | R | C |
| Lisa | Murkowski | AK | R | C |
| Rob | Portman | OH | R | C |
| Mark | Pryor | AR | D | C |
| James | Risch | ID | R | C |
| Pat | Roberts | KS | R | C |
| Marco | Rubio | FL | R | C |
| Charles | Schumer | NY | D | C |
| Tim | Scott | SC | R | C |
| John | Thune | SD | R | C |
| Pat | Toomey | PA | R | C |
| David | Vitter | LA | R | C |
| Mark | Warner | VA | D | C |
| Roger | Wicker | MS | R | C |
| First Name | Last Name | State | Party | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tammy | Baldwin | WI | D | DNC |
| John | Barrasso | WY | R | DNC |
| Max | Baucus | MT | D | DNC |
| Michael | Bennet | CO | D | DNC |
| Barbara | Boxer | CA | D | DNC |
| Sherrod | Brown | OH | D | DNC |
| Richard | Burr | NC | R | DNC |
| Maria | Cantwell | WA | D | DNC |
| Thomas | Carper | DE | D | DNC |
| Thad | Cochran | MS | R | DNC |
| Michael | Crapo | ID | R | DNC |
| Richard | Durbin | IL | D | DNC |
| Dianne | Feinstein | CA | D | DNC |
| Jeff | Flake | AZ | R | DNC |
| Al | Franken | MN | D | DNC |
| Chuck | Grassley | IA | R | DNC |
| Tom | Harkin | IA | D | DNC |
| Martin | Heinrich | NM | D | DNC |
| Heidi | Heitkamp | ND | D | DNC |
| Dean | Heller | NV | R | DNC |
| Mazie | Hirono | HI | D | DNC |
| John | Hoeven | ND | R | DNC |
| Tim | Johnson | SD | D | DNC |
| Ron | Johnson | WI | R | DNC |
| Timothy | Kaine | VA | D | DNC |
| Angus | King | ME | I | DNC |
| Amy | Klobuchar | MN | D | DNC |
| Patrick | Leahy | VT | D | DNC |
| Carl | Levin | MI | D | DNC |
| Ed | Markey | MA | D | DNC |
| Claire | McCaskill | MO | D | DNC |
| Mitch | McConnell | KY | R | DNC |
| Jeff | Merkley | OR | D | DNC |
| Barbara | Mikulski | MD | D | DNC |
| Christopher | Murphy | CT | D | DNC |
| Patty | Murray | WA | D | DNC |
| Bill | Nelson | FL | D | DNC |
| Rand | Paul | KY | R | DNC |
| Jack | Reed | RI | D | DNC |
| Harry | Reid | NV | D | DNC |
| Jay | Rockefeller | WV | D | DNC |
| Bernie | Sanders | VT | I | DNC |
| Brian | Schatz | HI | D | DNC |
| Jeff | Sessions | AL | R | DNC |
| Jeanne | Shaheen | NH | D | DNC |
| Richard | Shelby | AL | R | DNC |
| Debbie | Stabenow | MI | D | DNC |
| Jon | Tester | MT | D | DNC |
| Mark | Udall | CO | D | DNC |
| Tom | Udall | NM | D | DNC |
| Elizabeth | Warren | MA | D | DNC |
| Sheldon | Whitehouse | RI | D | DNC |
| Ron | Wyden | OR | D | DNC |
Here’s a New Year’s resolution that participants in policy debate in Washington, and especially those in Congress, should make: be honest about your position on Iran. Say what you really want, and make your best arguments on behalf of what you [...]]]>
Here’s a New Year’s resolution that participants in policy debate in Washington, and especially those in Congress, should make: be honest about your position on Iran. Say what you really want, and make your best arguments on behalf of what you really want, and don’t pretend to be working in favor of what you really are working against. The main vehicle for debate about Iran once Congress reconvenes is a bill introduced by Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) that would threaten still more sanctions on Iran and purchasers of its oil, would impose unrealistic conditions to be met to avoid actually imposing the sanctions, and would explicitly give a green light to Israel to launch a war against Iran and to drag the United States into that war. As Colin Kahl has explained in detail, passage of this legislation would be very damaging to the process of negotiating a final agreement with Iran to keep its nuclear program peaceful.
