by Jim Lobe
Lindsey Graham, who is not a stupid person, can be so embarrassing. Speaking at a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem Saturday, Graham said the following in response to Bibi’s call for “more sanctions, and stronger sanctions” against Iran.
But you, above all others, have said that sanctions are what got Iran to the table, and it will be the only thing that brings them to a deal that we can all live with.
I’m here to tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, that the Congress will follow your lead. [Emphasis added.]
What a remarkable thing to say to a foreign leader when he’s hosting you in his country, especially when the president of your own country is clearly not happy with that prime minister’s approach to this particular problem.
But that’s not all he said. He implied that people in the US intelligence community, which has insisted for more than seven years now that Iran has not made a decision to build a nuclear weapon, should have their driver’s licenses revoked whenever they return from overseas assignments, meetings or vacations.
To those who believe the Iranians have not been trying to develop a nuclear weapon, if you come to America, you should not be allowed to drive on our highways. Clearly, this regime for years has been deceiving the international community, has been trying to pursuit [sic], in my view, a nuclear weapon.
And then there’s this little gem offered to a leader who, as prime minister or the leader of the opposition, has steadfastly opposed the peace-making efforts of three US presidents, including George W. Bush, and who enthusiastically encouraged the United States to invade and occupy Iraq, among other incredibly stupid moves.
And what brings me here so many times, is common and shared values and common and shared enemies.
The fate of one country determines the fate of the other.
God bless the people of Israel, and you can count on the United States Congress, Republican and Democrat, to be there for you when you need us the most. [Emphasis added.]
Now, to be fair to Graham, he did not explicitly endorse Netanyahu’s call for “more sanctions, and stronger sanctions” despite his promise that Congress will follow Bibi’s “lead” in dealing with Iran. Instead, he promised that Congress will vote on the Kirk-Menendez bill, or what I originally called the “Wag the Dog Act of 2014,” next month, the approval of which, according to virtually all knowledgeable observers, will result in the collapse not only of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, but also of the international sanctions regime. (For a more specific analysis, you can examine Ed Levine’s assessment of the bill after it was introduced last year.)
Graham, like Netanyahu himself, also insisted that he supports the administration’s efforts to negotiate a deal. “I would love nothing better than a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear ambitions,” he said. “I support the Administration’s effort to try to bring this to a peaceful conclusion.” But then he went on to insist that any final agreement must include the abandonment by Tehran of its uranium enrichment capabilities—a demand that all of the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) consider totally unrealistic.
Now, Graham often has had a problem with getting a little carried away in his public rhetoric. Reacting to President Obama’s State of the Union Address last January, and particularly his remarks about imposing sanctions against Iran, the South Carolina senator warned that “the world is literally about to blow up.” At the 2010 Halifax International Security Forum, Graham reportedly stunned the audience—and apparently embarrassed his hosts—by calling for a full-scale attack on Iran beyond its nuclear facilities.
So my view of military force would be not to just neutralize their nuclear program, which are probably dispersed and hardened, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard. In other words, neuter that regime.
But then last June, Graham, while on the rounds of the Sunday talk shows and apparently freaked out about Islamic State’s sweep in northern and western Iraq, called for Washington to work with Iran (and presumably with the hated Revolutionary Guard) to protect Baghdad. The US has to “have to have some dialogue with the Iranians that says, ‘let’s coordinate our efforts,’ but has some red lines,” he said on one show. “The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn’t fall,” he said on yet another. “We need to coordinate with the Iranians. To ignore Iran and not tell them, ‘Don’t take advantage of this situation,’ would be a mistake.”
More recently, Graham denounced the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee’s report on Benghazi as “full of crap.”
It’s pretty clear that Graham can sometimes get excitable, especially when the TV cameras are rolling.
Assuming that the Kirk-Menendez bill does come to the floor next month, however, the big question is whether it will attract enough Senate Democrats to render its passage veto-proof (because there’s no doubt whatsoever that Obama will veto it). That will take 33 Democrats and/or independents and/or Republicans. At this point, I think the president should not have too much trouble getting those votes, and the fact that Graham has now taken the lead on this while on foreign soil will likely make it easier for Obama to get the Democratic support he needs. But Graham’s assurance that a Republican-led Congress will “follow [Netanyahu’s] lead” (against a US president, if necessary) should prompt a few of his fellow-Republicans to reflect just a little on the implications of such deference by a powerful US senator to a foreign leader.
Graham also had a lot to say about Hamas and withholding funding for the United Nations if it becomes more involved in seeking an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. You can read the whole transcript of his appearance with Netanyahu here and judge for yourself.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Since Obama’s announcement last week that he will normalize relations with Cuba, a number of commentators have analyzed what impact this might have on US-Iranian ties, particularly with respect to the ongoing negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
Aside from neoconservatives, such as Elliott Abrams, and other hawks, like Lindsey Graham and John McCain—who predictably deplored the move and worried that Obama’s move portends US surrender at the negotiating table—the Wilson Center’s Aaron David Miller was one of the first to do a more thoughtful analysis of what it might mean for Iran policy. In his post, entitled “After Cuba Comes Iran,” Miller argued that, despite the key differences between the two countries, Obama’s decision to normalize ties with Havana “should be a clear sign of where he might like to go with Iran on the nuclear issue in coming months.”
Paul Pillar, a regular contributor to the National Interest, also alluded to the possibility that the Cuba initiative, coupled with Obama’s more assertive policy shifts on immigration and climate change, could indeed indicate where Obama wants to go with Iran and expressed the hope that these moves will encourage him to inject into the US negotiating position the flexibility that will be needed to conclude an agreement.
In another important contribution published by Voice of America Tuesday, the Atlantic Council’s Iran expert, Barbara Slavin argued what I’ve been thinking (but hadn’t put pen to paper) for the past week:
For those in the Iranian government who are pushing for a long-term nuclear deal with Washington, seeing Obama use his presidential authority to relieve the embargo against Cuba despite the vocal objection of some in Congress should increase confidence that he can waive key nuclear-related sanctions against Iran in a similar fashion.
In my opinion, Obama’s willingness to make a bold foreign policy move that is certain to provoke heated opposition from not insignificant domestic constituencies (that are also overrepresented in Congress) should—contrary to the narratives put out by the neoconservatives and other hawks—actually strengthen the Rouhani-Zarif faction within the Iran leadership who are no doubt arguing that Obama is serious both about reaching an agreement and forging a new relationship with the Islamic Republic.
I asked Farideh Farhi—whose analysis of internal Iranian politics and foreign policy is, as far as LobeLog (among many others) is concerned, the best available—about this Wednesday. She replied by email as follows:
I think Obama did himself a lot of good in changing the perception of him in Iran, as well as the rest of the world, as a weak and indecisive president. I think that perception just received a beating and will help those in Tehran who are making the case that Obama is serious and can deliver on substantial sanctions relief or that he is the best person to deal with (given the fact that he is relieved of election pressures). To be sure, all this will be focused on nuclear negotiations and not normalization of relations that developed in the Cuba situation, but if it happens, it will certainly be a breakthrough that may gradually open the path towards normalization.
