These are the same allegations that Dennis Ross, Obama’s top National Security Council official for [...]]]>
These are the same allegations that Dennis Ross, Obama’s top National Security Council official for Iran policy, pushed back against in his talk yesterday at a U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) event.
In the Leveretts’ piece, they cite a Huffington Post article by Reza Marashi, who just joined the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) as research director after four years in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs:
It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy. By definition, engagement entails a long-term approach that abandons “sticks” and reassures both sides that their respective fears are unfounded. We realized early on that the administration was unlikely to adopt this approach. [...]
Moreover, as the leaked cables show, the highest levels of the Obama administration never believed that diplomacy could succeed. While this does not cheapen Obama’s Nowruz message and other groundbreaking facets of his initial outreach, it does raise three important questions: How can U.S. policymakers give maximum effort to make diplomacy succeed if they admittedly never believed their efforts could work? …And what are the chances that Iran will take diplomacy seriously now that it knows the U.S. never really did? The Obama administration presented a solid vision, but never truly pursued it.
This is pretty damning stuff from a guy who just left the Obama State Department. He was on the inside. And the Leveretts are feeling vindicated:
This, of course, provides additional powerful and public confirmation—from inside the Obama Administration—for our argument, in a New York Times Op Ed published in May 2009, that the Obama Administration’s disingenuous approach to dealing with Iran had already betrayed the early promise of President Obama’s initial rhetoric about engagement.
They mention that Ross was quite displeased with what they then had to say, and he let them know. The Leveretts note that Ross had Ray Takeyh, then his assistant at the State Department, push back against the notion that Obama’s “extended hand” to Iran was a checklist item for building international backing for more pressure on Iran, and possibly eventually military strikes. Takeyh called the idea “wrong and fraudulent.”
The Leveretts want to know what Takeyh thinks now:
]]>In light of the Wikileaks cables and Mr. Marashi’s public confirmation that the Obama Administration was, in fact, pursuing engagement to pave the way for more coercive options, including expanded sanctions, we ask Ray Takeyh: who was perpetrating a fraud with regard to the underlying intent of the Administration’s Iran policy?
The catch? For years the United States has been accused [...]]]>
The catch? For years the United States has been accused of lending support to Jundullah as a way of fomenting instability in Iran’s ethnic Baluchi southeast.
From State’s press release:
On November 3, 2010 the Secretary of State announced the designation of Jundallah, a violent extremist organization that operates primarily in the province of Sistan va Balochistan of Iran, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) [...]
Since its inception in 2003, Jundallah has engaged in numerous attacks resulting in the death and maiming of scores of Iranian civilians and government officials, primarily in Iran’s Sistan va Balochistan province. Jundallah uses a variety of terrorist tactics, including suicide bombings, ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations.
Iran responded late last month to an invitation to the November P5+1 talks on its nuclear program. Whether the latest move by the U.S. is a concession or a confidence building measure, it’s worth noting the State Department recently seems to be taking aim at Iranian national pride, such as referring to the “Persian Gulf” as the “Arabian Gulf” (see here and here).
Nonetheless, the statement on Jundullah was welcomed in Tehran, even as it bashed U.S. covert support for anti-regime groups there. According to the Iran’s semi-official news service, ISNA:
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast called the US designation of Rigi group as terrorist a “right measure.”
“Fighting terrorism is a general responsibility of all nations and the Islamic Republic of Iran regards the US measure in blacklisting Rigi terrorist group as a right measure,” he added.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will evaluate change in the US policy on supporting terrorist groups of Jundullah (Soldiers of God), PJAK and Tondar in practice.”
Politico foreign policy blogger Laura Rozen suggests that the designation of Jundallah as a terror group could be “signal” to Iran ahead of negotiations. She quoted an unnamed Washington Iran expert who said the move is clearly aimed at engaging Iran:
The designation of Jundullah shows “one bureaucratic fight in favor of engagement was won,” one Washington Iran expert said on condition of anonymity. “But whether it’s sufficient or not and how it is followed up remains to be seen.”
U.S. geo-strategists Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, writing on their blog, called the move a “notable turn-around” and “long overdue.” They lay out some little known history that early-on the Obama administration had considered designating Jundullah, but didn’t do so in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 2009 election. The Leveretts point out:
Since then, the perception that the United States continues to have ties to Jundallah and other groups considered terrorists by most Iranians has had a deeply corrosive effect on Iranian assessments of the Obama Administration’s seriousness about strategic engagement with Iran and its ultimate intentions towards the Islamic Republic.
As the Leveretts report, Obama inherited the wide-ranging covert program against Iran from George W. Bush, whose administration had greatly increased funding for regime change activities and subversion on Iran’s nuclear program.
