By Robert E. Hunter

The devil is in the details.  This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.

Devil and details, [...]]]> via LobeLog

By Robert E. Hunter

The devil is in the details.  This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.

Devil and details, yes; but if there is such a thing, the “angel” is in the “big picture,” the fact of the agreement itself – interim, certainly; flawed, perhaps; but a basic break with the past, come-what-may.  It will now become much harder for Iran to get the bomb, even if it were hell-bent on doing so.  The risk of war has plummeted.  Israel is safer – along with the rest of the region and the world — even as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu denies that fact.

This is the end of the Cold War with Iran, (accurately) defined as a state when it is not possible to distinguish between what is negotiable and what is not.  Going back to that parlous state would require a major act of Iranian bad faith, perfidy, or aggression, not at all in its self-interest.

In the last few days, the Middle East has become different from what it was before.  Indeed, that happened, if one needs to denote “moments of history,” when President Barack Obama picked up the phone to call Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, in the latter’s limousine on the way to Kennedy Airport.

Even that moment was months in the making.  But psychologically it set in train a sequence of events that is causing an earthquake in the region.  And like any good earthquake, the extent, the impact, and even the direction it travels will not be clear for some time.  But one thing is clear: much is now different, and despite serious down-side risks, that can be positive if people in power will make it so.  As said by John Kennedy, the 50^th anniversary of whose assassination also came this past week, “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.”

The struggle with Iran has never been just about “the bomb.”  Even putting aside the question whether Iran’s insistence on having a domestic nuclear energy program would ineluctably morph into a nuclear weapons capability (or threshold capability, a “screwdriver’s turn” away from a weapon), Iran has posed a problem for the Middle East, many of its neighbors, and outsiders in the West ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.  That turned Iran from being a supporter of Western, especially American, interests – a so-called “regional influential” – to being a challenger of US hegemony, the more-or-less accepted predominance of Sunnis over Shiites in the heart of the Middle East, and the comfort level of close US partners among Arab oil-producing states and Israel.  That all happened well before Iran’s nuclear program became an issue.

Led by the United States, countries challenged by the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution fostered a policy of containing Iran.  It included diplomatic isolation, the introduction of economic sanctions, US support – some covert, some open – for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its war against Iran, and US buttressing of the military security of its regional partners, along with the plentiful supply of Western armaments.  There have also been widespread reports of external efforts to destabilize Iran, along with a US predilection, when not also a formal policy, for regime change in Iran, a goal which continues to have its adherents.  For example, see here.

Why Iran has now decided to negotiate seriously about its nuclear program will be long debated and will be variously ascribed to swingeing economic sanctions that have increased pressures by average Iranians on their government to do what is needed to get them lifted; to progressive loss of popular support for the mullah-led regime and a “mellowing” of ideology – factors analogous to the crumbling of Soviet and East European communism two decades ago; and to the election of an Iranian president with an agenda different from his predecessor – blessed, one has to emphasize, by the Supreme Leader for reasons he has not revealed.

The current state of possibilities was helped immeasurably by a US administration that has itself been prepared to negotiate seriously, unlike its two predecessors, from the time a decade ago when Iran put a positive offer on the table that went unanswered – as Secretary of State John Kerry noted in early Sunday morning (Geneva time) commentary.

At heart, what has happened in the last two months is that Iran is now back “in play” in the region and is beginning the march toward resuming a role in the international community – slow perhaps, abortive perhaps, but for now pointed in that direction.  Assuming that the issue of Iran’s nuclear program can be dealt with successfully – a big “assuming” — that is clearly in US interests.  While it is much too soon to “count chickens,” that could lead toward renewed US-Iranian cooperation, tacit or explicit, over Afghanistan, where complementary interests led Iran to support the US overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. The possibility of Iran’s potentially no longer being a pariah state could lead it to value stability in Iraq over the pursuit of major influence there, which itself is problematic, given historic tensions between the two countries that Shia co-fraternity between the leaderships in Baghdad and Teheran only partially obscures.

It is still a stretch, however, to see Iran’s working to reconcile with Israel (a quasi-ally before 1979), although Iran’s full reengagement in the outside world and especially in relations with the United States can never be completed without Iran’s reaching out to Israel (and vice versa), a feat far more difficult than the diplomacy that began to bear fruit last weekend in Geneva.  And for Iran to change its posture toward Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon would require not just alteration of Iran’s ambitions but also changes in policies by other states and groups.

Syria is both symbol and substance of the core problem of Iran’s re-emergence as a serious player in the Middle East.  At one level is the slow-burning civil war between Sunnis and Shias that was reignited by the Iranian Revolution and then, when that fire began to be tamped down, by the US-led invasion of Iraq, which overthrew a Sunni minority government dominating a majority Shia population.  The war in Syria is at least in part an effort by Sunni states to “right the balance.”  In the process, however, Saudi Arabia in particular has been unwilling to control elements in its country that are both inspiring and arming the worst elements of Islamist extremism and which also fuel not just Al Qaeda and its ilk but also the Taliban.  They have been primary sources of destabilization in several regional states and have killed American soldiers and others in Afghanistan.