Farideh pointed in particular to the official reaction by Iran’s Foreign Ministry to Obama’s Cuba announcement as offering some indication about how it was being interpreted in Tehran. That statement emphasized the president’s acknowledgment that more than 50 years of isolation and sanctions against Cuba had not worked and “I do not believe we can continue doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.” Obama’s remarks about having learned “from hard-earned experience that countries are more likely to enjoy lasting transformation if their people are not subjected to chaos,” according to Farideh, were also likely to be seen favorably in Tehran as Obama’s repudiation of “regime change.” (Related points were made in another analysis, “If It’s True on Cuba, It’s True on Iran,” published in the Huffington Post by Trita Parsi and Ryan Costello shortly after Obama’s announcement.)
I would add that the fact that the Castro brothers, who have “resisted” Yanqui imperialism and “global arrogance” for even longer than Tehran, are now willing to establish a new relationship with their own “Great Satan” may also count for something in the internal debate that swirls around Ayatollah Khamenei’s office. If, after all, revolutionary Cuba is willing to turn the page with their historic nemesis—defiance of which has largely defined Cuba’s out-sized standing and status in the world—shouldn’t hardcore revolutionaries around Khamenei at least consider the idea, if not of normalisation (which appears out of the question for the moment), then at least moving with greater confidence toward some rapprochement?
That view is shared by Kenneth Katzman, the senior analyst of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the Congressional Research Service. “I think we should also not minimize how the Cuba rapprochement might play in the inner counsels in Tehran,” he said in an email. “Surely, Rouhani and Zarif can now go to the Supreme Leader and say ‘The Castro brothers are at least as distrustful of the United States as you are, and they were able to reach a deal with the United States. Why wouldn’t you do the same??”
Of course, opponents of Obama’s normalization of ties with Cuba will try to rally a Republican-led Congress behind their efforts to restrain Obama’s efforts by, among other measures, denying funding for an embassy, refusing to confirm a nominee as ambassador, and introducing legislation designed to constrain the president’s authority to waive or lift certain sanctions or further ease the trade embargo. And, if they succeed, particularly with respect to the sanctions issue, there’s no doubt that such action will be used by hard-liners in Tehran to argue that Obama lacks the power to follow through on any promises he makes about lifting sanctions and related concessions, in a nuclear deal.
But it’s pretty clear that Obama is determined to fight such actions, and it’s most unlikely that anti-Castro diehards like Marco Rubio and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will be able to gather enough Democratic supporters to overcome a presidential veto. Indeed, given the strong support for Obama’s action from such quarters as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Foreign Trade Council, and various agricultural lobby groups whose members are eager to significantly increase their exports to Cuba, normalization’s foes may find it more difficult than they anticipate to rally a large majority of Republicans behind them despite the party leadership’s determination to deny Obama any kind of foreign policy success.
At the same time, any serious effort by the anti-Castro forces on Capitol Hill will pose some difficult questions for key players on Iran, especially the Israel lobby and the various groups associated with it. The Cuba and Israel lobbies have worked closely together for decades—their common interests have converged perfectly in the persons of the outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former House Foreign Committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. And now is the moment when the Cuba lobby needs all the help it can get. Moreover, if the leadership of the Israel lobby believes that normalization with Cuba will make a nuclear deal and rapprochement with Iran substantially more likely, will it decide that this is a fight worth fighting? Of course, the leadership is not monolithic, especially on a question that, at least on the face of it, is so far removed from Israel itself, and it will be very difficult to mobilize all but the lobby’s most right-wing constituents behind preventing normalization with Cuba. But it will be fascinating to watch.
Photo: US President Barack Obama talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani of during a phone call in the Oval Office, Sept. 27, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>In perhaps his boldest foreign policy move during his presidency, Barack Obama Wednesday announced that he intends to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba.
While the president noted that he lacked the authority to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo against Havana, he issued directives that will permit more American citizens to travel there and third-country subsidiaries of US companies to engage in commerce. Other measures include the launching a review of whether Havana should remain on the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism.” The president also said he looked forward to engaging Congress in “an honest and serious debate about lifting the embargo.”
“In the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years, we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” said Obama in a nationally televised announcement.
“Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people, and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.”
The announcement, which was preceded by a secret, 45-minute telephone conversation Tuesday morning between Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro, drew both praise from those who have long argued that Washington’s pursuit of Cuba’s isolation has been a total failure and bitter denunciations from right-wing Republicans. Some of them vowed, among other things, to oppose any effort to lift the embargo, open the US embassy in Havana, or confirm a US ambassador to serve there. (Washington has had an Interest Section in the Cuban capital since 1977.)
“Today’s announcement initiating a dramatic change in US policy is just the latest in a long line of failed attempts by President Obama to appease rogue regimes at all costs,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, one of a number of fiercely anti-Castro Cuban-American lawmakers and a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
“I intend to use my role as incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee to make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt by the President to burnish his legacy at the Cuba people’s expense,” he said in a statement. “Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama’s naiveté during his final two years in office.”
The outgoing Democratic chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, also decried Obama’s announcement. “The United States has just thrown the Cuban regime an economic lifeline,” he said.
“With the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, Cuba is losing its main benefactor, but will now receive the support of the United States, the greatest democracy in the world,” said Menendez, who is also Cuban-American.
But other lawmakers hailed the announcement.
Today President Obama and President Raul Castro made history,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a senior Democrat and one of three lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who escorted Alan Gross, a US Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor, from Havana Wednesday morning as part of a larger prisoner and spy swap that precipitated the announcement.
“Those who cling to a failed policy (and) …may oppose the President’s actions have nothing to offer but more of the same. That would serve neither the interests of the United States and its people, nor of the Cuban people,” Leahy said. “It is time for a change.”
Other analysts also lauded Obama’s Wednesday’s developments, comparing them to historic breakthroughs with major foreign policy consequences.
“Obama has chosen to change the entire framework of the relationship, as (former President Richard) Nixon did when he travelled to China,” said William LeoGrande, a veteran Cuba scholar at American University, in an email from Havana. “Many issues remain to be resolved, but the new direction of US policy is clear.”
Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based hemispheric think tank that has long urged Washington to normalize ties with Havana, told IPS the regional implications would likely be very positive.
“Obama’s decision will be cheered and applauded throughout Latin America,” he said.
“The Cuba issue has sharply divided Washington from the rest of the hemisphere for decades, and this move, long overdue, goes a long way towards removing a key major source of irritation in US-Latin American relations,” Shifter said.