The promoters of the legislation contend that its effect would be just the opposite, and would increase U.S. bargaining power and make it more likely Iran would make concessions we want. It is possible that some members of Congress who might be inclined to vote for this bill, and even some who have signed on as co-sponsors, actually believe that contention. They keep hearing, after all, the trope about how “sanctions brought Iran to the table” and that if some sanctions are a good thing than even more sanctions are an even better thing. But anyone who has thought seriously for more than a minute about this subject—as the chief promoters of the legislation surely have—realizes how fallacious that idea is. Whatever role sanctions may have had in getting Iran to the table, it is the prospect of getting sanctionsremoved, not having them forever increase, that will induce Iran, now that it is at the table, to complete an agreement placing severe restrictions on its nuclear program. It goes against all logic and psychology to think that right after Iran has made most of the concessions necessary to conclude the preliminary Joint Plan of Action, “rewarding” it with more pressure and more punishment would put Iranians in the mood to make still more concessions.
The people doing the negotiating for the United States oppose the legislation because of the damage it would do to the negotiations. Their view is highly significant, no matter how much one might agree or disagree with whatever specific terms the administration is trying to get. If the legislation really would strengthen the U.S. negotiating position, any U.S. negotiator would welcome it.
And if that weren’t enough, counterparts to Kirk and Menendez in the Iranian legislature are providing further evidence of the destructive effect of what is transpiring on Capitol Hill, with the Iranian legislators’ bill calling for Iran to start enriching uranium to a level well beyond what it has ever done before if the United States imposes any new sanctions. This is direct confirmation of how threats and hardline obstinacy, especially at this juncture, beget threats and hardline obstinacy from the other side. The Iranian bill also provides a real-life opportunity for some role reversal. Does this threat emanating from the majlis make U.S. policy-makers more inclined to take a softer line and make more concessions? Of course not.
Kirk and Menendez are not dummies. They surely realize all this. Their legislation serves the purpose of those who want the negotiations with Iran to fail, not to succeed. Chief among those with this purpose is, of course, the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made it abundantly clear that he opposes any agreement of any sort with Iran and will continue to do whatever he can to portray Iran as Satan incarnate and to keep it permanently ostracized. The principal organization in Washington that serves the policy of Netanyahu’s government—i.e., AIPAC—also has its own reason to hammer away forever at the Iranian bogeyman: it’s “good for business,” as a former senior AIPAC executive explained. It is no accident that Mark Kirk is easily the biggest Congressional recipient of AIPAC funds, and Robert Menendez is also among the top half dozen recipients.
Honesty would mean dispensing with the phony issue of whether more sanctions now would help negotiate a better agreement—since they clearly would not—and instead posing the real issue: whether it is in the interests of the United States for the negotiations with Iran to succeed or to fail. That issue can be debated according to several criteria. One concerns the objective of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon: is that objective more obtainable through a negotiated agreement that imposes major new restrictions and intensified international monitoring on Iran’s nuclear program, or through continued confrontation that offers neither of those things? A second set of criteria concerns which path is more likely to avoid the danger of a new war—supplemented by discussion of the impact of a new war on U.S. interests. Another criterion concerns whether broader U.S. policy in the Middle East is better served by the United States having the flexibility to conduct its own diplomacy with anyone in the region on a case-by-case, issue-by-issue basis, or by being locked into hostility insisted on by third parties.
All of this should be debated from the standpoint of U.S. interests. Those with a special concern for Israel can also ask parallel questions, such as whether Israeli interests are better served by an unending relationship of hostility with another major state in the region, with threats and hatred being perpetually flung by each side at the other, or by following a different path.
Let such an honest debate begin. But an honest debate will barely get off the ground unless we discard the nonsense about how something like the Kirk-Menendez bill supposedly aids negotiations.
]]>Lindsey Graham and John McCain, the two-thirds of the Three Amigos who are still in the U.S. Senate since the departure of Joe Lieberman, contributed to the opinion pages of the Washington Post this weekend a short reprise of their familiar positions on front-burner Middle Eastern [...]]]>
Lindsey Graham and John McCain, the two-thirds of the Three Amigos who are still in the U.S. Senate since the departure of Joe Lieberman, contributed to the opinion pages of the Washington Post this weekend a short reprise of their familiar positions on front-burner Middle Eastern issues: act forcefully to defeat the Assad regime in Syria, be obdurate toward Iran, etc. Nothing new here, but it might be worth reflecting for a moment on one of their accusations: that the administration’s “failure in Syria” is part of broader “collapse of U.S. credibility in the Middle East.” Graham and McCain’s particular usage of the term credibility exemplifies something broader, too: a habit of associating the concept only with forceful actions, especially military actions, rather than with any other policy course.
This restrictive concept of upholding a nation’s credibility does not flow from any dictionary definition of credibility (“the quality or power of inspiring belief”). Whether any given action or piece of inaction tends to inspire belief depends of course on context and on what else the state in question has said or done on the same subject. There is no reason to postulate an asymmetry in favor of forceful action or any other kind of action.