At another level is the state-centered competition for influence in the region – geopolitics. This is also linked to the relationships of regional states with the West and especially the United States.  In particular, Saudi Arabia and Israel each has a basic stake in their ties to, and support by, the United States; both stoutly oppose Iran’s reentry into that competition, however modest.  Of course, Israel is also concerned by the continuing risk that, somehow, the US (and others) will fail to trammel Iran’s capacity to get the bomb; and also that attention will again swing back to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  But Saudi Arabia faces no potential military threat from Iran.  Indeed, to the extent it and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf face a threat or challenge from Iran, it is denominated in terms of Sunni vs. Shia, cultural and economic penetration, and the greater vibrancy of Iranian society – none of which can be dealt with by the huge quantities of modern armaments these countries have accumulated.

Further, as Iran does again become a player and moves out from under crippling sanctions, in the process attracting massive foreign investments, uncertainties regarding Iranian power and potential challenges to its neighbors will lead the latter to cleave even more closely to the United States; and the US will have to continue being a critical strategic presence in the region – its desire to “pivot” to East Asia notwithstanding.

With all these stakes, it is not surprising that several regional states are opposing the US-led opening to Iran and have already signaled a no-holds-barred campaign, including in US domestic politics, if not to scuttle what has been achieved so far, at least to limit US (and P5+1) negotiating flexibility.  (Iranian hard-liners will also be working to undercut President Rouhani.)  Israel and others can rightly ask that the US not fall for a “sucker’s deal,” though, as Secretary Kerry correctly stated, “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid.” But they are also worried that they will lose their long-unchallenged preeminence in Washington and with Western business interests.  This is not Washington’s problem. Indeed, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria and even to Israeli-Palestinian relations, drawing Iran constructively into the outside world – if that can be done and done safely – is very much in US interests.

Even as things stand now, at an early stage in moving beyond cold war with Iran, President Obama has earned his Nobel Peace Prize.

US-Iran relations expert Trita Parsi explains why diplomatic headway can be made with Iran in the time period after the US presidential election and before the Iranian election in the Daily Beast’s “Open Zion“:

Between November 8, 2012, and mid-March 2013, a unique opportunity exists to make diplomatic headway [...]]]> via Lobe Log

US-Iran relations expert Trita Parsi explains why diplomatic headway can be made with Iran in the time period after the US presidential election and before the Iranian election in the Daily Beast’s “Open Zion“:

The Western members of the P5+1 are showing signs of serious intent, if re-election of President Barack Obama allows nuclear-related talks with Iran to resume in the next few months.

This ought to be cheering news for all who believe that this dispute can be resolved according to the provisions of [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The Western members of the P5+1 are showing signs of serious intent, if re-election of President Barack Obama allows nuclear-related talks with Iran to resume in the next few months.

This ought to be cheering news for all who believe that this dispute can be resolved according to the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), enhanced by some well-chosen, voluntary confidence-building measures.

Yet scepticism remains in order. Why? Several past opportunities to resolve the dispute through negotiation and confidence-building have been squandered. Two vital questions also remain imponderable: is Iran’s Supreme Leader really interested in a nuclear settlement, and will Israeli politicians resist the urge to exercise Israel’s formidable powers of influence in Western capitals to close down the political space for a negotiated outcome?

The Supreme Leader has not hidden his distrust of the United States and his aversion to the West’s “dual-track” approach. In August 2010, for instance, he is reported to have said: “We have rejected negotiations with the US for clear reasons. Engaging in negotiations under threats and pressure is not in fact negotiating.” And at Friday Prayers on 3 February 2012 he said:

We should not fall for the smile on the face of the enemy. We have had experience of them over the last 30 years… We should not be cheated by their false promises and words; they break their promises very easily. They feel no shame. They simply utter lies.

Does he, in addition, calculate that a nuclear settlement would not be in the interest of the Islamic Republic, even if the terms were fair and consistent with the NPT?

I have come across people who believe that this is the case. They argue that Iran’s leaders need the nuclear dispute to prevent a thaw in relations with the US which might bring about unwelcome social change; to mobilise popular support for the Islamic Republic; to distract attention from political repression, human rights abuses and the corrupt practices of an elite; and to excuse economic mismanagement.

I have no evidence for saying that this view is mistaken. If, however, I try to look at the issue “from the other side of the hill”, it seems to me that the Supreme Leader could afford to give up the nuclear dispute as a domestic political instrument; he would still be left with several other ways of arousing indignation against the West and of avoiding a thaw in relations with the US. And in cost/benefit terms, the gain from a nuclear settlement — if it results in the lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions —  looks to me enticing.