Obama also announced Wednesday that he will attend the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama in April. Castro had also been officially invited, over the objections of both the US and Canada, at the last Summit in Cartagena in 2012, so there had been some speculation that Obama might boycott the proceedings.
Harvard international relations expert Stephen Walt said he hoped that Wednesday’s announcement portends additional bold moves by Obama on the world stage in his last two years as president despite the control of both houses of Congress by Republicans.
“One may hope that this decision will be followed by renewed efforts to restore full diplomatic relations with even more important countries, most notably Iran,” he told IPS in an email.
“Recognition does not imply endorsing a foreign government’s policies; it simply acknowledges that U.S. interests are almost always well served by regular contact with allies and adversaries alike,” he said.
Administration officials told reporters that Wednesday’s developments were made possible by 18 months of secret talks between senior official from both sides—not unlike those carried out in Oman between the US and Iran prior to their landmark November 2013 agreement with five other world powers on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Officials credited Pope Francis, an Argentine, with a key role in prodding both parties toward an accord.
“The Holy Father wishes to express his warm congratulations for the historic decision taken by the Governments of the United States of America and Cuba to establish diplomatic relations, with the aim of overcoming, in the interest of the citizens of both countries, the difficulties which have marked their recent history,” the Vatican said in a statement Wednesday.
The Vatican’s strong endorsement could mute some of the Republican and Cuban-American criticism of normalization and make it more difficult for Rubio and his colleagues to prevent the establishment of an embassy and appointment of an ambassador, according to some Capitol Hill staff.
Similarly, major US corporations, some of whom, particularly in the agribusiness and consumer goods sectors, have seen major market potential in Cuba, are likely to lobby their allies on the Republican side.
“We deeply believe that an open dialogue and commercial exchange between the US and Cuban private sectors will bring shared benefits, and the steps announced today will go a long way in allowing opportunities for free enterprise to flourish,” said Thomas Donohue, the president of the US Chamber of Commerce in a statement. Donohue headed what he called an unprecedented “exploratory” trip to Cuba earlier this year.
“Congress now has a decision to make,” said Jake Colvin, the vice president for global trade issues at the National Foreign Trade Council, an association of many of the world’s biggest multi-national corporations. “It can either show that politics stops at the water’s edge, or insist that the walls of the Cold War still exist.”
Wednesday’s announcement came in the wake of an extraordinary series of editorials by the New York Times through this autumn in favour of normalization and the lifting of the trade embargo.
In another sign of a fundamental shift here, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose husband Bill took some steps to ease the embargo during his tenure as president, disclosed in her book published last summer that she had urged Obama to “take another look at our embargo. It wasn’t achieving its goals, and it was holding back our broader agenda across Latin America.”
That stance, of course, could alienate some Cuban-American opinion, especially in the critical “swing state” of Florida if Clinton runs in the 2016 election. But recent polls of Cuban-Americans have suggested an important generational change in attitudes toward Cuba and normalization within the Cuban-American community, with the younger generation favoring broader ties with their homeland.
Photo: Alan Gross talks with President Obama onboard a government plane headed back to the US, Dec. 17, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson
]]>For those who are trying to keep abreast of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the International Crisis Group has just put out their latest report and recommendations. You can find links an overview of the underlying report, as well as the report itself for greater detail, at the bottom. We are posting ICG’s press release issued Wednesday with permission.
When twelve months of intense negotiations between Iran and the P5+1/EU3+3 ended with yet another extension, sceptics saw this as confirmation that the talks are doomed. But it would be as grave a mistake to underestimate the real progress as to overstate the chances of ultimate success. A landmark agreement is still within reach if both sides adopt more flexible postures on enrichment capacity and sanctions relief.
Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, also known as the EU3+3) failed to reach a comprehensive nuclear agreement by their self-imposed 24 November deadline but have made considerable progress in the past twelve months. Though both sides expressed their political constraints and irreducible requirements for a deal more clearly than before, two core differences remain: the size of Iran’s enrichment capacity and sanctions relief. In its latest briefing, Iran Nuclear Talks: The Fog Recedes, the International Crisis Group sheds light on deficiencies of the talks thus far, examines both sides’ concerns and redlines, and argues that an accord can still be reached without violating either side’s core principles and interests.
The briefing’s major findings and recommendations are:
“As pressures build in Washington and Tehran, and the region endures horrific instability and violence, the status quo might not be sustainable for long”, says Ali Vaez, Iran Senior Analyst. “Without tangible progress, even if the talks survive outside pressure until 1 July, another extension will damage the parties’ credibility and drastically diminish their chances of success”.
“There is no reason to be pollyannaish, but neither is there any reason to write off the talks when the parties have just had their most fruitful exchanges”, says Robert Blecher, Acting Middle East Program Director. “With patience, persistence, creativity and sufficient will, an agreement is within reach”.
]]>Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the CIA of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups.
While welcoming the report’s release, the subject of months of intensive and sometimes furious negotiations between the Senate Committee’s majority and both the CIA and the Obama administration, the groups said additional steps were needed to ensure that U.S. officials never again engage in the kind of torture detailed in the report.
“This should be the beginning of a process, not the end,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The report should shock President Obama and Congress into action, to make sure that torture and cruelty are never used again.”
He called, among other steps, for the appointment of a special prosecutor to hold the “architects and perpetrators” of what the George W. Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) accountable and for Congress to assert its control over the CIA, “which in this report sounds more like a rogue paramilitary group than the intelligence gathering agency that it’s supposed to be.”
He was joined by London-based Amnesty International which noted that the declassified information provided in the report constituted “a reminder to the world of the utter failure of the USA to end the impunity enjoyed by those who authorised and used torture and other ill-treatment.
“This is a wake-up call to the USA; they must disclose the full truth about the human rights violations, hold perpetrators accountable and ensure justice for the victims,” said Amnesty’s Latin America director, Erika Guevara.
The Senate Committee’s report, actually a 524-page, partially-redacted summary of a still-classified 6,300-page report on the treatment of at least 119 terrorist suspects detained in secret locations overseas, accused the CIA not only of engaging in torture that was “brutal and far worse” than has previously been reported, but also of regularly misleading the White House and Congress both about what it was doing and the purported value of the intelligence it derived from those practices.
Water-boarding, for example, was used against detainees more often and in more of the CIA’s “black sites” than previously known; sleep deprivation was used for up to a week at a time against some suspects; others received “rectal feeding” or “hydration’; and still others were forced to stand on broken feet or legs.
In at least one case, a detainee was frozen to death; in the case of Abu Zubayda, an alleged “high-value” Al Qaeda detainee who was subject to dozens of water-boardings, the treatment was so brutal, several CIA officers asked to be transferred if it did not stop.
While the CIA officers and former Bush administration officials, notably former Vice President Dick Cheney, have long insisted that key information – including intelligence that eventually led to the killing of Osama bin Laden — was obtained from EITs, the report concluded that these techniques were ineffective.