There are valid grounds for criticizing the Obama administration’s policies on Syria, especially the overemphasis on the issue of chemical weapons with insufficient advance thinking about what to do if a significant chemical incident were to occur. But the administration’s subsequent seizing on the Russian initiative after the chemical incident in August was in a real sense a making good on its own word about viewing chemical weapons as the most important dimension of the Syrian conflict. That is an unjustifiably narrow way of viewing the conflict, but at least the administration was being consistent, and consistency is an important ingredient of credibility.
The Two Amigos write that the president “specifically committed” to them in the Oval Office “to degrade the Assad regime’s military capabilities, upgrade the capabilities of the moderate opposition and shift the momentum on the battlefield.” Those of us who have not been flies on the Oval Office wall cannot referee that one. But publicly the president has not made the sort of commitment that would warrant the Amigos’ accusation that he “abandoned” the Syrian opposition.
Another erroneous application of the concept of credibility is the senators’ equating loss of credibility with how “Israel and our Gulf Arab partners are losing all confidence” in the administration’s diplomacy, with references to recent indications of the Saudi regime’s displeasure. Displeasing other states, when there has been no failure to live up to a treaty commitment and when the other states—as is true of both Israel and Saudi Arabia—have major differences of interest with the United States as well as some shared interests, has nothing to do with a failure of credibility. Consistent pursuit of the United States’s own interests is much more of a foundation for maintaining credibility.
Graham and McCain do inadvertently give us an example in their piece of how U.S. credibility can be hurt. In referring to the Iranian nuclear issue they say, “We should be prepared to suspend the implementation of new sanctions, but only if Iran suspends its enrichment activities.” This formulation comes out of a letter that eight other senators also signed and that tries to portray this package as a balanced “suspension for suspension” deal. This is a ludicrous play on words. There is nothing reasonable or proportionate about linking a demand for one side to stop completely an ongoing program in return for the other side not piling on still more new sanctions, which doesn’t really entail a suspension of anything. The wordplay is unbelievable. If we want the Iranians or anyone else to believe that the United States is serious about reaching an agreement, this sort of silliness damages U.S. credibility.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, LobeLog
by Jasmin Ramsey
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Amazing things have been happening on the US-Iran front, which began to defrost following Hassan Rouhani’s presidential inauguration this summer. I’ve listed some of them in my last two reports for IPS News (here and here) but today’s news is monumental.
You’ve probably heard something about a letter exchange between Presidents Obama and Rouhani. Well, this has not only been confirmed by both administrations, we’re also learning some of the details now, which I touch on below. Before I do so it’s worth noting that after news of the letter exchange and ahead of the United Nations General Assembly next week where Rouhani will give a speech, Iran released today a group of political prisoners, including lawyer and human rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh, who ended a 49-day hunger strike in December 2012 after Iran’s authorities lifted a travel ban on her 12-year-old daughter. Here is Sotoudeh’s interview in English with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and some truly heart-warming photographs of her reunion with her family.
As shown in the clip above, Ann Curry has also conducted Rouhani’s first interview with an American news outlet as Iran’s president, which will air on NBC’s Nightly News tonight at 6:30 EST. (I think Curry hasn’t been to Iran since 2011 when she interviewed former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) Only bits of the interview have been released so far, and while Rouhani won’t likely say anything earth-shattering so early on, he did describe the “tone” of Obama’s letter as “positive and constructive“. Of course, yesterday Obama also described Rouhani in a positive light. ”There are indications that Rouhani, the new president, is somebody who is looking to open dialogue with the West and with the United States, in a way that we haven’t seen in the past. And so we should test it,” Obama told Telemundo. That’s a dramatic change in tone from White House statements marking Rouhani’s inauguration.
All this is good news and there’s going to be a lot of expert analysis on what it all means, but I can’t get into it now as I’m getting ready to travel to New York where I will be reporting on Obama’s and Rouhani’s speeches from the UN, among other things. For now, here’s an excerpt from Paul Pillar’s “The Stars Align In Tehran” (written before today’s exciting news), to keep in mind as these developments unfold:
The late Abba Eban, the silver-tongued Israeli foreign minister, once famously said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The circumstances, and Palestinian preferences and policies, that underlay his remark changed greatly long ago. But his apothegm might apply to much of the history of the U.S.-Iranian relationship. It would, tragically, apply all the more if the current opportunity is missed, either because of the ammunition being supplied to Iranian hardliners or because the side led by the United States simply does not put on the negotiating table the sanctions relief necessary to strike a deal.
Photo Credit: ISNA/Abdolvahed Mirzazadeh
]]>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
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