On the other side of the equation, we are all familiar with the arguments Israel’s leaders will deploy if they do not want a nuclear settlement. They will claim that an Iranian enrichment capacity, though not outlawed by the NPT, and even if subject to international inspection, represents a threat to Israel’s survival.  They will remind us that Iran is the world’s “leading sponsor of terror”, even though many of us know that the process which leads to a state being branded a “sponsor of terror” is highly political and highly partial. They will assert that continuing uranium enrichment in Iran will compel Saudi Arabia and Turkey to violate their NPT obligations and become nuclear-armed. They will point to Iran’s lamentable human rights record.

We are also familiar with their motives: to convince the US that Iran remains a threat to US interests in the Middle East, against which an indispensible ally, Israel, is a necessity (cf. Trita Parsi’s A Single Roll of the Dice); to justify an absence of progress in the Middle East peace process; to distract attention from their lack of interest in a Middle East free of Israel’s nuclear weapons; and to create common ground with Gulf monarchs who fear and loath Iran.

Until now Israel’s political harvest from keeping the Iran Nuclear pot at simmering temperature has been rich (I hope I can be forgiven a mixed metaphor). So it is hard to imagine that Israeli politicians will abstain from applying pressure on the West in 2013, if Iran fails to do their job for them by aborting renewed negotiations, and if things appear to be heading towards a settlement.

Yet the story could have another ending. Perhaps this time Western politicians will recall their primary responsibility: the welfare of those who elect them. Safeguarded Iranian nuclear activities pose no threat to the security of these voters. These voters are paying a price for the imposition on Iran of oil and other trading and investment sanctions. And a war on Iran, inevitable in the absence of a negotiated settlement, would entail risks to Western living standards, as well as to Western lives.

But enough! These musings will seem the stuff that dreams are made of if Governor Romney is elected and some of his neoconservative advisers are let loose on Iran policy.

- Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna).

Sadeq Zibakalam, University of Tehran professor and the closest the Islamic Republic has to an intra-systemic gadfly, has written an interesting commentary in the new daily Arman regarding the current state of Iranian politics. The article’s title, “End of the Deviation current,” refers to the excuse hardline conservatives in Iran have [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Sadeq Zibakalam, University of Tehran professor and the closest the Islamic Republic has to an intra-systemic gadfly, has written an interesting commentary in the new daily Arman regarding the current state of Iranian politics. The article’s title, “End of the Deviation current,” refers to the excuse hardline conservatives in Iran have relied upon to maintain their support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The “deviation current” was imaginatively concocted to blame a small clique of presidential appointees for leading Ahmadinejad astray.

Last week, Zibakalam states, proved that such a posture was no longer possible. The public interchange of letters between Ahmadinejad and the head of the Judiciary, Sadeq Amoli Larijani, ended the pretense that Ahmadinejad and his views are not the problem.

What happened last week was essentially this: Ahmadinejad’s sudden transformation into the defender of the “people’s rights”, through his public letter to the Judiciary head that in his capacity as the “implementer of the Constitution” he has the right and responsibility to visit Iranian prisons, was met with Amoli Larijani’s rather humiliating public lashing that a president’s visit is allowed only after the head of the judiciary’s permission. And, Amoli Larijani went on to say, the Judiciary does not think that it is in the “interest of the system” (maslehat) for the permission to be granted. End of conversation.

Zibakalam notes that after this exchange, even hardliners are no longer talking about the deviation current. In effect, Ahmadinejad has managed to lose every single constituency that coalesced to bring him to power in 2005 against the centrist former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The hardliners, who continue to call the 2005 election epic for heralding a discourse (goftoman-e sevom-e khordad) — at the heart and soul of which was Ahmadinejad who embodied simple living, justice-oriented policies, service to the poor, a challenge to the “aristocratic way of life,” a revolutionary stance against the West in the global arena, and the export of revolutionary values — can no longer avoid the reality that their hero is no longer one of them (or at least is acting as though he is no longer one of them).

The hardliners’ separation from Ahmadinejad does not merely lie in Ahmadinejad’s betrayal of their values and his new liberal fondness for “universal human values” and accommodation-oriented foreign policy. They are aghast at Ahmadinejad’s blatant effort to enhance his standing among the urban middle classes. To them, there is nothing wrong with Ahmadinejad trying to maintain popularity so that he can continue to play a role in Iranian politics after his term ends by August 2013. Conceivably, Ahmadinejad’s popularity can be a boon for the hardliners next presidential candidate. But Ahmadinejad’s assessment that it is the urban middle classes which need to be wooed through a liberal posture is hard to swallow. This is a problem for hardliners because it is a public abandonment of their cherished discourse, as well as a clear statement that the country’s mood is not hardline.