Seven of 39 detainees who were subject to the most aggressive EITs provided no intelligence at all, while information obtained from the others preceded the harsh treatment, according to the report, which relied on the CIA’s own cables and reports.
In some cases, detainees subjected to EITs gave misinformation about “terrorist threats” which did not actually exist, the report found. Of the 119 known detainees subject to EITs, at least 26 should never have been held, it said.
Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who fought hard for months to release the report over the CIA’s fierce objections, wrote in its Forward that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, “she could understand the CIA’s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and CIA was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack.”
“Nevertheless, such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security,” according to Feinstein.
For his part, CIA director John Brennan, a career CIA officer appointed by Obama whose role in the Bush administration’s detention programme remains cloudy, “acknowledge(d) that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes.”
“The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists.”
But he also defended the EITs, insisting that “interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” A fact sheet released by the CIA claimed, as an example, that one detainee, after undergoing EITs, identified bin Laden’s courier, which subsequently led the CIA to the Al Qaeda chief’s location.
With several notable exceptions, Republicans also defended the CIA and the Bush administration’s orders to permit EITs. Indeed, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican members released a minority report that noted that the majority of staff had not interviewed any CIA officers directly involved in the programme.
“There is no reason whatsoever for this report to ever be published,” said the Committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Saxby Chambliss. “This is purely a partisan tactic” which he said was designed to attack the Bush administration. Republicans also warned that the report’s release would endanger U.S. service personnel and citizens abroad by fuelling anti-American sentiment, especially in the Muslim world.
But Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam war, defended the report, calling it “a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose …but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.”
McCain has championed efforts to pass legislation outlawing torture, particularly because Obama’s 2009 executive orders prohibiting such practices could be reversed by a future president.
Passage of such a law – whose prospects appear virtually nil in light of Republican control of both houses of Congress for the next two years – is one of the demands, along with release of the full report, of most human-rights groups here.
“The Obama administration and Congress should work together to build a durable consensus against torture by pursuing legislation that demonstrates bipartisan unity and fidelity to our ideals,” said Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First.
Many groups, however, want Obama to go further by prosecuting those responsible for the EIT programme, a step that his administration made clear from the outset it was loathe to do.
“We renew our demand for accountability for those individuals responsible for the CIA torture programme,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented a number of detainees at Guantanamo, including Abu Zubaydah, in U.S. courts. “They should be prosecuted in U.S. courts; and, if our government continues to refuse to hold them accountable, they must be pursued internationally under principles of universal jurisdiction.”
“The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction,” according to Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. “Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of the officials responsible, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”
Noting that health professionals, including doctors and psychologists also played a role in the EITs, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) also called for legal accountability. “For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been lying about its use of torture,” said Donna McKay, PHR’s executive director.
“The report confirms that health professionals used their skills to break the minds and bodies of detainees. Their actions destroyed trust in clinicians, undermined the integrity of their professions, and damaged the United States’ human rights record, which can only be corrected through accountability,” she said.
This article was first published by IPS and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, has just released a major new poll of US public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Mitchell Plitnick will analyze on this site in the next few days.
The survey also contains some very interesting data that suggest Islamic State (ISIS or IS) is now seen as a significantly greater threat to the United States than Iran. The data and Telhami’s analysis appear in a blog post entitled “Linking Iran and ISIS: How American Public Opinion Shapes the Obama Administration’s Approach to the Nuclear Talks” at the Brookings website. (Telhami is a long-time fellow at Brookings, and the poll results were released there.)
Briefly, the poll, which was conducted Nov. 14-19, found that nearly six times as many of the 1008 respondents said they believed that the rise of IS in Iraq and Syria “threaten(ed) American interests the most” in the Middle East than those who named “Iranian behavior in general.” Respondents were given two other options besides those to choose from: “the violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and “instability in Libya.” Libya was seen as the least threatening (3%); followed by Iran (12%), Israel-Palestine (13%), and ISIS (70%). The only notable partisan difference among the respondents was that Republicans rated Iranian behaviour (15%) slightly higher than Israel-Palestine (11%) as a threat, while Democrats rated Israel-Palestine (13%) slightly higher than Iran (9%).
In some respects, these results are not surprising, particularly given the media storm touched off by the beheading of American journalist James Foley in August. A Pew poll shortly after that event showed growing concern about Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaeda and IS compared to “Iran’s nuclear program.” Thus, while Iran’s nuclear program was cited by 68% of Pew’s American respondents as a “major threat to the U.S.” in November 2013—behind Islamic extremist groups (75%), only 59% rated it a “major threat” immediately after Foley’s murder.
Still, Telhami’s results are pretty remarkable, if only because neoconservatives, Israel’s right-wing government and the Israel lobby more generally have been arguing since IS began its sweep into Iraq, and particularly since Foley’s death, that Washington should avoid any cooperation with Iran against IS, in part because Tehran ultimately poses a much greater threat.
In June, for example, John Bolton, an aggressive nationalist at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), insisted that Washington should ignore Iraqi appeals for help against ISIS and instead “increase …our efforts to overthrow the ayatollahs in Tehran” because “Iran is clearly the strongest, most threatening power in this conflict.”
In a New York Times op-ed in October, Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, Yuval Steinitz, appealed for Washington not to “repeat (the) mistake” it made in 2003 when it went to war in Iraq “…at the expense of blocking a greater threat: Iran’s nuclear project.”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, “remains the world’s foremost threat.”
And one month later, speaking to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America shortly after Foley’s execution, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned against any cooperation with Iran against IS: “The Islamic State of Iran is not a partner of America; it is an enemy of America and it should be treated as an enemy,” he declared.
At least for now, it appears these arguments have not made much headway with US public opinion. Here’s Telhami:
[T]he Obama administration appears to have decided to risk appearing open to an Iranian role in fighting ISIS, as it certainly allowed the Iraqi government to coordinate such a role, and Secretary of State John Kerry described it as a good thing. There is evidence from recent polling that this may not be unwise when it comes to American public opinion. Obama assumes that nothing he is likely to do in the Iran nuclear negotiations will appease Congressional Republicans and thus his best bet is getting the American public on his side. Evidence shows the public may be moving in that direction.
The starting point is not about Iran as such; it’s all about shifting public priorities.
The survey also asked respondents which of two statements (you can read them in full on Telhami’s blog) was closest to their views—that Palestinian-Israeli violence was likely to draw more support for IS among Muslims worldwide or that it wouldn’t have any appreciable effect on IS’ support. In that case, 30% percent of all respondents agreed with the latter statement, while 64% said the former was closer to their view. Remarkably, given their leadership’s strong support for Israel’s right-wing government, Republicans (71%) were more likely than Democrats (60%) to believe that violence between Israelis and Palestinians would boost support for IS.