In July 2008 New Yorker, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about the expansion of Bush’s program (with my emphasis):
One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” [Council on Foreign Relations scholar Vali] Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” [...] According to [former CIA agent Bob] Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.
A blog post on the Wall Street Journal website sums up much of the (thin) evidence for U.S. support of Jundullah, and quotes an earlier unequivocal denial to the blog from the State Department that such support had ever occurred:
]]>“We have repeatedly stated, and reiterate again that the United States has not provided support to Jundallah,” a [State] spokesman emailed. “The United States does not sponsor any form of terrorism. We will continue to work with the international community to curtail support for terrorist organizations and prevent violence against innocent civilians. We have also encouraged other governments to take comparable actions against Jundallah.”
Nonetheless, his myth-busting, based [...]]]>
Nonetheless, his myth-busting, based on his vantage point in Beirut, is worth the read:
]]>Firstly, let us put to one side the nonsense: The President of Iran’s visit was not about embedding Lebanon as a part of the Iranian state, nor was it about paving the way for any Hizbullah ‘take-over’ of Lebanon; and nor can the visit be described as a ‘provocation’. …All these claims for the purpose of the visit are just a part of the psychological warfare mounted against Iran, and can be ignored.
The visit was, in fact, a State visit. The Iranian President was formally invited by the Maronite Christian President of Lebanon some while ago. Iran is a prominent regional state, just as Turkey is – whose Prime Minister happens to be visiting Beirut today.
Iran’s popularity on the streets should not surprise anyone. It is real, and it is heartfelt – and extends beyond the Shi’i of the south of Beirut. Having been present here in Beirut throughout the war of 2006, I experienced the almost universal shock at how leaders and so-called ‘friends of Lebanon’ such as Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice tried to fend-off and delay a ceasefire – in order to allow Israel more time to ‘finish the job’, i.e. to destroy more bridges, more infrastructure and impose civilian casualties – as our ‘price’ to be paid for Hizbullah’s seizure of Israeli soldiers. Feelings here are still raw on this point, and all sectors of opinion know that the only real support for Lebanon in those dark hours came from Syria and Iran. Unsurprisingly, there was a direct element of gratitude in expression to Iran in recent days both for the support then, and its subsequent economic assistance to repair the damage.
Levey has served as the chief architect of U.S. sanctions policy under both [...]]]>
Levey has served as the chief architect of U.S. sanctions policy under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The Leveretts blast the U.S. sanctions as “profoundly dysfunctional”, where Levey considers they can work at both formal and informal levels. While the formal level has proscribed categories of prohibited activities, the “informal level” of sanctions enforcement—deterring banks and businesses from doing business with Iran out of a concern over “reputational risk”– can limit trade in ways that formal sanctions are unable.
Their October 7th blog post concludes:
The interview underscores just how profoundly dysfunctional U.S. sanctions policies are. We have criticized sanctions as being futile and counterproductive, in that America’s continued resort to multilateral and unilateral sanctions against Iran undermines whatever credibility U.S. offers of “engagement” might otherwise have. But, the Levey interview makes clear that the damaging effects of sanctions go beyond even this. Levey says that sanctions are meant to press Iran to engage in serious diplomacy witht the United States and the international community. But, he has, in effect, created a sanctions policy which will be very difficult for the United States to walk back, even as part of a process of negotiation and prospective rapprochement. We suspect that this is precisely what Levey intends. That President-elect Obama moved so rapidly to retain Levey was a sad indicator of how internally contradictory and incoherent the Obama Administration’s Iran policy would turn out to be.
The Leveretts are correct to point out the Obama administration is painting itself in to a potentially difficult corner. Hooman Majd’s Washington Post blog post last week, as discussed here on LobeLog and on The Race For Iran, outlined the cultural and historical reasons why a confrontational sanctions policy is not likely to force Iran to give up its nuclear program.
The Leveretts’ and Majd’s insights into Iranian history and political trends are useful prisms for understanding the relative effectiveness of U.S. sanctions policy. However, it is important to examine the impact sanctions will have on U.S. trading relationships and bilateral relationships if, as some Iran-hawks have suggested, the United States should demand total conformity to sanctions from large, and notoriously independent, countries such as Russia and China.
As the extent to which sanctions are intended to “bite” or “cripple” the Iranian economy grows, so too do the challenges of holding other countries to the sanctions regime. Last week’s announcement by South Korea–a country which has a historically far closer relationship with the U.S. than China or Russia–that it will find new ways to finance trade with Iran is just another example of the challenges facing Stuart Levey and the sanctions regime which he is piloting.
]]>