Ahmadinejad’s new posture is observed with quite a bit of amusement and ridicule by many who in 2009 voted for his reformist opponents, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, despite Ahmadinejad’s claim that he has been calling for their release from house arrest a couple of times. But this adds to the hardliners’ uncertainty in finding another carrier for their “discourse”, one who is both trustworthy and electable.

To be sure, so far the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stepped in to make sure that the “justice-centered and resistance” discourse does not vanish with Ahmadinjad’s troubles. The question of whether the Leader’s abode will try to manipulate the 2013 election in order to maintain his position as an effective executive officer (along with being the Leader) is also a real one (even if this is not as easy as many imagine it to be given the fact that the body in charge of elections is the Interior Ministry, which is still run by Ahmadinejad’s appointees, and that Iranian presidents have shown a tendency to eventually object to the office of the Leader’s interference regardless of their political orientation).

At this point, the hardliners in Iran are left with no other choice but to elevate the Leader into a God-like figure who knows everything about what is best for the country with the hope that by doing so, he may be even more likely to remain on their side. Just this week Khamenei’s chief of staff, Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani said, “if one day it becomes necessary and the commander in chief [khamenei] wills it, sacred defense will again be repeated.”

However, the fear that Khamenei will eventually be forced (or connived by centrist forces) to acknowledge the same societal forces that have pushed Ahmadinejad to feign liberalism, is also there. Whether he will do so is the million dollar question in Iran, and the answer remains to be seen. (In North Khorasan a couple of weeks ago, Khamenei gave a tiny nod to the popular mood by calling for a more flexible approach to the appearance of women who don’t wear their veil properly but “are still believers.”)

But showing flexibility towards certain social conducts along with continued political repression has been an old trick in the Islamic Republic and does not represent a turn. Unless something drastic happens — such as Ahmadinejad resignation or removal — we will have to wait for the June 2013 presidential election to see whether there is a move away from the hardline discourse and which part of the electorate will be given a better chance to have its say.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad himself is turning into an interesting figure to watch in terms of the fate that awaits him.

The Islamic Republic has treated its past three presidents differently. One past president is the current Leader  due to behind-the-scene machinations that have now turned sour for its prime architect, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Former president Khamenei continues to have a constituency, particularly in the provinces and among the lower ranks of the state and multiplicity of popular or militia-based welfare organizations and networks.

Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani has lost power but still holds a position as the chair of the Expediency Council and maintains quite a bit of clout, particularly in the business community and state-run technocracy through his advocacy of anti-hardline domestic and foreign policies.

Finally, former president Mohammad Khatami has been completely cut off from access to power, but despite all the complaints about his indecisiveness, he remains a popular man in Iran at least within a certain constituency. I have no way of knowing for sure, but there are people in Iran who insist that a real poll would show that he is still the most popular politician in the country.

In other words, Iran’s past three presidents, for all their faults, each have their own constituency. Ahmadinejad will be the first past president who will leave office with hardly any significant constituency and few political instruments to rely upon. His sudden shift toward some of the concerns of the urban middle classes suggests even he knows that once his access to state coffers is cut off, verbal populism will be of no use in maintaining a constituency that relies on state largesse.

Since the flight of Iran’s first president, Abolhassan Bani Sadr, from the country in the 1980s, all of Iran’s significant leaders have chosen to stay in Iran and precisely because of this continue to represent a voice even after they leave office because they have remained influential, each in their own way, even if purged from power and under house arrest.

Ahmadinejad stands alone, at least for now, because his confrontation with Khamenei has robbed him of support from the right of the political spectrum without any accrued benefits from the other side. In the next few months he will continue to try, as he has done in the past couple of years, to distribute as many resources among his friends as he can — even placing them in secure tenured university positions — in order to maintain some sort of political relevance after the election. But his options are limited.

Even if nuclear talks go somewhere after the US election, Ahmadinejad will not be the beneficiary of his pivot towards being a promoter of talks with the United States. He will continue to be framed as someone who, through mismanagement and bluster, brought about the enhanced sanctions regime, with Khamenei eventually taking charge and fixing the mess. He will have a hard time swallowing this reality and few believe that he will accept his checkmated predicament quietly.

But whatever Ahmadinejad does pales in comparison to what he has already done, which is to make clear, publicly, that even he is aware that public sentiments have drastically moved away from what they were in 2005 when his populist, justice-oriented platform won the day.

Ironically, this awareness was also the motivation behind the Mousavi and Karroubi campaigns in the 2009 election, and it must be quite disconcerting for those who put their reputation on the line to support Ahmadinejad’s reelection to watch him place value in public sectors that are disenchanted with his management of the economy and want a less confrontationist foreign policy.