Finally, respondents were asked to choose between four options as to which country or countries are “most directly threatened by Iran”—the US, Israel, Washington’s “Arab allies,” and “Other”. Overall, 21% of respondents named the US, and another 21% named Arab allies, while 43% opted for Israel. Twelve percent chose “Other.” The poll found little difference between Republicans and Democrats on the Iranian threat posed to the US—19% and 24%, respectively. The major difference was on the perception of the threat to Israel: 38% of Democrats said Israel was most directly threatened by Iran, compared to 54% of Republicans. (Only 31% of independents.)
]]>I know this is a little off-topic from our usual Middle East focus, but I wanted to point out a new resource for those of you interested in US security and military assistance to countries around the world. Unfortunately, a lot of that information is very difficult to find, and it’s rarely aggregated in a way that makes it possible for researchers or interested citizens to understand how much assistance is going to X country via how many different programs. The Pentagon, which has a lot of shopping-around money, has been particularly tardy in providing information about the many aid programs it runs and is required to report to Congress.
However, dogged researchers at the Center for International Policy (CIP), with the help of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Latin American Working Group (LAWG), and the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), have put together in one interactive website as much of the unclassified data as can be legally gathered. The site launched last month at the Open Society Institute (OSI), which also funded the initiative.
The project was born out of the Just the Facts project, which first documented US security assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean in the mid-1990s. The project became an invaluable resource for Congressional staffers worried about the imbalance between security and development assistance in the region. The Security Assistance Monitor project covers a broader geographical area and includes both State Department-funded, and, to the greatest extent possible, Pentagon-funded programs from 2000 to the present. Of course, given their classified nature it doesn’t include CIA or other intelligence programs.
“Over the past decade, the US government has greatly expanded its investment in security assistance and its involvement in the security sectors of other countries, but where are the dollars going; what is the effect on the security of the recipient; and is it buying us relationships that are big trouble downstream,” asked Gordon Adams, a former senior Clinton administration defence budget official who teaches at American University, in remarks prepared for the website launch.
“As we give more and more responsibility to the Pentagon, we don’t know the answers to these questions,” he said. “Accountability starts with transparency, the Security Assistance Monitor is a big step forward in filling that hole in our knowledge.”
The website, for example, doesn’t explain the effectiveness of US security assistance to Yemen, whose capital Sana’a essentially fell last month to the Houthi insurgency from North Yemen, virtually without a shot fired. The latest reporting indicates that the Yemeni armed forces, to the extent they remain coherent, are now under Houthi direction. But what you can, among other things, find out from the new site is that the ratio of equipment to training provided to Yemen under the Pentagon’s controversial 1206 program during fiscal 2013 was nearly 100:1. The Yemenis received $45.4 million dollars in weapons and related equipment versus $565,000 in training—a ratio that may help explain the Yemeni military’s rather poor performance.
You might also be interested to know that Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s most repressive state (which is saying something), received security assistance from 16 different Department of Defense and State Department programs between 2002 and 2013. Washington is currently supplying the government nearly 20 million dollars a year in military and police assistance.
In any event, if you are interested in this kind of data, you should check out the site.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Following up on Paul Pillar’s excellent takedown of Dennis Ross’s remarkably crude display of Islamophobia (whereby Saudi Arabia is considered a “non-Islamist state,” while Syria’s Baathist regime is “Islamist”), it seems we can add Iranophobia to the list of the somewhat irrational feelings held by the man who was supposed to coordinate Iran policy during much of Obama’s first term.
It was demonstrated most recently in an op-ed, “Iran Remains Our Biggest Challenge,” published in the print edition of last Sunday’s Washington Post and co-authored with former Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, who is identified by the Post as a distinguished fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments but who also serves as a director of the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative (successor to the Project for the New American Century), and Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ross himself is described as a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and “special assistant to the president for the Middle East and South Asia from 2009 to 2011.” (What all three men have in common is membership in the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA’s) ultra-hawkish task force on Iran which, among other things has recommended that the US provide to Israel Washington’s most powerful bunker-buster bombs and the means to drop them on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ross and Edelman serve as the task force’s co-chairs.
The op-ed’s argument has become an increasingly familiar refrain by neocons and the Israel lobby and their supporters in Congress since Obama first declared his intent to “destroy” the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or IS); namely, whatever Washington does, it should not ally itself or cooperate in any with Iran or its regional allies in pursuit of that goal. Whatever threat may be presented by IS, they contend, is dwarfed by those posed by Iran and its presumed nuclear, hegemonic, and anti-American intentions.
Let’s stipulate at the outset that the authors have some valid points. For example, they argue essentially that the US cannot expect the indispensable cooperation of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies if it does anything that could be seen by Riyadh as cooperating with Iran. In their view, Riyadh and Tehran see their rivalry as a zero-sum game, and Riyadh is far more important to Washington’s anti-IS efforts than Tehran. (Of course, Monday’s meeting between two countries’ foreign ministers, as well as Rouhani’s optimism about bilateral relations at Tuesday’s press breakfast may offer some counter-evidence to their argument, not to mention the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia have worked out their differences in the past, most notably in stabilizing Lebanon.) Similarly, any disinterested observer would have to agree with the authors that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is highly suspicious of, and deeply hostile to the United States (just as, perhaps, Josef Stalin felt about Winston Churchill during World War II, or Ho Chi Minh and his successors felt about China during the Vietnam War.) What the authors contend is “the essential axiom of Middle East politics”—that “the enemy of my enemy is sometimes still my enemy”—is not unique to the Middle East, as much as these culturally sophisticated Washington analysts believe it to be.
But, at the same time, let’s consider some other aspects of their analysis.
On the one hand, they observe that “…both Washington and Tehran have an interest in defanging a militant Sunni group”—an assertion that is difficult to argue with. Yet, a few paragraphs later, they write: “Today, in the two central battlefronts of the Middle East—Syria and Iraq—Iran’s interests are inimical to those of the United States.” Yes, granted, in Syria, Iran prefers to keep Assad in power, while Washington wants him out. But, as the authors noted in the previously cited paragraph, both share an undeniable “interest” in defeating ISIS wherever it appears.
As for Iraq, it seems that both countries share the objective not only of defeating ISIS there, too, but also of stabilizing the country and maintaining its territorial integrity. After all, Tehran clearly played a role—and perhaps a decisive one—in ensuring the departure of Nouri al-Maliki as Iraqi prime minister and rallying the highly factionalized Shia leadership behind Haider al-Abadi—a result clearly supported by Washington as well. If Iran’s interests were truly “inimical” to Washington’s, Maliki would probably still be prime minister. No doubt, Iran is urging Abadi to retain the closest possible links to Tehran and to confine his outreach to the Sunni community to the minimum necessary to separate it from ISIS, while Washington would prefer a more wide-ranging power-sharing arrangement that would also substantially reduce Tehran’s influence in Baghdad. In that respect, the ultimate aims of the US and Iran in Iraq are different; but, at this critical moment, the overlap in their mutual interests appears far more significant.
Then there is the authors’ rather bizarre assertion about Iran’s role during and immediately after the US-led offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, an assertion that contradicts the testimony of virtually everyone directly involved in the aftermath of the Taliban’s ouster in late 2001 and the creation of the new regime in Kabul:
[quote]“In Afghanistan, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the misapprehension was born that the United States needed Iran’s assistance to rehabilitate its war-torn charge, and this misbegotten notion has since migrated from crisis to crisis. The tactical assistance that Iran offered in Afghanistan in 2001 was largely motivated by its fear of being the next target of U.S. retribution.” [endquote]
This is a radically revisionist interpretation of those events for which the authors provide no supporting evidence whatsoever. In fact, it was quite clear even before the Taliban was ousted that Iraq—not Iran (as much as Ariel Sharon would have preferred)—was the next target, at least for those, including then-Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and then-VP Dick Cheney, not to mention Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who were by then dominating policy making. It was Rumsfeld, for example, who was telling aides on 9/11 itself that the attack offered an opportunity to take out Saddam, and it was Perle and a host of his fellow-neocons who were busy trying to tie Saddam to 9/11 and raising the specter of a nuclear-armed Iraq, a nightmarish vision quickly embraced by Cheney himself! While Tehran was no doubt made uncomfortable by the presence of US forces close to its eastern border, it would be very difficult for Iran’s leaders to seriously believe that they were “the next target” given all of the anti-Saddam hysteria that had been whipped up by the neocons back in Washington, especially when Iran’s good friend and informant, Ahmad Chalabi, was being promoted by the war party here as the presumptive leader of a newly “liberated” Iraq.
No, despite its concerns about the presence of US ground forces, Tehran’s cooperation with Washington in ousting the Taliban and constituting a successor government that could successfully resist the group’s return, respect the rights of the Shia community there, and stabilize the country appears to have been motivated entirely by the very rational calculation of Iran’s national interests, interests that coincided substantially with those of Washington. It was, of course, only when Iran found itself grouped with Saddam and North Korea in the “axis of evil” that anti-US hard-liners in the regime got the upper hand in the internal debate in Tehran, no doubt turbo-charging Khamenei’s pre-existing suspicions about Washington’s intentions and trustworthiness. By all accounts—from US, European, and Iranian officials directly involved in Afghanistan policy—the explicit hostility expressed by George W. Bush in his January, 2002, State of the Union speech marked a turning point in Iran’s willingness to cooperate with a US administration that had turned abruptly and seemingly gratuitously—not to say irrationally (given the extent of Iran’s cooperation in Afghanistan up to that point)—hostile.
Now let’s consider some of the other assertions made by the authors such as: The ebbs and flows of the war on terrorism should not be allowed to conceal the fact that the theocratic Iranian regime and its attempt to upend the regional order remains the most consequential long-term challenge in the Middle East.
Well, let’s see, we’ve been engaged in the “war on terrorism” now for 13 years and have been told—even by the Obama administration—that we’ll be battling IS alone well into the next presidency. And, in those 13 years, it seems that Washington’s biggest, bloodiest, and most expensive pre-occupation by far has been combating Sunni Muslim extremism—as manifested by al-Qaeda and its many affiliates, the Taliban, and Sunni insurgencies, of which the latest is the Islamic State—most of them inspired by the Wahhabi theology native to (when not promoted by) our “non-Islamist” ally, Saudi Arabia. (A lot of effort has also been devoted to working out a reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which virtually every administration has called a highly consequential long-term challenge in the region, but apparently Ross, for obvious reasons, doesn’t want to bring that up in this context.) While curbing Iran’s nuclear program and weakening Iran’s closest allies in the region—most importantly, Syria and Hezbollah—have gained a lot of attention, it has not been so much in the context of the authors’ “war on terrorism.”
As for “upend[ing] the regional order,” Iran’s efforts have been miniscule compared to those of the Bush administration (in which Edelman served) when it invaded and occupied Iraq. And let’s not forget that it has been Saudi Arabia and the UAE that have led and financed the counter-revolution against the democratization movements of the Arab Spring across the region. Which raises the question, what kind of “order” do the authors believe the US should be defending? And how likely is any kind of “order” to be established if the US, as they recommend, undertakes “a systematic effort to isolate Iran in its immediate neighborhood” given its size, population, geostrategic importance, and its unquestioned influence in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as with Assad and Hezbollah? (Fareed Zakaria, who spent a lot of time with Rouhani in New York this week, makes this case quite persuasively in “The Enemy of Our Enemy” published in the Post’s print edition Friday.)
Here’s another statement—or neoconservative cliché—that deserves some serious scrutiny:
[quote] The Islamic Republic is not a normal nation-state seeking to realize its national interests but an ideological entity mired in manufactured conspiracies.[quote]
Compared to whom? Was the US a “normal nation-state” when its leadership invaded Iraq under the highly questionable, if not manufactured, pretext that Saddam represented an imminent threat to our national security due to his alleged support for al-Qaeda and possession of weapons of mass destruction (and then, post hoc, that we were trying to “upend the regional order” in favor of democracy and human rights)? Is Saudi Arabia a normal nation-state when it actively promotes and finances the spread of Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world and beyond and actively supports a bloody and highly repressive dictatorship in Egypt in order to extirpate the Muslim Brotherhood? Of course, this notion—that the Iran is more an ideology than a government—has been around since 1979 (and heavily promoted by Israel’s political leadership), but most serious Iran experts believe that, at the age of 35, the Islamic Republic has settled into middle age, pursuing its national interests as it defines them—and, above all, its survival—in a relatively rational and predictable way.
[quote] The United States and Iran stand at opposite ends of the spectrum of Middle East politics.[endquote]
Given the Rubik’s Cube of Middle Eastern politics at the moment, what does this mean? Even if you accept Ross’s frankly idiotic bipolarization of the region between “Islamists” (like the Muslim Brotherhood, IS, Assad, Hamas, Turkey, Qatar, and Iran) and “non-Islamists” (like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Gen. Sisi, the PLO, Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE), the spectrum is decidedly non-linear and thus challenges the notion of what constitutes “opposite ends.” The region is obviously multi-polar with many different actors whose interests are sometimes clearly at odds and sometimes clearly overlap. The failure to take that multi-polarity into account is what makes the analysis so crude and unhelpful, to say the least.
Yes, if you consider Syria the critical dividing line, then Iran, which has supported Assad, takes a position that is precisely contrary to Washington’s. But why should Syria serve as the critical reference point? If you take Bahrain, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are at opposite corners, it appears that Washington is somewhere in-between, though leaning increasingly toward Riyadh’s point of view, especially now that Manama has joined the US-led air campaign against IS in Syria. But if you take Iraq, as noted above, Washington and Tehran are closely if uncomfortably aligned, especially compared to, say, Saudi Arabia or IS.
If you take Israel—which appears central to the worldviews of Ross and Edelman—in particular, as your point of reference, then the notion makes a bit more sense, especially given Netanyahu’s avid courtship of the region’s Sunni-led states (minus Turkey and Qatar, at least for the moment) against Iran. But despite the strenuous efforts of the neocons, Netanyahu, and the Israel lobby to make them appear so, the fact is that Israel’s and US interests are not identical, including regarding Iran itself. Israel, after all, is doing virtually everything it can to sabotage the chances of Washington striking a nuclear agreement with Iran, while the Obama administration is trying very hard to reach one, in part because it believes strongly that its regional position will be much improved and because the alternative is potentially so destructive. Similarly, Israel believes that the perpetuation of the Sunni-Shia conflict across the region serves its interests, in part because it diverts the world’s attention from the Israel-Palestinian struggle. Washington, on the other hand, has made clear that the continuing sectarian conflict serves only to further destabilize the region, which is very much contrary to its interests. In that respect, Israel and the US are in very different camps.
In any event, the repetition of these hoary stereotypes of Iran disguised as expert analysis—at a moment when Washington’s need for Tehran’s (at least tacit) cooperation in both Iraq and Syria, not to mention Afghanistan, has become, as noted by Zakaria, so clear—helps illustrate the intellectual and analytical bankruptcy of these authors and their ideology.
]]>by Jim Lobe
New York — On his second trip to the UN General Assembly as Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani Tuesday said he looked forward to better relations with regional rival Saudi Arabia and only tepidly criticized the US attack on Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) and Khorasan targets in Syria.
Speaking at a press breakfast with about two dozen media representatives, Rouhani expressed hope that the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) and Tehran will conclude a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by the current Nov. 24 deadline but noted that differences remain and that this week’s series of meetings in New York are likely to be critical.
Failure to reach an agreement, he said, will not necessarily result in a rapid uptick in tensions between Washington and Tehran.
“If there [is] no final agreement, there will perhaps be another way to go,” he said.
“For now, everything is based, God willing, on reaching an accord. [But failure to meet the deadline] doesn’t mean we will go back to the way things were before.”
He also suggested that the Obama administration should accept Iran’s role as a regional leader in the fight against ISIS, stressing that, while Washington justified its initial military reaction to the Sunni group’s sweep last month across much of central and northern Iraq largely in terms of protecting US personnel and property, Iran was already taking action to bolster anti-ISIS forces on the ground.
“Americans are very aware that the country that prevented the [Baghdad] government from falling was Iran,” he said. “Iran’s role has been undeniable.”
“Countries in the region are much more qualified to lead [the anti-ISIS] efforts than those who are outside and don’t know the region as well,” he said through a translator.
Tuesday’s breakfast marked the first of a series of events featuring Rouhani, who will address the UN General Assembly Wednesday morning and hold a more general press conference Friday. It came amidst intensified diplomacy between the P5+1 and Iran, which included a meeting lasting more than one hour between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, who had already arrived in New York last week, Monday.
The breakfast, in which Rouhani answered questions in Farsi, also came in the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon’s confirmation that it had attacked targets of Khorasan, an al-Qaeda offshoot that Washington claims is actively planning and preparing attacks against western states, including the US, inside Syria.
Khorasan is not known to have links with ISIS, whose recent military successes in both Syria and Iraq prompted Obama’s decision to dispatch some 1,600 US trainers and advisers to Iraq and to authorize air strikes against ISIS forces in both countries.
US Anti-ISIS Campaign
Rouhani did not explicitly address Khorasan during the breakfast, focusing instead on ISIS, as well as other groups he referred to as “terrorist.”
As to the US air strikes in Syrian territory, Rouhani questioned their legality but did not explicitly denounce them. He stressed, however, that any military action within a country’s borders should either be authorized by the UN Security Council or by the country whose territory is subject to attack. “[It’s not] legal, particularly without the authority of the government,” he said.
“…Everything that does take place must take place within the legal framework,” he said later in reference to US counter-terrorist actions in Iraq and Syria, and possible coordination between Tehran and Washington in that effort.
Perhaps his most significant remarks, however, came in response to a question about relations between Iran and its regional rival, Saudi Arabia. It came in the wake of a meeting Monday between Zarif and Riyadh’s foreign minister, Prince Saudi al-Faisal in which the latter reportedly invited Zarif to visit the kingdom.
Many observers have commented recently that any effort to isolate and defeat ISIS and eventually reach a political settlement to the civil war in Syria will require understandings worked out between Tehran and Riyadh.
“Saudi Arabia is an important country in our region, and we believe that the relationships between [Iran and the Gulf] countries must be very dignified and very strong,” Rouhani said. “Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is not within the level that our people expect. I believe relations deserve to be warmer.”
He went on to say that he believed Riyadh was moving “closer and closer with us” as a result of a conditions in the region, an apparent reference to ISIS’s advances. “Within the next few months, I believe our relations will grow warmer,” he added.
Rouhani also repeatedly stated that Iran’s role as a leader in the anti-ISIS fight should be given more recognition, noting that he had spoken at length about the dangers posed by “extremism and violence” in his speech to the General Assembly a year ago.
“Perhaps this [ISIS] threat and danger were not crystal clear when I spoke,” he observed.
And he questioned Washington’s claim to leading the international fight against ISIS. “Can countries [carry out this effort] without cooperation and coordination and succeed,” he asked.
“Is a coalition needed? If so, who is best suited to lead? …Is it possible [to defeat extremism] without [addressing root causes and] without knowing the region very well?” he asked rhetorically.
“Countries in the region are much more qualified to lead…,” he said.
“The Americans are free (to make their own) judgment, but people are aware that the strongest government that has taken the strongest fight against terrorism has been Iran,” he said.
Without citing the United States by name, Rouhani also implicitly criticized Washington’s strategy in Syria, noting that it was not “easily digestible” for Iranians to accept the leadership of countries which had supported anti-Assad insurgent groups, some of which have been associated with ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
He also complained that “a country” that says it wants to fight against a terrorist group but, at the same time, forms, arms and trains an anti-government group in a third country (a reference to Saudi Arabia) and then sends them back in hopes it will fight the terrorist group was “nebulous and ambiguous at best” and constituted a “very confusing behavior and policy.”
Nuclear Talks
On the nuclear negotiations, Rouhani broke no new ground but suggested that current differences between the P5+1 and Iran went beyond the size and scope of Tehran’s uranium enrichment program and included the timeframe of any comprehensive agreement and the lifting of sanctions as well as what changes will be made to the Arak reactor.
“This week will clarify many things as to whether we will reach an agreement in two months,” he said, adding that both sides agree that the “continuation of the current agreement doesn’t benefit anyone.”
If an agreement is indeed reached, relations between Iran and the US will be “completely different” and will constitute a “win-win for all sides,” he said, noting that he and President Obama had spoken “in depth about a number of issues of co-operation” once the nuclear issue had been resolved during their ground-breaking phone conversation one year ago, as Rouhani was being driven to the JFK airport after the General Assembly.
Rouhani also acknowledged that there was domestic opposition to an agreement and rapprochement between the US and Iran, noting that various sectors in both countries had opposed the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) reached in November last year. “But after the dust settled,” he noted, Iranians “…saw only roses, not thorns, on the path.”
Detained Washington Post Reporter
A number of attendees at the breakfast raised the plight of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and his wife who have been detained in Iran for more than two months without formal charges.
Rouhani insisted that the case was in the hands of the judiciary and that he hoped it would be resolved very soon.
“The judiciary has not yet made a determination,” he said.
Asked whether their detention may have been designed to sabotage the P5+1 talks and weaken his government, Rouhani said he didn’t think the action was “premeditated” (the translator said “pre-programmed”) with that intent, although his answer fell short of a categorical rejection of that notion.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrives in New York on Sept. 22, 2014 ahead of his address to the United Nations General Assembly
A successful agreement on Iran’s nuclear program could significantly enhance US leverage and influence throughout the greater Middle East, according to a new report signed by 31 former senior US officials and regional experts released here Wednesday.
The 115-page report, “Iran and Its Neighbors: Regional Implications for US Policy of a Nuclear Agreement,” argues that a nuclear accord would open the way towards cooperation between the two countries on key areas of mutual concern, including stabilising both Iraq and Afghanistan and even facilitating a political settlement to the bloody civil war in Syria.
“A comprehensive nuclear agreement would enable the United States to perceive (regional) priorities without every lens being colored by that single issue,” according to the report, the latest in a series published in the last several years by the New York-based Iran Project, which has sponsored high-level informal exchanges with Iran since it was founded in 2002.
“If the leaders of the United States and Iran are prepared to take on their domestic political opponents’ opposition to the agreement now taking shape, then their governments can turn to the broader agenda of regional issues,” concluded the report, whose signatories included former US National Security Advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, as well as more than a dozen former top-ranking diplomats.
Conversely, failure to reach an accord between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) could result in “Iran’s eventual acquisition of a nuclear weapons, a greatly reduced chance of defeating major threats elsewhere in the region, and even war,” the study warned.
The report comes as negotiations over a comprehensive nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 are set to formally resume in New York Thursday, as diplomats from around the world gather for the opening of the UN General Assembly, which will be addressed by both Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, among other world leaders, next week.
The parties have set a Nov. 24 deadline, exactly one year after they signed a Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) in Geneva that eased some economic sanctions against Tehran in exchange for its freezing or rolling back key elements of its nuclear program.
While the two sides have reportedly agreed in principle on a number of important issues, large gaps remain, particularly with respect to proposed limits on the size of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and their duration.
The study also comes amidst what its authors called a “tectonic shift” in the Middle East triggered in major part by the military successes of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (IS, ISIS or ISIL), a development that has been greeted by virtually all of the region’s regimes, as well as the US—which is trying to patch together an international coalition against the Sunni extremist group—as a major threat.
“The rise of ISIS has reinforced Iran’s role in support of the government in Iraq and raises the possibility of U.S.-Iran cooperation in stabilizing Iraq even before a nuclear agreement is signed,” according to the report, which nonetheless stressed that any agreement should impose “severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities… (to reduce) the risks that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons.”
Still, the thrust of the report, which includes individual essays by recognised experts on Iran’s relations with seven of its neighbours, focuses on how Washington’s interests in the region could be enhanced by “parallel and even joint U.S. and Iran actions” after an agreement is reached.
Such cooperation would most probably begin in dealing with ISIL in Iraq whose government is supported by both Washington and Tehran.
Indeed, as noted by Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Middle East analyst, both countries have recently taken a number of parallel steps in Iraq, notably by encouraging the removal of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and by taking separate military actions—US airstrikes and Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) advisers—to help break ISIL’s months-long siege of the town of Amerli.
“There’s ample potential here for more communication on a source of very high concern to both of us,” Pillar said at the report’s release at the Wilson Center. “[The Iranians] see the sources of instability in Iraq; they see it is not in their interest to have unending instability [there].”
A second area of mutual interest is Afghanistan from which US and NATO troops are steadily withdrawing amidst growing concerns about the ability of the government’s security forces to hold the Taliban at bay.
It is no secret that the US and Iran worked closely together in forging the government and constitution that were adopted after coalition forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, noted Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert who after the 9/11 attacks served in senior positions at the State Department and later the UN.
Lesser known is the fact that “the IRGC worked closely on the ground with the CIA and US Special Forces” during that campaign, he said.
With political tensions over recent election results between the two main presidential candidates and their supporters on the rise, according to Rubin, some cooperation between Iran and the US is likely to be “very important” to ensure political stability.
“A nuclear agreement would open the way for a diplomatic and political process that would make it possible to retain some of the important gains we have made in Afghanistan over the past 13 years,” he said.
As for Syria, Iran, as one of President Bashar al-Assad’s two main foreign backers, must be included in any efforts to achieve a political settlement, according to the report.
Until now, Iran has been invited to participate only as an observer, largely due to US and Saudi opposition.
“The Iranians are not wedded to …the continuation of the Baathist regime,” said Frank Wisner, who served as ambassador to Egypt and India, among other senior posts in his career.
In talks with Iranian officials he said he had been struck by “the degree to which they feel themselves over-stretched,” particularly now that they are more involved in Iraq.
The report anticipates considerable resistance by key US regional allies to any rapprochement with Iran that could follow a nuclear agreement, particularly from Israel, which has been outspoken in its opposition to any accord that would permit Iran to continue enriching uranium.
“It goes without saying that this is of primordial importance to Israel,” noted Thomas Pickering, who has co-chaired the Iran Project and served as US ambassador to Israel and the UN, among other top diplomatic posts.
Washington must make it clear to Israel and its supporters here that an agreement “would certainly improve prospects for tranquillity in the region” and that it would be a “serious mistake” for Israel to attack Iran, as it has threatened to do, while an agreement is in force.
Washington must also take great pains to reassure Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-led Gulf states that a nuclear agreement will not come at their expense, according to the report.
“Such reassurance might require a period of increased U.S. military support and a defined U.S. presence (such as the maintenance of bases in the smaller Gulf States and of military and intelligence cooperation with the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] states),” the report said.
“Riyadh would be willing to explore a reduction of tensions with Tehran if the Saudis were more confident of their American ally,” according to the report.
Photo: US Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks to the press in Baghdad, Iraq on Sept. 10, 2014. Credit: State Department
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